Therapeutic Eurythmy
Therapeutic eurythmy is often referred to as movement therapy but it is neither dance nor yoga, nor muscle building exercise. It is born of the insight into the creative spirit of the human being. As with all aspects of anthroposophic medicine, therapeutic eurythmy invites the individual to participate in the healing process. Eurythmy means “harmonious rhythm”. The rhythmic system of the human organism mediates between the nervous system and the metabolic system. Therapeutic eurythmy can help to reestablish a balance in the organism and bring about harmonization where there is the one-sidedness of illness. Eurythmy invites the breathing system of heart and lung to restore harmony. It reawakens our forgotten sense for all that lives in music and speech and raises this to a higher level. Specific sound gestures are practiced in a sequence. These gestures are intensified and repeated to strengthen specific organic functions. Different gestures have a correlating affect on different organic functions. Therapeutic eurythmy also stimulates the faculties which enable a person to learn. This may be helpful to the child in school or to the adult who is never without ever new opportunities for self-education.
The eurythmy therapist works individually with children and adult patients on a broad range of illnesses, combining their training with a doctor’s insight into health and illness. Each patient follows a personal prescription of vowel and consonant exercises which are a sequence of sounds and gestures that will guide the outward dynamics of artistic eurythmy back into the body where they can restore the organs to health and stabilize the emotions. The therapist does not use manipulation but teaches through instruction and demonstration. The patient is then encouraged to practice these movements for 10 –20 minutes each day.