It seems like only yesterday that I thought it would be madness to ever consider creating an online eurythmy website.
Why? Eurythmy is all about living, moving presence. And that simply isn’t communicable through the computer. For all their bells and whistles, their fabulous color effects and images, and their capacity to transmit gazillion-bytes of information faster than the speed of thought, computers only give the appearance of reality. Computers live on the surface of things: they perpetuate the world of maya. They cannot give us the true experience of being in the warm presence of another person.
Eurythmy, on the other hand, opens the door for each of us to celebrate communion with our own spirit-selves, and with the world-spirit that has created all. And every instance of eurythmy must be permeated with presence: with your presence, with spirit presence.
When I teach live classes, one of my most important responsibilities is that I am fully present throughout the lesson to witness the best and highest in each one of my students. In honoring the fact that each person is a child of God, an active spirit presence awakening to their infinite spirit potential, I am inwardly attentive, patient, supportive and generous. And through this act of witnessing, I see that everyone is beautiful when they do eurythmy.
And so: when I decided to create EurythmyOnline.com, I had some tough questions to face.
Would it be possible to create recordings that were so carefully crafted that I and my students would be able to overcome the electronic media? Searching for a solution, I carefully instruct people to watch the videos only as long as they need to, to internalize the material I am teaching and then to turn off the recordings and work in silence. In that silence, I know that they can awaken to their own experience of spirit presence.
And then I had to decide: what sequence of instruction should I offer? Should I require that students all start at the very beginning exercises (weight and light, contraction-expansion, threefold walking) before proceeding to learn how to do the sounds of language? Or should I allow people to enter the curriculum at their own level, and choose for themselves where to begin? I took many month of design for me to come to my present solution, in which I encourage people to do the whole curriculum, but also break the content down into modules so people can take smaller chunks if they prefer.
And then came the question of money, for eurythmy is actually priceless. And, because it is my ardent wish that everyone should be able to do eurythmy, how could I charge anything for it? On the other hand, I have had real costs in building this website and in sustaining it. And through paying money for the lessons, students allow me to continue to live and teach and serve spirit in all the ways that life asks of me.
I know that I will be asked: Why did I do it? And I will answer: Because the “Spirit of Eurythmy” is longing to be relevant, to bring its refreshing liveliness to our age.
Why? because I am aware of the millions of people in the world who will never have a chance to meet a eurythmist in person, but who may have heard of eurythmy, in real life or through their Waldorf connections or even in their dreams, and who want to learn about it and try it.
Why? Because I know that if we as eurythmists don’t find a way to step into the culture of electronic media, we will become increasingly invisible and, unfortunately, irrelevant.
It is my real hope that this work will help eurythmy to grow in the world. I hope more people will come to know about it. I hope that my subscribers will invite me to come to visit them in their home communities so I can offer live workshops, and take their work to the next level. I hope they will come to visit me, wherever I travel and give classes, so they can see how much energy and joy arises in group classes. And I hope that they will use my list of eurythmy teachers to seek out the eurythmy workshops closest to them, wherever they live.
And so I ask of you, my friends and website visitors, to look kindly on my attempt, knowing that I have done my conscientious best to offer the gift of my life’s work!
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