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Sensory Awareness is a field of health science that emphasizes that awareness of our sensory perceptions can contribute positively to our physical and mental health, as well as a positive outlook on life and a more caring attitude toward others and the society as a whole.  Sensory Awareness sharpens our senses to provide a more heightened connection of our senses to ourselves and everything else around us.  Sensory Awareness can also facilitate our body’s inherent healing ability.

Sensory Awareness is also known as mindfulness or part of the human potential movement.  The emergence of Sensory Awareness in the U.S. is usually credited to Charlotte Selver (1901-2003), originally a German music teacher who studied with Elsa Gindler of Berlin, and then emigrated to New York in 1938.  Beginning in the late 1950s to early 1960s, she started to teach what later became known as Sensory Awareness at the New School for Social Research in New York and the Esalen Institute in California.  She and  other leading intellectuals of that period (e.g., Erich Fromm, Alan Watts, Fritz and Laura Perls, Shunryu Suzuki, and many others) helped to establish and grow the human potential movement that is now often part of the portfolio of physical therapy and psychotherapy treatment options.

At the suggestion of a relative that Sensory Awareness could be beneficial to my Taiji practice, I participated at the “Sensory Awareness:  Meditation in Action” Workshop at the Garrison Institute in NY October 7-9, 2016. [1]  In this article I would like to share my thoughts on some of the relationships between Taiji and Sensory Awareness.
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A recent medical study showed that practicing Taiji is equally effective versus doing physical therapy for knee osteoarthritis. [1][2]  Knee osteoarthritis, commonly known as wear-and-tear arthritis of the knee, is a condition in which the natural cushioning between joints in the knee — cartilage — wears away. When this happens, the bones of the knee joints rub more closely against one another with less of the shock-absorbing benefits of cartilage, resulting in pain, swelling, stiffness, and decreased ability to move.  More than 27 million people in the U.S. have osteoarthritis, with the knee being one of the most commonly affected areas. Women are more likely to have osteoarthritis than men.

With respect to osteoarthritis, reference 1 states that “Currently there is no effective medical treatments.  Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and acetaminophen are commonly used to treat osteoarthritis but often fail to relieve symptoms and may cause serious adverse effects.  Physical therapy, a globally recommended element of the standard care regimen for knee osteoarthritis produces moderate benefits for pain and physical functioning, but data on psychological well being and durability effects are limited.”

Previous studies of Taiji already showed promise that it can reduce pain and improve physical and psychological health for patients with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, and knee osteoarthritis. The current study compares a group practicing Taiji and another group undergoing physical therapy.  The results show that both approaches produced beneficial effects in treating knee osteoarthritis, but the Taiji group had significanly greater improvements in depression and the physical component of quality of life (i.e., overall health improvement).

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