Elsa Gindler


Elsa Gindler was a somatic bodywork pioneer in Germany.
Born in Berlin, gymnastics teacher, student of Hedwig Kallmeyer.
From her personal experience of recovering from tuberculosis, Gindler originated a school of movement education, in close collaboration with Heinrich Jacoby.
What Gindler had called Arbeit am Menschen emphasised self-observation and growing understanding of one's individual physically related condition. Simple actions such as sitting, standing, and walking were explored, as well as other everyday movements.
This became one of the bases of body psychotherapy since many of the most influential body psychotherapists studied with her or "Sensory Awareness" with Charlotte Selver at the Esalen Institute around 1962.
During the Nazi-period of Germany, Gindler used these investigations and experimental exercises with her students to covertly help people who were persecuted by the regime.

Students and Collaborators

Gindler's collaborators included
Several of Gindler's students went on to become influential teachers themselves:
Gindler's student Charlotte Selver emigrated to the United States in 1938, and later became one of the first teachers at
Esalen Institute where she would frequently credit Gindler. Through Selver's Sensory Awareness workshops
at Esalen and elsewhere, Gindler's work indirectly influenced most of the somatic teachers in the United States, including Ida P. Rolf, founder of Rolfing Structural Integration.