ATSANA

Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström was already very interested in medical issues in her youth and actually considered studying medicine. But her outstanding artistic talent then pointed the way to a career as a singer.

Her first therapeutic experience came, however, during the time of her singing in Hamburg (beginning in 1920). A student had a lower jaw that was strongly jutting forward, which at a certain time hindered the development of sound. Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström described the problem to Rudolf Steiner, who gave her an exercise. She did the exercise with the student and indeed, after a few weeks, the problem was solved. The jaw no longer hindered further training and she realized that singing can work into the physiological conditions – therapeutically!

Dr. Eugen Kolisko was the first school doctor at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart and a personal student of Rudolf Steiner, who held him in high esteem. Dr. Kolisko invited Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström to give a concert at the school. Listening to her singing, he became interested in her work. He then sat in on her lessons and also took lessons from her himself.

Dr. Kolisko understood that this training consistently corresponds to the threefold structure of the human organism and the soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing. The anthroposophical study of the human being was thus fully realized artistically in the unveiling of the voice. From this point, Dr. Kolisko held a cycle of lectures for Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström’s students in 1934.

In 1938, Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström published her book, “Uncovering the Voice – The Cleansing Power of Song”. By this time the dark years of the 2nd World War were already beginning. Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström withdrew together with her daughter to a small village in the east of Germany.

At the end of the war, when the Soviet army was approaching, she had to flee. At one point, she was wounded and taken out of the area in a handcart. It was a very difficult time for her. Finally she came to Eckwälden, near Stuttgart, in 1945, where other anthroposophists had already gathered including Rudolf and Margarethe Hauschka, Ernst Lehrs, Maria Roschels and others.

Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström was by that time quite discouraged. She had perceived all the misery of destruction during her flight. It was for her, apart from the destroyed cities and the many war victims, the culture of German idealism, that is, the culture of all the great philosophers and artists like Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, that had perished. The land of her dreams, as she had expressed it in her youth, no longer existed.

In this situation, she could not continue with life as it had been before that great catastrophe of World War II. That would not have been true for her. From then on it could only be a matter of seeking healing and mediation. So she decided to work therapeutically, exclusively with people seeking help from her in the 25 years of her life that remained.

In the last decade of her life did the meeting with the pianist, Jürgen Schriefer, take place in 1967. He was not well when he came to her, however, their collaboration enabled her to pass on to a younger generation her singing training with its significance for artistic and therapeutic singing.

Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström crossed the threshold on February 1, 1972. Jürgen Schriefer carried the School for Uncovering the Voice to 3 continents in the span of his lifetime after her death. Mr. Schriefer crossed the threshold on October 23, 2014.

Many have since taken up research and healing work utilizing therapeutic singing as a time tested modality for healing in our times. Research and implementation is ongoing and evolving. Those singing therapists engaged in this practice are fully present, aware and interested in furthering the road to balance in our troubled times.

The work of Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström, like Anthroposophy itself, is ever changing and metamorphosing into a greater and clearer understanding of what it means to be a human being in our times. This artistic healing modality addresses the reality of the human being and its intrinsic relationship to its origins in the Spirit and its role at the very frontier of Earth and Spirit existence.