Therapeutic Eurythmy
The creation of eurythmy arose with a question related to health: “Would it not be possible, that through rhythmic gestures, through the etheric – which is the abode of everything that is rhythmic, but also of health and illness -, act in a healing way on the physical body, regulating and strengthening it?”
Therapeutic eurythmy was developed in the first decades of the 20th century as part of Anthroposophical Medicine. It is a movement therapy that can be described as body exercises linked to phonetic expression, and imaginatively guided, thus integrating cognitive, volitional and feeling aspects, to the movements performed externally. There is a specific relationship between certain movements and phonemes and, according to the illness and needs of each patient, short sequences of phonemes are made especially directed to the question. These specific body movements are accompanied by appropriate imaginings that help and facilitate the movement, thus combining body movements with a special kind of meditation.
“Therapeutic eurythmy exercises represent a valuable aid in supporting drug treatment, as they themselves can be referred to as drugs; they must be handled with care, understanding and consistency of a remedy.”
Ita Wegman
Therapeutic eurythmy works deeply on the organs and systems in a specific way, strengthening them, regulating them, and thus giving new impulses to the whole organism. The exercises bring health and order to the constitution, acting from the creative forces that shape our organism. These formative forces are also shown in language and music. Every vowel and consonant, every tone or interval, indeed every element of language or music, can be translated into motion through its archetypal dynamic gesture. Each sound and, consequently, each eurythmic movement is related in a specific way to the life processes of our organism.
Therapeutic eurythmy is attributed to general effects (improvement of breathing patterns and posture, strengthening of muscle tone, improvement of physical vitality), and specific therapeutic effects. Furthermore, therapeutic eurythmy proposes to stimulate somatic healing processes through the soul-filled experience of the respective movements. In addition to indications for acute, chronic and degenerative diseases, therapeutic eurythmy is also used for health development (salutogenesis) as well as for rehabilitation purposes. In oncology and other acute and chronic diseases treated in addition to Anthroposophical Medicine, therapeutic eurythmy is often used as a complementary treatment.
Treatment is done individually or in small groups, and patients are instructed to perform specific movements with the hands, feet, and/or the whole body. For each patient, one or more movements are selected, depending on the disease in question, its constitution, and on the therapeutic eurythmist's observation of the patient's movement pattern.
Sessions are weekly and can last from 30 to 60 minutes; in the period between sessions, patients practice the movements daily. A therapeutic cycle normally lasts 12-15 sessions. Therapeutic eurythmy can be used as a monotherapy or combined with other therapies in anthroposophic medicine.
Therapeutic Eurythmy in Education
In several Waldorf schools abroad and in some in Brazil, therapeutic eurythmy is offered as an impulse for the development of children and young people, contributing to the learning process, motor issues, growth and maturation, and other childhood disorders such as asthma and nocturnal enuresis, for example, that affect the self-esteem and achievement of these children. The exercises are offered to an individual child or a small group of children with similar questions. School therapeutic eurythmy is applied only after authorization from parents and consultation with the family or school doctor, generally taking place three times a week in 10-minute sessions during the school period. However, it is also possible to treat more specific issues in the office outside of school hours.
Therapeutic eurythmy promotes a healthy development of the four bodily senses, acting on the development of the tactile, autonomic nervous, sensorimotor and vestibular systems of the physical organism and the neural pathways associated with it. These senses - touch (sense of being incarnate), life or well-being (being open to learning/energy), self-movement (proprioperception, bilateral integration) and balance - underlie and provide the basis for all subsequent mental and emotional development. .
Therapeutic eurythmy also works to balance the upper and lower organization of the organism (ie, head/thinking forces and limb/will forces). An imbalance of these forces (often manifest in dental abnormalities such as open bite, retrognathism, prognathism, deep bite, or crowding) can also be a cause of specific difficulties in behavior and learning. In addition to these disorders, even the dental abnormalities mentioned here can be treated with the systematic and prolonged application of therapeutic eurythmy.
Therapeutic eurythmy proves to be a useful therapeutic modality in integrative medicine in the context of anthroposophical medicine and an important resource in child and youth development.