Charles Genoud

Twenty years ago Charles discovered the practice of sensory awareness at a workshop led by Michael Topphof, a Dutch psychotherapist. Participants were asked to walk, sit or lie down. Sometimes they were asked to work in groups of two or three, placing their hands on the shoulders or feet or some other part of the body of another person. Participants were asked to take the arm of another and to move it slowly. It was a simple, powerful practice. By that time, Charles had practiced meditation in the Tibetan and Theravada tradition for over ten years. Charles saw how sensory awareness could help the practice of meditation. How It could help to be grounded, more balanced yet being at the same time totally playful. After the first workshop, Charles decided to learn more about sensory awareness, and to use it as a stepping stone for the practice of meditation. He attended more workshops with Michael Topphof in France and in Spain, and also attended workshops in Mexico with Charlotte Sealver, the pioneer in the field of sensory awareness. All the while continuing with his studies and practice of Tibetan and Theravada Buddhism. Through the years, through every retreat he led, he would discover new ways of disclosing the many preconceptions that shape and restrain the lives of people. The preconceptions that lead men and women to be taken in by the fiction of time and space, The preconceptions that leads for example, to the perception the world through the unique notion of efficiency. The practice of Gesture of Awareness as Charles calls his practice is an inquiry into the nature of such fictions. It questions the notion of time and aim. Questioning, and yet not looking for conclusion, for knowledge, for to do so would reduce one’s experience to the concept of experience.