This group is now closed to any new participants.

Watch the SAF Calendar for a new group forming in the future!

Contact Pamela Blunt with any questions.

pamrose4arts@msn.com

Sensory Awareness:  Embracing Your True Nature
May 13 – 15, 2016
Schedule

The whole community will attend the opening session with Lee Klinger Lesser and the closing session with Stefan Laeng Gilliatt. The rest of the sessions are offered two at a time. Participants choose one or the other.
Both silent (Leader TBA) and guided meditation (Eugene Tashima) sessions are offered on Saturday and Sunday mornings 7 a.m. – 7:45 a.m. During lunch on Saturday, there is a special opportunity to explore Sensory Awareness and eating with Sara Bragin.

7 – 7:45 a.m.
Eugene Tashima
Guided Meditation

Silent Meditation (Leader TBA)

Friday, May 13, 2016: Check in 4 – 6 p.m., Dinner 6 – 7 p.m.

Beginning Right Where We Are, Right Now
Opening 7:15 – 9:00 p.m.

Lee Klinger Lesser, MA
As we begin, let’s slow down and open to the natural responsiveness waiting right here for us. We don’t have to do anything, or be any certain way. Just offer our attention and curiosity to our experience and discover how we meet what is needed within ourselves and in connection to those around us.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

7 – 7:45 a.m. 
Eugene Tashima
Guided Meditation

Silent Meditation (Leader TBA)

Our Natural Responsiveness
9:15 – 11:15 a.m.

Richard Lowe, MA, LMFT
What is it to be moved or touched or relieved by something? In this experiential session we’ll explore sensing the inner flow of changes in ourselves as we encounter the world around us. We may discover old habits of resistance in ourselves. How might we then meet such habits with acceptance and love?

Jill Harris, MA, CMT
In the process of “growing up”, the sensory nature of direct experience is often overshadowed by the effects of training, expectations and habit. We will explore aspects of sensory experience individually and in relation to another, including a sense of oneself as a whole.

Break: 12:00 – 3:00 Lunch: a special opportunity to explore Sensory Awareness and eating with Sara Bragin.
Time on to explore Sensing on your own.

The Art of Pausing
3:15 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Connie Smith-Siegel, MFA
Through a combination of Sensory Awareness, drawing, and movement we can discover the rich diversity of our inner nature as it changes, moment to moment. Through spontaneous improvisations with shape, line and color we can connect more deeply with what we see and feel around us.

Penny Smith
Allowing time between one activity and another gives us the space to experience what is happening within, deepening our inner sense of when we are ready to meet the next activity. Being aware of our breathing and how we are connected to the support of the earth renews our ability to meet the experiences of living. Exploring standing, walking and lying through various experiments with weight and gravity awakens possibilities for new awareness.

Saturday Night
7:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Wondering Together
Discussion and questions about Sensory Awareness with members of the Leaders’ Guild.

Sensory Awareness and Psychotherapy
Richard Lowe, LMFT
An exploration of the practice of Sensory Awareness as it relates to psychotherapy and wellness.

8:15 – 10:00 p.m.
Leader TBA
In the Library, sensing movement exploration to music.  Art materials will also be available. A ‘café’’ (or should we say SAFé) will be available for socializing in the dining hall.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

7 – 7:45 a.m.
Eugene Tashima
Guided Meditation

Silent Meditation (Leader TBA)

9:45 – 11:45 a.m.

Finding Support in Our Own Nature
Ray Fowler, MS
While exploring the nature of breath, you may begin to notice how habitual conditioning affects this fundamental life function. Breathing provides a powerful link to hidden ways in which we control behavior. You will begin to feel how breathing has its own path. Noticing breath’s own way will gradually allow you to let go of behaviors and habits which no longer serve you. Embracing your own nature comes simply by itself, since it is already there!

Patricia Baxter, MA, CMT
In listening to breath and our natural responses to life’s demands we come to know ourselves. We will explore concepts of inspiration, enthusiasm, response-ability and the tendency to “should” ourselves. These concepts will be explored through Sensing experiments that help distinguish between what we sense and what we emote and how the two lead us through life.

Closing: Stepping Into Life
Stefan Laeng Gilliatt
When we leave the supportive atmosphere of the workshop to step back into everyday life, we quickly realize that life’s fast pace and unpredictability challenges our newly gained insights. How can we integrate Sensory Awareness into our lives so that the practice supports us in our many activities and encounters? We’ll explore this question in playful and in quiet ways, interacting with other people and with everyday things to rediscover the new and fresh in the ordinary.

Self-Righting:

Sensory Awareness  and journal writing

Fort Mason Center

a benefit for the SAF

4 Sundays, 10am – 1pm, 6/8, 6/15, 6/22, 6/29, 2014

Fee: $35 per class, $110 series

Leader: Richard Lowe, LMFT

Contact: 415-485-5457

Natural or Performed?

By Charlotte Selver

This article is based on an excerpt from the newly published audio tape of Charlotte Selver’s August 3, 2001 class on Monhegan Island, Maine.

It is very interesting to find out how life is when we are more spontaneous, and when we don’t embellish anything. What happens when we don’t repeat ourselves and say “this is right and this is wrong”, but simply feel in the course of momentary living? At first we may notice that even when we don’t try to be good, even when we just let things have their own way, that we still have this tendency to perform. Could we gradually give this up and let the true person comes out? Can we feel what is really, honestly, happening?

It is very helpful not to judge, just to allow, feel, and see what effect something has. This is true not just in class, but in everything we do. Whether you are with your friends or enemies, or at your job, it is very important to begin to discriminate between that which comes naturally and that which is performed and then to choose what comes naturally.

It is important, however, that we don’t watch from our heads but that we feel throughout. We have feeling nerves everywhere but very many of us watch mostly from our heads. I wish we could gradually become conscious of it and trust our ability to sense from head to toe.

If you were a tight rope walker high up on a suspended rope, how much sensitivity would you need for the next step forward, the next step backward?

Usually, we swallow our sensations as though they are not existing. And yet there is this possibility to sense – as you know, the whole work we are doing is called sensory awareness, awareness of the senses. That doesn’t mean that the mind tells the senses, “Be good,” but the senses, in themselves, are able to feel and discriminate. It is very interesting to realize that we can notice even the slightest lack of air in a room. When we notice that, we open a window. Who knows what I mean? In the same way, when we notice that there is not enough sensitivity in ourselves, we open our inner windows, so that we feel more.

This possibility to feel more can be exceedingly helpful to us, because then we can feel what feels good to us, what we are afraid of, what we withdraw from, where we hold back, where we give ourselves fully. This can be a great teacher in life and I would suggest that you find out about it. For instance, when you go away from here, from the school house, every stone on the road can tell you a story. It’s very nice to walk on the stones and to let them help you to wake up. And you would hopefully not complain and wonder: “Why is this road not smooth and even? Why is the road not parquet?” No, it is as it is! And you respond to it, and hopefully your response is spontaneous rather than directed.

Even if you do the greatest nonsense spontaneously, it’s much better than directing yourself. But the important thing is to find the middle way: to be personal, spontaneous, and at the same time not oppressive. It would be very beautiful to be awake enough – not watching, but being there – for what you notice of yourself and of the other, and then to respond from that experience.

From “Zen and Psychoanalysis” to Barra de Navidad

SLG: I was hoping that you would tell me a little bit about your work in Mexico. How it came about and – also how you discovered Barra.

CS: I don’t remember the year in which Erich Fromm and Daisetz Suzuki, the old scientist of Buddhism, had together a seminar in Cuernavaca, Mexico, which a great deal of psychotherapists attended*. At that time Erich Fromm was very interested in Sensory Awareness and he invited me to join him and give a talk about our work. So, I went to Mexico and it was for me a very significant and beautiful occasion. The relationship between Erich from Daisetz Suzuki was a very beautiful and close one. Erich Fromm felt of Daisetz Suzuki as the wise father of knowing.

For me, a great moment in the conference was when Erich Fromm began to explain what he wanted to offer during this time and then gave the word to Daisetz Suzuki. Suzuki was at that time already near eighty and had spent his entire life digging deeply into Buddhist knowledge and Buddhist beliefs. He raised his eyes to the audience and said: “I want to introduce myself. I am a student of Zen.“ – after which all the doctors and professors [who had previously introduced themselves with all their titles and credentials] nearly crawled under their chairs with shame. As they so proudly sat there in the audience . . . “I’m a student of Zen.” I will never forget this. This is very similar to what Elsa Gindler meant when she said, “I want not to teach, I want to find out, and want to go as deep as possible into the forces which move the human being.” I was greatly impressed by this statement. It’s also very similar to that what Shunriu Suzuki said in the book titled:Zen Mind – Beginners Mind. So, we all are in the same boat.

I was asked to give a lecture [at this conference] and I did so with the help of slides. The conference attendees were very interested. After the lecture two leading psychiatrists in Mexico, Dr. Dias and Dr. Chavez asked me if I would be willing to give a longer course in Mexico. This then later on took place. I don’t know whether I should mention my own attempts at speaking Spanish. It was very difficult for me because I thought, “All the Mexican people. How can I possibly work with them, not being able to speak Spanish? So, I took a dictionary and wanted at least to know with what I would work [in the first session]. I looked into the dictionary and found the word for forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, lips, chin. All the psychologists were lying on the floor and I began to ask questions . . . . Silence. I was very impressed with their attention. At last, when I came to the chin – there was still a deadly silence – suddenly Dr. Diaz sat up and he asked: “What did you say?” (Laughs) [This is when I] realized nobody had understood my Spanish and that everybody could speak English. (More laughter). After that everything went beautifully and until today the psychologists and psychiatrists either come or send their patients to my courses in Mexico.

When I gave this first course in Mexico we worked always Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And then there was a pause until the next week. And I was invited by one of the patients of Dr. Chavez to live in a very beautiful and sumptuous house in Mexico City. I was also permitted to bring four friends with me, who also were invited to live there. This was the first time that I brought Charles Brooks with me who was one of my students. And there was also a torch singer, a very fabulous woman. So we were living in this house; we were beautifully take care of; we eat there; everything was just unbelievably sumptuous and beautiful. But that was only the first time. Later I rented my own place and a room for working. This was very extraordinary, this first time and the connection with these psychiatrist and their relatives has been very warm and very deeply appreciative during all these years – until today.

SLG: So, and then one year you traveled with Charles through Mexico.

CS: Yeah. We traveled through the big, big valley of Mexico. And suddenly we saw a very elegant new truck with a sign on the side: “Barra de Navidad. The Côte d’Azur of Mexico.” Charles saw the sign first and said, “What, Barra de Navidad, The Côte d’Azur of Mexico? Let’s go!” So, we went long, long ways traveling with our little Volkswagen through Mexico and came at last to a river. There were a number of boats, no bridge, nothing. And there were also two or three boats over which wooden planks were laid, where one could go with one’s little car on one of these boats. And Charles rolled his trousers up to his hips and waded through this very unusually stony river. And always, when he found a little more of a passage, he would give us a sign that we could come. In other words he was the guide. When we landed on the other shore we went a little bit further and finally came to Barra de Navidad, the Côte d’Azur of Mexico. (Laughter)

I can’t tell you how it looked. The cows were on the beach; and the dogs were chasing the cows over the beach; and not a single person. There was absolutely nothing except for a place where we could have a drink, and where we took quite some drinks, I remember. The only other guests were a Scottish man who sat silently with his drink and a nurse tried to win his attention. (Stefan laughs) The man who owned this restaurant was a lover of Spain and behaved like a Spanish Grande: Always when I came he kissed my hand and bowed deeply. I was anything but the Côte d’Azur of Mexico (laughs). Of course we were the sensation of the place. But it was so inviting – and the man who owned this place was also so inviting. So I said: “For the next Study Group we could come to Barra de Navidad – the Côte d’Azur of Mexico. (Laughter)

SLG: You probably don’t remember what year that was.

CS: No, I don’t. But I could – I could probably dig it out. In any case: The owner of this place loved to sing. He had a beautiful voice and he always wanted the most lovely girls to sit on his knees. He always sang and made music between our Study Group sessions. It was a hilarious time. The people who were mainly fishermen were speechless. They couldn’t believe that such a thing as we existed. It was one of the most hilarious Study Groups I ever gave.

SLG: I ‘m trying to imagine how much this place must have changed since you were first here.

CS: Yeah. It was really a fisherman place. But now it’s unfortunately becoming more and more of a resort.

* Seminar with Erich Fromm and D. T. Suzuki: Zen and Psychoanalysis, held in Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1957.