Bernard Gunther Ph.D., was a renowned teacher, healer, counselor and best selling author, whose career spans over 40 years, and touched the lives of thousands of people.
Hailed as the first book of the human potential movement, Dr. Gunther’s Sense Relaxation: Below Your Mind has sold over half a million copies. His other books include: “Energy Ecstacy,” (a perennial best seller) “What to do Til the Messiah Comes,” “How the West is One,” “Neo Tantra,” and “The One Minute Enlightenment.”
Bernie, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, has studied and taught Yoga, Zen Buddhism, Tantra, massage, Rolfing, and Gestalt. Having known and associated throughout his long career with Fritz Perls, Roshi Joshu Sasaki, Alan Watts, and many others, Bernie has drawn on diverse disciplines to develop many innovative methods for allowing people to know their enlightened selves, and to live more abundantly.
Bernie is one of the people who helped establish the renowned Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Founded in the early sixties, Esalen was a haven for radical explorations of Gestalt, encounter groups, family therapy, and meditation – as well as for groundbreaking investigations into mind/body awareness, which Bernie pioneered.
Esalen was a mecca for many innovators in the human potential arena, including; Joseph Campbell, Carlos Castaneda, Buckminster Fuller, Ram Das, Abraham Maslow, Timothy Leary, to name a few.
Bernie was significantly responsible for incorporating the importance of the body, stress reduction, touch, and body language into modern psychology. He revitalized such ancient religious rituals as the laying on of hands, washing of feet, and breaking bread. He created the world famous Esalen Message, and the “blind trust walk,” as well as numerous awareness games. Today millions throughout the world attend personal empowerment workshops, and encounter groups which use Dr. Guther’s imaginative and innovative techniques.
After Esalen, Bernie decided to venture even further beyond traditional western therapies, and spent a number of years in India studying meditation and mysticism with various teachers and gurus. He has incorporated these experiences into his own unique method for mind/body spiritual integration
Bernie’s work has been featured and celebrated on numerous television programs including “The Tonight Show,” as well as in magazines like “Playboy,” “Time,” “US,” and “Newsweek.” In 1978 Bernie made the first audience participation movie called “Come to your Senses” which included the famous laughing meditation, and the whip cream kiss, for CBS. The film became a cult classic in college campuses, and the human growth movement.
Bernie is now living in Encinitas, California, counseling in person or on the phone, utilizing his own accelerated method for dissolving conflicts and realizing the “Ultimate place of peace and silence beyond mind that’s always the core of who we truly are.”
From Body Mind Magazine.
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