Social Eurythmy
Social Eurythmy focuses on enabling social process to become visible through movement, giving participants an embodied experience of the world of social relationship, its complexity, its dynamic quality and the interconnectedness of all elements.
The living rhythms of contraction and expansion form the basis of all the group exercises, as do the 3 dimensions of space (with their essential differences in character) and the flow of time. Added to this is the fundamental principle underlying all human interaction – the activity of giving-and-receiving (or the qualitatively very different offering-and-taking.) The exercises explore the differences between straight lines and curves and how to maintain the inner balance of moving intentionally while holding the 'curvedness' of community and unpredictable process. They enliven an understanding of the reciprocal relationship between inner and outer (or centre and periphery) and the reality of simultaneity and synchronicity. They provide a space to practise moving not just out of one's self-centred drive to act, but out of opening to the movement streaming from the infinite and intentionally stepping into that flow while bringing one's individual energy and way of being to bear in such a way as to co-create the living form that holds the whole.
Carried out in our normal upright posture the exercises are not physically gymnastic, but rather stimulate an inner gymnastics and mindfulness by demanding that we pay attention - to ourselves, to the other and to the in-between - and become inwardly mobile and flexible in our awareness and response. They are a metaphor for life and, more importantly, an awakened, direct experience of life as it unfolds through us in all its fine complexity. They bring warmth, light and laughter to a group leaving us invigorated and refreshed while deepening our regard for the mystery of the universe and our own inner Being. As one participant put it, "What I love about eurythmy is that it is so light and yet so profound."
...each human being is a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses.
Dag Hammerskjold