Examples from my work - Truus Geraets

I want to show a few samples of Successful Work from my Eurythmy Therapy Praxis with hundreds of children and adults, but first I must share the most basic part of my approach. Everyone, children and adults want to be seen in their true being. I need to create a real relationship to each one, coming for therapy. With children I try to find out what really interest them in terms of movement possibilities. That is my starting point. Once I got them positively inclined to what we are doing, mostly in the field of interactional games with ball, dolphin or copper rod, then I can slowly on go over to what is really needed in terms of Eurythmy gestures.

 

1.      Alice has been rescued from a drowning death when she was five years old.  When I am asked to work with her when she is nine years old, she has already been upsetting her whole family for years by having recurring nightmares, screaming and  bringing everyone in the family to despair. She is now in third grade of the Waldorf School and cannot function there at all.
When I meet her the first time I observe that she looks pale, haggard and is very thin. I know straightaway that she needs the E-sound more than anything else. I try to make this alive for her by telling her and then drawing about the way the salmons go upriver to spawn by swimming in spirals to get strength to jump onto the next level of the kataract. Then we draw spirals going in and in and in. Also walking them in space, playing salmon, so to say.
In the third session I feel she is prepared enough for the extensive E-exercise.
Next I invite her mother to see what we are doing so she can also do this once a week at home with Alice.
After five weeks of working with Alice, she has gotten in touch with her body in such a way that she has no more nightmares and with some extra help starts functioning in class again.

2.      Gerald in second grade is one of twins, whereby his twin brother has died at birth. Gerald is deeply traumatized by this and is convinced that he caused the death of his brother by taking too much of the nourishment for himself while being in the womb. Eating becomes a problem at home and during lunch time at school (Waldorf). He gags and gags and the food does not want to go down.
I use several Eurythmy sessions to start building up his confidence and telling about the spiritual aspects of preparing for birth, that there are no accidents, that God knew why it was not yet time for his twin brother to spend time on earth. I also use meaningful verses using mainly vowels to affect in this way his deep-seated anxieties. I let his mother and teacher know what we are trying to achieve.
It becomes clear that I will need much more time with him so that he slowly can relax and be happy to be his own person here on earth.

3.      Chris, a Chinese boy in second grade of another Waldorf school is totally unattentive in his class, is extremely restless and can not sit still. It is difficult for the teachers to ever meet him eye to eye. And so it is equally difficult for me in our private sessions. I work with him intensively doing Eurythmy gestures to the verse:

“I am a link in the golden chain
that enfolds the whole wide world
And I must keep it gleaming and strong.”

He has to say it at night before sleep and start the day with it in the morning by doing the Eurythmy gestures he has learned with me.
Yet, in class the class as well as the subject teachers see no improvement in him.
I then realize that I can not help him, unless I work with his mother, which she agrees to. I slowly start to understand that the mother is in agony still of things which happened in the family when she was still living in China. She tried to escape to America from it, also got a divorce and starts building a new life with her two children.
Only after much work in the form of Eurythmy and deep discussions is the mother able to start to express what happened to her.
After many weeks of work with the mother, then again with Chris, I finally hear from the teacher that she sees some remarkable improvements in Chris.

4.      One more example now of how quickly Eurythmy can work when one feels that one can do this in working together with – in this case – his angel.
Daniel lives alone with his mother. She is a business woman, traveling the country. So most of the time he is left with his nanny, who always comes along. Living in hotels, every day in another place, can be disastrous for a young boy like this.
When still in Kindergarten he is sent to me as a last resort. Other children in school and in the park try to avoid him as he displays mean tricks like throwing a stick into the wheels of a bicycle of a child passing by. The same in Kindergarten, always disrupting.
I see him the first time –together with his mother. He immediately, willfully, blows out the candle I have just lit. It is clear that he does not plan to cooperate.
I then ask his mother to take hold of his ankles while I get hold of his wrists. At the tune of “What shall we do with the drunken sailor early in the morning” we swing him back and forth. He likes it and wants more of it. I hear that there is still a grandpa at home. I ask his mother to do the same ‘game’ at home, as much as he likes.
The next time when he comes I, obviously, have not lit the candle. But now with his gestures he asks me to please light the candle, which he  -this time – does not blow out. On the contrary. I can do other interactional things with him. He co-operates with everything. The next thing I hear from his kindergarten teacher is that he changed a hundred degrees. Children even ask him to join into their play.
And the best thing I hear some time afterwards, when I have already moved back to my native country, that they let him go to first grade!

I only had two sessions with him, but he must have felt that he was “seen”.