Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68174
ILSE MIDDENDORF As a teacher and author of several books, Middendorf was dedicated to breath, even from a young age. In a 1995 interview with colleague Juerg Roffler, Middendorf talked about how her life's path began: "When I was 12, I was in my parent's garden in Germany. Suddenly a voice within me said, 'You need to breathe.' I was deeply touched and this experience led me to follow my strong interest in the breath as oneness of body, mind, and spirit. I had the impression that people passed over a very important part of their lives." Breath was Middendorf's guide for living. As a young adult in Germany during World War II, Middendorf lived through significant challenges and stormy times, but she said it was also a great time for creative explorations. As Middendorf pursued studies in dance and gymnastics, key teachers supported her discoveries. She came into contact with a group called Mazdaznan, whose purpose was to develop a healthy body education. And Ewe Warren, a dancer, taught her the unity of human expression by means of movement, breathing, and meditation. Cornelius Veening from Holland was especially important to Middendorf. His work with Margaret Mhe, and his affinities with Carl Jung's depth psychology that explores breath and psyche, led him to be clear that connecting with breath in depth meant connecting with the essence of self. Middendorf appreciated Veening's teaching over a long period in her exploration of how breathexperience could connect a person to self. The work Middendorf developed was distinct, innovative, basic, and simple. The key difference between Middendorf's work and most other somatic practices was in its allowing breath to flow through the body without imposition. Her unique approach was in learning how we can experience breath movement—our gift at birth. This is California, began with words she often spoke: introduction for a 1989 workshop in Berkeley, Ilse Middendorf's "We let the breath come, we let the breath go, and in the pause, we wait— in a peaceful rest— until the next breath comes back on its own." connecting us to the higher power that breathes us and unites us to life itself. Middendorf addressed wholeness, not focusing primarily on pains that might be crying out, but including them in the oneness of body, mind, and spirit where they become integrated. She wisely recognized the intelligence of our body of breath—intelligence that could not be learned from intellect alone. RETURNING TO BREATH In 1940, Middendorf married Jost Langguth, a choir master-organist. Their son, Helge, born in 1941, was never to meet his father, who was killed during the war. By then, with her workspace destroyed by bombs, Middendorf escaped Berlin and began living in Frankenberg, Saxony. As the war ended in 1945, she began her trek back to Berlin with 4-year-old Helge and a friend, jumping on crowded trains, sleeping in farmers' fields, sometimes walking with a wheelbarrow carrying the few items of food and clothing they had collected along the way. When she returned to her the breath that we receive—not take, pull, push, direct, or control. Instead, we let breath come and go on its own, and sense it in our body as it moves from our inner being into the outer world and from the outer back in again to a home inside ourselves. Middendorf said we sense this breath on the threshold between the unconscious and the conscious, in all its dimensions— physically, emotionally, spiritually— apartment in Berlin after the war, Middendorf found it barren and soon discovered some of her furniture in other tenants' apartments. When she thanked them for "keeping her furniture while she was gone," they returned it. She had no money, so she reinstituted the breath practice she had begun 10 years earlier by bartering hands-on breath treatments for bars of soap and food. In 1950, she married Erich Middendorf, a gifted photographer. By 1965, she had founded her Institute for the Perceptible Breath in Berlin where she trained practitioners and teachers, some of whom opened their own Middendorf Breath Institutes in Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. As she gained recognition, she led seminars and conferences and 70 massage & bodywork may/june 2010