Spontaneous Mindfulness

A Weekend of Sensory Awareness

October 9 – 11, 2015

Photos

The workshop was a diverse mixture of ages, backgrounds, old-time students and leaders of Sensory Awareness as well as newcomers. See our winter newsletter for an in-depth report on the workshop.

Sensory Awareness is not just for a weekend. What we explore here opens the door to a lifetime of more meaningful living, a life more deeply tasted, more fully felt.

(Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

 

Without hesitation we can enter a world of enriched vitality, because the potential for Sensory Awareness is already alive within us, waiting to be tapped. Skillful guidance can quickly help us find our way beyond habitual living into a world that is fresh, significant… and inviting.

 

Sensory Awareness:  Jumping Right In
Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt
             

 

 

Deep Mindfulness
Pat Meyer-Peterson

Moving beyond the mindfulness we may have cultivated in meditation, Sensory Awareness invites us to make simple, modest experiments in connecting ourselves and the world—lifting a small stone, bringing the palm to the forehead, arriving at a new way to stand. Simplicity turns out to be intriguing. Life reveals itself with new presence.

 

 

 

 

Sensing:  The Inner Journey
Enric Bruguera
Each sensing experiment can be an inner journey, one that allows us to see new ways of being in the world—even to live in a new way, if we choose. What will we discover?

Nature and Your Nature
Krista Sattler

The nature we admire in the world that surrounds us has a deep connection with our own nature. How would it be to live from our own nature, without second-guessing and calculation?  With an innocent freshness we can explore the inner and outer world with assurance and delight.

Joy in the Joints: Music in the Soul
Eugene Tashima & Carol Buck

 

Sometimes creakiness or weariness—or just routine—can rob us of the pleasure of simple, easeful movement. Following the path of Sensory Awareness, we can step little by little into a world of genuine freedom and delight. In tiny, tender gestures, or bold extravagant moves, we can discover our inherent vitality. We can meet music in such a way that we are not on the outside, listening, but saturated with it – our very tissues part of the music itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carol Buck, professional cellist, shared stories and her music. At one point participants placed their hands on her while she played to feel the resonance of the music move through her and, sometimes, into them. She told us of her despair over 40 years ago when she was diagnosed with advanced Scleroderma, a progressive, degenerative autoimmune disease that causes hardening of connective tissue, can spread to the vital organs and can be fatal.  Her doctor told her that there was no cure or treatment. She could only hold down the strings of her cello with the index finger of her left hand.  She happened to attend a Sensory Awareness class led by Charlotte Selver and she felt a difference right away, “I could feel where the frozen areas in my tissues met the areas that were still alive.”  That was late summer. She continued to attend Sensory Awareness classes and by December, she was moving with ease. Now in her 70s, agile and energetic, she performs with several musical ensembles in New York City and is a Leader in the Sensory Awareness Leaders Guild.

Entering a Lifetime of Awareness
Lee Klinger Lesser

In the quickness of play, change happens fast and spontaneously. How do we respond when things are moving fast?

 

 

 

Each moment, no matter how ordinary, offers the possibility of a richer, more sensitive and vital connection from which we can respond to what is needed in ourselves and in those around us.