Eurythmy is a powerful artistic and therapeutic tool that makes speech or the ‘creative Word’ visible through body movements. In artistic eurythmy the creative Word is made visible through movement, color and sound; in therapeutic eurythmy, the creative Word is brought into the body through movement in the etheric body of formative forces. Man’s etheric body has descended too far into the material/physical and must become strengthened and fluid once again to support soul evolution.
The artistic and therapeutic form comes from Rudolf Steiner—spiritual scientist, occultist, mystic, and philosopher of the early 1900s. He described man as “a symphony of the creative Word”. If you consider that we are vibrational beings, then you will understand that every part of our bodily nature is attuned to a certain vibration—from body organs, blood flow, endocrine glands, bones… to the crystalline structure in our DNA, the chakras, our higher bodies, and our soul name. There is nothing in the nature of man that is not vibrational or did not emanate from the macrocosm and via the living Logos. And so, we may activate those living creative sounds in our bodies through specific movement and impact on them through the formative forces of the etheric body. There are gestures for every vowel, every consonant, every tone and interval in music.
“You have to learn to let the heart rise into the head, not the other way round, letting the head penetrate the heart.” We must spiritualize matter and the material that nourishes our body must become spiritual through the heart forces and offered up to further evolution. Steiner further expresses of the power of eurythmy that, through it the whole body can become soul imbued. The quality of soul is feeling; we must learn to feel the qualities of the eternal with our whole body, and through that we become moral beings. Eurythmy recognizes the body as the Temple and supports its receptivity to higher cosmic impulses through moving and strengthening the etheric forces rather than muscles and limbs. “In eurythmy we have to bring our thoughts right down into our toes”, and we become human—integrated and free in thinking, feeling, and will.
Eurythmy is highly effective as a therapeutic tool in children, whose bodies are still in formation and easily impressionable. This is why deadening activities such as TV, computer games, and abstracting socializing through media such that children interact electronically rather than in live movement with others is a cause for extreme alarm nowadays. We are paralyzing and mechanizing our children, to the point where their souls will no longer be able to become embodied. But even for the adult population who is largely sedentary and engaged in activity from 9am-5pm that does not engage the whole being, we can see how curative eurythmy is very much needed in our time.
.
Eurythmy is a tool that attempts to bring the spiritual macrocosmic forces to bear on the microcosmic body of man, to restore health to body, mind, and soul. What it means that man is a microcosm of the macrocosm is that all of creation is embodied within man’s being. Steiner has stated that within the Heart is a point wherein if we were to ‘involute’ we would become the macrocosm. This has been referred to by others as the zero-point essence of the Sacred Heart, and our connection to the Infinite. Paracelsus (14th century mystic doctor) has also expressed it thusly, “The human being is a spread out macro cosmos and the micro cosmos is a condensed human being.”
Steiner has further stated that “Man is the religion of the Gods”, for in the human being lies the potential to become a creator. We have that everything in the vibrational creation is a sound and the human being is the living Word—the whole of God’s creation. As we open our beings to the cosmos once again, we may embody the original creative sounds and restore wholeness to the distortions that we’ve taken in.
“Sounds contain wisdom, laws and mystery of the universe. Sounds made visible through conscious movement of the limbs in Eurythmy, make these very laws more real and unlock, step by step, the dynamic force behind the tangible world. These are the very forces, which are working in us, sustaining our organism. The very fabric of our being is created by the formative forces of the cosmos. The whole universe is created out of sound, with its seed in OM or AUM. Upanishad says: “Brahma begins creation”. It means the whole creation comes out of sound. OM is the universe.
Every organ, every breath we take and even a single thought is in relationship to the dynamic forces around us. Our roots are in the universe, mirroring the undying spirit behind our individuality, giving us the power to strive over and above our physical boundaries. With this in mind, every sound made visible works therapeutically. Each sound is in tune with the health giving formative forces working in our organs, in our organism, in our very breathing.” (Excerpted from an article on eurythmy which may be accessed at www.anthroposophyindia.org/downloads/eurythmy.doc)
Eurythmy is a therapeutic tool that has no limitation in its healing and transformational abilities, and I hope to explore it more in future as a tool to enhance integration of the activations that are themselves cosmic vibrational flows.
E u r y t h m y M e d i t a t i o n
I seek within
The working of creative forces,
The life of creative powers.
Earth’s gravity is telling me
Through the word of my feet,
Air’s wafting forms are telling me
Through the singing of my hands,
And Heaven’s light is telling me
Through the thinking of my head,
How the great world in Man
Speaks, sings and thinks.
Rudolf Steiner
July 11 , 1924