I have been a student of Sensory Awareness for over 18 years. I took a workshop this Saturday and last Saturday so am renewed in the study, the practice, which means again reading the books.
This comes from the book Waking Up by William C. Littlewood and Mary Alice Roche. These are the words of my beloved teacher Charlotte Selver:
Charlotte is talking about balance, and muscle tone:
You know sailboats, don’t you? Where there’s no wind, the sail gets slack. The breeze or the wind is constantly doing something to the sails. And our muscles in front and back and on the sides, inside and outside, could be constantly moved by the inner breeze. By breathing, in other words. And would neither get tight nor get slack but would be all the time massaged through by breathing. Getting smaller and larger and smaller and larger through breathing.
In another talk, Charlotte begins:
In the last session we touched the front and the back of the shoulder area of a partner. And you probably noticed that there’s something living inside. There is something going on in us which could constantly form us: the excursions of breathing.
While breathing is happening – and it’s happening all the time – the inner tissues are being formed by what comes in and what goes out. And the more delicate our tissues are to this forming capacity of our breathing – to this refreshing, renewing capacity of our breathing – the more will come into a posture which is sensitive and reactive and open for what is constantly being a creative power in us.
When your breathing is very hindered, then you will easily collapse and fall together because you are not reacting to this possibility of allowing the air to form you. When your breathing is more creative – when you are not closing yourself against it – then there is a possibility of being constantly re-formed by breathing.
She continues on to speak about the "source of life, breathing," and how we are shaped for it.
I love the "possibility of being constantly re-formed by breathing."
I settle in to enjoy and appreciate the play of air as it dances in and out!