Eurythmy

I seek for myself in the WORD

© gail langstroth

I'm just gonna jump back in here after a long pause.  This has been a busy year: moving, starting the grades work in our homeschooling journey, co-creating and organizing weekly a local homeschool co-op, new pets, planning a major trip, postponing the same major trip.  So many times I've wanted to post but didn't make the time - I've been too overwhelmed (something I feel quite easily) trying to find a rhythm in the midst of all the newness and emotional ups and downs since summer.  I'm happy to say I'm starting to find my stride .   It was simple but overlooked: find what I'm most drawn to in the educational style we've chosen and focus on it.  That's what I can offer the most authentically.  For me, it's the spiritual and artistic leanings of our process.   Waldorf education initially appealed to me because learning is achieved by weaving spirit (wholeness) into every task; wholeness is the goal of education, in fact; and we can't separate spirit and body, so learning is in movement, woven together with practices like archetypal stimulation and color therapy.  I got overwhelmed in the tasks and forgot the underlying essence.  Since this step back and refocusing, the rest is falling in to place, and I'm finding myself reenergized and totally inspired by much of Rudolph Steiner's work.

For the last few weeks I've been focusing my research on the practice of Eurythmy - basically the spoken word expressed as movement, used in education, therapy, and as a form of movement art.  I can't resist a synthesis, and this one is particularly enticing.  I remember reading once that we  are all synesthetes in the beginning, but we grow into the neurological state of having separate and distinct senses.  For some people, synesthetes, this development is arrested to varying degrees, so some of the senses remain entangled.  But we all still have access to our own union of the senses (I think we each have different abilities in terms of what is easily unified for us).  It's healing to actively unite them, anyway.  

Does it take us back, perhaps, to a time when our developing, distinct consciousness wasn't so distinct, when our sense of self was blurred into the world around us?  to a time when our primary experience of reality was one of wholeness and connection, both to everything outside us and of our own long since partitioned aspects-of-self to each other?  And perhaps it simultaneously grounds us, incarnates us ever more into our very physical human experience, an expression of the non-dualistic nature of reality.  My plan is to learn the dance and think/feel/move/teach my way into knowing Eurythmy.

Anyone have experience with Eurythmy?  I'd love to hear about it!

Above is a image of Gail Langstroth, eurythmist and poet -

-  "Each work of art is a transformation of a substance or material. The poet uses sounds, words; the sculptor shapes stone, metal, wood, clay; the dancer sculpts air in space; the philosopher moves the light within ideas. An artist feels the sacred roots of his or her individuality and imprints his or her idea into a given substance—changing its constitution into gold.  Art is the Alchemical Process of Holy Graffiti."   

-  Her work is inspiring, from her intuitive translations of Steiner - "Earth's weight of gravity speaks through the word will of my feet" 
and her photographed movement

- to her poetry,  I love Blue Indestructible.

- and Here she is dancing Hallelujah.

Some other relating bits:

- A lecture on Steiner and Jung (in fact, a lot of the lectures posted by ArchetypalVeiw seem super interesting).

- The film, The Challenge of Steiner

- just ordering this book, Eurythmy - Rhythm, Dance and Soul.  love the description:  "A historical context is provided by means of a brief survey of dance, from its beginnings in the ancient mysteries to today's forms of dance. The author explains Steiner's insight into the hidden laws of movement —which Steiner designated as belonging to the realm of the etheric." 

I hope it won't be another six months before I check back in here!  I've missed it.