body therapy, and participated in many of Wilhelm Reich’s experiments. In 1952 Eva and Bill moved to Hancock, Maine, where she opened a small medical practice out of her home while Bill taught art in the schools. At the age of 28, and the first female MD in the area, Eva soon became loved and respected as a country doctor. Through much of the 1950s Eva and Bill were also deeply involved in her father’s work. After Wilhelm Reich’s death while he was imprisoned for his scientific ideas in 1957, Eva struggled with depression and plunged herself even more deeply into her rural private medical practice. She applied many of the principles she had learned from her father with good results. Together she and her husband also operated a small organic farm, where they were forerunners in the organic food movement. In many ways Eva was always ahead of her time, preaching the benefits of natural food, gentle birth, and mother-child bonding long before these ideas found the main stream. In 1960 Eva gave birth at home to a daughter, Renata Moise, the only child she would be able to carry. She closed her medical practice in 1962, after suffering herself the loss of several pregnancies. She ran a Montessori school in her home for Renata and neighboring children from 1963 to 1966. In 1970 she established mobile birth control clinics for all ages, which served central and eastern Maine. Eva’s principle was to make her efforts available at low cost or free, and she lived very simply. After her divorce from Moise in 1974, Eva began traveling around the world, invited to lecture on, and demonstrate her father’s work, as well as her own. William Moise died in 1980. Eva, who had studied infant emotional health under her father’s tutelage and as a primary care physician, developed a gentle orgonomic treatment for upset infants and colicky babies. She coined the term “Butterfly Baby Massage”, since the touch used was as gentle as the touch used to pick up a butterfly. This method has been taken up especially in Austria and Germany. In Berlin there are special “ambulances” which rush to houses where babies are crying inconsolably, using Eva Reich’s methods to calm babies. She found that this level of touch worked with both adults and children, melting the body armor rather than breaking it down. She eventually traveled to 30 countries and rounded the world 7 times, giving lectures on Orgonomy, gentle birth, breast feeding, sexuality, organic foods, birth, baby 10 Renata Reich Moise Eva Reich: “The peace on earth begins in the uterus” massage, as well as running therapeutic workshops, all without a secretary. She believed in starting with the wanted child, natural nonviolent birth, prepared parents, bioenergetic therapy for the traumatized newborn, and self regulation as a guiding principle in educational and all institutions. Throughout her life Eva championed peace, stating that peace on earth begins in the uterus. Each summer she returned to the farm in Hancock to be one with the land. Although not affiliated with a religion, Eva felt led by god. In the United States and Europe students have carried on her work, and she is regarded as the founder of Gentle Bioenergetics. After her retirement in 1992 due to a small stroke, she lived year round on the farm again, able to garden, ski, canoe, hike, and teach those who sought her out. Even in her disability after the spinal stroke, she brought deep lessons to all who cared for her. A few months before her death, she remarked that, ”All old people need is to be loved”. Dr. Reich leaves behind a daughter, Renata Moise and son-in-law Antonio Blasi, both of Hancock, Maine; a grandson William Christopher Ross, of Trenton, Maine; a sister Lore Rubin of Pittsburgh, PA: a brother Peter Reich and his wife Susan of Leverett, MA; a cousin Sigrid Kirsners of Boston, MA; much loved nieces and nephews, as well as her helpers Valerie, Kathy, Mary, Danielle, and Laura. A memorial service was held on Monday August 18th at 4 pm in Hancock, at the Monteux School Forest Studio. All was welcome back to Eva’s house after at 53 Point Road for food, music and talk, with a walk down Eva’s path to the shore. Donations in Eva’s name may be sent to the public health nonprofit: Downeast Health Services 52 Christian Ridge Road Ellsworth, Maine 04605 This is the obituary which Renata wrote after Eva’s death.
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