The fifth opened for us the door into another world, and we experienced it as a turning force in the soul gesture of cognition. With the sixth, we step into this space. The corresponding soul gesture is the gesture of communication.

Attunement

I take time to arrive within myself. I invite it into my hands as if it were a substance, and guide it to my heart. 

I use my senses to perceive the inner life: the weaving of the breath, the rhythms of the heart, the space of the chest extending to the shoulder blades. 

Until the inner life feels perceived, responds, expands, lightens the chest and gently lifts it. I let this lightness and its warmth overflow and stream downwards, guiding it deep into the earth.

I feel how this straightens me up naturally and makes me tall. And how my heels become light.

Repetition of the sequence of tones from the prime to the fifth.

I feel my shoulder girdle, especially my collarbone, like a roof (Do) and the body like its house (Do). The roof carries its house:

Do – Do.

From there we move limb by limb into the hands: Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol.

At Fa we experience a looking back from the back of the hand towards ourselves.

At the fifth we experience the sunrise: the hands slowly lift the sun above the horizon, and it illuminates the space before us.

Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol.

The Sixth

Look at your hand: we activate the fifth with the palm, which allows its tension to radiate gently into the fingers so that they participate.

With the sixth, we go beyond the body. We experience it through the fingers – yet in truth it is the space between the fingers. Open your hands, feel the space between your fingers, and weave out into space and back again.

You can strengthen the outward weaving by moving from the thumb to the little finger. You strengthen the return by moving from the little finger slightly back towards the thumb. Yet the essential element remains the space between your fingers.

Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol – La – La – La – La.

You have truly arrived outside, beyond the boundary of your body – awake, feeling, and perceiving.

Do–La, Do–La

For those of you who are musicians: the outward movement corresponds more to the major sixth, the return more to the minor sixth. For now, however, I remain with a single tone.

Do–La, Do–La

It is like a butterfly: at the fourth the caterpillar forms its chrysalis, at the fifth it emerges and shows its wings – with the sixth it flies into freedom.

Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol – La – La – La – La.

Try to perceive this feeling of freedom that you sense outside between the fingers, this lightness of the fingers and of the space between them, also within your own inner being – as the true experience of joy of this interval.

Do–La

Does it succeed? Does your bodily feeling change?

Do–La

The Soul Gesture of Communication

From the sixth, the eurythmic soul gesture of communication develops.

Feel into your collarbone and allow yourself to be carried by your fingers into the lightness of the sixth. And notice: I have wings. You fly with them out into the world and back again. You let them rise and fall – forwards, backwards, sideways – and feel their lightness and freedom like a familiar home.

Feel far into the space behind you with your wings and hands. Sense your shoulder blades, the hands, and then bring the right arm above and the left arm below forwards.

Do it once more and, with your wings, accompany what was behind to the front towards the other. In this movement, feel successively all the intervals: collarbone, upper arm, forearm, wrist and hand. Communication!

M

This movement does not go in only one direction.

If you know the M-gesture, then you know: M is both – streaming out and streaming in – at the same time. Speak M and hold your nose: it no longer works. You see: M is the master of opposites – open and closed at once.

The M-gesture can express this by letting both arms move alternately: outwards and inwards. Even more subtly, both arms can move in parallel: you stream out and notice that something is also coming in. You stream in and notice that something is also going out again.

This is also the case with the soul gesture of communication. In the mood of the sixth, you unfold your wings. You sense backwards, connect the movement with your heart, and bring it flowing through your centre to the front. Your wings accompany this process.

You have the feeling that you are accompanying something towards another – it may be a person, a being, a question. And from there something returns – what is it?

Letting the Soul Gesture of Communication Arise from the Lightness of the Sixth

Feel the lightness of the sixth, weave outwards with the space between your fingers, far into the distance.

Do–La

Let your arms stream backwards, remember your bodily presence, feel your heart, and let them flow through the heart towards the other and arrive there.

Then we become still and open: what returns? Only then are we truly in communication. This encounter inspires us, and our thoughts become true!

Are you still light?

In the eurythmy figure, this lightness is expressed in a particular way by the heels and toes gently lifting from the ground.

Explore what is needed for the lightness of the sixth to work within you so that your heels and toes lift from the ground.

Do–La, Do–La

It is like a triad of three sixths.

La – La – La

Let us conclude by practising the sixth once more, in order to experience what lives within it and why it gives us such joy.

Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol – La – La – La.

Conclusion

Sit down slowly and listen to the resonance.