“There is something very sacred about our nature and the nature of things—the nature of coming together, being together, getting in contact with each other and having a sensitive connection to what we are doing.”
—Charlotte Selver
Sensory Awareness is an experiential study that helps us rediscover our natural birthright: an embodied felt sense of authenticity and vitality. Sensing focuses on the cultivation of an ever-deepening awareness of our sensory experience as a gateway into ourselves and into a deeper connection with the world around us.
We don’t have to do anything special. No techniques or exercises. We are already sensing all of the time. We only have to learn to pay attention to our own experience in a way that is not common in western cultures, where we tend to be more focused on experiencing our lives from the neck up. On the other hand, this work is very accessible. People commonly report a sense of truly “coming home”: To ourselves, to each other, to everything that exists.
Since this work is experiential, why not take some time to participate in a Sensing experiment? It is the work itself and your own experience that is the teacher. This experiment is led by Stefan Laeng, a highly respected member of the Sensory Awareness Leaders Guild. It’s best if you are someplace where you won’t be disturbed and have a place to sit, lie down or move about a bit.
You may hear some background noises on the audio file, just like in life where we often hear all kinds of sounds around us. There will be pauses to give you time to give your attention to what is suggested. Just follow the leader’s simple guidance and see where it takes you.
For this experiment, you will need to be seated in a chair. Just click the “play” arrow when you are ready.
Click here: Head and Hands: A 15-minute sensing experiment
For more audio files and resources from Stefan Laeng: click here.
What happens in a class or workshop?
In workshops, classes and individual sessions students are guided through simple sensory experiments to help them become more deeply attuned and responsive to the felt sensations and dynamics of gravity, breathing, balance, energy, movement, and more. Through a progressive awareness-expanding process, habitual thoughts and tensions recede into the background as our senses revive and we come to experience life more fully and clearly in the moment. In this way we can gradually develop our capacity to embody greater ease, presence and authenticity in everyday life.
Similar in aim to many types of meditation and mindfulness practices this non-dogmatic work offers a down-to-earth and proven way to revive greater aliveness and presence. Developed in Europe over many years, later brought to the U.S. and popularized by Charlotte Selver, this unique form of mind/body re-education has touched the lives of thousands. Many find this life-affirming practice to be transformational and life-enhancing with benefits for our entire being: body, mind and spirit. Out of these simple experiments, a sense of connection and relationship to ourselves and the world around us emerges naturally. Compassion develops as we feel more connected and aware of the myriad relationships we often take for granted and the many natural resources that are always available: the pull of gravity, the aliveness of everything on the earth and beyond, the air, the sun, the symbiotic relationship we share with all kinds of living beings and processes. It is one thing to have an intellectual concept about all of these things, another to know it from lived experience, fully present for the wonder of being alive.
This work’s valuable legacy lives on through the educational efforts and projects of the Sensory Awareness Foundation and through the many approved teachers of the Sensory Awareness Leaders’ Guild worldwide.
About the Sensory Awareness Foundation
The Sensory Awareness Foundation is dedicated to promoting the legacy of the study developed by Charlotte Selver known as Sensory Awareness. While doing so it recognizes that it is essential to preserve this work’s integrity while earning its widespread recognition and credibility. In this effort, the Foundation seeks to help develop and support Sensory Awareness leaders, document and distribute teachings, and form alliances with like-minded groups and organizations.