EURYTHMY: MOVING WITH THE TIMES

Park Attwood Clinic is a holistic health centre that integrates complementary and conventional medicine. The doctors not only prescribe medicines and treatments for their patients, but also complementary therapies that support and extend the medical treatment. One such therapy is a unique form of movement therapy known as eurythmy.

Artistic eurythmy was first created in 1911 by philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner, initially as a performing art, with a rich vocabulary of movement and gesture to create visual form for poetry or music. The word comes from the Greek for ‘well’ or ‘harmonious’ rhythm. Steiner then worked with doctors to develop this form of movement to be used therapeutically to help their patients. Today eurythmy therapy is practiced in anthroposophic clinics and hospitals throughout Europe, such as Park Attwood, and also by individual therapists who work with GP practices around the UK, treating patients on a one-to-one basis for a wide variety of complaints. With the demands of modern day living, this seemingly anachronistic therapy is now more relevant than ever.

Eurythmy therapy can influence posture, mobility, spatial orientation, breathing, co-ordination, circulation and warmth. It helps restore balance in a broad sense: not just physically (stretching, exercising, strengthening, rather like physiotherapy) but also the delicate balance of health itself. True healing is about more than the disappearance of symptoms. Eurythmy therapy works at a deeper level and nurtures the patient’s ‘etheric life’ – that is the invisible life force that supports the physical body, without which we cannot recover or maintain good health. It also enhances a sense of self: the main benefit that therapists hear time and time again from patients is that it helps them feel themselves again.

So what is eurythmy therapy like? It is neither like dance nor aerobics: eurythmy is not about the body beautiful and it is not about keeping to a beat. It is rhythmic in the sense that breathing is rhythmic – it can be strong and vigorous, or gentle and flowing, building up or calming down, depending on the therapeutic effect that is required. The movements are harmonious, one could say eloquent, gentle and controlled, although purposeful. Although it undoubtedly produces a sense of wellbeing, there is considerable gravitas.

To an onlooker, it looks something of a cross between old-fashioned ‘physical education’ (those demure mechanical exercises that won’t make you break out in a sweat) and an altogether more exotic and spiritual influence like Tai Chi. Eurythmy has been described as ‘ensouled movement’. Each movement or gesture is usually accompanied by the sounds of speech, each sound having its own particular dynamic. Just to take one example: when you sound the letter M aloud and do the accompanying eurythmy gesture, it has a very balancing quality and is often used in eurythmy therapy for people with breathing problems.

Working with doctors, therapists may see patients who are recovering from injury or surgery, coping with depression or anxiety, living with chronic illness such as Parkinsons or ME, or patients dealing with more acute life-threatening illnesses - from asthma to cancer. Asthma patients frequently feel tight and cramped in the chest. Working with expansive eurythmy gestures – opening and closing the arms and the airways and expanding and contracting the rib cage – breathing and circulation can be aided and strengthened. However, it’s not all soothing and calming. For a patient suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, eurythmy therapy can have an energising and enlivening effect, working with more rhythmic or pulsating movements.

Steiner developed several sequences for specific illnesses or conditions which can then be tailored to meet each individual patient’s needs. For example the Evolutionary Sequence can help address a wide variety of problems associated with growing up or transition – from bedwetting to anorexia - where children and young adults have difficulty adjusting to their development. The sequence, which can be used in part or in full, begins with the letter B - an enveloping gesture representative of the womb or the comfort of a mothers’ arms - and moves through childhood and adolescence to the point of adulthood, finishing with the letter T which is affirming and decisive.

Eurythmy is even helpful for terminal illness. A therapist can perform the full alphabet to accompany someone at the point of death, with a sound and movement for each letter, from A to Z. It is beautiful to watch: it evokes the cycle of life, and produces a sense of completion and wholeness, and for many patients helps create a calm and peace which can make a significant difference to their end of life experience.

Eurythmy presents an opportunity for patients to take an active role, quite literally, in their recovery. The therapist is simply the guide; the healing and therapeutic work is done by the patient. When we are ill, we often lose our sense of connection with our bodies. We may unconsciously distance ourselves from it: it might be painful, feel different, look different (for example inflamed or scarred), feel slower or weaker than usual, feel alien. The therapist encourages patients to re-engage with their physical body, so that things begin to feel less frightening, less stiff and painful, stronger, more familiar. The focus is on what each patient can do, rather than what they cannot do. It requires no grand theatrical gestures. Patients don’t need to be particularly fit or agile, or even able-bodied. At least initially, the therapist ‘accompanies’ the patient with each gesture, sharing the movement either as a pair or as opposites. This acts as a guide, so patients feel less inhibited, but also has a certain resonance – the therapist’s echoing movement reinforces the therapeutic effect.

It is an important part of each session to pause, just briefly, after an exercise rather than moving swiftly on to the next: to let it resonate. Like sculpture, the intervals and spaces in and around the sculpture are as important as the form. Often we rush through life, find it difficult to stand still, and many patients initially have a tendency to rush through the eurythmy exercises, or find it difficult to pause, until this tendency is pointed out to them. Eurythmy can help us to adjust the pace.

As eurythmist Patricia Mulder eloquently puts it: “Eurythmy is like a seed: we plant it in the inner depth of our being, and in that quiet earth it strengthens the forces out of which we grow and develop”.

Eurythmy therapy usually forms part of an overall programme of care at Park Attwood, either residential or as individual 30 - 40 minute out-patient appointments.