Eleanor Criswell, Ed.D.is emeritus professor of psychology and former chair of the psychology department, Sonoma State University. Founding director of the Humanistic Psychology Institute (now Saybrook University, San Francisco), she is currently a Distinguished Consulting Faculty member for Saybrook University. Editor of Somatics Magazine, the magazine-journal of the mind-body arts and sciences, and director of the Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training, her books include Biofeedback and Somatics: Toward Personal Evolution, How Yoga Works: An Introduction to Somatic Yoga, and she is editor of Cram’s Introduction to Surface Electromyography. She is president of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, the Somatics Society, and past president of Division 32 Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and the Biofeedback Society of California. She is on the board of the Association for Hanna Somatic Education. She is the originator of Somatic Yoga and Equine Hanna Somatics.
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I was recently inspired to re-listen to this interview when Dr. Dave, through some email exchange we had in which my interest in A Course in Miracles was mentioned, informed me that Eleanor Criswell was the first publisher of the Course. I found – shock, horror – that I had never heard this episode at all.
As an avid listener of many years I don’t know how I missed it but was very pleased it had been brought to my attention, as it is a fascinating interview on many fronts, not least of all the inside information on ACIM.
It is always gratifying to hear someone who has been in the trenches over a long period of time reporting on the progress of what was initially almost an esoteric arm of mainstream approaches. Eleanor’s career now spans more than five decades and it is obvious from the interview that she is a great example of integrating her academic, professional and personal life.
It is also obvious from her observation that she once felt the need to do everything in a rush, that she had to learn to take her own medicine. I love what she said about telling her clients that if you carve out some time to do things mindfully then you are more efficient generally.
Another thing I learned is that Somatics is the umbrella term for mind-body disciplines. I hadn’t known that and it’s not obvious from the word because it doesn’t incorporate psyche but when she explained that it comes from the Greek word soma, which means the living body as distinct from a corpse, it made sense.
I also enjoyed hearing Dr. Dave’s experience of being encouraged by Eleanor to take on the role of department chair when she vacated it. He said he would take it on with the personal challenge that he would feel he had succeeded if at the end of the three year term, he didn’t want to give the job up. He reluctantly relinquished the job after seven years and commented that the whole experience had been one of his most important life lessons. In listening to the story and taking the whole interview into account, I would say that there are many lessons in it, including the benefit of having trusted others to reflect the potential we can’t see in ourselves because of the fears that blind us. It’s also a lesson in being able to let go when the time comes and I think that is how I want to see my whole life at the end, that when the time comes, I will be able to say I overcame my fear of life, learned to love it and am ready to release it gracefully.