Charlotte Selver

Charlotte Selver (April 4, 1901, in Ruhrort (Duisburg), Germany – August 22, 2003, in Muir Beach, California; née Wittgenstein) was a teacher of the Gindler/Jacoby method of awareness and exercise, a somatic bodywork method she further developed and taught after her arrival in the United States in 1938 as Sensory Awareness.

The central point of Selver's work was "experience through the senses". She was convinced that the well-being of the individual, the society as a whole and even the worries about our environment depend on how far we find new confidence in organic processes.

Selver had a deciding influence on the "Human Potential Movement", which was cultivated and named at the Esalen Institute, where she taught as of 1963. Because of that, she also had influence on Humanistic Psychology and the therapies based on it. Aspects of her work, especially the conscious sensing of the body and the following of physical sensations (Sensory Awareness), flowed into many of the methods of physical work, physical therapy, physical psychotherapy and psychotherapy which still exist at Esalen and other venues today.

Biography

In the 1920s, Charlotte Selver encountered Elsa Gindler in Berlin, who together with the students in her courses, researched how the natural gifts of people could be developed, even at an adult age. Up until she emigrated to New York in 1938, she studied with Elsa Gindler and the music teacher, Heinrich Jacoby, and she reestablished contact with them in the 1950s.

In 1971, the "Sensory Awareness Foundation" was brought into being. Its goal is to preserve and document Charlotte Selver's life work.