>>
>> What is Sensory Awareness?
>>
>> The experience of peace, health and power in the individual is the
>> beginning of a peaceful, healthy society. For many of us a most
>> direct way to this experience is through Sensory Awareness, a
>> practice in which we can rediscover our natural balance, self-
>> confidence and oneness with ourselves and others.
>>
>> What we do in this practice seems very simple, considering the
>> far- reaching influence it can have in all aspects of living.
>> Living is movement. A quiet, undivided and uncritical attention to
>> how movement takes place in us can tell us how we live our lives.
>> Such attention is a basic way to "know thyself" wholly, within our
>> own organism and within its relationship to everything within the
>> environment. It is a basic way to free ourselves for infinite
>> possibilities: new ways of seeing and hearing, of thinking and
>> relating, new ways of being creative, contributing members of
>> society.
>>
>> In Sensory Awareness sessions we attend to what happens in quiet,
>> basic movements: how breathing comes and goes as we lie, sit or
>> stand, and its interaction with the larger movements of coming
>> from lying to standing, or walking, etc. We notice what it asks of
>> us to lift something such as a small stone, to give it to another
>> or receive it when it is given to us. We notice how we get ready
>> to move, how we interact with the physical support of floor or
>> chair, where energy develops, and what part is played by gravity,
>> that force which connects us to the earth at every moment. Do we
>> waste our energy straining against an immutable law of nature? Or
>> can we allow conscious experiencing of this unchanging pull to help
>> us come into alignment, reduce stress and conserve our energy in
>> both resting and working?
>>
>> As we follow these experiments over a period of time, muscles may
>> become more elastic, aches and pains fade, "mental" problems
>> change, our perspective on life changes, as may our relationships
>> with others. But the underly ing intent is an open-ended one:
>> simply to experience what happens in every part of us - in all of
>> us - as we move and breathe and interact in the situation of the
>> moment. Then we can discover where that experience could lead.
>>
>> Such revealing, life-enhancing experience of movement, and what it
>> tells us of our attitudes and behavior, comes to our awareness
>> through the sensory nervous system- if we can allow that system to
>> function as intended. Th e capacity to be consciously aware of
>> immediate experience is inherent in the human being, just as is
>> walking and talking. But often conditioned, habitual attitudes,
>> embedded in our tissues as physical tensions, prevent t his
>> capacity form fulfilling itself.
>>
>> Parents, teachers and society provide an environment for our
>> learning to walk and talk. But, more often than not, they impose
>> on us their prejudices about reality and propriety. This hinders
>> our capacity for perceiving re ality for ourselves, for allowing
>> unconditioned awareness of sensory information. Recovering this
>> ability as adults requires a special kind of attentive practice, a
>> kind of meditation in action.
>>
>> In Sensory Awareness we can shed hindering fears and tensions,
>> becoming ever more aware of what is actually happening in and
>> around us. Then we can begin to function more fully in ourselves
>> and in the world, as parents, f riends and co-workers, artists of
>> all kinds, therapists, doctors, nurses, business persons,
>> politicians, educators - as human beings.
>>
>> Like the participants in most workshops and classes, leaders come
>> form many different backgrounds. But the aim of the practice is
>> always the same - to recover our birthright: awareness;
>> responsiveness; the capacity to rea lly rest, regenerate, move and
>> work with joy and power. Only then can we allow a personal change
>> toward equilibrium, confidence and peacefulness. Only then can the
>> needed change take place in society.
>>
>> The Originators
>>
>> The phrase Sensory Awareness was coined by CharlotteSelver for the
>> practice which she brought to the United States from Germany in
>> 1938. The basis for this practice originated in the early 1900's
>> with ElsaGindler, a teach er of Harmonische Gymnastik in Berlin.
>> While working alone to cure herself of TB, Gindler made startling
>> discoveries about the fundamental laws which govern the
>> functioning of the human organism in its totality, within it self
>> and in its relationship to the earth. Until her death in 1961,
>> Gindler continued to develop the work arising out of these
>> discoveries along with her colleague, the innovative musician and
>> educator, HeinrichJacoby.
>>
>> Jacoby's thesis was that every human being is born with the
>> biological equipment for every natural function, and that these
>> include all possibilities of living, experiencing and creating.
>> Unrealized possibilities for rece iving impressions and allowing
>> expression in every mode can continue to unfold for us all through
>> our lives - if we are not hindered by inappropriate attitudes.
>> Gindler had already discovered that one's attitudes are manifested
>> in the physical tissue as well as in abstract thought. She set up
>> situations in which her students might consciously experience a
>> state of "being in balance" which was neither "physical" nor
>> "mental", but both, and more than that.
>>
>> aus coforum
>>
>>
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>> WISSEN2 (W2)
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>> --
>>
