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).
Basic AWARENESS - careful watching looking and listening is to key to healing. I had several conversations with clients this week about just this. People don’t believe it. It’s so simple. It is the actual key out of pain and dysfunction in the body.
It’s only taken me a lifetime and some of the greatest teachers of my time to begin to understand it. I am increasingly appreciative to this profound learning process that goes deeper rather that accumulating “more”. I think that once you initiate a greater and wider somatic experience the realizations and “aha” moments happen as a gift from that place of awareness.
