Breathing and Full Reactivity

By Charlotte Selver

This article is an edited excerpt from the newly published audio tape of Charlotte Selver’s July 28, 1992 class on Monhegan Island in Maine.

When you have a real, full, deep relationship to breathing, then breathing will react to what you are doing. In other words, when you are jumping your breathing changes in jumping. When you are slowly going your breathing changes for the slow. When you have a hard task if you don’t hinder your breathing your breathing gives more vitality to you so that you can go into this hard task and really meet it. In other words breathing becomes your ally, is always there for you whatever you do. That it is not ‘the breathing’ – something static, something that has to be such and such. It is something which is constantly there for you, and you can feel it.

There are certain steps we go in breathing. First it is important to be able to allow breathing to have its own way, not to lead it somewhere, not to manipulate it. This in itself is already quite a task that you begin to be obedient to a function which happens in us as long as we live. I don’t know whether you have ever realized that the air is a guest. It’s not your possession. It’s a guest which comes and which goes. And it’s a guest which you need dearly. So it’s a question of to what degree your inner tissues are sensitized enough and appreciative enough that they let you exist fully. The total person, the total organism is involved in the new air coming in, being welcomed, penetrating, doing its job, and then letting go out what has been used. The exhalation is one of the most important things to have. To feel the going out of the air, allowing it go out to the very last. And not already coming in with the new air but letting it have its way.

The question of total reactivity is a very deep question. It has been found that every impression which we get – let me say right now you hear my voice, you hear what I say, you see that I move, you also feel that you are sitting, hopefully – everything which strikes us, our consciousness, comes first into cells in the brain. These cells act like the emulsion of a photographic plate. In the moment you hear something, or see something, or whatever, you are being impregnated. And right away, this goes from there into the entire sensory nervous system. That means you get the message – if you don’t sleep – you get the message from head to foot immediately. From there it becomes conscious, and the thought comes supported by the experience. And from there it comes to the word. But, sais Alfred Korzybski who did a lot of research on this, all this can only happen when the mind is quiet. Only when the mind is quiet can this impregnation and the immediate reaction happen all through. If not, we only live from the head. If yes, we live as a total self. When the mind is quiet we become peaceful and quiet even in the fastest speed. In other words, not this sleeps, and that is awake, and this hurts, and so on, but the whole organism is tuned in for what happens.

In Zen they speak of ’empty mind’. They even speak of ‘no mind’. That means that the head is just as much – could be – as much affected as my hands or my feet or my belly or anything. The head is nothing extra which has to be watchful and constantly observe things and so on. When the head is free, free of all this packed in thoughts and needed occupations, when it is empty, it can react just as my knee, as my hands and as my feet – the total organism is awake instead of just the brain. You see this total reactivity often in animals. You see it sometimes in little children who are still unspoiled. And you can also see it in Zen masters. I always felt that Suzuki Roshi looked just like a child. He was so open, so free, so easy, so modest, so reactive. Why? Because he had no raisins in his head. He was just there for what was happening in the moment.

Have you ever been delighted by something which happened spontaneously? I have a little cat, a little kitten. She is a wonderful teacher for me. Everything is spontaneous. It just happens. The connection, the direction between what you happen to be involved in and breathing is really like the kitten. It changes all the time in connection with what one is doing. Our work, what Elsa Gindler wanted, is like what I heard from Suzuki Roshi many times: to come back to our original nature. You have a question in Zen: “How was your face before you were born?” Nobody else in the world exists the same as you. You are special. Your original nature is different. And so you breathe in or out at certain times. Your reaction to things will come uncalled for. In other words, spontaneous. Not by teaching or whatever.

Featured image by Robert Smith

By Charlotte Selver

Remarks made by Charlotte Selver in 1962 during a joint seminar with Alan Watts. This text appears in our new Bulletin Charlotte Selver. Vol I, collected writings.

When we do not function naturally anymore but instead use our senses, we do something. We do something in seeing, we do something in smelling, we do something in hearing and tasting. Actually, this is how we are educated. When the mother says to the child, ‘Doesn’t this taste good!’ (lipsmacking sounds) or ‘Listen to the airplane!’ (looking up strenuously), etc., etc. – this mother, with the best will in the world, begins to disorient and distort the sense perception of the infant. And this distortion is increased when educators force a child to answer immediately and as correctly as possible. Much pressure is put upon the child to respond as people want him to. We come into the world and soon learn to feel we always should be doing something instead of simply being open for what presents itself at the moment. You may understand now how important it is that we learn to give up this doing. But how can one bring this under the skin of a person?

It is not so easy. For the organism has become accustomed to this ‘doing’ while perceiving and has built up effortful habits which block this very openness. This is one of the ways we create resistance within ourselves to the organism’s very own ways of functioning. Let me mention just a few of such natural functions: breathing; circulation, digestion, organic functioning, movability and soon. We usually call these hindering manifestations ‘tensions’ or ‘strain’. It often goes so far that we become numb in such blocked regions, or that pains develop.

Sometimes you see in the circus a man with overdeveloped biceps who throws a sharp knife at his arm. The knife strikes and jumps back. In other words, it does not penetrate. Now imagine that we become aware of such restrictions which come from hard effort. We say: ‘Oh, I am working too hard. I am making too much effort. I have to let go. This is the answer: I have to let go!’ We call it relaxing. So we let go, if we can. But it isn’t done by just letting go. We often let go too much. We not only give up the unnecessary doings, but also the very necessary healthy tensions, our vitality which we dearly need in living. We become limp, lifeless, heavy. And this is often worse than before, when inner restrictions were still there.

In such a lifeless condition the fine self-directing and renewing process of the organism cannot start up because we have given up too much. The change demands something quite different. As we very gradually give up the restricting tendencies, we feel how with the diminution of this inner straining and tensing the wells begin to flow and fill up the gaps. And there where restrictions hindered, gradually the life activities start filling in. And so recovery, recreation, begins to happen.

Can you go with me? Does this make sense to you? This ‘letting go’ stuff is just something which we have figured out in our minds. Because if we really would sense, really would be present in what happens, we would feel how lifeless, how depleted of energy, we have become. When one has ‘looked’ in order to see, has ‘listened’ in order to hear, has ‘sniffed’ in order to smell, has made an effort in order to think, one does not know at all that one is constantly hindering the innate capacities of the organism from coming into play.

So when I come to you with an invitation to allow more ease here or there, I do not mean that you simply let go, but that you enter a way, a path which you can only take step by step. In this work of transformation, when you follow anything at all, you follow only your sensations, the natural tendencies of the organism. And to be able to follow these inner needs we have to be awake.

There is a kind of awakeness, a boundless awakeness, in which we don’t go around and around with our thoughts, but which arises from quiet, in which we really can experience. When our mind is full of effort and thoughts, it’s like when you want to go to a lavatory and there is a sign which says ‘occupied.’ You can’t go in; it’s occupied by somebody else. The trouble is only that our mind does not say ‘occupied,’ but we press our thoughts one after another into the space which is already occupied with something else. You can see how un-fulfilling such an attitude must be.

And so when an invitation reaches you to permit the thoughts gradually to come to more rest, and you allow that, then a process can start and restore you while your efforts begin to decrease. Then your head gradually clears, and at the end you are awake and feel wonderfully released, and everything in you can function.

I would like to finish this little explanation with a remark that Elsa Gindler, my teacher, once made. When we would say: ‘Ah, I feel so marvelously light,’ or ‘Oh, I could run and do anything in the world’ – and I would say, ‘What a deep awareness!’ and ‘How one can grow with something like that!’ she said, ‘Charlotte, don’t make such a fuss. You simply function a little bit more normally.’

So what I have to offer you is nothing but that you begin to give up what is hindering you, and you become ‘a little more normal.’

Featured image by Robert Smith

By Charlotte Selver

This article is an edited excerpt from the newly published audio tape of Charlotte Selver’s December 5, 1999 class at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center.

When I first came to Elsa Gindler in 1923 she had become very interested in breathing and the organism’s positive tendencies: to heal itself; to renew ; and to balance. Gindler had given up any teaching, she said: “I don’t want to teach anymore; I want to find out; I want to study. I want to discover and whoever wants to come with me, to study and discover together, is very welcome.” It was a magnificent time we all had together. The tiniest reactions and the smallest discoveries were taken very seriously. I felt fortunate to be with Gindler as she was discovering and developing her work.

When class began in the morning there was first one and a half hours work on breathing. Next, we would spend time with inner functioning as it related to how we moved. Then, we would explore how we dealt with bigger questions: how we go into difficult tasks in daily life; how we approach other people; how we get in touch with them; how we speak to them; how we help a person to rest more, or to become more vivid, or to become more balanced. Gindler had a very deep interest in how we acted in moments of stress. These possibilities were endless. We worked on each other, with each other and alone. We could work the entire day on one activity, be it in class or on our own. It was a deeply human study that embraced everything a human being could do.

When I was a child my whole life was music. I was eleven years old when my parents gave me a grand piano. I was all the time sitting at it and playing. Every Wednesday, my piano teacher came to the house. My father would come home early from business and join us in the music room. Part of my lesson was hearing the teacher play the beginning of different pieces for me to tell him the name of the piece and the composer. Toward the end of the lesson, father would ask the teacher to play for us. It was always a festival for me to have these music lessons, see my father listen to me and hear the teacher play.

This was the only enjoyable event in the house of my parents. My mother was a dragon; activities were either forbidden or allowed. To be able to do something out of one’s hearts desire didn’t exist. Mother said “yes” or “no” and we acted accordingly. I spent much of my growing up alone because my sister and I were very different. She loved being involved with homemaking. I preferred to be removed from these things and found excuses to be away. I did many things my mother did not approve of and learned to lie to get my way. Everything was a lie. I lied from morning ’til evening. Soon, I didn’t know truth.

There was always this war going on at home. Playing the piano was my only solace. I hardly ever moved and I ate constantly. I became very heavy.

I had a cousin who was a dancer. One day she exclaimed: “Charlotte, do you know how you look? You cannot go out looking so heavy, you must do something for yourself. You must move!” I didn’t want to “move” but I found an activity that connected music with physical activity. Dr. Rudolph Bode had a system whereby he played the piano and the students moved according to the music being played. I enroled in his school.

Although Dr. Bode considered me completely ungifted I completed my studies after two years and started to teach Bode Gymnastik. One of Bode’s senior students, Hinrich Medau, said to me: “Let’s go and conquer Berlin.” This was a time when everybody wanted to study movement and in no time did we had a lot of students.

During this time, I also met Elsa Gindler and began studying with her. In the beginning it was all just wonderful but after some time I realized that all my movements were artificial; that everything I did was not heartfelt. I had a terrible time when I began to feel my own falsehood, my own deafness in movement. All I had learned so far was not me and it took a long time before I began to understand more of what Gindler’s intentions were and what true movement, what honesty was. I came out of my web of lying. This was a very, very important time for me.

By Charlotte Selver

This article is an edited excerpt from a CD of Charlotte Selver’s August 16, 2001 class on Monhegan Island, Maine.
The full sensing experiment is available on CD at: Books and CDs

In every moment of our living we can notice something new. We can be present. Being present is not thinking about something, it is just being there for what is happening.

It seems that we are usually sound asleep. And it happens at times that we wake up from this sleep – for example during a Sensory Awareness class on Monhegan – and we feel so fabulously awake, we are just delighted. Why are we so surprised? Being awake may be just natural! Being there for what one is doing is rather unknown to people, usually, but coming to life and coming to presence is a wonderful possibility which everybody has in himself or herself – from moment to moment to moment.

We are often very habit-bound and the question is: Do we change or do we always fall back into the old? This is very, very important! Do I want to be this old, habitual person all my life? Or do I want to be fresh out of the oven so that when someone will eat me, his teeth will crack under the freshness? We need to distinguish the newness of something from the stale so that everything you do can be entered freshly and not be habit-bound. It could be very interesting for you to find out what the difference is. Giving up habits and becoming fresh bread – fresh anything, you can replace the bread with anything you do. Every moment can be fresh and every moment can be degraded into habitual ways of living. It means business, of course. It is not in your head. It is in every nerve of our nervous system. When you would allow life to be a fresh roll, it could become very interesting. I predict that.

Have you ever watched a dog running after a stick? You throw a stick and the dog runs and brings it back to you. Your throw it again, the dog runs after it and brings it back again. Dogs never seem to get tired of it. No matter how often you do it, the dog is always there to get the stick. How about us? We are not even half a dog! This wonderful freshness of perception, of reaction, would be a very great gift to take home with you from Monhegan. But then you have to cultivate it, not forget it and say, “Oh, next year in Monhegan.” It has nothing to do with Monhegan!

Charlotte with Johanna Pfeiffer in Prien, Germany

One of my students gave me a beautiful book about a Rabbi. There was a young man who wanted to visit this Rabbi and the Rabbi said he could visit him but he would have to not eat or drink anything on the way. It was a long way this young man was supposed to go in order to meet the Rabbi. He had to go through a desert. It was very hot. He finally came upon a place where there was water coming out of the rock and he ran to the water. But then he remembered the Rabbi had said he should not drink anything and so he went on. And he came to another place where the water was running and he was so very thirsty but he could not drink. At last he came to the house of the Rabbi. When the Rabbi saw him, he shouted: “Go away! Do not enter my house! You have not done what I asked you to do. You wanted to drink when I told you not to!” So the poor man had to go the entire way back and start out again.

This story has followed me a great deal in my working. To what extent does a person take seriously what she does or is asked to do? To what extent is she looking right and left to get away from what is asked of her? Or does she go her way in spite of all the temptations? This has been very helpful to me in my life. The possibility to go my way in spite of all temptations, right and left, and always following the trail – this is something for all of us to become aware of. When you see all the temptations and you feel them, do you want to follow your temptations or will you, in spite of all the temptations, go your way to the place where you are supposed to go? Can you honor the temptations but not become a target for them?

Featured image by Robert Smith

By Charlotte Selver

This article is based on an excerpt from the newly published audio tape of Charlotte Selver’s August 13, 2001 class on Monhegan Island, Maine.

Just as our heart beats, breathing can happen without effort, without being directed. The air exchange happens all by itself. When the exhalation wants to become deeper, let it become deeper. Don’t direct it. Even the slightest attempt to breathe is unnecessary. It happens by itself.

Do you feel your heart beat right now? You may want to use one of your hands to feel it. You don’t have to tell your heart “beat.” It beats by itself. Wonderful! My heart beats! Enjoy it! Here it is, a sign of life. You have no duty, it beats anyhow.

You can even feel how it’s easiest for your heart to beat just by being peaceful, feeling the natural movements of your own heart which you don’t create. How do you have to sit, for example? Where is it easiest for your heart to beat? Some people slump and that’s not easiest. Some people straighten up, and that’s not easiest. Where is it easiest for you? Just you. This one person in the world which is you.

In the same way, you could be permissive to breathing. As I look out the window right now I can see a tiny breeze outside. Perhaps one or the other of you can see the fine way in which the breeze moves the curtain. The muscles inside are like that curtain, if you permit it. Like the curtain is moved by the wind, so we are moved inside by our breathing, without doing anything for it. If you gently give up doing it, you will experience that it comes all by itself. We should not be the educators of breathing. Breathing should teach us how it wants to be – without our admonishing it.

There is this wonderful nervous system which we all have, from our foot soles up to the top of our head. Everywhere it feels. You can feel whether here or there your breathing is going on, without your doing. Or, as Elsa Gindler would say: “Don’t hinder it.” When you don’t do it and don’t hinder it you will feel what happens. Something is going on. From moment to moment, whether you are asleep or awake, there it is. So you don’t have to worry about breathing. Who enjoys the idea? No worry! Breath and heartbeat. There they are, and you feel there is something happening – beating in me and living and doing something in me. And I don’t do it.

I would suggest when you wake up in the morning that you don’t jump out of bed right away. Lie there for a little while as you move from sleeping to being awake and feel how breathing goes. You can learn a lot from it. And you can feel also when you are doing breathing. Many people have learned to do breathing. It’s terrible. It’s as though we spit creation in the face. Breathing goes all by itself, no matter what we are doing.

I remember one time in class with Elsa Gindler we worked very quietly, and I fell asleep. I woke up and I thought, “Oh, I fell asleep.” And my next thought was, “Nobody could see it.” I had my eyes closed. But when I opened my eyes there stood Elsa Gindler right next to me and she asked, “Was it good?” That was a great moment. I will never forget that.

Without us knowing, breathing goes on and on. Thank God! You can hinder, but you have to permit at least a little bit of it. When you do too much, you become unnatural; when you do too little, you become stingy. You can feel for yourself what you need, and just allow it. You trust your own feeling. You might feel that you have always denied breathing, that you have always hindered it. Many children, when they are afraid of their parents, don’t dare to breathe, really. They don’t know it, but they hinder breathing.

You can feel the slightest bit of unnaturalness when you do breathing, even just a tiny bit. I warn everybody who wants to work on breathing to give up these ideas of how breathing happens – just be very quiet and feel what happens by itself. Feel where inside you can feel it, when you are not ambitious, where every little bit of this fine movement, which keeps us alive, can be felt. You can’t be sensitive enough for this. We often don’t feel spontaneous breathing because it is very gentle and comes without any ambition.

And so it goes on from moment to moment to moment to moment, as you see, for more than a hundred years. There is nothing that has to be done. You only have to feel whether air is going through you. Do I let it? Do I close the doors or do I let my inner doors stay passable, open? Even the slightest inner movement of air exchange can be felt. And nobody has a duty. Be sure not to watch, just be peacefully open for what happens.

Has anybody been at the birth of a child? Everybody is waiting. The baby comes out of the mother and then somebody shouts, “It breathes!” And it didn’t know at all what breathing was, you know. It just happened anyway.

What I hope you will learn is giving up exercises and becoming more natural. Whatever you do, don’t make an exercise out of it but allow it in its own juiciness. Your heart is beating, your breathing is going without you doing it, thank God. Be there for it – in your natural self, not as an exercise. With this constant exercising, one degrades oneself, one degrades one’s possibility. But being there for something is something other than exercising something. Feel how your heart is beating right now and your breath is going right now, when you are not trying to influence it, when you allow it to have its own way of reacting.

As far as I am concerned every moment is a new moment, and I don’t exercise it, no matter how long something takes. One can feel when something comes by itself, naturally, and when it is induced, when one does do something to make it be such and such. Allow things to become more spontaneous. Being new, be there for it. This is sensory awareness work. It’s supposed to prepare us for life, not for exercises.

Featured image by Robert Smith

By Charlotte Selver

The following text is an edited excerpt from the newly published audio tape Coming Back to Experiencing, recorded in Santa Barbara, CA, on April 2, 2000.

I would like to speak about the main natural forces we are exposed to as we live on this planet. There is this force of gravity. Gravity is a very attractive force, and everybody is constantly exposed to its influence. The pull of this force makes us all stay on the ground. It even tries to pull us under the ground. But fortunately there is another force in us which does not permit that. That is energy. Each of us is able to allow energy to counteract the pull of gravity. So this would be the second very, very important force there is, to which we are constantly exposed. And then, of course, this energy manifests as breathing too. The possibility of constantly getting new air – can you feel it right now as you are reading? Are you open for this possibility of the energy source breathing to go through you or are you collapsing? Are you open to this coming and going of air and the possibility – whether we sit, or stand, or lie – to allow this exchange of air through us?

The third very important force, which we constantly are exposed to, is the support of the ground. That means, as you are sitting right now, there is something under you which supports you. Can you feel it? It is very solid and reliable; it is there at all times supporting us – the support underneath your feet, underneath your whole self, when you are lying, underneath your behind when you are sitting. You cannot go wrong trusting this support. Are you enjoying it? How wonderful that is!

Gravity, the support which the ground gives you, and energy – can you really experience these three forces?

– Can you feel that there is always something which invites you down?

– Can you feel something going through you which gives you the strength to stay upright?

– Is there really something which offers itself under you?

You may feel how easy it would be for gravity to become overwhelming, pulling you down to the ground and how the earth even wants to swallow you. But no, there is something under you which supports you – and something inside you which reconditions you from moment to moment.

Could you be open in your bones and other tissues for that which supports you? Be grateful for that support – grateful in every cell, grateful in your skin, and in your bones!

Can you feel the air which goes through you? Can you feel how it comes into you and how it goes out of you? Could you become sensitive in your muscles and skin and all tissues for the air which goes through you and leaves you? Are your tissues awake enough to let the air through and receive what is needed and let out what needs to go out? Can more and more of your inner be open for this wonderful process? We call it breathing.

To talk about these forces is quite dangerous. We have to be very careful not to follow ideas about gravity, energy, and the support of the floor. In German the word for ‘learning by heart’ is ‘auswendig lernen.’ The literal translation is something like ‘learning from the outside.’ But to learn by feeling from inside is completely different (Unlike the German, the English expression ‘learning by heart’ seems to encourage that. slg). It is important that we give this learning from inside a chance. When you feel what is, what occurs, what calls on you, your sensations, then you are in touch with life, which is always better, always deeper, always new. Wanting to know something is usually outside. Real experience is always surprising, is nothing which you know beforehand. And there is a difference between talking it – speaking from direct experience – and talking about it. When we speak about something we are not in it. It is important to feel what we say. Very much of our daily living is not experiencing, is not this warm-blooded being there for what we are doing.

As old as I am, all these moments of a new reality, of a new experiencing make everything so alive and full. I feel how it affects me when I’m only in my head, with my thoughts, and when I really feel in my tissues, in my nerves, in my bones. When I am really sensitive from moment to moment I live a completely different life.

Featured image by Robert Smith