Support Bride Alona’s Eurythmy Therapy Training

Bride Alona McWilliam is organizing this fundraiser.

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The Eurythmy Therapy Training UK cohort. Summer 2022

(I am in the front row, second from the left)

Hello friends and supporters,

Welcome to my Eurythmy Therapy Training GoFundMe!

What for?

The funds raised here will help cover the costs of my tuition, flights, and accommodation costs while studying.

Whatever you are willing to give, donations however big or small (an encouraging thought or the gift of your time to read my story or passing this gofundme on to someone or a community who you believe would like to support this work...) I am truly grateful!

In joining the Eurythmy Therapy Training, I am led by the question:

What is the source of light in human beings that enables them to shine even, and perhaps especially, in the darkest of times, during personal illness, struggle, and collective human tragedy? Does a source of light live as seed in each of us? What strengthens or engenders this light? This is a question I have carried throughout my life. Intrigued by our deep inner resources to heal, and the experience of illness as messenger, the journey of self-healing and care for others has been a recurring and integral theme of my life. What is illness? What is healing?

I wish to deepen my path of learning and experience, so that I may more effectively and wisely utilize the healing-formative forces of Eurythmy (speech and song made visible through the human being in harmonious full bodied movement) to support and meet the need for healing in our time.

Eurythmy Therapy can be beneficial to anyone and everyone at any time in their life, whether used as a tool to bring alignment, grounding and a sense of wellbeing into your daily practice or be a source to engender deep healing and change in the face of a serious illness or condition. It can be done in infancy (or already in pregnancy) and lead into childhood, where it can support children’s resilience and healthy development facing trauma, stress, anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia, desensitization through media... It can support the work and individuals and groups in their spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being and vitality. Eurythmy therapy can also address and effect change when working with chronic or acute illnesses, such as cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, mental illness. The field of Eurythmy Therapy is also expanding to include work with animals.

The Training:

The Eurythmy Therapy Training UK, beginning in Spring of 2022, is a 3-year, part-time master's program held in Forest Row, England, at Emerson College. For 3-years, twice yearly, I will be flying to England for four-week intensive sessions in spring and summer, and participate remotely in classes for a week each fall. Between the in-person sessions, where we study under many master Eurythmy therapists and doctors, I will practice and deepen my experience of the Eurythmy Therapy exercises independently. Also, under mentorship and in collaboration with practicing Eurythmy therapists/doctors, I will gather experience in a variety of different intern settings (Waldorf schools, Camphill, Medical clinics), building observation and practical skills, and growing independence in my practice of meeting a diverse clientele.

The Eurythmy figure “B”

More about me:

In the year 2013, I began my artistic Eurythmy training in Spring Valley, NY. This was a decision that came from a culmination of many encounters with the art. Perhaps the most significant one (though I didn’t realize it at the time) was the profound experience I had at 19 years-old, practicing Therapeutic Eurythmy while attending the Michael Chekhov acting school in Berlin. In the midst of intense group rehearsing, a past trauma was brought before me, and in reaction I become very anxious and felt disembodied. I experienced myself as if I were a few inches outside the surface of my physical skin. Being a sensitive person, this experience was not altogether unfamiliar, and was usually remedied with some grounding and good sleep. This time, however, no matter what I did (sleeping, eating meat, gardening, massage) the feeling of being excarnated persisted, and even after a week was just as acute as when it began. Needless to say I was disconcerted. I knew I could not push myself to continue life as normal, and must endure being present to my experience in order to find out what I needed. A friend, whose mother was a Therapeutic Eurythmist, showed me how to do “Ich Denke die Rede” (I Think Speech, an exercise for establishing one’s physical orientation in space) and “B”. Accompanying the gesture of “B”, I was guided to imagine and come to the experience of a blue mantle all around me, the red awareness making space for the inner yellow, the inner yellow free to live and shine. (See figure “B” above).

I took hold of these two exercises, and with devotion, practiced them daily. From this exploration with incarnation, color, and gesture, I was soon brought back into myself, strengthened, and inspired. From that moment onwards, the healing power of Eurythmy was impressed deeply upon my soul. There the seed of “B” lived within me.

Bringing Eurythmy into the world, artistically and pedagogically, I have experienced windows of its healing power -- working in the audience, in my colleagues, in my students. Most recently, I stood opposite an eighth grader, who until that day had never done Eurythmy. She was, and had always been, in the public school system, and was now spending her days taking her classes via Zoom. “Of course, she is falling between the cracks,” I thought, as her grandparents expressed their concern, and asked if I could help with her studies. I knew right away, before all else, that I must bring her Eurythmy. Soon enough we stood face-to-face outside on the grass and began. I introduced a concentration exercise with rhythm, that included much clapping of each other’s hands and many E’s (crossing arms). We sped up. And then her face cracked …and transformed …she was suddenly glowing, a smile peeking through the staged bleakness, a child behind the wall she had built to protect herself from a system that didn’t appreciate, or encourage, or celebrate her artistic, creative gifts as a human being. The experience of her sudden change in that moment made a big impression upon me. It had happened so spontaneously, and with such joy that we both were taken by surprise. How delicate and powerful is that joy, the light of self and its reflection beheld in another. I was filled with a very strong sense of purpose.

When sharing what Eurythmy is in conversations with strangers, the questions come, “Could you do this with my children, with me? Does the school have a Therapeutic Eurythmist? Where can I find one?” In my work in the kindergarten, and in discussion with my grades colleagues, we feel there is a great need for healing, a great need for children or the inner child of the adult to be met as they are, to be faced and embraced, to be acknowledged and supported in carrying and transforming the burdens that mute their light, to free and utilize their inherent power to be...to “B”.