Earth · Consciousness · Healing

The Biodynamic Farm

Where working the soil and working with people meet — a collaboration taking shape.

Some healing does not begin in a treatment room. It begins in the soil.

Over the coming year I am joining the Biodynamic Hub — an educational farm in the Latrun area of Israel — as a practitioner. The farm already runs courses and gatherings in biodynamic agriculture. What we are working toward is bringing together two things that were never really separate: working with the earth, and working with people.

Inside the biodynamic greenhouse: rugs and cushions on the floor, a circle of chairs and a projection screen, under a canopy of fabric sails — The greenhouse from the inside — rugs on the floor, a circle of chairs, and the fabric sails that soften the light

A group of course participants at the educational biodynamic farm — A graduating group from one of the farm's courses

What biodynamic agriculture actually is

Biodynamic farming was founded in the 1920s by Rudolf Steiner — the same thinker behind Waldorf education. It predates modern organic farming, and it differs from it on one fundamental point.

Conventional farming asks: how do we grow more? Organic farming asks: how do we grow without toxins?

Biodynamics asks something else entirely: how do we restore the soil's vitality?

The premise is that if the soil itself is healthy, fertile and resilient, the plants growing in it will be naturally robust. You do not need to fight pests if the plant is strong enough. So the focus is not the vegetables — it is the ground they grow in.

In biodynamic farming we do not grow vegetables. We grow the soil — and the vegetables follow.

In practice: no chemical fertiliser, no synthetic pesticide, and a farm meant to recycle itself. Instead of feeding a plant a measured dose of NPK, you create conditions in the ground so it can make what it needs for itself.

Two things in the method sound strange on first hearing, and it is better to say them plainly than to dodge them:

500–508

Nine preparations. Made from medicinal plants, minerals and cow manure, fermented at length, then sprayed on the soil or added to compost in homeopathic quantities. The stated aim is to stimulate processes in the ground and enrich it with microorganisms.

The moon

An astronomical calendar. Sowing, planting and harvesting are timed by the positions of the planets and the moon’s cycles, on the understanding that those forces affect the flow of sap in a plant.

These are anthroposophical ideas, not scientific findings, and I do not intend to present them as anything else. What can be said is that working for quality rather than quantity produces an entirely different relationship to the ground — and that the vegetables really do taste different.

Why this speaks to me

When I first encountered this approach, what caught me was not the agriculture. It was the parallel.

Biodynamics treats soil as a living entity — something with vitality, condition, and forces that can be depleted or renewed. A sick plant is not read as a problem to spray, but as a sign that something underneath is wrong.

That is precisely how I work with people. A symptom is not the enemy. It is a message. Treat only the symptom and it returns wearing a different face.

Soil degraded over decades does not recover through fertiliser. It recovers when the conditions for life are returned to it. People, in my experience, are not so different.

Hands-on learning in the field at the biodynamic farm — Learning in the field — hands in the soil, not only theory

Who leads the farm

Dr Yael Almog Stein came to biodynamic agriculture from the least likely place — thirty years of medicine.

Until 2021

Nearly thirty years at Hadassah Ein Kerem: anaesthetist, pain clinic, and research into the effects of electromagnetic radiation and chemicals on the body at the Hebrew University's School of Public Health. A research master's in public health followed in 2022.

2021

An acute chemical sensitivity, diagnosed after prolonged exposure in unventilated clinic rooms. Breathlessness, pain, difficulty functioning. A long sick leave, then resignation from the hospital and from her academic post.

Since

Her own recovery began on an organic farm, one day a week, hands in the soil. From there to studying biodynamics with Nitzan Spielman of Vitalis — Biodynamic Israel, and since 2024 she has been teaching it herself.

In 2023 she founded the Yurt in Jerusalem — a social venture for gatherings and workshops around natural health and consciousness. She closed it in October 2025 and moved everything to the biodynamic greenhouse at Moshav Tzelafon. In 2026 she opened a study centre there, and — after patients kept asking — a clinic for medical consultation, focused on environmental sensitivities.

I came to understand that healing, as I understand it, does not really happen inside an airless hospital with no windows.
Dr Yael Almog Stein

That background is exactly what makes her an unusual teacher. She explains soil the way a physician explains a body — connecting the health of the ground to the health of a person in a way I have not heard anywhere else.

The medical consultation is hers and her responsibility, as a licensed physician. I am not a doctor and do not give medical advice — my work at the farm is complementary: breath, sound and consciousness.

What an evening looks like

The Earth · Consciousness · Healing series runs to a fixed shape, and its logic is what drew me to it:

17:30A talk. One subject, in depth — synergy in healing, say, or how we think about health.
18:30Work in the field, together. Preparing beds, planting, whatever the season asks for. By hand.
19:30A shared meal. Everyone brings something and it is cooked on the spot.
20:30A healing session. Crystal bowls, percussion, constellation work — it changes with the evening and who is leading.

That order is not accidental. The body works first and attention opens afterwards. Going straight from the car into inner work is far harder. An hour of digging does what no instruction does.

Working together in the field at the biodynamic farm — The hour between the talk and the session

Talks and meditative work

Some evenings open with a talk of hers. The one that recurs describes what she learned from thirty years inside public healthcare — and particularly which social messages get in the way of recovering. It is not a talk against medicine. It is given by someone who spent a whole career there.

And there is meditative work that belongs to the method rather than being added to it: stirring the preparations. Water is stirred in one direction, then the other, for a full hour. The action is completely monotonous — which is precisely why it does something. After twenty minutes the thinking stops insisting.

Anyone who has done a guided meditation will recognise the state. The difference is that here it arrives through the hands and through real water in a bucket, rather than through instruction.

What is planned

The collaboration between Quantum Healing Field and the Biodynamic Hub is taking shape. The direction: gatherings that combine work in the field with healing, breath and consciousness work.

The idea is simple. A morning that begins with hands in the soil and continues into quieter work — breath, meditation, energetic practice. Not two separate events, but one movement: from the material inward, and back again.

These are not open for booking yet. When dates are set, they will be announced here and to the waiting list.

Poster for the short container growing course at the biodynamic greenhouse — The short course — three evenings, no sprays

Vegetables growing in containers, the practice the short course teaches — Containers on a balcony — where most people start

What is running now — with Yael

The Biodynamic Hub's own programme is already active and can be joined directly:

Introductory farm evenings — free, an evening to meet the place and hear the background to biodynamic agriculture.
Biodynamic vegetable growing course — 10 sessions, fortnightly mornings, with practical fieldwork. It covers soil preparation, bed building, sowing and planting, biodynamic preparations, irrigation, pest management, biodynamic compost, the biodynamic calendar and tree care.
Container growing short course — 3 sessions over two weeks, without sprays or harmful chemicals. No prior knowledge needed, and you can attend on the farm or over Zoom. Well suited to anyone with a balcony, a small yard or a few planters.
Human and soil health — 2 sessions on the link between living soil and our own health.

If the link between soil and the body interests you, it runs through holistic health as well, and the way I choose what a session becomes is set out in the approach.

The place itself

The greenhouse was renovated recently, and cloth sails were strung across the ceiling so they move in the wind. It sounds like a technical detail, but it changes the feel entirely — the light softens, the heat breaks, and the space becomes somewhere you can happily spend hours.

It is also one of the things that drew me to it. Not an industrial greenhouse — a space somebody has cared for.

You can hold something of your own here

The space is open for retreats, healing workshops, study days and group gatherings. It is built for it: rugs across the floor for sitting on the ground, chairs for anyone who needs them, a screen and projector for talks, a coffee corner, and open fields and olive trees all around — so a group can move from the circle to the air without anyone getting in a car.

What makes it unusual is not the equipment but what surrounds it. A group working here can step out for half an hour of work in the soil between two parts of a process, and that does something a closed room does not. I have seen evenings where the break in the field was the moment people opened up.

If you lead groups, practise, or are looking for somewhere to hold something — write to me and I will put you in touch with Yael. Scheduling and cost are with her; I only make the introduction.

For dates and registration, contact Dr. Yael Almog Stein directly. I am also glad to answer questions through my contact page.

Who it suits

Anyone who wants to grow their own food and does not know where to start. Anyone looking for work that returns them to the ground and to their hands. Anyone drawn to the philosophical side of farming and not only the technical. And anyone who simply wants to spend time outdoors among people asking similar questions.

No agricultural experience is needed. Many participants begin with a balcony or a small garden.

Biodynamic agriculture is an agricultural approach grounded in anthroposophical philosophy. The ideas presented here — including the relationship between cosmic qualities and growth, and treating soil as an entity — belong to that tradition and are not presented as established scientific fact. Courses and gatherings are educational and experiential, and do not constitute medical or nutritional advice.

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