Fall 2001

HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Celebrating the Thirtieth Anniversary of The Sensory Awareness Foundation (Formerly The Charlotte Selver Foundation)
by Mary Alice Roche

Being alive and well after thirty years is an achievement in itself for any organization, but the Sensory Awareness Foundation (SAF) - formerly the Charlotte Selver Foundation (CSF) - has also had an interesting life. Hoped-for happenings - and wonderful ones never dreamed of at the start - have come about, directly or indirectly, because of its existence. To me, one of the most heartwarming is the formation of an expanding, mutually supportive, Sensory Awareness Community, including the discovery and bringing together of diverse people around the world, most of whom had never known each other before.

There was an exchange of ideas and a working together to experience and be of service to what had inspired us all: "the Work" originated by Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby, and called by Charlotte Selver "Sensory Awareness". Today there are five other foundations in Europe1, the Sensory Awareness Leaders Guild (SALG) with members both here and abroad, and the Monday Night Group (MNG) in New York City, each with their own publications and activities; and there may be others I don't know about. Our sense of fellowship grows and grows.

THE FIRST BEGINNING
The idea of a foundation was born at a Selver/Brooks workshop on Monhegan, Maine, in the summer of 1970, out of the desire for a Center for Sensory Awareness, and a book of Charlotte Selver's words. Charlotte had spoken to me of the tapes and transcripts she had of class sessions and workshops; I felt that excerpts from them might be made into a book. So, after an evening gathering of students, where Charlotte spoke of her longing to see the work she was offering become better known, and asked for suggestions as to how this could come about, I offered to try to set up a tax-exempt, educational not-for-profit corporation, with my home in Caldwell, New Jersey as an office, and myself to start things off as secretary and bulletin editor. I was sure other devoted students would rally around, and the resulting foundation could produce this book and Center - and provide other support for the Work.

Charlotte took up my offer; in January of 1971 the Charlotte Selver Foundation came into being, and the suggested arrangement continued for sixteen years, until I retired as managing secretary. During this time most directors lived in the New York area, but in 1984, after Charlotte and Charles had moved permanently to the West Coast, people there began to join the Board, meetings became phone-conference calls, and then the Foundation moved to California in 1987, where it continues today under the dedicated stewardship of Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt.

But to go back to the start, the first action of the newly formed CSF was the recovery of the aforementioned tapes and transcripts of Charlotte's classes, and - as it turned out - much other material, besides: pictures, Charlotte's first lectures in their various stages of metamorphosis, student's reports, plans for joint seminars with Alan Watts, correspondence with Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby, and even an early movie of a Charlotte class.

When, in 1963, Charlotte and Charles had been forced to evacuate their studio on 57th St. in New York City in twenty-four hours, all this had been jammed higgledy-piggledy into three large file cabinets and dozens of cardboard boxes, and taken to a barn in Connecticut on the property of Charles' stepmother. There it stayed until Charlotte took me and my daughter, Deirdre, to pack it all up in our van, take it back to Caldwell, roll up the reel-to-reel tapes, try to identify them, and put everything in some kind of order.

Some of it still remains here, since the SAF does not yet have a permanent home and storage place. However, in 1986 Charlotte was selected by her peers as one of the "highest priority pioneers" in the field of Humanistic Psychology, and the remarkable collection of tapes (and transcripts) of the many classes offered each day in her New York studio in the sixties was the first of the mass of material to go to the Davidson Library of the University of California at Santa Barbara, to be preserved, catalogued, and made available for research having to do with this period. Other archival material will go there later.

TAPES!
But there was also an extensive collection of tapes from later workshops, which became the basis for the ongoing "Charlotte Selver Tape Project." This is a good example of the many CSF projects that involved many people working together toward a mutually desired end. As donations came in, we had some workshops transcribed professionally by Pamela Strong, but many were already being transcribed by volunteers. The transcriptions were sent back and forth to various people to look for definitive excerpts for a book. One full-length manuscript was completed (by Bill Littlewood) and may soon be published - a book that took thirty years to materialize.

Charles continued to record workshops as long as he lived, and later John Vitell did so. All these tapes were sent to Pamela to transcribe where needed, to catalogue everything, to mail out tapes to another large group of devoted students who would listen to them, comment upon them, and select their favorite passages - eventually resulting in the tapes that are now being offered by the SAF.

THE PURPOSES
In 1970 on Monhegan, however, such a tape-project was not thought of. The first bulletin, announcing the formation of the CSF, stated its purposes as: "A. Publish and disseminate materials which would widen the interest in and deepen the understanding of the Work. . . B. Set up a Center to provide deeper study of the Work and to facilitate the training of teachers. C. Provide scholarships for worthy students who could not continue the work without financial assistance."

Over the years we attempted to set up a Center. We had a "Brownstone Project," and looked at several properties in and around NYC. A few of us experimented with living and working together in Caldwell. For a brief time we had an office in Hoboken, New Jersey where we were open to the public, and offered regular classes. But we never achieved the dreamed-of permanent home for Sensory Awareness with office, library, living space and ongoing classes - or the scholarships.

Publications
We did achieve the first purpose - the publication of material about Sensory Awareness. At that time there was no book about the Work, in any language; there was only one article by Elsa Gindler, Charlotte's primary teacher; and four printed lectures by her colleague, Heinrich Jacoby - all in German, and never translated. In English, there were only the two short reprints of articles by Charlotte and Charles: "Sensory Awareness and Total Functioning," and "Report on Sensory Awareness and Total Functioning." There was nothing more about the Work, and nothing about the originators, or the history of its development and spread in Europe and the USA.2

Though this work is at heart non-verbal and experiential, the words Charlotte speaks in class are precise, meaningful, and rise directly out of the situation of the moment. They would be its best possible verbal representation, and could form the basis for the body of literature which seems essential in building up wide interest, understanding, and active support for any discipline.

CSF Bulletin #1 attempted to illustrate this. There was an article on "The Development of Sensory Awareness in this Country" with which Charles gave me much help. But there were also selections from my first workshop with Charlotte: the enchanting, "Are You All There?" and the classic, "On Breathing." It was a delight to work with Charlotte on editing these short excerpts, but I did not have the same good fortune with suggestions for longer publications.

She gave me her written piece, "Beginning of Beginning," for our second bulletin, but then made it clear that there was to be no talk of a book or bulletin about/by Charlotte Selver until there had been a bulletin about her teacher, Elsa Gindler. The first volume was done with the help of many of Gindler's longtime students, particularly those who had come together in her honor to a meeting in Germany in 1976 that was brought about by Friedrich Everling, a student of Gindler, Jacoby, and Charlotte. At this meeting Charlotte asked all those present who had studied with Gindler to write their memories of her, and many did so. Of course they all wrote in German, and everything had to be translated - as did Gindler's one and only article and Jacoby's lectures.

Translating
Translation from German to English proved one of the biggest challenges, in all our bulletins. Unfortunately, at that time, we had no one who was both in the Work and a good translator of German. Professional translators didn't understand "the Work" (Gindler's "working with weight" was "lifting weights") so we had to struggle with their (costly) translations ourselves, endlessly trying out different words and phrases until the result pleased Charlotte.

The memorial bulletins: Gindler, Jacoby, Hengstenberg, Pikler
But after the volumes about Gindler (and then another one telling how various of her students had carried her work into many areas of living, and many parts of the world) Charlotte insisted there be one about Gindler's colleague, Heinrich Jacoby, then one about their colleague, Elfriede Hengstenberg, and finally one about Emmi Pikler, the Hungarian pediatrician whom Charlotte called "the third pillar in a total 'work with the human being.'"

Producing these bulletins was very satisfying: finding these students (many of whom are now gone), encouraging them to tell or write their stories, and putting those stories into print where they would always be available. It also expanded the network of Sensory Awareness-oriented people to include Gindler students in Europe and Israel. Readers of the first Gindler Bulletin wrote and identified themselves as Gindler students, or told us about someone we had not heard of, that person would tell us of someone else, and so on.

I could interview Carola Speads and Johanna Kulbach in New York City, but found myself in California to work with Clare Fenichel and Marei Hoelscher - then in London to work with Gertrud Heller, and in Berlin to talk to Elfriede Hengstenberg and Sophie Ludwig. When several students of these teachers came to the USA to visit friends or work with Charlotte, they visited the Foundation in Caldwell: Ruth Veselko (from Switzerland) to talk about her teacher, Heinrich Jacoby; Ute Strub (from Germany) to help with the Hengstenberg bulletin (which became the beginning of the beautiful Hengstenberg book, Entfaltungen (Unfoldings) that the SAF hopes to see published in English soon); and Anna Tardos (from Hungary) to work on the bulletin honoring her mother, Emmi Pikler. Only after all those bulletins were available would Charlotte consent to a small publication of her words (A Taste of Sensory Awareness) combining material from an early lecture and a 1987 workshop.

Newsletters
Meantime, as the early, smaller Bulletins turned into larger memorial volumes, the Foundation began to publish a Newsletter telling what it was presently doing, and what was going on in the field of Sensory Awareness. It included the first list of teachers of Sensory Awareness (in 1980), described the articles and books being published about it, and the building up of the CSF library, including not only material directly about Sensory Awareness but relevant to it, anything mentioning it or its originators, or by students who used it in their professions.

Charles Brooks' book
Though many other books about and relating to the Work came afterward, the first one was Charles V. W. Brooks' Sensory Awareness: The Rediscovery of Experiencing (the Viking Press Inc. New York 1972),3 which was later translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese.4 The Foundation sold it, and also mounted a fund drive and distributed 1000 copies to selected libraries and educational institutions - a huge project, once again involving many dedicated people.

THE GENERAL COMMITTEE AND THE NYU WORKSHOPS
As said in Bulletin #9, however, "the more we publish, the more we know that the words are not the Work, they are only an invitation to experience." And the Foundation did many other things besides publishing. In 1973 a large General Committee was formed in the New York area, and met monthly in the homes of various members to find ways to raise funds to support the CSF's activities, while creating interest in the Work. These meetings were both rewarding and difficult, showing clearly the diversity of views even among people brought together by the same interest and the same purpose. But as long as we had a definite project to bring to pass, we solved our difficulties and stayed together. The same could be said of the Board of Directors, which took over the function of the General Committee when it dissolved after the NYU and the Open Center workshops.

The NYU workshops, sponsored jointly by the CSF and New York University, were our biggest undertakings in every way; each one attracting more than 200 people. At the first, in 1974, Charlotte and Charles were joined by colleagues from across the country to "introduce approaches to Sensory Awareness which demonstrate how this Work can be carried into daily activities and personal and professional life." The great gymnasium in NYU's old building hosted the whole group for each of the two-day's opening and closing sessions, led by Charlotte and Charles, while in between, participants could choose from fifteen different workshops held in the various classrooms.

On Saturday the small workshops were on awareness in everyday living, while on Sunday they were on the connection of Sensory Awareness to other disciplines. The subjects and their presenters were: Carole Binswanger, physical therapy; John Chichester, sculpture; Peggy Crawford, special education; Ray Fowler, conducting; Hannah Gross, voice; Lenore Hecht, gestalt therapy; Charlotte Read, general semantics; Sophia Rosoff, piano; Connie Smith Siegel, drawing and painting; Leon Siegel, M.D., medicine; Alice Smith, international civil service; Deirdre Roche, movement; Bernard Weitzman, psychotherapy; Nancy Wickens Thiess, R.N., nursing, therapeutic massage.

I don't know how to express the excitement around this event, the culmination of months of planning, of forming committees and making decisions, of meetings and letters back and forth with the program directors at NYU. When the day finally arrived, everyone must have gotten up at dawn to prepare for their part. There were flowers to be arranged everywhere, some people were presenting workshops; others took registrations for them, or sold Charles' book, which had just been published. And trying to take care of 207 people!

But the Work was still at the heart of it all. And the last experiment Sunday afternoon is one I will not forget. It had to do with giving and receiving. All the participants were walking around the huge, high-ceiling hall in the dusk of the November afternoon. A long table held bowls of water in which floated a short, lighted candle. I picked up a bowl, walked with it about the room as I felt what I felt - about the water, the bowl, the flickering flame. By and by I met someone to whom I gave my candle. Then I walked on, and soon received a candle from someone else - until, finally, the whole room was filled with moving flames, light being passed from one to another.

When everything was over, a group of happy, tired, Committee members and workshop leaders got together and talked about what had happened. In one person's opinion, much of the success of our effort "sprang from our very eagerness and innocence: we didn't know we couldn't do it, so we did it." 5

FINANCING THE FOUNDATION
In 1975, in the second workshop jointly sponsored by the CSF and NYU, Charlotte and Charles were again joined by several colleagues, in an exploration of the theme, "Continuity and Change." The two workshops were financially profitable, the main reason being that everyone did their part for love, no one got paid. As a matter of fact, the CSF was almost wholly a volunteer organization. With no endowments, government or other grants, our support came from the public: as donations, for publications, workshops and other projects.

The General Committee planned and brought about other events besides the NY workshops. There was the first of several concerts - one given by Hannah Gross, singer, Carol Buck, cello, and Ray Fowler, piano, where 80 people "shared their reactions with the musicians and with each other. Sometimes the musicians replayed a piece, and sometimes tried something new. . . The mixture. . . made a kind of fumbling, organic sense."6 And we cleared $500.00. Later the Committee put on a profitable Arts and Crafts Exhibit and Sale, with material from our many Sensory Awareness artists. There was a get-together for supper, and to see an exhibit of Peggy Crawford's beautiful photographs of Monhegan.

But workshops were a main financial support of the CSF, and gave many people the opportunity to taste Sensory Awareness through actual experience. Some took place at: Temple/Ambler University in Pennsylvania (offered by Charlotte Selver), The Open Center in New York (offered by Charlotte and Charles), Hudson Guild Farm in New Jersey (offered by Alice Smith and Efrem Weitzman), the Community School in Englewood New Jersey, and at Daibosatsu Zendo in Livingston Manor, New York, where Charlotte gave a joint benefit for the Zendo and the CSF. Then, in September of l980, long after Charlotte and Charles had left the East Coast for California, Charlotte returned to New York to give a benefit for the Foundation, and she has done so each year since. In the meantime, the CSF sponsored a regular schedule of workshops in the New York area. In 1986-87, eleven workshops were offered by nine Sensory Awareness leaders, alone or in combination.

Over the years many devoted students have served as directors - too many to list - but Peggy Wood's long and devoted stint as our treasurer can't go unmentioned. Nor that of May Cass who served as the first treasurer, later as secretary and finally as the third president. Other presidents, in order, have been: Charlotte Selver, Bernard Weitzman; Robert Smith, Charlotte Read, Gordon Bennett, and now Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt.

Alice Smith, and the Studio for Sensory Awareness
The late Alice Smith (she died on July 12, 2001) in great part made a Sensory Awareness Community possible in New York City. When Charlotte and Charles took up permanent residence in California, Alice took over their Studio 2G at 160 West 73rd St., kept it serene and beautiful- and made it an East-Coast Center for the Work. She offered classes and workshops there regularly from 1970 until she retired in 1996, but she also made the space available for us all. Charlotte and Charles stayed there when they came back to give classes in New York, and, after Charles death in 1991, Charlotte's small, intensive seminars that preceded her annual benefit for the SAF were held there. Board meetings for the CSF/SAF took place in Studio 2G, also Foundation classes and workshops. The Eastern Region of the SALG met there, as did the Monday Night Group.

Ray Fowler, Richard Lowe, the MNG and the SALG
Ray Fowler conceived and helped organize the Monday Night Group, and also the first workshop for leaders of Sensory Awareness, in 1979. After the Sensory Awareness Leader Guild came into being - at Charlotte's first workshop for leaders in 1985, and under the inspiring leadership of Richard Lowe - Ray organized International SALG meetings, first in California, and now each summer on Monhegan. All these (and many others) made possible our growing sense of community - and realization of the breadth of relationships within that community.

SPECIAL EVENTS
"Experiential Anatomy"
One well-attended course offered by the Foundation was in Experiential Anatomy. The first half was offered by a Sensory Awareness teacher - a period of quiet, non-verbal experiencing of how the human organism functions. The second was presented by Vita Shapiro, of the Swedish Institute of Massage. She said, "I tell you what anatomists and physiologists have concluded so far, but these conclusions are merely theories, and what we are doing here is actually research. In this group we can learn current theories about how our bodies work, but we can also learn what happens in each of us as we shine the theories through the prism of our personal experience." Participants agreed that all anatomy classes should be preceded by a session of Sensory Awareness.

"Sensing Sound and Music"
Another popular course was offered by Alan Wittenberg, a music therapist who worked with children, and a one-time director of the CSF. It was a wonderful opportunity to sense ourselves as both makers and hearers of music, to feel our respon-ses to the variations in sound, to anyone of twenty different instruments as tangible objects, to feel as well as to hear their response to our touch and movement.

Flying kites, and "work days"
Other special events were: a kite-flying in Central Park; a day at the shore, with sun, and sand, and water and wind; and a series of bimonthly weekends in Caldwell, to work together in Sensory Awareness sessions but also to carry over this practice into other activities such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, child care, and work in the office and library of the CSF.

Parties and anniversary celebrations
There were not only meetings, but also parties: special birthday parties as well as benefit potluck suppers, parties for long-ago students to renew old friendships (and interest in the Work), and our gala anniversary parties. To celebrate our tenth year, John and Bettina Vitell welcomed us to their restaurant in Hoboken, the Beat'n Path, for a delicious vegetarian supper. Various people sang, read poetry, played the cello, the piano or the guitar - both early and contemporary pieces, some of the latter composed by the performers. At the end, everyone joined in the singing.

In l986 (under the expert management of Program Director Allegra Azouvi), over 100 old and new students gathered in the "Ceremonial Room" of the Ethical Culture Society in NYC - decorated with clusters of balloons and masses of wildflowers - to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Charlotte Selver Foundation, its change of name to the Sensory Awareness Foundation, and the new issue of Charles Brooks' book on Sensory Awareness. Fabulous food and drink was provided by the guests. André Émelianoff, cellist, and Bob Stallman, flutist, played beautiful music. There were speakers about the Foundation, the recently formed Sensory Awareness Leaders Guild, and Charles' book. And five students of Charlotte shared their connection with her and the work she offers: Lee Klinger Lesser; Ilana Rubenfeld; Charles Lawrence; Yvonne Rand; and Bernard Weitzman. Charles and Charlotte then responded to the other speakers, to the celebration, and the Work which had brought us all together.

PEGGY ZEITLER AND THE CSF/SAF IN EUROPE
Parties are wonderful, and nothing can take the place of experiencing a real live class in Sensory Awareness - but the published words of the originators, the great practitioners who have come after them, the historical memories of how they have offered the Work, and how people have been affected by it in their lives, seem to be the invitation to and an aid in the discovery of an ever fuller experiencing and understanding of the Work itself.

Peggy Zeitler, an American married to a German and living in Munich, Germany, felt this. She had been a student and translator for Seymour Carter, one of the many students of Charlotte who have taken the Work back to Europe. Peggy thought that Charlotte's "Beginning of Beginning" should be available in German. She translated it, and then other CSF publications, becoming the Foundation's representative in Europe and distributing its publications there. She helped with the Pikler Bulletin and the Hengstenberg book, and edited the book, Erinnerungen an Elsa Gindler (Memories of Elsa Gindler), in which she added much new material to that already collected in the CSF bulletins.

A leader of Sensory Awareness, she has given joint workshops with Anna Tardos, and eventually started WE7 (Wege der Entfaltung - Paths of Unfolding) which is based on the lifework of Elsa Gindler, Heinrich Jacoby, Elfriede Hengstenberg, Charlotte Selver, Emmi Pikler, and Rebecca and Mauritzio Wild (who have a school project in Ecuador.) Its purpose and program is to aid "Lóczy," the Emmi Pikler Institute in Budapest, which is no longer supported wholly by the Hungarian government.8

It seems that this Work encompasses all paths of unfolding, from the newborn infant to the centenarian. It is truly a cause for celebration that, for thirty years the CSF/SAF has helped to increase recognition of the depth and breadth of Sensory Awareness - its fundamental value anywhere, for anyone, in every moment. Now, as the Foundation begins its thirty-first year, I look forward to a continuing fellowship within a growing community of all those who love this "Work." And find within it a great help in living life fully, and interacting with openness to the whole world.

1 The AEDE (Association of Students of Doctor Ehrenfried) in France, the Heinrich Jacoby/Elsa Gindler Stiftung in Berlin, AIP(L) (the International Pikler Foundation of Budapest), the Arbeitskreis Heinrich Jacoby/Elsa Gindler in Switzerland, WE Wege der Entfaltung (Paths of Unfolding) in Munich.

2 In the year 2000, the bibliography of a literature review of Sensory Awareness included fifty-eight references.

3 Latest edition: Sensory Awareness - The Rediscovery of Experiencing Through Workshops With Charlotte Selver, (Great Neck, New York, Felix Morrow 1986).

4 The translator of the Japanese version was Prof. Hiroshi Ito, Pres. of the Japanese Association for Humanistic Education, who incorporated Sensory Awareness into his work. Prof. Ito was a student of Judyth Weaver, who continues to offer Sensory Awareness in Japan.

5 CSF Bulletin No. 7 Winter 1975

6 Ibid.

7 See SAF Newsletter Winter 1999/2000.

8 Ibid.