Bothmer One Year Foundation Course London 2025

Aims of the Course

• Support your own personal growth through the medium of movement.
• Grow your awareness and appreciation of others through social interactions, games, movement activities, sports and play.
• Develop your imagination skills, be able to form and hold pictures and understand the link between imagination and movement.
• To know and understand games and movement activities, their purpose in the Steiner Waldorf curriculum and how to teach them.
• To know and understand a selection of Bothmer Movement exercises.
• Improve your own posture, alignment and movement habits.
• Increase your sense of movement, spatial awareness, balance and bodily well being.
• Start to develop a sense of the energy of space around us.
• Gain an understanding of the underlying philosophy of Bothmer Movement.
• Gain an understanding of the stages of child development.
• Gain an embodied understanding of Anthroposophy.

The Curriculum

The course is largely practical and we will spend much of the time moving and playing. You will learn a series of Bothmer exercises and accompanying ‘conditioning exercises’ that help us enhance our quality of movement. You will be able to incorporate many of the conditioning exercises into daily life so you can start to become more conscious of your own movements and build better habits.

• Movement and Games : For teachers, each weekend we will teach you a selection of games and movement activities that you can immediately apply in a class setting. We will show you how to bring them to a class and why they are relevant. For parents and everyone else, these games are good fun, can also be used and adapted to family and work environments, and can provide an insight into your own character! When working with the Bothmer exercises some of the weekends may follow a theme. Here are some example themes that we will meet in our movement sessions:
• Point and periphery: How can we remain centered and not lose ourselves in the outer world?
• Falling: Many of the exercises reveal to us the inner experience of ‘falling’. When we have hard times in our lives or we experience a ‘collapse’ how do we navigate ourselves out of it? “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up” – old Chinese proverb.
• Moving with imagination: Imagination is one of the fundamental aspects of human development, linked to creativity and innovation, to empathy and compassion, and to individual well being. As the great American inventor Henry Ford said, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right”.
• The present moment: How can we become more fully present with ourselves? We look at the space behind us as the past and the space in front of us as the future and ask if we are balanced between the two. Can we create more space here to live more fully in the present moment?

Who is the course designed for?

• Steiner Waldorf physical education teachers.
• Steiner Waldorf class teachers and high school teachers who wish to develop their own movement practice and use of movement in the classroom.
• Mainstream physical education teachers who wish to deepen their understanding of child development and broaden their curriculum.
• Adults who want to learn more about Anthroposophy through movement.
• Parents of children in Steiner Waldorf Schools who wish to learn more about the education.

The weekends will start on Friday evening and run all day Saturday

• 12th/13th September 2025
• 10th/11th October
• 7th/8th November
• 12th/13th December
• 9th/10th January 2026
• 13th/14th February
• 13th/14th March
• 17th/18th April
• 8th/9th May
• 26th/27th June - Class 5 Olympic Games at Michael Hall School, Forest Row, Sussex
• July: Bothmer Movement International Summer Camp dates TBC Additional costs required.

INFO