Eurythmy therapy. The medicine that is always with you

Jannik, an eleven-year-old pupil, came to my practice with his mother. The family was at a loss as their son refused to go to school, did not socialise with his classmates and spent his free time in his room in front of a screen.

Eurythmy therapy is a holistic movement therapy whose movement content consists of speech and musical laws and relationships. Spatial forms and colours are included in the process. Eurythmy, borrowed from the Greek, could be translated as melodious movement. This is where eurythmy therapy differs fundamentally from other therapies: sounds, consonants and vowels, different rhythms or tones, intervals, and beats are moved rhythmically with the arms and legs and experienced emotionally. The idea behind this is that the movement that people perform, especially in their youth, not only makes the body flexible and strengthens it, but also the soul and the spirit.

Holistic is to be understood literally here. Everyone can try this out for themselves: if you quietly form a B with your lips, then with your open hand bring individual fingers one after the other into a bending movement, repeat this several times and then listen inwardly during a pause in the movement: the body reacts to this delicate movement of the fingers all the way down to the feet.

Our body, especially our system of connective tissue, is so finely tuned to relationships that the whole body resonates with every slightest movement. For comparison: we form our lips into an M, then turn our hand mindfully downwards and upwards again, repeating this several times, and now listen to the sensation in our body: how does my hand feel now? Where does a sensation in my body respond?

The sounds can be moved with the arm, hand, fingers, legs or feet and affect different organ systems. In the process my breath changes, warmth unfolds, it begins to flow again inside, tensions can be released or I can have a stimulating effect on certain bodily processes.

In this way a movement becomes a remedy that I can take with me everywhere and also pick up and use again and again. Eurythmy therapy is simultaneously a conscious way of dealing with myself, my body and my soul and spiritual development potential.

Anyone who pays attention to this can perceive that everything is in motion within themselves, nowhere is there any standstill or rest. Fluids even flow upwards in me against the force of gravity. When this flow is disturbed, the sound L can help me to lift everything back into lightness: my hands reach sensitively down to underneath my feet and in doing so transform heaviness into lightness in an upward movement. Even when exhausted, such movements with the arms are strengthening and restorative. In this way, the sound movement L encourages my inner process of coming into being and passing away and stimulates more than just the life forces in a clearly perceptible way.

With every sound movement I also connect with a kind of cosmic movement of forces. If I observe the plants in spring, how the green leaves slowly unfold, I can also perceive in nature the movement of coming into being, that is the L; or, for example, the B in the formation of buds and husks. The consonants are cosmically connected and nourished by the zodiac and the vowels by the planetary system.

Evoked by the flow of breathing in movement, the power of language and music determines our development and existence throughout our lives and, beyond that, also the possibility of expanding our perceptive ability to relate to ourselves and to the world.

Eurythmy therapy can be understood as a developmental companion: in the course of their life, children pass through many stages until they enter school life at the age of six or seven. Although they have changed significantly physically and seem ready to absorb abstract knowledge, their breathing rhythm has not yet adjusted. The young child tends to breathe at a ratio of 1:5 or 1:6, which means that the blood has to pulse past the lungs five to six times per breath.

The relationship between breathing and pulse also gives rise to a person's emotional irritability and sensitivity. The deeper the breath can expand within us, branch out in our organism, the greater the experience of our own self.

Around the age of nine, the school child approaches the average ratio of 1:4. As a result, a metamorphosis of the very first experience of the I occurs in the child's experience as a lasting memory, often with a significant biographical incision.

The child loses their natural connection with the surrounding world and from now on feels as if they are facing the world. This can also be associated with unpleasant experiences of loneliness.

In these phases of child development, a kind of developmental help can be given to the too early or too late awakening: one child is offered an individual space with nurturing forces and images, the other is provided with exercises for waking up. This is because our states of consciousness – waking, sleeping and dreaming – are directly related to our breathing.

How did Jannik fare in therapy? In front of me stood a well-fed boy in a T-shirt despite the winter, his eyes downcast and his lips pressed together. He was very pale around the mouth. His handshake was spongy, he had a shuffling gait. His anxiety was compounded by a difficulty in falling asleep and nocturnal enuresis. Overall, he appeared distracted on the one hand and sensitively perceptive on the other. We practised a lot of movements with the legs in addition to the sounds F (strengthening the bladder), B, P (forming an envelope), U (finding one's position), E (grasping the body), and I (building self-confidence). He learned to write with his feet, which he enjoyed very much. Exercises in body geography built up the relationship to his own body.

Jannik had a lot of fun with the rhythmical movements and attended school again for a whole week after our fifth session together. In addition to the medical support from the doctor, he was able to resume his relationship with himself and his environment in an age-appropriate way through eurythmy therapy.