The human being is formed out of the starry universe, and shaped by the elements of earth, water, air, and warmth.  We are a part of the whole, and bear the world within our soul.  We carry a miniature “treasure box” of these cosmic elemental forces in the forms made by our larynx when we speak.  In our speaking, we form hard gutteral sounds (g, k,), flowing watery sounds (l). light airy sounds (th, r,) and warm fiery sounds (s, f).  In eurythmy, these sounds are made visible in the realm of the “etheric” by differentiated movements of the limbs and body.

Therapeutic Eurythmy:    In our bodies we have the more solid bones, the watery fluids of our circulation, the air flowing into and out of the lungs, and the internal warmth.  So in therapeutic eurythmy we work in the differing etheric elements, striving to “speak to” the varying flows and dynamics that have formed us.

In the still resting head, we have predominantly the nerve-sense organism; impressions radiate in from the outside. In the digestion we have the unconscious metabolic movements and in the limbs we act/express ourselves outwardly; these are more centrifugal, outward radiating movements.

In anthroposophical medicine, colitis, for example,  is perceived as too much consciousness (nerve-sense activity) in the metabolic region.  Migraine, by contrast, is too much metabolic activity in the nerve-sense realm (head).

In between, always mediating, is the breathing-circulatory system, the rhythmic system.  At its center is the heart, not a pump, but a perceiving organ, always striving for balance.

God’s Grandeur