“The work of Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks is the inner ...

“The work of Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks is the inner
experience of entire being, the pure flow of sensory awareness when
the mind through calmness ceases to work—deeper than mindmade
awareness.”
— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Zen Master and author of Zen Mind,
Beginner’s Mind
“I consider the principles on which this work is based of greatest
significance for the full unfolding of the personality.”
— Erich Fromm, author of The Art of Loving and Escape From Freedom
“This book is uniquely valuable in giving access to the work of one
of the great, yet little known geniuses of the twentieth century:
Charlotte Selver. Selver pioneered a growing movement whose goal
is to return an increasingly mad world literally to its senses.”
— Don Hanlon Johnson, Author of Body, Spirit and Democracy and
Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams
“This remarkable book is the most definitive account of the lifelong
work of Charlotte Selver. It speaks articulately of that which is
hard to put into words. It is both interesting and profound.”
— Edward L. Deci, professor of Psychology, University of
Rochester, and author of Why We Do What We Do: Understanding
Self-Motivation
“Charlotte Selver conveys the actual sensation of some of the things
I try to express in mere words—above all the organic relationship of
man with the whole world of nature.”
— Alan Watts, author of The Wisdom of Insecurity

FOREWORD
by Norman Fischer
There’s an old 1970s photograph of Charlotte and Charles that hangs
in my house. Sepia-toned, it shows them in close view, Charlotte
in front, her gaze downward, absorbed in looking at something
beyond the frame, and Charles behind, handsome in his rugged,
angular New England way, looking straight into the camera. They
are fairly young in the photo. Charles’ hair is light and wind-blown;
Charlotte’s a rich brown, pulled tightly around her face. They are
both dressed simply, in the earth-toned colors they often wore, and
their house was decorated also in earth-toned colors from floor to
ceiling, so that when you went to visit everything around them and
on them was the color of sand, earth, dried grasses, like the hilltop
on which they lived, overlooking the sea.
To be part of the earth, to love it, to experience it, not as an object
outside the self, but as the essence of what the self is, connected,
intimate, vibrant, and alive, overflowing with life and with the
essential kindness that is life’s salient characteristic—to teach,
explore, and demonstrate that in living: this was Charlotte and
Charles’ work over the many years of their marriage and association
in the Sensory Awareness movement.
My wife Kathie and I and our twin sons Aron and Noah knew
Charlotte and Charles well, visited them often, and studied with
them from time to time over the years. They were, I suppose, surrogate
parents for us, though they were anything but parental. In
fact, they were a little wild, always bursting with enthusiasm over
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RECLAIMING VITALITY AND PRESENCE
some new food or place or experience they had just discovered. Dinner
at their house was an adventure, full of bright, sometimes gently
contentious conversation (Charlotte and Charles often disagreed,
and when they did wit and sparks would fly), and always surprising
food. Charles was the cook, and he had his own ways of doing things,
which were always very particular.
There was a similar wildness in their Sensory Awareness classes,
which they often gave together, and sometimes separately. Always
new experiences (“experiments, not exercises,” Charlotte would
always, sometimes testily, point out); always an astonishing (this
was a word that Charlotte used frequently) insight or appreciation
for some usually overlooked aspect of sensory perception. Charlotte
and Charles loved life and were constantly amazed by its possibilities.
This was what they explored in their classes, which were improvisational,
quiet, but intense. This was what they called “the work,” and
they engaged it in class after class, workshop after workshop, all over
the world, for many years. After Charles’ death in 1991 Charlotte
continued for eleven more years, teaching full time until her last
year, 2003, when she died at the age of 102, an astonishing run of
more than seventy-five years of teaching, exploring, and living.
As a Zen student, I was especially moved by the work, and I
experienced it in the context of my Zen practice. (Indeed, the Sensory
Awareness work has a long connection with Zen, at first through
Alan Watts and Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki, and for many years
through an association with the successive abbots of San Francisco
Zen Center, myself included.) Like Zen, Sensory Awareness focuses
on perception, in the recognition that it is only through the full
experiencing of our organic life that we can grasp the deepest and
most important human truths. The Buddhist Mindfulness Sutra,
which is foundational not only to Zen practice, but to virtually all
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FOREWORD
forms of Buddhism, speaks of four “foundations” of mindfulness:
the body, the feelings, the thoughts, and the deep patterns of reality.
It teaches that Buddhist contemplation begins with subtle and
thorough awareness of the body, of the breath, and of perceptions.
On this basis the practitioner can find access to deep human truths,
and compassion and peace will arise. Though Charlotte and Charles
were no friends of conventional religion (they considered religion,
and the sort of polite social life that grew out of it, essentially repressive)
they felt kinship with Zen. Their classes often began with periods
of silent sitting, and for years they were regulars at the Sunday
morning Dharma lectures at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, where
we lived. Each time I attended a Sensory Awareness class or workshop,
I came away with a sense of wonder at the simple fact of being
alive. Charlotte and Charles, as far as I could tell, went further than
anyone ever had, in exploring and expanding the Buddhist teachings
of mindfulness.
An important feature of the Sensory Awareness classes was the
“sharing” that took place after the group, in silence, guided only by
Charlotte’s or Charles’ verbal instructions, had completed a series of
“experiments” that might last anywhere from twenty to fifty minutes.
We’d sit down on the straw mats Charlotte and Charles always
brought wherever they went (the same straw mats that covered the
floors in their home) and report what we had experienced. Charlotte
or Charles would respond to what we’d said, expanding, sometimes
correcting, pointing out subtle aspects and implications that could
often be quite startling. We learned so much about ourselves, and
what and how we were. There was always an intimate and quiet feeling
in these sharing sessions. Both Charlotte and Charles had an
extremely subtle and precise way of expressing themselves in these
exchanges, especially Charlotte, whose native German locutions often
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RECLAIMING VITALITY AND PRESENCE
made themselves felt in her often quite unusual use of English. It is
odd that although the work itself is almost entirely nonverbal it
admits of such clarity and profundity of verbal expression.
The study and practice that Charlotte and Charles loved so much
still live on in various parts of the world through students of theirs
whom Charlotte approved to be leaders of this wonderful work. It
lives on too in the pages ahead. Although reading this book is not the
same as experiencing the work directly, I think you will find that
appreciating Charles’ and Charlotte’s words will be a valuable experience
in its own right. These were two remarkable people, who led
remarkable lives. With the book you have in your hands you can
hear them speak—and possibly with their help rediscover how
remarkable life actually is.
xii

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
This book is an attempt to weave together in one volume the voices
of Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks, two unique and inspiring
teachers who collaborated for some thirty years in co-leading classes
and workshops in the deceptively simple yet profound study known
as Sensory Awareness. Just as they frequently alternated in the leadership
of class sessions, so too in this book they will take turns leading
you in exploring the living nature of reality through actual
here-and-now experiencing. That is to say they will be leading you
in the invaluable study of sensing, a capacity we are all born with, yet
which most of us find too often diminished in our daily lives.
Among the most influential and colorful pioneers in the Human
Potential Movement Charlotte and Charles led classes and workshops
together throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and
Europe in growth centers, universities, churches, dance studios, Zen
P CHARLOTTE SELVER AND CHARLES BROOKS
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RECLAIMING VITALITY AND PRESENCE
monasteries, hotel rooftops, and even a small New England schoolhouse.
The unique type of somatic reeducation they offered has been
an important force in the development of the Human Potential
Movement, Humanistic Psychology, and various types of now popular
mind/body disciplines. It has also deeply touched and changed
the lives of hundreds of students over the years, among them Ruth
Denison, Fritz Perls, Alan Watts, and Erich Fromm, to name a few.
Charlotte was modest in always crediting the origins of this
approach to Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby,* with whom she had
studied in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, giving the greatest
acknowledgment to Gindler as her primary teacher. Gindler had
been a teacher of Harmonische Gymnastik who gradually developed
her own special in-depth approach to body/mind integration. Jacoby
was an innovative educator and musician who often collaborated in
teaching with Gindler. Both were interested in helping people develop
truer authenticity and unfold their fuller potentials. In 1938 Charlotte
emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis, eventually
offering her own classes in this study in New York. As her classes
gradually became better known she called her approach “Sensory
Awareness,” a name she was never completely satisfied with, feeling
it was a bit too simplistic and limiting. “It is more than only the
senses,” she would say.
Shortly before she died in 2003 at the age of 102, almost totally
deaf and blind and unable to walk more than a few steps, Charlotte
was still passionately hard at work doing what she had done with
relentless dedication for more than seventy-five years: continuing
to help people reawaken to what it is to be more fully alive and
human. For her this was far more than just teaching; it was a seri-
*For more about Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby, see Appendix B.
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EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
ous calling. She felt a great responsibility in helping her students
rediscover and nurture the innate renewing powers of life within
them. This work was her life, and indeed during her last few years
it seemed to sustain her life.
Charlotte began co-leading her classes with Charles Brooks in
1963. Charles, a longtime student whom she had married that year,
was an accomplished cabinet maker, a gifted writer, and the Harvard
educated son of American biographer and literary critic Van Wyck
Brooks. During their early years of teaching together they struggled
with the difficult challenge of just how to put into words this essentially
nonverbal study. After collaborating on a couple of articles
together it was decided that Charles, who was far more comfortable
with writing than Charlotte, would attempt to write a book about
Sensory Awareness, a book that would serve as a good introduction
and overview of “the work.”
In 1974 after many years of diligent effort and collaboration
Charles’ book Sensory Awareness: The Rediscovery of Experiencing was
published. The book was well received by critics and since then it
has been republished three times in English and in addition has been
translated into German, Japanese, Dutch, and Spanish. Because this
book has worked so well in helping readers gain a wider sense of the
scope of “the work,” much of it is included in this volume to serve
as a framework into which Charlotte’s words are interwoven. The
original artwork, which so beautifully complemented Charles’ writing,
could not be used for this book with the exception of just a few
photographs. We took the utmost care to use images that will again
illuminate the text. For this, we chose new photographs, mostly
from locations where Charlotte and Charles taught, from the Black
Forest in southern Germany, from Santa Barbara, California, and
from Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine.
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RECLAIMING VITALITY AND PRESENCE
The material from Charlotte is based on tapes and transcripts
from her workshops. Over the years, articles drawn from these materials
were published in various Sensory Awareness Foundation publications.*
Charlotte, whose first language was German, had a unique
way of expressing herself, adding another dimension of immediacy
to her workshops. In this book, we want to let Charlotte speak in her
own words as much as possible. However, because reading a book is
not like experiencing Charlotte in person, we cautiously edited some
of the text when it seemed necessary. In this book, Charlotte’s words
are italicized, to distinguish between the voices of Charlotte and
Charles.
Our intention has been to offer the reader the best of both worlds:
Charlotte and Charles combined together in offering an updated,
enhanced, and fuller guidebook for newcomers, beginning students,
and “veteran” students alike.
Although Charlotte and Charles have both passed on (Charles
died in 1991) the study known as Sensory Awareness lives. In 1986
with their help the Sensory Awareness Leaders Guild was formed
as a professional association for the mutual support and development
of those persons Charlotte had approved to be leaders. Today
there are leaders of this study scattered in Europe, the United States,
Canada, and Mexico. Many years earlier the Sensory Awareness
Foundation was formed to help educate the public about Sensory
Awareness through publications, newsletters, and periodic conferences.
Today both organizations work together to help keep this
legacy alive and developing.
The editors are most grateful for the support of many people who
have helped get this book into your hands. We wish to give partic-
*See Appendix C.
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EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
ular thanks to John Schick, Bill Littlewood, Lee Klinger Lesser,
Cathy Edgett, the Board of the Sensory Awareness Foundation, and
the Institute of General Semantics.
This is a book not so much to read as it is to savor. It is best
approached as you might a fine meal, a walk through a garden, a
collection of poetry, an intimate meeting with a beloved friend. We
hope you can allow yourself the patience and fresh readiness to taste
and sniff and feel your way through each page.
—Richard Lowe and Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt
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O1 3
Sensory Awareness and
Our Attitude Toward Life
In our work of Sensory Awareness, we experiment with all the simple activities
of daily life, all the things which we have been doing since we were born,
or which we have learned in our earliest infancy, such as walking, standing,
sitting, lying, moving, resting, seeing, speaking, listening, et cetera. As
Elsa Gindler* said, “Life is the Playground for our work.”
Our daily life gives us opportunity enough for discovery: in combing our hair,
washing the dishes, in speaking to somebody, and so on. In such “unimportant”
areas of life we can experience the same attitudes we have in “important”
areas, where we are often too absorbed to feel clearly what is happening.
Although practicing Sensory Awareness often has therapeutic effects, it would
be a misunderstanding to think of our work as therapy. Our purpose is not to
make living healthier, but to make it more conscious; not to make it happier,
but to let it come more into accord with our nature. The more we arrive at
our original nature, the more we discover that healthier and happier living
and relating comes about by itself.
We begin to discover that experiences within the organism are parallel
to experiences in life. This can be difficult. Often we may find ourselves full
of fear, not wanting to allow changes. Through experimenting, we may come
face-to-face with the reasons for previously unexplained problems in our
*For more about Elsa Gindler, see Appendix B.
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RECLAIMING VITALITY AND PRESENCE
lives. But with growing ability to permit what becomes necessary, our elasticity
grows, and so does our security.
We cannot know how much energy we have as long as we keep interfering
with our own activities. We cannot know our real abilities until we have
freed ourselves to such an extent that they can unfold more fully. As Elsa
Gindler used to say, “If we had the strength at our disposal that we
use in hindering ourselves, we would be as strong as lions.”
What creates our freedom, or our lack of freedom, is our attitude toward
whatever we meet: the way we are living our daily lives; the way we are
with our families and friends; the way we do our work; the way we read the
newspaper; in short, the way we are in this world. When it is understood that
we are including the broader questions of our attitude-toward-life, this
will help us much more than just working on what we call “the body.”
So, in the very simple experiments of a Sensory Awareness session, we can
make some small steps to come to ourselves and to awaken some of the possibilities
which are dormant inside us. For instance, we may work to become so quiet
that life can begin to whisper to us again, so that we are not just seeing the
big, blunt things, but can be touched and nurtured by the beauty of what
may be small and quiet.
But not only beauty becomes conscious: there is also an opening of our heart
to those difficulties in life which demand our presence and maybe our help.
Too often, we don’t see and we don’t feel what is happening around us. Too
often, we are only interested in ourselves, our family, and maybe our very close
friends. To become sensitive enough and free enough to become active as a member
of our community, country, and world—this is also part of awakening.
For me, Elsa Gindler was a great example of this through her deep involvement
in what was happening in the world. During the Hitler time, although
she was invited to live in Switzerland, where she could have been secure, she
stayed in Berlin giving help to whoever needed it. Her life was in danger
from resisting Hitler, and from the constant bombings, but she did not leave.
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SENSORY AWARENESS AND OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE
This attitude of responsibility is part of becoming aware, so that we would
not be part of the Me generation, but rather of the We generation, embracing
everyone and everything on this planet. Do you not feel that everyone has
an equal right to live a life, unconditioned, free from pressure and rejection,
free from starvation and harassment? Becoming more and more able to be
there in situations, whether easy or difficult; to be more there with our mind,
with our hearts, with our sensitivities, with our strengths—this is very, very
important.
3

We have been thoroughly deprived of trusting the inner wisdom
which each person has in him- or herself.
There lies a great unused richness in us,
which we gradually have to dig out and develop.
When you get to it, you will be astonished
by what comes into the open
which you didn’t know was there.
—Charlotte Selver
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O2 3
Being in the World
After heavy rains last week, we planted seeds in our garden. They are
sprouting already. I know from past exploration how deep and intimately
the little roots are pushing their way, with the amazing vigor
of infancy, down through the dense particles of soil; and as I look
I can almost see the stems and leaflets unfolding in the same air
that I feel bathing me inside and out, under the same sun that beats
on my skin.
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RECLAIMING VITALITY AND PRESENCE
Does not all individual life, as with these seeds, begin in moisture—either
in the sea or, as here, in the damp earth, or on the yolk
of an egg, or in the fluids of the womb? In the womb, when the
united cells multiply to the point where something that one could
call consciousness infuses them, the whole development of the new
organism continues to take place in that total, invisible immediacy
of the environment which is the nature of fluid, which leaves
no crack unentered, no surface unembraced.
Until birth we had no experience of distance: of the possibility of
falling, of the sound of something not adjacent to us, of warmth
either coming to us or going from us. No wonder that on entering
the world outside we clutched at the breast, with its soft tissues
like our own, and breathed the strange air more easily when held
and enveloped in mother’s arms.
In this new world, it was for the first time possible—indeed,
necessary—to be alone: mother might be here or absent. Gradually,
newfound doors began opening. Sounds came and went, which
little by little could be related to phenomena outside ourselves;
smells likewise; what we touched, and what touched us, was always
changing. Finally the growing kaleidoscope before our eyes began
separating into enduring, recognizable forms, nearer or farther, with
each of which we could have a different connection.
Though the nerve ends in our skin were in immediate contact
only with the air, or with the delicious water of our bath, or here
and there with clothing, crib, and playthings, or now and then with
mother, still we were not out of touch with the world in the distance.
We could hear mother’s voice from afar and see her when we
could not touch her, and we smiled in recognition and pleasure.
Indeed, we had a voice too, which could go out to others and
arouse perceptible reactions in them. We had hands and feet with
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BEING IN THE WORLD
P GRADUALLY, NEWFOUND DOORS BEGAN OPENING
which we could reach out to grasp or kick objects in space. As our
enlarging consciousness embraced a larger and more differentiated
world, both near and far, in the embrace itself was contact, though
of varying kinds. The shape or color which we could not reach was
yet in our eye, the voice was in our ear, the smell in our nostrils.
And now came a new contact and immediacy as we gained experience
and began storing the past to give larger meaning to the
present. When we saw and smelled mother and heard her voice,
memory was there, and our stomach began to contract in hunger
for her milk and our skin to yearn for her touch. And the future
entered. When we were already hungry, as mother appeared, the
comfort which had not yet reached us brought our smile of anticipation,
as a kitten purrs before the milk is poured.
Time and space, which had no existence in the womb, appear gradually
to the growing child and to the adult as being everywhere and
part of everything, so as to define all objects of perception. Yet they
7