Janet Adler
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Janet Adler | |
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| Born | 1941 Frankfort, Indiana |
| Died | 2023 Galiano Island, BC, Canada |
| Known for | Founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement |
Janet Adler (1941–2023) is the founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement, a practice with roots in dance, healing, and mystical tradition, devoted to the study of human consciousness manifesting through the body and movement. Central to her investigation is the relationship between a person moving and a person witnessing that movement. Her primary inquiry concerned the development of the inner witness and the evolution of the Discipline of Authentic Movement as a contemporary mystical practice. [1]
Adler founded and directed the Mary Starks Whitehouse Institute in Northampton, Massachusetts (1981-1983), the first school devoted to the study and practice of Authentic Movement. [2] It was here that Adler first named two distinct relational roles—mover and witness. From 1981 until near the end of her life, she taught in Europe and North America, attracting students from around the globe to retreat centers, and to lectures at private and public institutions. Throughout this time, she continued to welcome individuals and groups into a full engagement of the practice in her home studios. Returning to Northampton where her teaching practice first began, Adler was honored at the Somatics Festival 2019 for her 50 years of devoted work within the field.[3]
Earlier in her career, Adler produced and directed the award-winning film, Looking for Me (1968), documenting her work as a dance therapist with autistic children.[4], [5], [6] Twenty years later, she produced and directed another landmark film, Still Looking (1988), reflecting her developing work in the Discipline of Authentic Movement. In 2022, five decades of her collected writings were compiled in Intimacy in Emptiness: An Evolution of Embodied Consciousness. Near the end of her life, Adler was both collaborator and subject of a film: “Light: Five Days with Janet Adler” by filmmaker Jens Wazel.
Adler also worked as a hospice chaplain, including co-founding and directing a support program, Transitions in Dying and Grieving, on Galiano Island, British Columbia, where she lived the last eighteen years of her life. Adler’s archives are housed at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.
Personal History
Janet Rosalyn Adler was born February 20, 1941 in Frankfort, Indiana, the daughter of Roslyn (Posy) Woolf Adler and Leon S. Adler. She was the wife of Philip Buller, the mother of Joshua Adler Boettiger (b. 1973) and Paul Woolf Adler Boettiger (b. 1977), and the grandmother of Paloma Grajwer Boettiger (b. 2011). She was previously married to John Boettiger. Adler died July 19, 2023 at the age of 82, at home on Retreat Cove, on Galiano Island, BC, Canada
Early Professional Work
In 1963, Adler worked directly under the tutelage of American Dance Therapy Association founder Marion Chace, at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC. As a dance/movement therapist she worked in the nursery at Gallaudet College, the first school for deaf students in the United States, and at the Austin Riggs Center, directed by Erik and Joan Erikson in Stockbridge, MA. Her work with children with severe autism was groundbreaking in its understanding of the body as the common denominator and basis for shared communication. [7], [4] In post-graduate studies, beginning in 1966, Adler was introduced to the “Natural History” approach [6] to phenomenological research by Dr. William Condon & Dr William Ogston at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at University of Pittsburgh Medical School. Through frame-by-frame observation of filmed footage of her work with two of the children, she tracked the physical and relational details of their interactions. [8], [3] Adler’s renowned film, Looking for Me (1968), which continues to be shown in college classrooms, dance studios, and at conferences all over the world, features some of this original footage. [4]
From the summer of 1969 through the spring of 1970, Adler immersed in life-changing work with two formative teachers, John Weir [3] and Mary Whitehouse. From Weir, a psychologist associated with the Human Potential Movement, she received teachings related to group process, the importance of a language system, somatic knowledge, and the phenomenon of witnessing. [9], [10] From Whitehouse, a dancer, teacher, and Jungian analysand, Adler received a new, inner-sourced approach to movement that Whitehouse called “Movement-in-depth.” [11], [12] Following their work together in California, Adler returned to the East Coast, where she worked with therapy clients for ten years, incorporating what she learned from Whitehouse.[13] They maintained a close personal correspondence via letters and audiotapes up until Whitehouse died in 1979. [14]
Authentic Movement: A Practice of Mover and Witness in Relationship
In 1981, with the intention of honoring her teacher, Adler established the Mary Starks Whitehouse Institute. As her professional work transformed from therapist to teacher, [2] Adler capitalized the term “authentic movement” [15], giving a name to a practice consisting of two specific roles: a mover (moving with eyes closed in the presence of a witness) and a witness (sitting to the side offering open-eyed presence). Working with students, Adler’s teaching of Authentic Movement focused on the experience of the mover, on the experience of the witness, and on the relationship between the two, which she described as the “ground form.” Adler writes, “As the relationship between the mover and the outer witness develops, the relationship within the mover, between her moving self and her inner witness develops.” [16]
Evolving of a Contemporary Mystical Practice
During the time Adler was teaching at the Institute, she was in the midst of an unanticipated experience of initiation (1979-1986) wherein direct experiences of energetic phenomena such as vibration and light were received with great intensity directly in and through her body.[17], [18] The insights and questions generated by these visions within her early years of teaching are reflected in Adler’s pioneering essay, “Who is the Witness?” (1987), in which she describes how her work is inspired by and distinct from Whitehouse’s work. [19] Because of her transformative experiences and the inquiry they inspired, Adler’s work expanded to include the transpersonal realm.
Adler’s doctoral dissertation from the Union Institute (1992) [20], included both a phenomenological, cross-cultural study of Mysticism, and a narrative of her personal experience of initiation, which became the basis for her first book, Arching Backward. [21] In 1992, Adler moved to Northern California, where her teaching practice welcomed individuals and groups, some of which focused on the relationship between the discipline and the distinct realms of mystical text, mystical dance, kundalini, the process of initiation, Jewish mysticism, Zen, and the practice of psychotherapy. [22]
The Collective Body
From the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, Adler worked with larger groups, exploring a form she called the long circle. Her essay, “The Collective Body” (1994, 1996), gives an overview of this phase of her teaching and reflects her widening developmental perspective on the evolution of human consciousness. Adler’s questions and focus at this time turned from the “intimacy of interpersonal work” to what she described as “our unprecedented task…to bring the gifts of individuation into conscious membership in the whole, to find a way to be uniquely ourselves inside a sacred, conscious circle.” [23]
Some students who worked with her during this time went on to teach the long circle from their own questions and perspectives, contributing to a widening field of Authentic Movement practice. During these years, Adler also traveled to her students in European countries (1992-2001), seeding a strong intercontinental collective of teachers and students which continues to further the development of the Discipline of Authentic Movement.
Mapping the Development of Witness Consciousness
As Adler’s work developed with greater focus on direct experience and intuitive knowing, supported by a clearer commitment to specific roles of movers and witnesses in each round of practice, her work with the long circle and its fluidity of roles was left behind, replaced by the declaring circle. [24] Refinements in the evolution of the discipline developed within smaller groups, resulting in a greater focus on cultivating a quality of attention, strengthening the inner witness, and opening to qualities of presence.
Adler encouraged students to focus less on the content or the associative and symbolic material of their experiences, and more on the non-symbolic detail of embodied experience. In her essay, “From Seeing to Knowing” (2004), she articulates the difference between a kind of seeing based on imagination and a kind of knowing based on intuition. [25] Inherent order, direct experience as understood within mystical traditions, and the non-symbolic and non-associative elements of energetic phenomena all became central to Adler’s teaching.
In 2006, Adler moved from California to Galiano Island in British Columbia, Canada, where she continued teaching and writing. In the second decade of the 2000s, the practice developed into full maturity, as articulated in Adler’s essay “The Mandorla and the Discipline of Authentic Movement” (2015) where she maps the development of witness consciousness in its arc from duality to unity. [26]
References
- ↑ Bacon, J. (2015), p. 206-207.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Haze, N & Stromsted, T. (1994), p. 89.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Sager, P. (2022), p. 10-11.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Billock Tropea, E. (2003), p. 5-6.
- ↑ Sager, P. (2022), p. 12.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Morrissey, B, & Sager, P. (2022), p. 20.
- ↑ Adler, J. (2003), p. 6 – 16.
- ↑ Amos P. (2013), p. 1-15.
- ↑ Adler, J. (2002), p. xiii.
- ↑ Mix, P. (2006)
- ↑ Adler, J. (2002), p. xii.
- ↑ Whitehouse, M. (1979), p. 90
- ↑ Adler, J. (2022), p. 330–342.
- ↑ Ibid, p. 243 – 253.
- ↑ Morrissey, B. (2022), p. 2.
- ↑ Adler, J. (2002), p. 28.
- ↑ Shulman, E. & Alderoqui Pinus, D. (2025), p. 329 - 332.
- ↑ Morrissey, B. (2022), p. 2-3.
- ↑ Sager, P. (2015), p. 365 - 368.
- ↑ Adler, J. (1992)
- ↑ Halifax, J. (1995), p. x – xi.
- ↑ Morrissey, B. and Sager, P. (2022), p. 181.
- ↑ Adler, J. (2022), p. 150.
- ↑ Morrissey, B. and Sager, P. (2022), p. 109
- ↑ Pallaro, P. (2007), p. 16-21.
- ↑ Adler, J. (2015), p. 217 – 227.
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