Welcome to NALA!
NALA, the New Adult Learning Association, is a community of individuals who want to bring change in the world for the future of our world. We work together with learning processes based on seven step processing also called New Adult Learning processes. By creating connection and community, NALA strives to ignite interest in transformative learning that will in turn facilitate spiritual connection, individualized learning and the co-creation of generative pathways. We want to see these new pathways bring balance and healing for ourselves, our relationships and the greater community around us.
Our History
Coenraad van Houten was a member of the Social Science Section at the Goetheanum, and his work is inspired by Rudolf Steiner to F.W. Zeylmans van Emmichoven and Bernard Lievegoed. Coenraad’s thesis and life’s work was based on the question, once the human being is fully born at twenty one what happens to the life forces that are released? Could an adult transform them for conscious learning? Coenraad quickly proved this to be true, presented his findings and shared his life’s work in four publications: Awakening the Will, Practising Destiny, The Threefold Nature of Destiny and Creative Spiritual Research. The processes and three paths of learning he developed as New Adult Learning are being used by individuals and professionals around the world in many different capacities.
In the early 2000’s Arlene Thorn travelled to Europe to train over several years with Coenraad van Houten and upon completion Arlene Thorn formed a collective of New Adult Educators joined together, creating the New Adult Learning Movement Network (NALM Network). In addition to offering programs in their communities, the group of New Adult Educators had attended the yearly research weeks for personal and professional development. In the 2018 Research Week the group identified a wish to work together to develop the New Adult Learning impulse in North America. Out of this week came the initiative to hold yearly spring New Adult Learning conferences.
Our Present
Due to health issues Arlene Thorn wished to pass on the organization to a new group to ensure the future of the organization. The current group has taken up that task and all are members of the newly formed New Adult Learning Association (NALA). We are striving to be a community hub for those interested in developing the self through the three seven step processes. Offering seasonal events and workshops for individuals, families and professionals, NALA aims to support the continued development and connection of its community members. Through the website, NALA is also a gathering place where community members and facilitator members can connect through facilitator event sharing on our Community Events page.
In addition, NALA also offers three core development programs, two facilitator training programs and organization consulting, both on-site and online. All of the programs work with the seven processes and follow the three New Adult Learning paths. For more information, please visit our programs page and our trainings page.
Our Member Guides
Marg Beard, who hails from Wingham, Ontario, is a Waldorf educator/mentor having been in the field for over 30 years. Her educator/mentoring journey started with the homeschooling, from birth to Grade 12, of her three now adult children. This later led to being, for many years, a mentor for RSCC (Toronto) Foundations Studies in Anthroposophy Distance program (Homeschooling and Early Years streams) as well as the part-time Teacher Education Program (Early Years), a co-founder and Director of RSCC’s Healing Education and Remedial Training (HEART) program, and now a facilitator of the New Adult Learning programs My Child Myself as well as My Home, Family and Community (www.newadultlearning.com). She is a Parenting and Life in the Home Coach through her private initiative KALLIAS, offering customized in-person and on-line programing/mentoring for individuals, couples and groups. She offers programs locally, provincially, nationally and internationally. She can be reached at kallias@live.com
Heather Church grew up immersed in nature on the shores of Lake Superior and in the great outdoors of Muskoka, Canada. Her Waldorf journey began over twenty-five years ago, first as a parent and then as a Kindergarten teacher. After eleven years of teaching in mixed-age kindergartens in Ontario, she co-created a center focused on parent education, community building, and selling organic woollens (Warmth and Weather).
Heather’s involvement with NALA began with the Connections Course with Arlene Thorn in 2007. Since then, she has been actively involved in teaching, training, and facilitating within NALA, and is excited to support the growth of this work in North America and beyond.
In July 2023, Heather became a Co-Director of WECAN and has been a board member since 2015. She is also part of the WECAN Birth to Three Working Group, supporting early childhood programs and training across North America. Heather is actively involved in Waldorf teacher training and adult education at several Teacher Training Institutes. Previously, she served as Pedagogical Director and Early Childhood Coordinator at the Halton Waldorf School and held leadership positions at the Toronto Waldorf School. Heather now resides in Gores Landing, Ontario, Canada.
Heather is also the owner of Warmth and Weather, a company that imports and sells organic merino wool in Canada and beyond. She and Arlene founded this business in the early years of NALA, with a mission to foster warmth that supports wellness in body, soul, and spirit.
Kati Gabor, New Adult Educator, Mentor, Parenting Coach and Waldorf Consultant is an experienced Waldorf teacher who has worked with parents, teachers and healing professionals for the past 15 years. Her focus on the inner work of the teacher led her to Michael Chekhov’s drama exercises which inspired her to complete the Art of Acting course at the Threefold Educational Center, NY. Kati teaches the Connections and the My Child Myself programs of New Adult Learning, incorporating her observations and experiences about movement and gesture with a focus on embodiment practices, creative processes and destiny learning.
For more information about her work please see: https://katigabor.com/
Fiona Hughes is a health coach and New Adult Learning educator. Using anthroposophical remedies and New Adult Learning processes she faciliates healing and self development for individuals and groups.
Fiona grew up in a Waldorf household, is a graduate of Toronto Waldorf School, and the mother to two children who also attended a Waldorf school. Her grandfather, a pharmacist, brought the anthroposophical remedies to Canada where he distributed them from his basement – in Fiona’s memory a sacred place of mystery and beauty. While completing her BA in cultural studies at Trent University, she cared for her brother when he was dying with AIDS. This experience led her to pursue a degree in conventional and anthroposophical medicine at the University of Witten / Herdecke, Germany.
Without a residency position in Canada, Fiona worked for six years as the medical consultant and health futurist at Idea Couture, a management consulting firm in Toronto. There she co-wrote Futures of Health and Care, Futures of Aging, and gained insight into the workings of Big Pharma. She went on to work with the Hesperus Fellowship Community, an anthroposophical retirement home, to develop a vision for care and a curriculum for aging. It was at this time that she encountered Arlene Thorn’s New Adult Learning Facilitators program. She will be forever grateful to Arlene for developing and sharing Coenraad van Houten’s work with her.
As a New Adult Educator Fiona facilitates NAL retreats with the aim of deepening participants’ connection to the spiritual world by awakening to threshold moments in everyday life. In her experience NAL processes take us on a creative and liberating inner journey – to be more present in our lives in a state of becoming. The processes are also a profound method for revealing and healing karma, a tool to answer inner questions and enter more deeply into our work.
Fiona recently completed the three week program (three one week sessions over the year) with a group in Quebec, and one in Florianopolis Brazil. She has plans to start three new groups in Canada and abroad in 2025.
Marina Unger lives in Toronto, Ontario with her family. She discovered Steiner while in college for Early Childhood Education and never looked back. Much of the last 15 years have been spent creating home for her family, homeschooling her two children, earning her certificate in Foundations in Anthroposophy from Kallias and organizing parent development workshops for homeschooling families. Lead by Arlene Thorn, Marina completed the New Adult Learning programs My Home, Family and Community and My Child, My Self Facilitator Training in 2022.
Marina is a distance mentor for Foundations in Anthroposophy at Rudolf Steiner College Canada, a facilitator for New Adult Learning programs and is currently completing her teacher training as a Waldorf Handwork Teacher through Waldorf Handwork Educators. She also completed the year long course Laying Foundations towards Inner Freedom in the Young Child with Educaredo. Through her private practice, Growing Together in Freedom, Marina hosts a variety of anthroposophical book clubs, parenting and homeschooling seminars, and handwork classes for both adults and children.