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Today’s weird therapy I’ve never even heard of: eurythmy!

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

It never ceases to amaze/fascinate how many therapies I still haven’t heard of after twenty years in the pain game … despite being more or less continuously bombarded with what-do-you-think-of-this-treatment inquiries, and forever diving into related research and other reading. Today’s weird example? “Eurythmy.”

“Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with his wife, Marie, in the early 20th century. Primarily a performance art, it is also used in education, especially in Waldorf schools, and — as part of anthroposophic medicine — for claimed therapeutic purposes.”

Nothing good has escaped my attention for this long, so of course it’s just as whack as it sounds. But I had never even heard of it, and that is weird. Seriously, just how long do I have to do this job before I’ve “heard it all”?! At this point, I guess it’s never going to happen.

This seems like a good time for a reminder that not much of anything works for serious chronic pain of any kind… but some heavily qualified exceptions to that rule are thoroughly reviewed here.