Sensory Awareness and Our Attitude Towards Life
Charlotte Selver
Abstract: In this excerpt Selver presents the attitude of the work of Sensory Awareness and the responsibility of becoming aware and more fully living our lives through simple, daily activities. She clarifies how Sensory Awareness, even though often having therapeutic effects, is not meant to be therapy.
An Interview with Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks
Ilana Rubenfeld
Abstract: Ilana Rubenfeld comments on the simplicity and profundity of the teaching of Charlotte Selver, excerpting an interview with Charlotte Selver and Charles V. W. Brooks that took place in September 1976, in New York City, in which the development of "Sensory Awareness" was discussed. The author states that the emphasis of Selver's work on awareness and presence influenced both the creation of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® and the field of body psychotherapy.
Interview with Charlotte Selver
Charles Schick
Abstract: In this interview Charlotte talkes about the necessity of the work of Sensory Awareness being involved in the world situation. She cites the importance of differentiating between sensations and emotions and describes some of the strong influences she received from Elsa Gindler.
The Influence of Elsa Gindler on Somatic Psychotherapy and on Charlotte Selver
Judyth O. Weaver, Ph.D., SEP, RCSP
Abstract: This article depicts the early stages of the practice of somatic inquiry in Europe and its influence in psychotherapy as well as other fields. It tracks the work coming to the United States with Charlotte Selver and others and traces its influence and implications in various somatic fields and with varied members of the body-psychotherapeutic community.
Gymnastic
Elsa Gindler
Abstract: The author writes about consciousness in the simple, ordinary activities of life such as standing, sitting, and working to awaken an understanding of what happens in them. Breath is a major focus, as is relaxation, tension, and gravity, to help people understand more fully their own constitution in order to learn how to take care of themselves. This article, written early in her work, is the only piece she published and all that was not burned when her studio was destroyed in the final months of World War II.
Integrating Sensory Awareness And Somatic Psychotherapy
Judyth O. Weaver, Ph.D., SEP, RCSP
Abstract: The author depicts how, after returning from serious study in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan, she entered the work of Sensory Awareness which she felt was a western version of Zen practice. After studying Reichian therapy the author connects the lineage and intention between these seemingly disparate practices. During years of practice the two fields are integrated in highly successful and satisfying experiences. Case studies are presented and the philosophy and method of teaching this “Sensory-Awareness-based somatic psychotherapy” in graduate schools.
Charlotte Selver in 1965
Peter Levine, Ph.D.
Abstract: The author describes his first, and only, experience in a workshop with Charlotte Selver and the unexpected and immense effect it had on him. He credits her work with informing his development of Sensory Awareness.
Experiencing: A Memoir
Marjorie Rand, Ph.D.
Abstract: The author describes her journey through dance and gestalt and how she discovered Sensory Awareness without knowing what it was. She describes how SA has been her introduction to the concept of meditation. She cites the importance of SA in body psychotherapy and how she uses it in her own IBP practice.
How is Breathing Now?
Terry Ray, M.A., LPC
Abstract: The work of Sensory Awareness is a way for the psychotherapist to listen to what is underneath the words that the client is saying, and a way of guiding her to open to her deeper and more profound understandings. The author describes her powerful introduction to Charlotte Selver’s work and offers a clear example of how she brings her background of sensing to her psychotherapy practice.
My Experience with Charlotte Selver and Sensory Awareness
Barbara Cabbot, Psy.D., LMT
Abstract: This article reflects Dr. Barbara Cabott’s experiences with Charlotte Selver, over a span of 32 years. The author expresses the benefits received through Selver’s work in Sensory Awareness, both at a personal level and a professional level. Case examples are included, showing how sensing is combined with Psychotherapy to benefit clients in private practice. Dr. Cabott takes you step by step through three sessions where sensory experiments facilitated change at a body, mind, emotional level, showing the power and authenticity of sensing and body mind interventions.
Sensing is the Heart of the Contact
Ginger Clark, Ph.D., M.F.T.
Abstract: Sensory Awareness or “sensing” is fundamental to the practice of relational somatic psychotherapy, both for the therapist and the client. Two cases illustrate how sensing prepares the ground for attuned contact with the bodyself and with another. In this sense, sensing is both a means and an end.
How Charlotte Selver Influenced My Work
Richard Lowe, M.A., M.F.T.
Abstract: In this article I describe how I was first attracted to the work of Charlotte Selver, known as Sensory Awareness, my assessment of Charlotte Selver’s importance, her work’s correspondence to psychotherapy, and how her work has influenced my work as an integrative psychotherapist.
Sensory Awareness, Creative Expression, and Healing
Connie Smith Siegel, M.F.A.
Abstract: This article describes the use of art to address personal issues, using a process called Self-Guidance in Drawing and Color. This process combines creative expression with Sensory Awareness, revealing an elemental body language that not only expresses strong emotion in line, shape and color, but transforms them as well.
Sensory Awareness and Graduate School: Reflections of a Grateful Student
Susan Kilkus, M.A.
Abstract: This article offers reflections on a course in Sensory Awareness that was part of the graduate curriculum in a somatic psychology program. The student’s perspective includes the effects of sensory awareness practice on personal and professional development, clinical practice and academic support.
USABP Journal Vol. 3, No. 2
A Neuroscience Book Review (with a Primer of Terms and Concepts)
Aline LaPierre, Psy.D.
Abstract: This is the first of a three part review. I have approached the now extensive neuroscience literature with an educational objective, and an eye to its relevance to our somatic psychotherapeutic work. It is my hope that these reviews can serve as an orientation to this broad field and as a point of reference to one of its core integrative questions: What is the self in neurobiological terms?
In this issue, Part I: Understanding the Mind-Brain and Nervous System orients us to current foundational books that map the essential principles of neuroscience. In the next issue, Part II: Affective and Developmental Neuroscience will look at authors such as Antonio Damasio, Joseph Le Doux, and Jaak Panksepp, at Allan Schore’s regulation theory, and at Dan Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology. Finally, Part III: Neuroscience in Somatic Clinical Application will explore the integration of neuroscience in body-centered clinical work
The Genomic Science Foundation of Body Psychotherapy
Ernest Lawrence Rossi, Ph.D.
Abstract: This paper introduces the genomic science foundation of body psychotherapy ranging from Darwinian evolution and classical Mendelian genetics to the Watson and Crick molecular dynamics of DNA in human development, adaptation, stress and performance. Most of our genes are active players responding adaptively and cooperatively to the stimuli, challenges, stresses and traumas of our ever-changing daily activities. We outline how DNA microarray of research into gene expression will make it possible to define the specific characteristics and therapeutic values that distinguish each school of body psychotherapy on a molecular-genomic level.
Integrating Pre and Perinatal Psyschology and Body Oriented Psychotherapy
Marjorie L. Rand, Ph.D. with Christine Caldwell, Ph.D.
Abstract: A natural affinity exists between the fields of birth psychology and somatic psychology. Their basic tenets, many of their assessment tools, and quite a few of their clinical techniques are strikingly similar. In many cases, a difference of degree rather than kind is operating. Both these fields seem to recognize elemental features of human experience not included in currently dominant paradigms of psychotherapy, and seek to both extend and reorient them. This article begins the process of identifying some of the bridges that naturally occur between these two fields. A comparison of Emerson's birth stages and Rosenberg's Reichian segments demonstrates how birth issues can be recognized and worked with in the context of somatic psychotherapy.
Transference and Countertransference in Organismic Psychotherapy
Anna Maria Bononcini and Mauro Pini
Abstract: The article deals with the concepts of transference and countertransference as used in the field of Organismic Psychotherapy, focusing attention on the relationship between its theoretical model of reference and technical repertory. Organismic Psychotherapy, as conceptualized by Malcolm Brown, is characterized by systematic attention to everything occurring at the somatic level during the sessions: the therapist is trained to identify the relationship between what s/he experiences physically and what the patient expresses both verbally and non-verbally. Furthermore, the therapist must be capable of transforming his/her own psychic wounds into a vantage point for the observation of the client. This enables him/her to empathize with the client's wounds in a process that eventually leads the latter to self-actualization.
Health-threatening Bulimia Nervosa and a Promising New Treatment Approach
Christa D. Ventling, D.Phil
Abstract: Patients with eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa (BN) are well known to be difficult to treat psychotherapeutically. A vast literature on cognitive behavioral psychotherapy (CBP), still the treatment of choice, given to in-patients for a limited amount of time testifies to the discouraging low success rates. No literature on the success rates of a body-oriented psychotherapy treatment exists as yet. This article describes highlights from the first two years of an ongoing bioenergetically oriented psychotherapy of a young woman suffering from BN with compulsive self-injury behavior, the most severe form of BN. Since eating disorders according to recent research data have certain defined neurobiological deficits, I felt it important for the patient to know about these and made psychoeducation a part of the therapeutic treatment. The combination of psychotherapy and psychoeducation proved to be of great value. Since the therapy is still going on, it is, however, too early to say whether this approach seemingly able to reverse the neurobiological deficits also is of lasting effect. Based on scientific data and the personal experience so far a 7-point treatment program for BN and similar eating disorders is proposed.
