The Impulse that Led to It

 

It was while working as an art therapist, that Marianne Altmaier realised for an ever growing number of patients, interaction with colour was becoming increasingly important. This was especially as coloured light rather than as paints. For many years she worked with coloured gels in front of electric light, however this experience led her to ponder many questions regarding an improved quality of colour, how to form light, and the difference between electric light and daylight.

One day, while looking at the coloured windows of the Goetheanum, in Dornach, Switzerland - their intense colour qualities, how the gaze is led by the motif, and their change in colour when sunlight passes through them, she was motivated to transform that method of creating coloured windows into a therapy of coloured light.

Investigating how the colours of the windows were achieved, she came across a passage by Rudolf Steiner mentioning how to attain the colours of the windows of the first Goetheanum. The instructions made two things clear to her:  first, that the intense colours of the windows were achieved by adding metals, and, secondly, that colour light therapy could become an area of metal therapy.

In 2001, this impulse became a research project that has included the production and etching of metal coloured glass, quantitative and qualitative research, and its therapeutic use.

This new form of light therapy is now being successfully applied in various clinics and institutes of curative education. Since 2010 Lichtblick offers an extra-occupational further training as Metal Colour Light Therapist.

 

Goetheanum 01Blue window, south side of the Hall of the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.