A Bridge Between Worlds: a Personal Message for Eva Reich by David Boadella I first met you at the San Francisco conference, at Esalen, in 1974, on Wilhelm Reich and the Politics of the Body. I was inspired by your passion for truth and your clear enthusiasm for helping people in trouble. I felt you to be a builder of bridges: between male and female energies, between the excitement of the child, and the forcefulness of the adult. Our paths crossed from time to time over the years, in different countries on both sides of the Atlantic. When my daughter died suddenly in 1980, you were one of the first to ring me up with support and empathy. Later you visited me at my home in Dorset, and we sat together on Chesil beach, listening to the rhythm of the sea. The pulsation of the waves reminded you of your life’s work with expansion and contraction. When the first growth centre in Europe was established, at Quaesitor in London, you were one of the first therapists to be invited there. You oriented yourself so quickly in the neighbourhood in a way that taught the leader of that centre how practical you are and how quick to put your feet down on new ground. In the early nineteen eighties you and I were jointly invited to give lectures on our work at a conference centre in west London. I found your speaking very direct, and able to arouse lively responses from the audience. They could see that you embodied what you spoke about. I encouraged you to write more, and was hap py that I could publish several of your fine articles in Energy & Character. You were always provocative, ne ver conservative. After I moved to Switzerland in 1985, Silvia and I invited you as a guest trainer to our Institute for Biosynthesis, in Zürich. Your teaching was forceful and passionate and transmitted a deep trust in the ability of a person to regain vitality. You taught that the healing of wounds is indeed possible. Later you were a guest in our house, and you sat comfortably on the floor making easy and natural contact with our baby son, who was just starting to crawl then. You travelled widely, as I did at that time, to many 8 7th European Congress of Body Psychotherapy - 1999, Homage to Eva Reich David Boadella, Gerda Boyesen, Malcom Brown, Eva Reich and Renata Reich. places in the world. In your travels you were constantly reminding people of the needs of the newborn, and challenging them to rethink their views. You built bridges towards a more dynamic understanding of what the pulse of life is about. When you were once in Venezuela you saw videos of Biosynthesis sessions I had given in a therapeutic group in Caracas. You told me then that they deeply influenced your development of your own soft and non-invasive style of therapy. You said it reconnected you to the spirit of your father’s work which was founded in establishing emotional contact with the expressive language of the living. At the last time we met, at the EABP conference in Travemunde, North Germany, in 1999 you paid public tribute to this influence, and to our common roots. At the end of the conference you were awarded an Honorary Membership of the EABP, as a recognition and honouring of your life-long work for the prevention of neurosis and for what you described as your “battle for humanity”. Eva, for all that we could share together, at those moments when our paths crossed, visibly, or invisibly, I thank you from my heart, as I salute you, across the last bridge, between life and death. David Boadella A Bridge Between Worlds: a Personal Message for Eva Reich
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