Eurythmy with Tanja Baumgartner

Eurythmy course participants moving with flags

I joined Tanja Baumgartner’s first intro workshop because she came so highly recommended by Joy, who had experienced her at the Acacia School.  She said it was Eurythmy the way she’d never known or experienced it: grounded and new.  These are two different dimensions I always look for, as I believe they are part of what will truly bring us forward, but I never thought I would hear about it in the context of Eurythmy.  I never ever saw myself doing anything but Curative Eurythmy (of course as a patient!), but I was at a point in my biography where I felt movement of a different sort was in order and because I have two asthmatic boys, healthy breathing was always a question.

We have just finished Module 4 of the Basic Eurythmy Course and I’ve found that at each module I have expanded a little more. At first I thought I could use Eurythmy just to breathe better from day to day, to help my children through their own breathing just by being better at my own. Later on I realized I could use whatever it was I was learning—and taking in—in workshops we sometimes give on inner transformation. Of course!! That’s what it’s about! Eurythmy can take us from being too much in our heads and bring us down through our limbs, right through our toes, when the intellectual concepts get too overwhelming. Because I bear so many questions about societal transformation especially in the context of my own country and its lingering troubles, I am beginning to see the true power of Eurythmy as an agent of consciousness changing, through the wisdom of the body. I am so hopeful and excited about that.

Over the course of time, I find that I am using it everyday in different ways. I put myself in a B when I am overwhelmed and feel I’ve put myself too far out in caring for others. I move around in A when I feel cynical and disappointed and sometimes I find that simply sitting and inwardly feeling the A gesture is enough. I do the warming up when I feel disjointed.  Just this morning I did it again and found myself moving “from the inside” to try and heal a stiff neck. I have to say my neck feel so much better.

I’ve found over time that I have become more sensitive to what my body needs, inside and out, and am able to respond accordingly by using tools I feel I have received from the course. I do Eurythmy massage on my children and myself and though I cannot claim to know that what I do is creating specific results, it leaves us all with a sense of calm that is a true and rare gift in today’s world.

Because of Tanja’s Eurythmy, I am also better able to meet the world where it seems to be leading me, rather than where I insist on being. I had no idea that Eurythmy could be so freeing; it is like having a giant toolbox that I have with me at all times.  In it there is always a tool to help me answer a question, or at least move me towards a new perspective.

I feel a bud of courage and strength inside me that is only starting to blossom. Each module finds me doing things I wouldn’t normally do (What? Move in front of other people? Me doing Eurythmy?!), but each module I have learned to jump into things and concepts and movements that are becoming less and less daunting. And this I find to be a very powerful gift—the confidence to dive into life’s trials and demands knowing that the only way out is through.  It is wonderful to know that we have a daily tool for keeping us flexible and agile, conscious and free in body, soul and spirit. Hallelujah!

Tanja Baumgartner will be in Manila again in September. Make sure you attend her super Intro Course weekend. I will post more details as the date nears.