On line dance classes : between Wind & Sea
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"This work originated with Elsa Gindler, Charlotte Selver’s teacher, at the turn of the century in Germany. It arose from a crisis in her life, in which she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She did not have money to go away for a cure. She simplified her life and gave acute attention to what was happening in her: learning to connect with breathing and discovering how to allow healing and replenishment through her own inner responsiveness. Much to her doctor’s amazement, she became cured of the tuberculosis. Through this process, she made discoveries that later became the foundation of her work.
Mary Alice Roche, a longtime student and colleague of Charlotte Selver wrote an article that describes the history of this work. In it she quotes, Gindler’s friend and colleague, Elfriede Hengstenberg (1985),
“Unable to afford going to a sanitarium in the mountains, [Gindler] stayed at home and became interested in sensing her inner response to every activity at every moment during the day. While just coming out of the sleeping state she gave herself up to the first stirrings of the awakening organism, to its elemental desire for extending – and discovered how spontaneously breathing responded to the slightest movement. This process belonged to her need for regeneration, but also to her need to protect herself against noise from the outside and inside. She found that in this practice she came into a state where she was no longer disturbed by her own thoughts and worries.And she came to experience … that calm in the physical field (Gelassenheit) is equivalent to trust in the psychic field… It is a state of being in balance. The core of the word is lassen, “allowing” in contrast to “doing” or “controlling” or “resisting.” Lassen is also related to sensing the pull of gravity. There is an interdependence between sensing one’s weight (sensing the attraction of the earth on one’s substance) and trusting, self-confidence, finding a standing point – and calmness. This means “trusting, a deep confidence in the world, in life, in one’s organism. This was her discovery, and it became basic to all other research.” (Hengstenberg, 1985, pp.11-12)
Gindler wrote, “The aim of my work is not learning certain movements, but rather the achievement of concentration. Only by means of concentration can we attain the full functioning of the physical apparatus in relation to mental and spiritual life…” (Gindler, 1978, pp.36-37).
