About Elfriede Hengstenberg
She was born on December 22, 1892, and died in 1992.
She was a German gymnastic teacher having been influenced by her teachers: Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby.
With imagination and empathy, Hengstenberg offered the children tasks - and objects – with which they could experiment by themselves. The objects were reliable. The word "reliable" in this sense refers to the fact that things obey laws of nature, such as gravity, in a direct way.
How much it means for the lives of the children when they experience in practice that the heart of the matter is simply the reawakening of their ability to try things out: to experience in their own physical being how the functions of the body comply with sensible or with unreasonable behavior. How readily body and limbs, respiration and voice react as soon as we use them in a living connection!
Every situation in which balance is challenged demands an awareness wherein one is fully awake, in contact, present in the "here and now."
With Frau Hengstenberg, we learned our anatomy in a clear and vivid way. She showed the children how sensibly the arch of the foot - like a stone bridge - is built up of the individual bones. She used a birds' nest to illustrate how important it is that the pelvis, which is like a bowl for our inner organs, should be horizontal and level - not tipped to the front or to the back, as is so often the case.
“I asked the children whether they could balance while sitting. I had imagined that they would teeter on the front legs of their chairs. Instead, one girl sat on the back of her chair (picture 76). It seemed overly daring to me, yet she sat up there with great stability, her feet flat on the seat of the chair. I had seldom seen a child who sat so upright and straight. The back served only as support for her sitting bones and sitting again became an act of balance. "How do you feel up there? Good - like a queen!” – Hengstenberg
“When they had realized how useless it is to become fearful in advance, they could also remain more open in other, often very difficult, situations in life, allowing events to come to them without expectations.” – Hengstenberg
