Automatic translation

Harald Haas
Nervousness and Fear
Soul Troubles on the Path to Freedom

anthrosana 2018

Introduction

Paths Out of Fear and Depression

Experiencing Christ Transforms Nervousness

Renewal of Inner Life and the Future of Society

The Light and Shadow of High Sensitivity and Nervousness

Exercises from the Eightfold Path in Managing Nervousness

Developing Heart Thinking

Forms of Fear According to Rudolf Steiner

Anthroposophical Exercises and Mindfulness Therapies in Addressing Fears

Notes

Further Reading

Introduction

Mental and psychosomatic disorders such as fears, depression, and nervousness are increasing rapidly in post-industrial countries. At the same time, new perceptive abilities are emerging, which can be associated with phenomena of high sensitivity. How are today’s soul troubles manifested? What are their causes? Where do their origins in human history lie? And how can they be overcome? This publication is dedicated to addressing these questions.

Rudolf Steiner's accounts are supplemented by current research findings and personal experiences, creating an impressive picture of current human development with its psychological challenges and vulnerabilities. These reflections form the foundation for the healing aspects of the anthroposophical path of schooling and modern mindfulness-based therapeutic approaches.

Initially, the new experience of Christ and the relationship between high sensitivity and nervousness are explored. After describing the causes that lead to various forms of nervousness, an introduction is provided to Rudolf Steiner’s nervousness exercises, the Eightfold Path, and the development of heart thinking. The final section of this publication presents Steiner’s descriptions of different forms of fear, along with guidance on anthroposophical exercises and other mindfulness therapies. The focus lies on the nuanced view of human developmental facts (pages 5-9, 11-15) and the various practice elements (pages 21-34), which are prerequisites for anthroposophical therapy: whether body-oriented, medicinal, artistic, psychotherapeutic, or spiritual approaches.

A scientific justification of the research results based on Steiner’s spiritual science methodology can be found in the recently published anthology "Soul Science: Anthroposophy as a Basis for Psychotherapy," introduced and commented on by the author of this publication. For questions regarding the anthroposophical path of schooling, the booklet "Reverence and Mindfulness: Stages of Perception," edited by Andreas Neider, is recommended, compiling Steiner's key texts on this topic.

Paths Out of Fear and Depression

Looking at the frequency of fears and depression in different countries, cultural psychiatry has revealed the following interesting results:¹ Before industrialisation, the proportion of people who experienced mental disorders in their lifetime ranged from 5 to 10 per cent. During industrialisation—a process now repeating itself in parts of Southern and Eastern Europe—this proportion rose to 10 to 20 per cent. In post-industrial countries of Central and Northern Europe as well as the USA, this share has significantly increased to 20 to 40 per cent over the past decades. This means that with each transition, from industrialisation to the post-industrial service society, these illnesses have roughly doubled. Evidently, our current global economic development is provoking increasing mental suffering.

Recently, media reports have highlighted a massive increase in addiction disorders in the USA in recent years. A typical "addiction career" often unfolds as follows: Initially, painkillers are prescribed for physical strain and tension, which are later replaced by stronger opioids, leading to dependence. Over time, this dependency frequently transitions into illegal drug addiction, accompanied by significant social decline.²

From the late 1950s onwards, the rise in psychological suffering was addressed with antidepressants and anxiolytics (anti-anxiety drugs), as individual psychotherapeutic treatment options in medical and clinical practice proved insufficient. Interestingly, these medications were often discovered by chance during research into treatments for physical illnesses. Promises of groundbreaking discoveries in brain research, which began in the 1960s, have failed to yield new “mechanisms of action” or medications in the last four decades. Consequently, most pharmaceutical companies have abandoned research in this field, with only a few attempting to develop psychotropic drugs based on the "system concept of brain function."³

Perhaps the most audacious endeavour in current brain research is the EU and Switzerland’s "Human Brain Project," centred at ETH Lausanne, which aims to simulate the entire human brain using computer models funded by billions of taxpayers’ money. It seems likely that, much like the completed "Human Genome Project"—which claimed that decoding human DNA would lead to treatments for serious hereditary and other diseases but did not deliver on that promise—the brain project’s outcomes will have limited medical relevance. Instead, as Rudolf Steiner predicted, the results will likely advance the technical integration of humans and machines.⁴

Origins of Emotional Distress

Where do the historical origins of the emotional burdens that increasingly afflict humanity today lie? In An Outline of Esoteric Science, Rudolf Steiner portrays the development of the world in connection with human evolution. He identifies the root causes of today’s emotional strain, fears, errors, and anxieties at the very beginning of humanity’s development. Steiner emphasizes that these fears and insecurities of the soul are “accompanying phenomena of human development on the path to freedom.”⁵

According to Steiner, on the journey toward individual freedom, humans encounter opposition from initially obstructive beings belonging to the spiritual world. These beings, often referred to as adversary beings, are not simply “evil,” as they are sometimes described. Rather, they are permitted by divine cosmic guidance and ultimately serve humanity’s development. This concept was already grasped by Goethe in the first part of Faust, where Mephistopheles declares, “I am a part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”

Steiner further explains that between 1842 and 1879, a decisive battle occurred in the spiritual world. During this period, the Archangel Michael purified the supersensible world of these adversary beings, causing them to fall into the human soul. Understanding these spiritual events can provide significant insight into the growing nervousness, emerging anxieties, and the development of specific psychiatric treatments such as hypnosis and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis during this time. For a spiritual perspective on phenomena of fear, it is essential to consider the activities of these spiritual beings (pages 35-40).

Concurrently with the intensified influence of adversary beings on the human soul and body, a loosening of the human constitution and the soul faculties of thinking, feeling, and willing occurred. This manifested in two ways: as increased association, a neurotic “tumbling together,” and as dissociation, when the “I” can no longer (or not sufficiently) integrate the interplay of the soul forces.⁶ According to Steiner, disharmony in the external world can lead to hysteria and similar signs of nervousness.⁷

Another significant transformation described by Steiner is the detachment of the “etheric heart” from the physical heart, which began in 1721.⁸ By the year 2100, this “etheric heart,” located between the physical heart and the heart chakra, will have detached in all humans. The specific date of 1721 may initially seem puzzling, as Steiner does not name an individual in whom this first occurred.

The anthroposophically oriented musicologist and musician Steffen Hartmann has explored this topic.⁹ He speculates that this process of detachment first manifested in Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). In 1720, Bach experienced a profound personal shock when, upon returning from a two-month journey to Carlsbad, he learned that his wife, Maria Barbara, had died unexpectedly and was already buried. In 1722, Bach completed two significant works: The Well-Tempered Clavier, comprising twelve preludes and fugues in all twelve major and minor keys, and the six Brandenburg Concertos. The twelve keys can be interpreted as expressions of the twelve zodiacal forces, to which Bach became receptive in this situation. Thus, it can be argued that Bach required this spiritual transformation to realize his genius compositions.

These newly liberated etheric heart forces will form the foundation for future heart thinking, enabling an increasing number of people to experience luminous, spiritual thoughts. Hartmann summarizes this development as follows: “Through the detachment of the etheric heart from the physical heart, a great spiritual task arises, along with an increasing health crisis and anthropological challenge in our time. The finer constitution of the human being threatens to become disordered in the heart region.” Hartmann views Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier as a musical response to this problem. The structure of this work—experienced as a process—is such that it balances, harmonizes, and heals imbalances by “singing” the forces of the human heart on a higher level.

Chakras (Lotus Flowers) In spiritual science, chakras or lotus flowers with a specific number of petals are understood as soul perception organs for supersensible realities. The most important ones, which Rudolf Steiner discusses, are the two-petalled brow chakra, the sixteen-petalled throat chakra, the twelve-petalled heart chakra, the ten-petalled solar plexus chakra, and the six-petalled chakra in the sacral area. This will be discussed in more detail in the following text. Rudolf Steiner describes the location and appearance of these energy centres as supersensible organs of perception and knowledge, and also provides numerous exercises for bringing awareness to and developing these soul organs.10 In Eastern tradition, the chakras are also energy centres in the etheric and astral body that play a major role in physical and psychological health. Essentially, seven such energy centres are described there, which exist as organs of the etheric and astral body near the corresponding body regions: root chakra, sacral chakra, solar plexus chakra, heart chakra, throat chakra, brow chakra, and crown chakra.

In my view, the new perceptual abilities that are today understood as high sensitivity can be seen as a consequence of this development. Furthermore, in this context, one can observe the increased occurrence of nervousness and anxieties, particularly including conditions described as attention deficit disorder. The fact that these new psychological phenomena of high sensitivity have increased significantly in the last century was a topic at the third congress on high sensitivity in 2017 in Switzerland (www.hsp-kongress.ch). An interesting development was also shown there: While C. G. Jung¹¹ in the mid-20th century estimated the number of highly sensitive people at 10 percent, Elaine N. Aron,¹² the founder of scientific research on high sensitivity, already put this figure at 20 percent. And the latest studies by Michael Pluess, Professor of Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, calculated a proportion of even 30 percent.

According to Rudolf Steiner, the greatest mystery of human development is the reappearance of Christ in a non-sensory, but elementary-etheric form from the year 1933.¹³ Naturally, experiencing this event is not bound to any religious affiliation but can be experienced by all people. Meanwhile, there are numerous experience reports on this topic,¹⁴ which have confirmed Steiner's prophecies. The effect of this experience can be described as gaining greater self-confidence and orientation towards the essential aspects in life. In particular, Steiner describes that it would thereby become possible for humans to develop an ability and strength to counter the increasingly strong mechanisation and presumably also the advancing digitalisation

The four members of being Physical body: solid, mineral body of the human being, which decays after death when the physical body separates from the etheric body. Etheric body: also called life body or formative forces body; it forms and enlivens the physical body, controls and maintains all life functions such as growth, nutrition, reproduction. The etheric forces form the foundation for healing, health and regeneration. Astral body: connected to the soul's inner world of the human being, their feelings and emotions. I: the spiritual core of the human being that makes them an autonomous, individual personality and enables consciousness development.

of the living world,¹⁵ in order not to be at the mercy of the spiritually tangible 'Ahrimanic' force that works 'behind' the machines and in the 'artificial intelligence' of the computer world.

Self-Education and Salutogenesis

Which path and which consciousness lead to experiencing Christ in the etheric realm? Often, people have experienced this force particularly in situations of distress, without specifically seeking it. But there is also a conscious striving for it, which can be found in soul development through anthroposophical spiritual science.

Rudolf Steiner's statements can also be seen as an expression of this spirituality. Specifically, any spiritual seeker can connect with this spirituality by studying Steiner's writings or particularly by following paths of exercise to experience the supersensible. Steiner's path connects to the tradition of Western philosophy, especially to the representatives of German Classicism, Schiller and Goethe, and reformulates the paths of exercise, similar to those in the Asian tradition, particularly in Buddhism, which became known in Europe since the early 19th century. The exercises for self-education consist of meditation and concentration, reflection on the perception of natural processes, one's own physicality, a thought or feeling, as well as conscious activity.

Already in antiquity, self-education was also called 'self-cultivation or anthropotechnique' (see Peter Sloterdijk¹⁶) and was considered a salutogenic necessity for adults. Marco Bischof has provided an overview of this in his 2010 book 'Salutogenesis - On the Way to Health' (in the chapter Health Culture and Self-Cultivation). He describes therein that the topic has been taken up again in modern philosophy by, among others, Michel Foucault, Gernot Böhme, and Peter Sloterdijk, who trace it back to ancient and Eastern wisdom origins. Rudolf Steiner's work also contains countless references to self-development, not only regarding the attainment of supersensible cognitive abilities but also for improving health and dealing with external life.

Rudolf Steiner's basic thoughts on education and self-education in connection with health and illness can be found today in studies on pathogenesis and salutogenesis or hygiogenesis. It is impressive that the idea of salutogenesis, which was only coined in the 1960s by the American-Israeli medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, has spread so quickly in various therapeutic areas. Salutogenesis appears as a new paradigm, but upon closer examination has more distant and diverse origins.

As a current temporal phenomenon, it can be observed that meditative exercises are particularly used in psychotherapy as a standard therapeutic method. Scientifically widely recognised examples are the mindfulness-based group therapy for stress management according to Jon Kabat-Zinn (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which have been practised for several years in outpatient and inpatient psychotherapy in German-speaking regions.

Experiencing Christ Transforms Nervousness

Rudolf Steiner describes experiencing Christ in the etheric as an essential counterforce to overcome nervousness. Since this aspect is so significant for these considerations, the following will reference important statements from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Stuttgart on 14 November 1920¹⁷. He gave this lecture two years after the end of World War I. In it, he first addresses the temporal situation regarding the development of technical forces used, which were then measured in horsepower years. Thus, it could be determined that before the beginning of World War I, so much technical force was used in Germany as if, on average, one horsepower was active alongside each person. If one compares this with the amount of technical force that resulted from industrialisation and mechanisation in industrialised countries and then especially in recent years through computerisation and digitalisation in post-industrial countries, an increase to immense proportions has taken place.

Steiner then contrasts the working of Luciferic beings with Ahrimanic beings. The Luciferic beings want to draw humans away from Earth through illusions, so that they do not connect with the earthly world. The Ahrimanic beings, particularly active since modern times, are earth-bound, intelligent machine forces that want to bind humans to the material and make spiritual continuation after death impossible. Steiner then addresses the experience of elementary reality in

nature, which today's science no longer acknowledges. Steiner also describes the subconscious effect of technical forces. The consciousness for perceiving the spiritual in natural phenomena has been clouded; instead, our intellectualistic understanding, today's scientific approach, has developed. Thus, humans consider themselves 'enlightened' and regard it as superstition when spiritual beings are observed in natural phenomena. This is also the reason why they cannot experience the Ahrimanic-demonic beings working in technology. These nevertheless work in the subconscious; the consequence of this is that 'today demonic forces are rumbling in technicism; they continue to work in human will and humans still do not accommodate themselves to recognising this.'

Technification of Humans

Furthermore, Steiner characterises the relationship between Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces as they have manifested since the beginning of the 19th century. The Luciferic is more active in feelings, the Ahrimanic more in human understanding. The Ahrimanic influence is becoming increasingly significant today with the development of technical devices. As help against this development, Steiner expected the Christ event in the first half of the 20th century. Humans would thereby have received the possibility to permeate themselves with this Christ force and 'to let the necessary rise of Ahrimanic powers affect them in the right way'. The misfortune of our time consists in 'humans sailing into the Ahrimanic without being carried by the Christ force'.

It remains 'a great misfortune of our time', according to Steiner, when the connection to Christ as protection from the Ahrimanic is not sought. A consequence of not accepting the relationship to etheric Christ-working is today's science's ignorance towards human qualities. The designation of humans as 'naked apes'¹⁸ can be seen as the lowest point of today's scientific-materialistic view of humans as 'higher animals'.

Steiner then describes how technology was already affecting human relationships in the working world in his time. A clear alienation had emerged among people, particularly between employers and workforce. These tensions in the working environment repeatedly led to strike situations and revolutionary movements that had developed directly from the workforce but were not expected as such by leading business people; however, Steiner had already foreseen these.

The materialistically shaped conception of the working world, as shown in capitalist and socialist systems and in today's shareholder mentality of postmodern service companies, can be described as disregarding human dignity and as dangerous. This conception led to massive upheavals in Russia and China, where through the 'extinction of the bourgeoisie' more people lost their lives than in both World Wars combined.

The tragic aspect is that human relationships have meanwhile become so strongly determined by industrialisation and technification, whereby according to Steiner a subconscious rumbling of the Ahrimanic is caused.

Translation up to here ChatGPT, from here Word

Transforming Soul Distress

According to Steiner, this subconscious effect of intellectual, materialistic untruthfulness and mechanization resulted in a melancholic mood among children as early as the beginning of the 20th century. This mood continued to have an effect in the following generations until it revealed itself today as nervousness. The best-known forms of this are attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity as well as the numerous psychosomatic illnesses.

I have also been able to observe an increase in these ailments in the last twenty years of my practice. This trend is also reflected in the fact that there are more and more burnout and psychosomatic clinics in Switzerland. Likewise, the number of psychiatric, psychotherapeutic and complementary medicine practitioners has increased enormously in recent decades.

One can now ask oneself: What are the healing paths? Steiner gives an answer to this in the above-mentioned lecture: "There is another feeling than what I described earlier. […] That which the soul unites in the subconscious out of technicalisms, out of the Ahrimanic powers, reacts upwards, enters the consciousness as thoughts, ideas, but it comes up as something similar to fear. And in addition to the longing deprivation, one will see in the children who will have in school in the years and decades to come, a vague but no less lively fear of life, which will express itself in nervousness, which will express itself in a fidgety, nervous being - I mean it tangibly. In the appendix, what I am describing is already there today. […] There is no other cure for the nervousness that must assert itself in the growing generation than the preparation for the Christ event of the first half of the 20th century."

Steiner goes on to describe "the longing for the spiritual", which can only be satisfied through the encounter with the Christ. A possible encounter with Christ also has consequences for the further earthly lives of people: they can take a new consciousness with them into the future. If this encounter does not take place, people can fall into an ahrimanic dullness. People increasingly see themselves as "higher animals" who play a role above all in economic life. As a result, melancholic-depressive moods and psychosomatic ailments, Steiner calls it "hypochondria", have spread. Most people would not have the possibility to grasp what rumbles in their subconscious like a dawning of memories from previous earthly lives and causes in them a feeling of dissatisfaction with the general situation of the time as well as a longing for spiritual understanding.

This longing, however, leads precisely to the individual spiritual encounter with Christ and thus to the vision of Christ in the etheric. In this regard, the lecture says: "External distress will be transformed into inner distress of the soul, and out of this distress of the soul will be born vision, the vision of Christ, who will walk supersensibly among men and to whom they will have to adhere so that they do not sail in an impossible way from the Luciferic to the Ahrimanic. […] Today we look into the deserted nature, stop in front of the human being. This will create the great spiritual distress of the coming decades. This anguish of soul is a positive power, and out of this positive power the ability to see the Christ will arise."

New health-promoting soul abilities

Rudolf Steiner goes on to say that in today's enlightened Christian theology, the spiritual view necessary for the future is not to be found and thus does not allow access to Christ. For she assumes that the Christ who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was not a real God, but was only a particularly good person.

According to Steiner, in addition to the dissatisfaction, there is an increasing "fear of life", which is associated with becoming nervous, for which there is no other cure than conscious access to the new spirituality. However, the prerequisite for this is that society is ordered down to the concrete point in the sense of "social threefolding". This includes a "free intellectual life" as well as a state that is only responsible for the legal order, and an economy in which the principle of solidarity and fraternity prevails.¹⁹

Steiner expected that even children will feel in the future: "With all intellectualistic education, you won't be able to solve the riddle of man."²⁰ The human being, who through intellectual development sees himself only as an earthly man, can learn through this crisis to feel that he has a cosmic part within him in addition to his earthly part, with which he can experience the Christ Being.

As early as 1911, Rudolf Steiner had named three qualities that man can develop in order to form a spiritual shell for the Christ, with which he can unite individually: the qualities of wonder, compassion and conscience.²¹ To these he states that they are the qualities in which man can come out of himself without losing himself.²² Rudolf Steiner, in particular in his public lecture on self-education "Nervousness and Egoism" and in his presentations of the eight-limbed mindful path,23 pointed out ways to train and attain the qualities of wonder, compassion and conscience.

The salutogenesis concept

Aaron Antonovsky, who comes from the USA, carried out his medical-sociological research in his new adopted home of Israel from the 1960s onwards. They led him to the concept of health development of salutogenesis, which he developed in 1989 under the title "Unraveling the mystery of health. How people manage stress and stay well". In particular, he examined people who had survived a concentration camp and emigrated to the newly formed state of Israel.

He focused his attention primarily on their state of health and well-being. He came to the astonishing conclusion that almost 30 percent of the women examined were in good health and felt comfortable - despite their unbearable experiences. This relatively high proportion of healthy survivors was unexpected for him. He asked himself what kind of attitude or attitude these people had to have in order to be able to survive such a horrific event so well.

His further research showed that there are three basic attitudes in particular that have a health-promoting effect. Antonovsky called the first basic attitude the "sense of comprehensibility", the second the "sense of manageability" and the third the "sense of meaningfulness".

Regarding the feeling of comprehensibility, Antonovsky explains that this ability consists in understanding the connections of life. In this way, stimuli, even unknown ones, can be processed as ordered, consistent, structured information. This corresponds to a meaningful cognitive processing pattern.

With the feeling of manageability, there is the conviction of being able to shape one's own life. Antonovsky writes about it: "This component describes a person's conviction that difficulties can be solved. It is the extent to which one perceives that one has appropriate resources at one's disposal to meet the demands posed by the stimuli with which one is confronted."

When it comes to the feeling of meaningfulness, Antonovsky means that one has a belief in the meaning of life. It is "the extent to which one perceives life as emotionally meaningful: that at least some of the problems and demands posed by life are worth investing energy in, that one stands up for them and commits oneself to them, that they are welcome challenges rather than burdens that one would like to be rid of".

Antonovsky put these three basic attitudes together under the term "sense of coherence". He describes the sense of coherence as "a global orientation that expresses the extent to which someone has a pervasive, enduring, yet dynamic sense of confidence that, firstly, the demands from the inner or outer world of experience are structured, predictable and explainable in the course of life, and secondly, that the resources necessary to meet the demands are available. And thirdly, that these requirements are challenges that deserve investment and commitment."²⁴

Extensive research and literature on the topic of salutogenesis has emerged. In the field of anthroposophic medicine, it became known in particular through the former head of the Medical Section at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Michaela Glöckler. The German patient organization "Gesundheit aktiv" published a lecture by her entitled "Salutogenesis - Where are the sources of physical, mental and spiritual health?", which is unfortunately now out of print.

Renewal of the Soul Life and the Future of Society

An essential description of the evolutionary facts in the incarnation can be found in Rudolf Steiner's lectures of 13 and 14 February 1920,25 which are summarized here. In his lecture of 13 February 1920, he describes how the development of the soul's faculties, which extends over long periods of time, is divided into a cognitive area related to the past and a future-oriented, will-oriented area. The intellectual part of memory, intelligence and sensory activity are related to the past, while feeling, desire and volition are future-oriented.

First of all, Steiner characterizes the cognitive abilities of memory, intelligence and sensory perception, whose relationship to corporeality is decreasing more and more.

Steiner goes on to describe memory as the ability of the soul that is most closely related to the corporeality. Through memory we are able to "draw a thread from a certain moment, which lies two, three, four years or even more after birth, to the phenomena of the present moment, and man would be inwardly ill if this thread were to be broken. […] And that would mean that we would be sick in our sense of self." The memory can also suffer from sleep disorders. This tearing of the thread of memory is found today more frequently in the mental life of people who have experienced trauma.

Our intelligence is less connected to the body than memory and therefore not so individual: "While everyone has their own memory content that no one else can look into, while this memory content is therefore very individual, the intelligence content is something more common to humanity. […] But these intelligent processes themselves are a substantiality outside the brain, which is only reflected through the brain.

And then we come to the third faculty of man, which is, at least for the most part, most independent of our physical constitution. [...] This is the sensory activity. Let's take the eye. The eye itself as such has nothing to do with the processes that are the visual processes. […] The processes that occur in our consciousness as content in seeing have nothing to do with the eye. What happens in the eye only causes us to be present with our consciousness, with our ego, in the processes of seeing."          This presentation of Steiner may be confusing at first, since our current physiology interprets visual perception only as a consequence of optical phenomena. On the other hand, according to Steiner, the ego of man perceives the world unconsciously, but directly. In order to become conscious, the ego needs the eye, which connects us with the image of the world.

In the following lecture on 14 February 1920, Steiner takes up the topic of the soul faculties again. He now refers to the three intellectual, cognitive faculties as upper faculties (see box) and clarifies the connections between the soul faculties by bringing them all together in colour on a panel painting (see Plate 1): at the top the sensory activity (blue), then the pictorial thoughts (indigo), the intelligence (green), the memory-based thoughts (yellow), the memory (red), the feeling (deep red), the desire (violet) and at the very bottom the volition (blue-green).

The lower, will-based faculties of feeling, desire and will are thus opposed to the upper, intellectual ones (see box).

Upper Skills		Lower Skills: Social World
Sensory activity Intelligence Memory		Feeling Desire Willing

Steiner goes on to point out that in the soul everything must work together "from the bottom up" as well as in the opposite direction. Through the ascending effect, the emotional and volitional sides of the human being are strengthened and that he does not appear too "sober and dry" on his intellectual side. The forces for the renewal of the soul life, on the other hand, must come from outside the human being, from the spiritual influence of the angels (Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai), and work from above downwards. In this way, man would not become further numb to the world and would not become purely intellectually materialistic, otherwise the physical forces would "dry up" more and more in the future and the upper faculties would no longer be able to come to life.

This can be seen as another reason why there are more and more mentally ill people today. In order to change this difficult social and societal situation, the development of social threefolding is necessary, according to Steiner.

"To practice spiritual science today means to seek out the healing process of the diseased civilization. This would have to be felt by a sufficiently large number of people, and it would have to be felt very deeply and thoroughly. Without spiritual science one will not feel this. And now all the leading events happen without a feeling for what one is actually doing. […] For everything that is created without the knowledge of the future living conditions of the earth is a disease material for the developing humanity. […] In the future man must become capable of getting the spiritual world into his memory, into his intelligence, into his sensory activity as an individual human being. He can only do that as an individual person, only the individual can do that. In the future, the individual must become the mediator between heaven and earth, between the spiritual world and the physical world. But this justifies the necessity of a threefold division of public affairs."

Light and dark sides of high sensitivity and nervousness

Since the publications of Eliane N. Aaron, the term "high sensitivity" has become established for a more intense sensual and spiritual experience. In addition, the term high sensitivity is used. It stands for a new perceptual ability to perceive the supernatural,26 such as angelic beings or the natural forces or nature spirits that "create behind the sensory world".

In a lecture at the third Swiss Congress for High Sensitivity on 2 September 2017 in Münsingen, Ulrike Hensel, a now well-known author on this topic, compiled the light and dark sides of highly sensitive people (see www.hsp-kongress.ch). In the following, their aspects will be contrasted, slightly modified, with Rudolf Steiner's statements from the lecture "Nervousness and Egoism"²⁷ , in which he describes similar aspects as nervous weaknesses.

1. Perceptual talent - tendency to prejudice - judging from the merits

Hensel first mentions  the perceptual talent, which on the one hand enables greater alertness, and on the other hand can also lead to sensory overload with restlessness and exhaustion due to the openness to stimuli.

Steiner formulates that if thoughts do not pay attention to perception, prejudices automatically set in. The person then unconsciously follows the sensory impressions, so that the thoughts "cannot be properly captured and pursued". Steiner describes him as a "mental fidgety". As a form of nervousness, this gives rise to the tendency to prejudice and to criticize quickly. Thus, Steiner recommends not to judge hastily and too often, but deliberately,  on the basis of the matter in order to avoid obsessive thoughts.

2. Ability to think - indecision - thorough weighing

As a second aspect of high sensitivity, Hensel cites the ability to think, which can be characterized as networked, creative, gifted with caution and prudence. This also corresponds to the creativity and inventiveness that Hensel mentions again later as the sixth quality. As a flip side of this, this can lead to brooding and decision-making problems.

In the lecture "Nervousness and Egoism", Steiner characterises this situation as "not being able to advance to decisions" and recommends that decisions be made only after thorough consideration of the pros and cons and the "feasibility" in order to avoid a compulsion to act, as it is often suggested today as a "practical constraint".

3. Emotional strength - emotional desire - renunciation of wishes

Hensel describes the third quality as emotional strength, which is expressed in an intense emotionality when experiencing positive and negative feelings. This requires a high degree of self-management and mindfulness.

For Steiner, this shows "the effort to renounce wishes", as one  can be at the mercy of emotional desires. These lead to dependence on substitute satisfactions, which manifest themselves in forms of illness that deceptively replicate organic illnesses (which are now referred to as psychosomatic illnesses). As a means of training in dealing with them, he advises to refrain from insignificant wishes, as their non-fulfilment does not cause any damage to health.

4. Empathy - Weakness in demarcation - Observing activities

The fourth aspect of Hensel is the pronounced ability to empathize,  especially towards conversation or relationship partners, which can lead to excessive compassion and problems of demarcation and even exhaustion.

Steiner describes this as an expression of the "weak mastery of actions and gestures" as well as a weakness of boundaries, in which one imposes oneself on others. It is helpful to look at one's own body movements as if from the outside and to perform or refrain from arbitrary actions.

Fifthly, Hensel mentions intuition, which we will deal with here at the end.

5. Inventiveness - getting bogged down - review

This is followed by the sixth skill as the fifth, which Hensel  calls a wealth of ideas in dealing with problem solving. As a flip side, this leads to  getting bogged down in the variety of possibilities.

According to Steiner, this weakness is shown by the fact that there is a "small bond of interest between the human soul and what people accept as ideas", which is fostered by cramming into the usual schools and universities. On the other hand, it is helpful to follow the thoughts backwards, to  visualize an action in the reverse order, instead of leaving it in its natural course. This makes it possible to connect completely with the content of what is presented. This exercise can strengthen self-confidence and help overcome self-doubt and overconfidence.

6. Accuracy - perfectionism - conscious use of handwriting

According to Hensel, the seventh characteristic of highly sensitive people, which follows here as the sixth, is accuracy and value orientation, which can turn negatively into perfectionism . This requires generosity and leniency towards oneself.

In the lecture on nervousness, Steiner describes that difficulties can arise when the inner soul is far from what the head has to do at work. This leads to intrinsic movements of the physical body, which can become convulsively entangled. This weakness can also be experienced as a tendency to be jumpy and anxious about not being able to fulfill one's tasks. As a simple training, on the other hand, Steiner recommends using handwriting as consciously as when painting, instead of writing purely mechanically as usual. Handwriting can be deliberately changed, for example by writing individual letters differently than usual.

7. Overexcitability - forgetfulness - consciously misplacing things

Finally, Ulrike Hensel states that hyperexcitability can generally be observed as an obstacle  to high sensitivity. In my opinion, this is particularly expressed in a confused memory. People who have had traumatic experiences can also retain strong, intrusive memory images that are experienced as flashbacks in a very present and real way.

In connection with nervousness, Steiner recommends as a first exercise against forgetfulness to "consciously misplace" objects by placing them in an unfamiliar place and memorizing it visually. This strengthens the memory power. In my opinion, this is an excellent exercise for highly sensitive people, as they have a pictorial memory, which is a prerequisite for this exercise.

8. Intuition - Presumptuous Claims - Meditation

Now to  the intuition, which Ulrike Hensel mentions as the fifth. In the case of highly sensitive people, this ability is expressed in the fact that they can sense atmosphere. This can be used to describe high sensitivity in the true sense of the word. As a dark side, however, according to Hensel, this could easily lead to presumptuous claims if gut feeling is always taken as truth.

Steiner describes how the ability to intuition  can be trained in meditation in such a way that the supernatural can be perceived - detached from subjective feelings, from sympathetic and antipathetic reactions. This extension to the imagination, to the pictorial experience of thoughts, is also the eighth aspect of the eight-limbed path, which Steiner describes as "real contemplation".

The Eight Soul Activities

If we look at Steiner's drawing (Plate 1) in the previous chapter with the eight soul activities, we can see that all eight aspects of high sensitivity according to Ulrike Hensel as well as all forms of nervousness according to Rudolf Steiner are depicted on it. Thus, the perceptual talent fits the sensory activity (blue), intuition and imaginative thoughts match the pictorial thought (indigo), the ability to think and creativity match intelligence (green), the richness of ideas to the memory-based thoughts (yellow), the pictorial memory and the confused memory through the hyperexcitability to  the memory (red), the ability to empathize to the Feeling (deep red), the strength of feeling for desire (violet) and the precision and value orientation for wanting (blue-green).

The impressive thing about the compilation of the light and shadow sides of high sensitivity is that Hensel has arranged the qualities in such a way that they correspond to the aspects in Steiner's lecture "Nervousness and Egoism", although it cannot be assumed that she was based on them.

Exercises of the eightfold path in dealing with nervousness

In his lecture "The Self-Education of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science", Rudolf Steiner describes a path of practice for everyday life. Interestingly, a closer examination of the lecture text shows that it is arranged according to the principles of the path of mindfulness as originally outlined by Gautama Buddha.²⁹ Because of its division into eight stages, it is called the eightfold path. There are various descriptions by Steiner of this path in the sense of a renewal of the Buddhist path as a "path of knowledge" in "Theosophy" and on the development of the laryngeal chakra in "How to gain knowledge of the higher worlds?" as well as in the exercises for the days of the week in "Soul Exercises I".

The practice path of the eight-limbed path was adapted by Steiner to the current level of development of man. These exercises make it possible to develop eight still dormant soul-spiritual abilities that are associated with the 16-petalled laryngeal chakra. Steiner describes these eight qualities for the first time in his book "How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?".³⁰ There it says: "Man must pay attention and care to certain processes of the soul, which he usually carries out carelessly and inattentively. There are eight such events." It is the right opinion, the right judgment, the right speech, the right deed, the right point of view, the right aspiration, the right memory and the right contemplation. Steiner developed these eight processes into "exercises for the days of the week" (weekday exercises for short).³¹ The reference to the corresponding planets can be seen in the naming of individual days such as Sunday day or moon day.

Exercises for the weekdays Saturday: Saturn, Imaginations, the Right Opinion Sunday: Sun, make up your mind, make up your mind Monday: Moon, talking, the right word Tuesday: Mars, the external actions, the right deed Wednesday: Mercury, the arrangement of life, correct point of view Thursday: Jupiter, the human striving; Make all previous exercises a habit Friday: Venus, learning from life, the right memory Summary: the right tranquillity

If one compares the eight aspects of the "eight-limbed path" with the eight nervous weaknesses from Steiner's lecture "Nervousness and Egoism", one can find a broad agreement between the topics. To illustrate this, the eight nervous weaknesses are listed in the same order as the eight processes of the eight-limbed path according to the days of the week:

1. Form of nervousness: not being able to hold on to and follow a thought properly;
   Eightfold Path: Ideas, the Right Opinion;
2. Form of nervousness: not being able to advance to decisions;
   Eightfold path: to decide, right judgment;
3. Form of nervousness: forms of illness that sometimes imitate organic diseases in a deceptive way;
   Eightfold path: the speech, the right word;
4. Form of nervousness: weak control of actions and gestures; Eightfold path: the external actions, the right action;
5. Form of nervousness: a slight bond of interest connects the human soul with what people assume;
   Eightfold path: the arrangement of life, right point of view;
6. Form of nervousness: "a slight connection [...] between the human soul core and that which man does";
   Eightfold path: human striving;
7. Nervousness: frequent slight forgetfulness;
   Eightfold path: learning from life, the right memory;
8. Form of nervousness: presumptuous assertions;
   Eightfold path: the right tranquillity.

Thus, one form of nervousness is contrasted with an exercise aspect of the eight-limbed path. The third point of nervousness, where forms of illness are mentioned, which sometimes deceptively imitate organic diseases, is about the "renunciation of wishes", the suppression of desires if their non-execution does not bring harm, which in the eightfold path is related to the area of speech, where by speaking, "the right word", a balance between too much and too little is to be striven for. The connection of the seventh nervous weakness, easy forgetfulness, with the correct memory of the eightfold path is quite obvious.

What is not so obviously mentioned in the lecture "Nervousness and Egoism" is the eighth point of the eight-limbed path, the right contemplation. However, this can be found at the beginning and end of the lecture as well as in some intermediate remarks, where the importance of understanding the members of the human being for human life and the effects of exercises against nervousness are described.

Development of heart thinking

In order to promote the development of "heart thinking" and thus the heart chakra, Rudolf Steiner developed the so-called six side exercises. They are part of the "general demands that everyone who wants to undergo occult development must make of himself". The special thing about iÿen is that he not only put together mental tasks, but also describes sensations of "ether currents" manifesting themselves in the body, which were to be imitated.³² The following emphasis and intertitles are by the author.

1st exercise
"The first condition is the acquisition of perfectly clear thinking. For this purpose one must free oneself, even if only for a very short time of the day, for about five minutes (the more, the better) from the will-o'-the-wisp of thoughts. You have to become master of your world of thoughts. […] At the end of such an exercise, try to bring fully to consciousness the inner feeling of firmness and security that one will soon notice with subtle attention to one's own soul, and then conclude the exercises by thinking of one's head and the middle of the back (brain and spinal cord), as if one wanted to pour that feeling into this part of the body."

2nd exercise
"If you have practiced for about a month, let a second demand be added. Try to think of some action that you would certainly not have taken in the ordinary course of your life hitherto. They now make this action their duty for each day. […] When one has completed such an act of initiative through the second exercise, one becomes aware of the feeling of inner activity within the soul in subtle attention and pours this feeling into one's body, as it were, in such a way that one lets it flow down from the head to the heart."

3rd exercise
"In  the third month,  the new exercise is to be placed at the centre of life: the development of a certain equanimity towards the fluctuations of pleasure and sorrow, joy and pain, the "rejoicing to heaven, sorrowful to death" is to be consciously replaced by a steady mood. […] Let us not fear that such an exercise will make one sober and destitute of life: on the contrary, one will soon notice that instead of what takes place through this exercise, more refined qualities of the soul appear; above all, one day one will be able to feel an inner peace in the body through subtle attention; these are poured into the body, as in the two above cases, by letting them radiate from the heart to the hands, the feet, and finally to the head. In this case, of course, this cannot be done after each individual exercise, since one is not really dealing with a single exercise, but with a continuous attention to one's inner soul life. One must call this inner peace before one's soul at least once a day and then do the practice of emanating from the heart. [...]»

4th exercise
"In the fourth month, you should take up the so-called positivity as a new exercise  . It consists in always seeking out the good, the excellent, the beautiful, etc., which is present in all experiences, beings and things. […] Anyone who consciously focuses on the positive in all his experiences for a month will gradually notice that a feeling creeps into his inner being, as if his skin became permeable from all sides and his soul opened wide to all kinds of secret and subtle processes in his environment, which had previously completely escaped his attention. It is precisely for this reason to combat the inattentiveness to such subtle things, which is present in every human being. Once one has noticed that this described feeling asserts itself in the soul like a kind of bliss, then one tries to direct this feeling in thought towards the heart and let it flow from there into the eyes, from there out into the space in front of and around the human being. You will notice that you get an intimate relationship with this space. You grow beyond yourself, as it were. You learn to look at a piece of your environment as something that belongs to you."

5th exercise
"In the fifth month, one then tries to develop in oneself the feeling of facing each new experience completely uninhibitedly. What confronts us when people say to something they have just heard and seen: "I have never heard that, I have never seen that, I do not believe that, this is a delusion", the esoteric pupil must break completely with this attitude. He must be ready to receive a completely new experience at any moment. What he has hitherto recognized as lawful, what has seemed possible to him, must not be a fetter for the reception of a new truth. […] Whoever directs his attention to being thus minded in the fifth month will notice that a feeling creeps into his soul, as if something were coming to life in the room spoken of in the exercise in the fourth month, as if something were stirring in it. This feeling is extraordinarily fine and subtle. One must try to grasp attentively this subtle vibration in the environment and let it flow in, as it were, through all five senses, namely through the eye, ear, and through the skin, in so far as the latter contains the sense of warmth. [...]»

6th exercise
"In the sixth month, you should then try to systematically do all five exercises over and over again in regular alternation. Therefore, a beautiful equilibrium of the soul gradually develops. It will be noticed in particular that any existing dissatisfaction with the appearance and nature of the world will disappear completely. A mood that is consecrating all experiences takes possession of the soul, which is by no means indifference, but on the contrary enables it to actually work in a better and progressive way in the world. A calm understanding of things opens up that were previously completely closed to the soul."

Ordering effect

The six secondary exercises have a transforming effect on the ordinary structure of the physical body, etheric body, and astral body. The interaction of the members of the being becomes different from what it would be by nature. The etheric body is then no longer so strongly connected with the physical body. This also changes the connection between the astral body and the etheric body. The astral body can then experience more of what is "hidden" in the etheric body. In this way, the etheric currents can be experienced and become a "tool of feeling and will". With this ordering effect on the physical, mental and spiritual structure, the body sensation is also supported in a mindful way in dealing with nervousness and fears.

Forms of fear according to Rudolf Steiner

It is interesting that the modern symptoms of anxiety have only since the. 19th century, on the other hand, the other mental illnesses such as depression, mania or dementia have been known since at least antiquity. Could the late appearance of the various fears and forms of nervousness be an expression of the fact that they are connected with the mental and spiritual changes which Rudolf Steiner described within the development of humanity as the "fall of the spirits of darkness" and the "loosening of the etheric body from the physical body" (pages 5-9)?

On the way to individual freedom and on the way to the spiritual, the human being comes into conflict with initially obstructive beings who belong to the soul-spiritual world (pages 11-14). Through these encounters at the limits of the soul, diverse manifestations of fears can develop. For the spiritual contemplation of the phenomena of fear, it is necessary to include this work of the spiritual beings.

Salutary task of fears

With unbiased observation, it can be seen that the everyday actions of today's people are increasingly determined from the outside by practical constraints and often do not correspond to their feelings and inner convictions. This can only be overcome by gaining one's own freedom and compassion or love in thinking, feeling and willing.

This shows the importance of the various fears that can have a promoting effect in this process by showing that the orientation towards the purely external circumstances of life does not provide a true basis for shaping life. The resistance that fears offer to these outward appearances questions our attitudes in a deeper sense and offers a chance to see through the illusions and misconceptions about one's own life. One can even go so far as to say that fears have a salutary task and can help to overcome these illusions.

In connection with the misconceptions, Rudolf Steiner spoke of "normal thinking" as a "will-o'-the-wisp"³⁴ . This word refers to "will-o'-the-wisps", i.e. confusing creatures of thought that lead astray, as Goethe already described them pictorially in his "Fairy Tale of the Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily". This word probably also contains the Bernese German expression "Liiren", which means a never-ending turning of thoughts. It is precisely this entanglement in confusing thoughts and the spinning of thoughts that are typical manifestations of today's forms of anxiety.

In today's science, the spiritual references of mental illnesses are not accepted and pushed into the "pre-scientific corner". But it is a fact that psychiatric and psychological science finds it difficult to clearly grasp mental suffering in the long term. For example, diagnoses and definitions that require many academic studies are only valid for a period of about ten years. Already after the completion of a new classification of mental disorders, the scientists involved assume that the next revision should be prepared.

Here, Rudolf Steiner's illuminations of the humanities on the subject of fears35 prove to be important additions and clarification aids. What is special about this is that Steiner not only shows soul-spiritual references, but often also soul-physical references, which have largely been forgotten or are simply ignored in today's science.

Anxiety phenomena

With regard to the forces of the soul, fears manifest themselves in two configurations: in the reinforced association as neurotic "tumbling into each other" and in the loosening as dissociation. The loosening of the members of the being, the etheric body from the physical body and the astral body from the etheric body, as well as the ego from the soul body, also plays an important role as the basis of the symptoms of anxiety.

The phenomena of anxiety that Rudolf Steiner describes and which he describes quite uniformly in terms of terms are fright, shame, doubt, hyperscepticism, agoraphobia (compulsive claustrophobia accompanied by a feeling of dizziness or weakness to walk alone across open squares or streets), claustrophobia (pathological fear of staying indoors) and astraphobia (fear of lightning and thunder) as well as worry, panic and the most frightening confusion. These states can be understood as polarities, with fright and shame, doubt and agoraphobia as well as panic and the most frightening confusion confronting each other.

From a physiological point of view, the reactions of fright and shame are located in the bloodstream. In the case of fright, the blood flows inwards and appears externally as pallor, while in pubic area the opposite happens: Here, the blood pushes to the surface of the body and causes the skin to blush. Shame as well as fear and anxiety are mental processes in the blood that express themselves directly physically. On the one hand, fear leads to a "centralization" in the person, i.e. to contraction, to paleness, and on the other hand, shame leads to an expansion of the blood into the periphery, i.e. into the skin, where it becomes visible as blushing. Steiner further specifies that here the ego has an effect on the corporeality and that it is an effect of the spiritual on the material.

It turns out that the physiological basis is always the "blood man" who, with the "bumping" of the past, remains hidden inside, in the soul. There, thinking, feeling and wanting are touched by the feeling of shame. In the encounter with the unexpected or feared future in the sense world, the three soul members tear apart thinking, feeling and wanting when confronted with fright or fear. There is a connection between shame and the Luciferic beings, and in the case of fright and fear with the Ahrimanic beings.

Doubt appears in a different dimension than the fears of fear and shame; it is accompanied by a breathing disorder. The entity at work in this process is Lucifer. His activity can appear as a nightmare in his sleep.

In addition to doubt, according to Steiner, another feeling can occur on the border of the spiritual world: the most frightening confusion as a "tremendous increase in the feeling of fear and anxiety." It does not appear, like doubt, in inner experience or even in dream-consciousness, which is directed towards the past, but in the encounter with the outer world, with the external processes of nature. Here there is a toast to the world of the senses with ahrimanic effects of consciousness that shine in from the future. There is an exhalation tendency that does not reach any limits. It is an antithesis to the respiratory suppression of the nightmare pressure in case of doubt. So again a polarity can be made out between a halt in breath during doubt and losing oneself in breathing in the most frightening confusion.

Steiner also speaks of hyperscepticism (a pathological addiction to brooding and doubt), claustrophobia, astraphobia and agoraphobia. According to today's terms, these are thought obsessive-compulsive disorders. The terms claustrophobia and astraphobia used by Steiner are no longer used in the scientific nomenclature of psychology today. Steiner describes pathological skepticism as unconscious inspiration from the supersensible sphere of consciousness. Since these perceptions are unconscious, they express themselves in states of illness. Just as hyperscepticism can be understood as unconscious inspiration, the polar phenomena of claustrophobia, astraphobia and agoraphobia are related to the imagination. The phenomenon referred to by this is an unfounded fear of visiting certain places or situations, so that they can be avoided or only visited with an experience of fear. Hyperscepticism arises at the "inner boundary of the soul", which Steiner calls the "boundary of matter" in accordance with the Luciferic effects prevailing there, while claustrophobia, astraphobia and agoraphobia are situated on the boundary of the sensory world, at the "boundary of consciousness", where the ahrimanic beings exert their effects.

According to Rudolf Steiner, these diseases can be cured by the exercises of inspiration and imagination, as described in his works "How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?" and "Occult Science in Outline".

Panic also belongs to the anxiety disorders, which usually occurs when the ego has detached itself from the body in a calm mood and can no longer hold the forces of its "elemental body" together. The reaction, known as a panic attack, develops gradually, although those affected cannot specify exactly when it began. From a spiritual science point of view, it can also be described as a person entering the elemental-spiritual atmosphere of the body without consciousness, which can manifest itself, for example, in additional feelings of alienation. The panicked person thus climbs into the body without his self-awareness. This disturbance is caused by the work of Lucifer, which starts at the pole of matter of the human being. It can also be understood as an unconscious inspiration. Agoraphobia, on the other hand, which is caused by ahrimanic activity at the "frontier of consciousness", is an unconscious imagination.

The worry is not a specific, situation-oriented one, but a "free-floating fear phenomenon", says Steiner. Nervous weaknesses such as trembling or cramping occur, often also a grumpy mood with existential pathological fears and even unfounded fear of death. In this regard, Steiner refers to the fear of "active thinking". This basic tendency of passive thinking, of unclear thinking through of a situation, of wanting to see not the real, but only the superficial connections, keeps man from getting beyond himself. However, according to Steiner, it is precisely here that one detaches oneself from one's closest interests. However, the widespread attitude of passive, clinging thinking is the basis for being absorbed in everyday worries and the increased empathy for one's own body as an essential manifestation of neurotic fears.

Central to the occurrence of the most frightening confusion is a momentary overwhelm and helplessness to react adequately to a completely unexpected situation. The direct consequence of this is confusion, so that the connection of the events can no longer be found. For through the most frightening confusion a soul-bodily state is provoked, in which the members of the being no longer work together in a meaningful way. The physiological reaction is a numbness that goes beyond startling paleness, which is also known today as "freezing". If the reaction state does not subside or imposes itself on recurring memories and triggers the most frightening confusion again, we are dealing with a so-called dream sequence disorder or, as it is called in psychiatric nomenclature today, an "acute" or "post-traumatic stress or stress disorder".

In this context, Steiner describes the phenomenon of stress-related dissociation of the members of the being, the separation of body and soul, as it is also described in psychology today. One of the main phenomena of dissociation is the sudden emergence of memories, which is also known as a "flashback". In the normal process of remembrance, the ego falls back on the ideas which it has unconsciously formed in the etheric body up to the boundary of the physical body, and brings them back into consciousness. Here, temporary forgetting is an active process that prepares the soul to absorb new experiences; in the case of dissociation, it is replaced by an inability to forget.

Especially against the background of the constitutional changes taking place in the course of human development, it becomes understandable that the willingness to develop trauma-related disorders is becoming ever greater due to the tendency to dissociation of the soul and being members. In sensitive people, even experiencing trauma in close caregivers can lead to an acute or post-traumatic stress reaction. This is already possible in the womb, for example, if one of the twins unconsciously witnesses the other die.

In view of the progress of these constitutional changes in human history, it is to be expected that the state of dissociation will become a basic predisposition and that there will only be a healthy soul life if the human being consciously embarks on a path of practice in order to strengthen the other members of the being through his ego activity.

Anthroposophical exercises and mindfulness therapies in dealing with fears

Practice path according to Rudolf Steiner

In dealing with the various forms of nervousness and fears, which, according to Steiner, can be understood as borderline experiences of the soul, the humanities exercise and training path offers a form of salutogenesis. Starting from the strengthening of thinking, feeling and wanting in the work with the "Philosophy of Freedom", with the help of the exercises for the development of the laryngeal and heart chakras from "How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?" and from "Occult Science in Outline", it leads to the development of the supersensible levels of knowledge.

Rudolf Steiner's indications can order the soul or astral body from the ego and provide a basis for first of all shaping supersensible perception in the imagination, of pictorial experience, and of inspiration, the experience of an "inner word" from the spiritual.

The initial practical experiences with the Bern group courses in the Johannes branch of the Anthroposophical Society and in my practice confirm that in dealing with fears as well as nervousness and depressive moods, not only disturbing thought experiences (as with the Buddhist methods) can be overcome, but also new inner ways of looking at things (attitudes towards the perception of the world) and impulses for action can be taken up for everyday life. What these approaches of Steiner have in common is the reference to the body, which was largely lacking in psychology and psychotherapy. The descriptions can certainly only give indications of the possibilities of the training shown, whereby only one's own actions, as is the case with every practice path, can give concrete confirmation.

Mindfulness-based Buddhist and imaginative methods

In psychotherapy, mindfulness-oriented concepts have been developed that are suitable for individual therapy and show certain similarities in approach to Rudolf Steiner's indications on fears. In particular, "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" (ACT)³⁶ and "Psychodynamic-Imaginative Trauma Therapy"³⁷ according to Luise Reddemann should be mentioned here. ACT focuses on developing its own

Promote acceptance and mindfulness as well as use strategies for behavioural change and committed action. This is intended to increase the psychological flexibility of those seeking advice. Psychological flexibility means consciously perceiving the present moment and, even in difficult situations, being able to act according to one's own values.

"Psychodynamic-Imaginative Trauma Therapy" (PITT) is a depth psychological-psychodynamic short-term psychotherapy. It is used in particular in the work with trauma patients in an inpatient setting. PITT focuses more on the patient's resources, using controlled cleavage (dissociation) as a therapeutic tool.

There are also some forms of group therapy based on Buddhist mindfulness practice. In contrast to Rudolf Steiner's practice path, mindfulness therapies deliberately do not want to address spiritual dimensions, but want to be taken up as a means of improving health and well-being without the Buddhist background.

The group therapy for stress management (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR) by the American psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn38, which is based on mindfulness practice, became known as a Buddhist therapeutic approach, taking up exercises by the Vietnamese spiritual teacher Thich Nath Hanh, which are widely used in the psychological field. This mindfulness program is based on several elements, such as the "body scan", a non-judgmental and evaluative perception of the different parts of one's own body from the foot to the head, the mindful taste of a raisin or the observation of one's own movements and breath (breathing pause) in stressful situations, as well as various basic yoga exercises. The aim is above all to be able to detach oneself from intrusive thought contents and to place oneself in the present in terms of consciousness.

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Notes

¹ See lecture by Gregor Hasler, psychiatrist at the University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Bern, at the Annual Symposium for Psychiatrists and Psychotherapists "Psyche and Brain" in Bern in 2015.

² See Martina Leibovici-Mühlberger: Die Burnout-Lüge, Vienna 2013.

³ See presentation by Dominique de Quervain at the Mental Health Forum 2017 in Bern.

⁴ Rudolf Steiner: Individual spirit beings and their work in the soul of man (GA 178), pp. 218 ff.

⁵ Rudolf Steiner: Grenzerlebnisse der Seele, pp. 15-31.

⁶ Ibid., pp. 57-67.

⁷ Rudolf Steiner: The Gospel of Luke (GA 114), lecture of 24 September 1909.

⁸ Rudolf Steiner: Past and Future Impulses in Social Events (GA 190), lecture of 5 April 1919.

⁹ Steffen Hartmann: "The Composition of the Well-Tempered Piano of Johann Sebastian Bach and the Zodiac", in: Id.: Vom Schicksal der Töne in unserer Zeit. Musical Reflections on Anthroposophy, Hamburg 2018.

¹⁰ Rudolf Steiner: The Chakras. Sense organs of the soul. Edited, selected and commented by Andreas Neider, Basel 2015.

¹¹ C. G. Jung, quoted from Georg Parlow: Zart besaitet, Vienna 2003.

¹² Eliane N. Aron: Are you highly sensitive?, Munich 2007.

¹³ See: Rudolf Steiner: Precursors to the Mystery of Golgotha (GA 152); Rudolf Steiner: The Event of the Christ-Appearance in the Etheric World (GA 118).

¹⁴ Thomas Stöckli (ed.): Wege zur Christuserfahrung, Dornach 1991.

¹⁵ Rudolf Steiner: Opposites in World Development (GA 197), lecture of 14 November 1920.

¹⁶ Peter Sloterdijk: You have to change your life, Frankfurt a. M. 2009.

¹⁷ Rudolf Steiner: Opposites in the Development of Humanity (GA 197), lecture of 14 November 1920.

¹⁸ Desmond Morris: Der nackte Affe, Munich, Zurich 1995.

¹⁹ Rudolf Steiner: The Core Points of the Social Question (GA 23).

²⁰ Rudolf Steiner: The New Spirituality and the Christ Experience of the Twentieth Century (GA 200), lecture of 31 October 1920.

²¹ Rudolf Steiner: The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit (GA 134), lectures of 27 and 28 December 1911.

²² Rudolf Steiner: Educating Yourself, Basel 2012.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Jürgen Bengel (ed.): What keeps people healthy? Antonovsky's Model of Salutogenesis - Discussion Status and Significance, Cologne 2001.

²⁵ Rudolf Steiner: Spiritual and Social Changes in Human Development (GA 196).

²⁶ Anne Heintze: I feel something, what you don't feel, Munich 2017.

²⁷ Rudolf Steiner: Nervosität und Ichheit, Dornach 2009.

²⁸ Rudolf Steiner: Spiritual and Social Changes in Human Development (GA 196), lectures of 13 and 14 February 1920.

²⁹ Rudolf Steiner: Educating Yourself, Basel 2012.

³⁰ They were also discussed by him in lessons for his narrower (esoteric) circle of students, see Rudolf Steiner: Aus den Inhalt der esoterischen Stunden (GA 266/2).

³¹ Rudolf Steiner: Exercises for the Soul I (GA 267)

³² Ibid.

³³ See description of the eurythmic exercises of "I think the speech" with the six side exercises, in: Florin Lowndes: Die Belebung des Herzchakras, Stuttgart 2000.

³⁴ Rudolf Steiner: The Stages of Higher Knowledge (GA 12), p. 30 and Rudolf Steiner: The Occult Science in Outline (GA 13), p. 330.

³⁵ A detailed elaboration of Rudolf Steiner's textual sources, as well as a comparison of his descriptions of today's concepts of illness in psychiatry, can be found in the book: Rudolf Steiner: Grenzerlebnisse der Seele. Shock, shame, doubt and the most frightening confusion. Dornach 2016, lecture of 2 October 1920, in the morning, also: Rudolf Steiner: Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis (GA 322).

³⁶ John P. Forsyth, Georg H. Eifert: Dealing with Fears and Worries Successfully, Göttingen 2010.

³⁷ Luise Reddemann, Cornelia Dehner-Rau: Trauma heilen. Heilsame Wege gegen Ohnmacht und Angst, Stuttgart 2012.

³⁸ Jon Kabat-Zinn: Healthy through Meditation. The Practice of Mindfulness, Berlin 2013.

Further reading

Aaron, Eliane N.: Highly Sensitive People in Psychotherapy, Paderborn 2014.

Aaron, Eliane N.: Are you highly sensitive? How to recognize, understand and use your sensitivity, Munich 2007.

Antonovsky, Aaron: Health, stress, and coping. New perspectives on mental and physical well-being, San Francisco 1979.

Antonovsky, Aaron: Unraveling the mystery of health. How people manage stress and stay well, San Francisco 1987. German: Salutogenesis. Zur Entmystifikation der Gesundheit, Tübingen 1997.

Bengel, Jürgen (Ed.): What keeps people healthy? Antonovsky's Model of Salutogenesis - State of Discussion and Significance. An expertise by Jürgen Bengel, Regine Strittmacher, Hildegard Willman on behalf of the Federal Centre for Health Education, Cologne 2001 http://www.bzga.de/botmed_60606000.html.

Bischof, Marco: Salutogenese. On the way to health. New Health Concepts and the Development of Integrative Medicine, Klein Jasedow 2010.

Forsysth, John P.; Eifert, Georg H.: Dealing with fears and worries successfully. A guide for the mindful path to a fulfilled life with the help of ACT. Book with CD, Göttingen 2010.

Frankl, Viktor E.: Der Mensch auf der Suche nach Sinn. Zur Rehumanisierung der Psychotherapie, Freiburg i.Br. 1976.

Frankl, Viktor E.: Der leidende Mensch. Anthropological Foundations of Psychotherapy, Bern 2005.

Glöckler, Michaela: Salutogenesis. Where are the sources of physical, mental and spiritual health?, Bad Liebenzell 2007.

Heintze, Anne: I feel something, what you don't feel. How Highly Sensitive People Discover Their Power Sources, Munich, 4th edition 2017.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon: Healthy through Meditation. The Practice of Mindfulness, book and audio book, Berlin 2013.

Leibovici-Mühlberger, Martina: The Burnout Lie. Widespread disease or business model?, Vienna 2013.

Lowndes, Florin: Die Belebung des Herzchakra. Ein Leitfaden zu den Nebenübungen Rudolf Steiners, 3rd edition, Stuttgart 2000.

Parlow, Georg: Zart besaitet. Self-Understanding, Self-Esteem and Self-Help for Highly Sensitive People, 4th edition, Vienna 2003.

Reddemann, Luise; Dehner-Rau, Cornelia: Trauma heilen. Heilsame Wege gegen Ohnmacht und Angst, 4th edition, Stuttgart 2012.

Segal, Zindel V.; Williams, Mark G.: The Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy of Depression. A new approach to relapse prevention, 2nd edition, Tübingen 2015.

Sloderdijk, Peter: You have to change your life, Frankfurt 2009.

Steiner, Rudolf: Andacht und Achtsamkeit. Stages of perception. Edited, selected and commented by Andreas Neider, Basel 2014.

Steiner, Rudolf: Aus den Inhalt der esoterischen Stunden (GA 266/2), Dornach 1996.

Steiner, Rudolf: The Chakras. Sense organs of the soul. Edited, selected and commented by Andreas Neider, Basel 2015.

Steiner, Rudolf: The Result of the Christ-Appearance in the Etheric World (GA 118), 4th edition, Dornach 2011.

Steiner, Rudolf: Experiences of the Supernatural. The Three Ways of the Soul to Christ (GA 143), 4th edition, Dornach 1994.

Steiner, Rudolf: Opposites in Human Development. West and East - Materialism and Mysticism - Knowledge and Faith (GA 197), 3rd edition, Dornach 1996.

Steiner, Rudolf: Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss (GA 13), 31st edition, Dornach 2013.

Steiner, Rudolf: GeistigeundsozialeWandlungeninderMenschheitsentwicklung (GA 196), Dornach, 2nd edition 1992.

Steiner, Rudolf: Grenzerlebnisse der Seele. Shock, shame, doubt and the most frightening confusion. Introduced and commented by Harald Haas, Basel 2016.

Steiner, Rudolf: Individual Spirits and their Work in the Soul of Man (GA 178), 5th edition, Dornach 2015.

Steiner, Rudolf: Die Kernpunkte der Soziale Frage in den Lebensnebedarfen der Gegenwart und Zukunft (GA 23), 6th edition, Dornach 1976.

Steiner, Rudolf: Das Lukas-Evangelium (GA 114), 9th edition, Dornach 2001.

Steiner, Rudolf: Nervosität und Ichheit. Stress management from within. Introduced by Frank Meyer, Dornach 2009.

Steiner, Rudolf: The New Spirituality and the Christ Experience of the Twentieth Century (GA 200), 2nd edition, Dornach 1970.

Steiner, Rudolf: Philosophie der Freiheit. Fundamentals of a Modern Worldview (GA 4), 16th edition, Dornach 1995.

Steiner, Rudolf: Seelenübungen I (GA 267), 2nd edition, Dornach 2001.

Steiner, Rudolf: Seelenwissenschaft. Anthroposophy as the basis of psychotherapy. Introduced and commented by Harald Haas, Dornach 2018.

Steiner, Rudolf: Educating oneself. The secret of health. Edited and introduced by Harald Haas, Basel 2012.

Steiner, Rudolf: Soziales verstehen aus geisteswissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis (GA 191), Auflage, Dornach 1989.

Steiner, Rudolf: Die Stufen der höhere Erkenntnis (GA 12), Dornach 1993.

Steiner, Rudolf: Theosophie. Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and Human Determination (GA 9), 33rd edition, Dornach 2013.

Rudolf Steiner: Past and Future Impulses in Social Events. The Spiritual Background of the Social Question, Volume II (GA 190).

Steiner, Rudolf: Von Jesus zu Christus (GA 131), 7th edition, Dornach 1988.

Steiner, Rudolf: Precursors to the Mystery of Golgotha (GA 152), 3rd edition, Dornach 1990. Steiner, Rudolf: The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit (GA 134), Dornach 1990. Steiner, Rudolf: How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? (GA 10), 24th edition, Dornach 1993.

Steiner, Rudolf: Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. The Karma of Untruthfulness (GA 173b), 2nd edition, Dornach 2014.

Stöckli, Thomas: Wege zur Christuserlebnis, Dornach 1991.

Williams, Mark; Teasdale, John; Segal, Zindel; Kabat-Zinn, Jon: The Mindful Path through Depression. Book with 2 CDs, Freiburg 2009.

Zimmermann, Heinz; Schmidt, Robin: Meditation. An Introduction to Anthroposophical Meditation Practice, 2nd edition, Dornach 2015.

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