Hi Tom,

Lovely site this and imo so necessary. I have been doing eurythmy as a keen amateur for twenty years now. Though I am not a pretty sight to watch, being big, phlegmatic and mature now, I do have some experience of eurythmy from the "inside" so to speak. I have not done a formal training, though I was accepted for one 20 years ago and was unable to follow up. (with hindsight thank goodness fate intervened!)

 As to the question why eurythmists in general should study POF I can offer a small comment. from experience.

I think the answer in a word is "grammar": in particular the grammar ("etheric structure"? ) of the whole sentence. (As opposed to the grammar of the sound forms in the individual word.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I recall Steiner sugesting that- " Concepts are a form of inner movement capable of outer expression" (Sorry can't cite source).

To me the flow of Steiner's discourse in PoF is above all surprising. Not so much obscure, dense, or dificult, as surprising. Surprising in its disruption of  the logic of conventional conceptual expectation. It seems the dyamics of the resultant jars and shocks to my dead thought induces imaginations. With reflection these forms can be the starting point of imaginations out of which one can develop living eurythmical sound gestures. Steiner did say he could draw POF, so it is not remarkable that it could be danced ,so to speak, as well.

Thats how I have seen it anyway. Could say loads on this...Thanks for the chance to expound!

Love

Bryn

Dear Bryn,

Thanks for sharing this.  As I was reading what you wrote I actually had an experience of PoF eurythmy, I could see eurythmists moving, sometimes flying around the stage expressing all those straw-men philosophers, especially when they fall down.

Cheers, 
patri

I'm not quite with your meaning here. Those straw men philosophers; do you mean like Kant, Schopenhauer, Von Hartman who got a mention in PoF?

Sounds interesting, but I've never experienced anything like that myself. It sounds a bit like watching a eurythmy video to me, you know? A bit sort of "complete" and outside myself.

As I say. do enlarge.

Love

Bryn

Hi Bryn,

There has been a lot of talk on this website about PoF as music, as a symphony, so I thought it very interesting what you related in terms of what Steiner said and your experience of PoF  - in relationship to eurythmy and the etheric structure of grammar and concept as inner movement capable of outer expression.  I have studied dance and some eurythmy (little) and there is self-expression in dance in which you just dance what you feel, free-flowing form from what you are experiencing in your inner life.  When I read what you wrote I just saw eurythmy being performed to the ideas expressed in PoF, not necessarily individual words, but a particular concept as expressed belonging to one of the philosophers Steiner mentions in PoF, could be expressed through movement.  You would use the eurythmy grammar in a way that expresses the feeling and thought in the concept.  Building the concept up through the movement and then releasing the concept (the building up of straw men/ideas/concepts and then the release of same as not really valid for true freedom).  Then expressing the finding of true inner freedom, this would be very interesting to see in eurythmy.  I could go on but will stop here.

Cheers,
patri

How does the PoF work within us that is useful as part of a eurythmy training?

I found that the subtle changes wrought by working through PoF the first time in the eurythmy training were only apparent much later. My inner flexibility developed more slowly than the bodily ability to enter the flow of movement. Since then I have re-read PoF a couple of times and realised that it is continuing to work long afterwards. It has enabled me to enter a situation in thought and orientate within it, bring it into movement listen to that movement and thus know what needs to be done next. This also extends to being able to work on a text and quickly find how the eurythmy in it can be expressed.

Strange how that faculty has not only come about through direct practice but by working through PoF...  What other possibilities to train our eurythmical skills await discovery? What else can we do after the training(s) to develop our skills further, other than keep practising?

They both feel very similar to me (reading POF and eurythmy).

Both are designed to work (beneficially) on the etheric body.

So I imagine that reading POF brings about a certain 'flexibility' into one's etheric body that one would otherwise not have, which can then be expressed in the eurythmy.

Sort of like a bicyclist drafting behind a motorcycle in preparation for a race - his (or her) legs just get used to going so fast that they can do this without the motorcycle in front of them.

POF is analogous to the motorcycle.  Eurythmy would be the actual race.

HI,

I found out this:

When I was reading the chapter Consequences of monism, after the 14th chapter, I suddenly thought of AU, which is the diftongue connected to de planet sun (at least in eurythmy). Also my heart felt very 'sunny'. So maybe there is a connection with the vowels (planets) and consonants (zodiac) in eurythmy and the process in PoF. Sorry, I can't find a better way to describe it.

(I am sorry by my terrible english)

In my eurythmy training (Brazil) I've a lot of philosophy of freedom, classes of each chapter, after classes of Riddles of Philosophy. My Teacher was always repeating: "we move as we think, we think as we move." I didn't understand that at the beginning, but now is perfectly clear. Eurythmy is cognition, you must have a clear thinking to do good eurythmy. This is hard to explain but you can experience this. By the other side, the eurythmy traini g also helped me to understand PoF.

I've already said this in somewhere, but one of the things, for example, is the living gesture. To be able to do a living gesture, which has meaning for the public and that is not only a signal, it is necessary to learn how create each gesture each time as if this was the first time. This is related to the supression of old representations to be able to achieve a new and fresh intuition, and so on.

There are other important thing that I realized watching a discussion among eurythmists with different points of view about how to do eurythmy. After a performance, one of them said that the style had too much movement, and for this person this means "too terrenal" or "too physical". The other one answered, in a "PoF way of thinking", that eurythmy is a sensorial art, and the spirit appears through movement - it is how you do it. Well, many things were said and I can't reproduce here, but the point is: as the cognition is between perception and concept, also man is between spirit and matter, etc. The spirit it is not behind de matter, the concept it is not behind perception - this would be a dualist view, and Anthroposophy is monist. In Eurythmy is the same. If you want to make visible the spirit this will not happen supressing the physical movement, but permeating your physical body with the "image", with Spirit. And then this will appear.

Other thing. In my experience I saw that the thinking training which PoF offers also helps to understand a eurythmic form in the music, for example (of course you must have also good ears) -  to understand what is been proposed. And this also happens with spacial orientation and so on.

I know I could not be much clear, I am sorry it is hard to express myself in english.

My question is: how to create a structured programm for non-eurythmists which in a short time of practice can lead them to experiences relating to PoF. I am thinking in these matters for now. But I think I need more experience, I graduated only in the last year. If someone has some idea, I would like to hear.

All the best

Mr. John Ralph imitates the style of many by quoting Steiner above.

Why does Mr. John Ralph only quote Steiner? I would say it's probably because Mr. John Ralph never learned to analyse.   

To influence and manipulate others who believe in Steiner, such quotes are useful.