By: Charlotte Selver
We by nature are not isolated from the world around us…and the process of breathing is connected with everything which happens in us and around us, just as plants are connected to everything around them.
All the mysterious interwovenness which is happening in the living organism is coming to expression in every moment in which we are living in our environment.
We are usually not awake enough for it, but sometimes you may have noticed that when something or somebody really interests you, you’re speeded up, even when you were tired a moment ago. Your breathing changes; you are functioning quite differently than before.
From Reclaiming Vitality and Presence: Sensory Awareness as a Practice for Life. Charlotte Selver (1901-2003) was a teacher of the Gindler/Jacoby method of awareness and exercise, a somatic bodywork method she further developed and taught after her arrival in the United States from Germany in 1938 as Sensory Awareness. Her work was highly influential to Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and Fritz Perls (one of the founders of Gestalt Therapy). Selver frequently taught at the San Francisco Zen Center and its affiliated centers, and Suzuki Roshi was well acquainted with her. Her Sensory Awareness method has a close affinity with Soto Zen.