Reclaiming Vitality and Presence: Sensory Awareness as a Practice for Life

(Paperback)

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This book captures the essence of Charlotte Selver's practice of Sensory Awareness like no other publication. It is an invitation to experience life firsthand again, as we did when we were children. In a culture where we have grown accustomed to accumulating knowledge from teachers and experts, it is rare to find a book that actually invites us to trust our own senses again. It is the authors' intent to give back to the reader authority over his or her own experience and learning processes. Much of the book focuses on reviving the senses in order to open the mind and body to direct learning. The book imitates an actual Sensory Awareness class, involving the reader as a student, guiding him or her along a journey with and through the senses to a way of living that is in accordance with the natural functioning of the human organism in its environment. The range of explorations include a renewed connection to the support of the earth as a foundation for trust; the central role of gravity for our health and for finding orientation in life; a study of breathing that promotes health and vitality; and connecting and interacting with other people. A handbook to a more genuine and connected way of living, the work is also a beautifully crafted account of Sensory Awareness, showing these profound teachers at work with their students and with the reader.

Reviews

This is a wonderful and welcome expansion of a true classic. It teaches us Charlottes and Charless remarkable way to be genuinely alive.
Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Only by bringing awareness back to our senses can we renew the forgotten empathy between the human body and the breathing Earth. Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks were the great pioneers in this work, inviting us to drop beneath the churning of thought into the intimate silence of our rapport with the textures and tastes of the real.
David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous

Author Bio

Charlotte Selver's very long professional career as a teacher of Sensory Awareness started at the University of Leipzig in the 1920s. She was a faculty member of the New School for Social Research and a longtime teacher at Esalen Institute. Charlotte taught workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. In 1995 she was awarded "The Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa," by the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Charles Brooks was a longtime teacher at Esalen Institute and a faculty member of the New School for Social Research. Together with Charlotte Selver, he led workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt (editor) has studied Sensory Awareness and related practices since 1980 with teachers in Europe and the USA. Drawing at times from his background in Buddhism and Gestalt Therapy, Stefan offers individual sessions, group classes and workshops in the US and Europe. Stefan has been president and manager of the Sensory Awareness Foundation since 1995. He also works with prison inmates in New Mexico. He lives in Santa Fe, NM. Richard Lowe (editor) is a practicing Bay Area psychotherapist. Richard studied for many years with Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks and was the founding first president of the Sensory Awareness Leaders Guild. He lives in San Rafael, CA.