[This post is from the August 2019 newsletter – click here to read it.]
https://flic.kr/p/PapDh
Rhythms in the body are guided by our etheric body. You probably thought we had just a physical body and perhaps a soul, didn’t you? The etheric body governs our basic activity during sleep when we power down for the night to just basic functioning. The etheric body also operates on 28-day lunar cycles and also 7 year cycles.
Some examples : changes from milk teeth to adult teeth, our menstrual cycles, the fact that our female body has the innate wisdom to give birth after about 40 weeks gestation – it’s all related to our etheric body. It’s a very wise governor of our formative forces, instrumental in guiding our life force to complete certain processes for our evolution.
Rudolf Steiner considered the etheric reality, or life principle, as distinct from the physical material reality. It’s really an intermediary body that orchestrates our rhythmic functioning between the physical world and the astral or soul world.
The etheric body can be characterised as our life force which also shows up, also, in the plant kingdom. It maintains the physical body’s form until death. At that time, it separates from the physical body and the physical reverts to natural disintegration.
As beings subject to nature’s processes, the etheric body is a critical member of our holistic team. A body in stress or subject to chronic disease will show signs of ill-health at first by being ‘out of rhythm.’ We will reveal more of its innate functioning through the attached articles on the changing of the milk teeth and also natural fertility.