Sensory Awareness

Posted on August 27, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Awake

I’m reading Stefan Laeng’s Substack on Charlotte Selver and Sensory Awareness when I notice a helicopter flying back and forth overhead, flying between the ocean and Mt. Tam. Then I smell smoke and get an alert about a vegetation fire. Now, the alert says the wildfire is near Rodeo Beach where I almost went today. Rodeo Beach is right over the ridge, so now my eyes are constantly looking up and watching the sky. I walk outside and take some pictures. I don’t see smoke but I am awake.

My nose is wiggling in the air like Mole in Wind in the Willows when he’s called outside by the smells and sounds of spring. This is a different smell, not the warm, comforting smell of a fire burning in the fireplace. This is a call to alertness. It’s primal.

I look at what I’ve been reading.

Fritz Perls: We don’t have an organism. We are the organism.

Charlotte: So the question would be: is there a state possible in which we can be without watching and without observing—simply awake? Is there a state of awareness possible which is permitted through our whole self from head to foot? So that everywhere we can be aware?

What I have most learned in this work is what it is like to be there for what is needed. It is a very difficult thing to understand that the appetite for having and getting can be transformed into a giving. To the end of her life Elsa Gindler (Charlotte’s teacher) said, “What does this want from me?,” not “What do I want from it?”

I keep returning to Charlotte’s words: What does this want from me? And How do I meet what comes? In this moment, I’m awake, listening, aware, alert. A helicopter travels back and forth overhead. And now the ding of a new alert. Forward progress of the fire is stopped and fire crews will remain on the scene. And helicopters continue to travel back and forth.

Posted on August 2, 2026August 11, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Return to Our Senses

Today I was at Book Passage attending a reading by Lee Klinger Lesser. She read from her book Return to Our Senses: A Path to Stability in an Unstable World. To begin, Lee led us in grounding on our chairs and feeling the support of the earth. She led us to make a fist and feel how we were affected, and to notice how a fist of anger affects us. Also, notice how a different fist, a softer meeting, can lead us to a resilience that meets the challenges of these days. Lee discussed her work with Veterans PATH, PATH standing for Peace, Acceptance, Transformation, and Honor. Lee has changed lives with this program, healed the wounds that come with war.

She leads retreats with wildfire fighters, helping them to deal with pain, loss, and death. She spoke of Jarvis Masters, a wonderful man and how he’s transformed his unjust path on Death Row to teach and lead with speaking and his books. I could go on and on about the open heart that is Lee, and the works she does, but I’ll just say to buy her book and feel hope for opening your heart to bring forth your part in changing yourself, and in that, the world.

Posted on July 10, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

A Pause to Tender Tenderness

Aware of my friend as she was in surgery, my eye was caught by the front of a beautiful book standing upright on my bookshelf. The words “Each time you judge yourself you break your own heart,” jumped out at me. The book, Meditation Art, Openings to Awareness, was created by my friend Etta B. Ehrlich. For years, we were in Sensory Awareness workshops together. Older than I, she passed away a few years ago. In the book, she pastes words of wisdom on interesting bottles, and Virginia Brown photographs them. The book, a treasure, is no longer available, but I found some photos from a gallery in which the bottles were displayed.

She quotes our teacher Charlotte Selver in the book. Here’s one quote.

“Pay attention to the breath as it is now. As your breathing is, so you are. Since breathing happens by itself, it teaches us to trust what is needed now and to allow it.This can be the foundation for a whole new perception of ourselves in all our functions. I agree that it is difficult to be so peaceful and undemanding that one would really be present in one’s breathing activity without influencing it.”

As I wait for news on my friend, I sit with intention to “notice precisely where inhalations and exhalations begin and end”.

Posted on June 6, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Folding and Unfolding

Misty Hannah led us today in Sensory Awareness on Zoom. She began with how she was folding her laundry today, folding and unfolding, noticing weight and texture.

She invited us to feel our shape, and then slowly to fold down, and then unfold back up and bring our arms out. I became an egret, a heron, with wings broad and scooping the air. My arms were fluid, not fixed like an airplane wing.

Folded, I felt open in the back of the spine, breath pouring in, fluid. When I unfolded back up, my head kept moving on its wand of a neck making figure 8’s, a dance of infinity.

As I fold and unfold, and knots untie, I’m reminded of Rilke’s wonderful poem from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

If we surrendered

to earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again ..

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

The earth folds and unfolds, rises and falls.

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Touch

Yesterday I participated in a Sensory Awareness workshop in Berkeley. The pandemic brought workshops on-line on Zoom, and there can be power in that, but in person touch is a leap.

To begin, we brought one hand to our forehead, and eventually the other to the back of the head. Quite lovely, but then, someone else brought their hand to our forehead, and then, to the back of the head. A more profound and deep connection.

We held a bamboo pole to feel the pull of gravity, and the responding lift. We tapped each other’s backs. We sat back to back with another and simultaneously rubbed each other’s backs.

There were other experiments, other ways of awakening and touching into vitality, other ways of opening to play and returning to the spontaneity of childhood.

I’m with this now, the grounding vibration in my feet, signaling up to the top of my head, and deep into the core.

The poem Notes to Self above the Paradox Valley by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer was read.

The whole poem is exquisite but I’m with how “You cannot shovel snow that is yet to fall.”

“Put down the shovel. Breathe

into the dark spaces of your back,

feel how they open like cave doors

to let in the light.”

Posted on December 5, 2021December 5, 2021 by Cathy Edgett

Living – Relationship

Yesterday when I came to my Sensory Awareness Zoom class, I thought I felt fine, but as we worked with feeling the support of the floor, standing was too much. I needed to get down on the floor to fully receive and feel the support. We were working with boundaries, and I felt how my cells had been invaded by something foreign, and potentially dangerous, though the purpose was to potentially save my life.

I felt nauseous and tired as I processed the effects of the Covid booster shot the day before.

Then we went to the wall, and placed our hands there. At first, my feet were so sensitive from noticing, my hands needed time to meet, to truly meet and receive the wall, but then the support came through. I rested my forehead and hands on the wall and received and filled with reception, woke. I was no longer tired. I was awake, soothingly, comfortably, easily awake. In relationship, when we notice what is always here, there is the possibility of renewal, connection with the core, the inner-outer cord of support.

Martin Buber wrote: All real living is about relationship.

And Marion Milner discovered through her own explorations in her wonderful book A Life of One’s Own that:

But now concentration, instead of being a matter of time tables and rules, was a magician’s wand. By a simple self-chosen act of keeping my thoughts on one thing at a time instead of dozens, I had found a new window opening out across a new country of wide-open horizons and unexplored delights.

We’re not alone. We’re living Relationship.

Elaine Chan-Scherer took photos of the sunset at Ocean Beach last night. We’re in the time of December King Tides, though Queen works, too, and the tides are extraordinarily high balanced with a shore-revealing low.

Enjoy the December light and receive the gift of her perception capturing these moments blending water, fire, earth, and air.

Posted on June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 by Cathy Edgett

I came to Sensory Awareness in 1993 and for me, it’s been a lifeline, a lifeline of fluidity and connection.

Here’s a beautiful offering and taste.

Find a comfortable place to watch and participate as Stefan leads us From Isolation to Connection.

Posted on April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Honoring Movement in the Moment

I ventured out today and wore my mask into the grocery store. It’s been two weeks and it was time, but the whole experience felt strange and overwhelming.

Yesterday, Lee Klinger Lesser ended the Sensory Awareness workshop by reading a children’s book to the 125 of us who were on Zoom and spread across the globe. She read Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, and we all joined in to sing along and clap our hands.

I hate to destroy the ending for you but I will say that when Pete steps in blueberries, he sings, “I love my blue shoes,” and when he steps in strawberries, “I love my red shoes,” and when in mud, “I love my wet shoes.” We sang together around the world a rather silly song but not really because no matter what was happening with his shoes, Pete loved them, and here we all are, caught in a situation we wouldn’t choose, and yet, we can clap and sing, “I love my shelter-in-place”, and in my case, “I love that those I love are currently safe in their respective shelters-in-place”. I have hands to clap, a voice to sing, and feet I can move and tap and swing.

I know it’s about how I meet what comes, so I put my hands together now, and feel that meeting, and hope as I meet myself, I meet you too, in the movement in the moment, this moment, now. Peace!

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Cathy Edgett

Each One of Us

This morning I’m thinking about superheroes. I watched Superman as a child but have never really related to the idea of a superhero, and this morning I realized why. We are all superheroes, and babies and small children show us the way if we forget.

My almost six month old grandson can now use both hands to put things into his mouth. Somehow that new ability seems like the most superhero thing I can imagine.

I watch this little guy learn something new every day as he reaches out to explore his environment.

I’ve been studying and practicing Sensory Awareness for 27 years, and yet yesterday being led on the Sensory Awareness Zoom call I felt and learned something new. I felt a new awareness of what it is to be centered, to be off-balance and centered. I played with the two learning that the center is always there for me, and in that dance of play, I can branch out like a tree.

I felt what it is to be still enough to feel the movement of breath in and out, not just through heart, throat, and lungs but everywhere. I receive, and without doing anything, my inner moves in and out. I’m involved even when still, perhaps even more so when still.

We are all Superheroes, and letting ourselves feel and honor that, well, that is a gift.

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Cathy Edgett

Sensory Awareness

A Sensory Awareness workshop retreat was planned for this Saturday and Sunday in Berkeley, CA. Shelter-in-place has changed that. Now, it will be a free online retreat. If you are curious, you can check it out here:

https://sensoryawareness.org

There’s a beautiful video on the website that gives a sense of what the practice of Sensory Awareness is about.

I stumbled into Sensory Awareness in a poetry workshop with Norman Fischer at Green Gulch Zen Center in 1993. The group wasn’t coming together so Norman led us in some sensing. We stood in a circle and touched the shoulders and back of the person in front of us. We then distributed ourselves around the landscape of Green Gulch and wrote. When we came back together, we sat in a circle and read what we’d written. As we read around the circle, it was as though we’d written one poem.

Intrigued, I signed up to study with Charlotte Selver, the founder of Sensory Awareness. I studied with her in Mexico, and on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. Charlotte lived nearby so I also studied here. In 2005 and 2006 when I went through chemotherapy and radiation for cancer treatment, Sensory Awareness was my lifeline. It’s a gift you can give yourself, especially now in such challenging times.

This weekend offers an opportunity to check Sensory Awareness out in the privacy of your home. It’s an invitation for support. I’ll be there, well, here, but in a square on the Zoom screen.