Dear colleagues,
Fritz Perls died 54 years ago today. If you met him, you are no longer young.
In 1967, at age 19, I made a pilgrimage to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. I was not admitted, because I had no business to be there. Back then- I was enamored with Will Schutz, the major Encounter Group proponent. I learned more about Gestalt Therapy and Fritz the following year.
Fritz was probably about 200 yards away… that’s as close as I ever got to him.
I am including a tribute below from Robert Hall, MD. I was very fortunate, in 1977, to have Robert spend the summer in the house where I lived in Boulder, Colorado. John O. Stevens owned the home and during the summers, he was at his ranch in Shura, Utah- near his business: Real People Press. I oversaw the house, and Robert and two other roomers taught at the nearby Buddhist, Naropa Institute .
I discovered some months ago in trying to contact him, a final time, that Robert had died on September 20, 2019, he had been living in Mexico on the southern Baja peninsula at Todos Santos, just above Cabo San Lucas.
Robert was a Psychiatrist and had studied with Fritz at Esalen and in San Francisco. He also developed the Lomi School of Body Therapy in Mill Valley, California. Some of you know of him.
Robert was a brilliant, sweet, spiritual and loving man. (I don’t call any men sweet, except him.) An empath; he could see deeply- and at times warmly, lovingly, smiled in to your heart - seemingly showing that he could see the “divinity in you”. He was a contemporary and friend of Ram Das and traveled to India in 1970, to study Vipassana meditation with a spiritual master- Charan Singh.
A 1959 medical school graduate, means he had aged out and is sadly, no longer alive. He lived his years out. In his loving way and with his presence, he didn’t always have to talk to be healing.
At times he let me pick the topic that he would present at Naropa, though I was a young trainee at the Institute in Denver. I’d sit in on his presentations.
This is more about Robert, because I’m disturbed to recently find out that his life is also over. (But with a connection to Fritz.)
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And now something from Robert Hall from the forward to In And Out Of The Garbage Pail.
"Dear Fritz
You came and you did what you wanted to do,and a lot of us fell in love with you and the way you were. You were what you talked about,and that's rare among men.Your words were easy to hear, your voice awoke my sleeping hope and right now I can remember the tears which came often to your eyes when there was a special amount of love around...
But that is all past now and now you have been gone a year.There are a number of us, pupils in your school of life, who are still learning from you...
...-the recognition of your guidance fills my heart with gratitude that once you touched my life and taught me that I am here now with a pen in my hand, sending love-energy down the corridors of my mind to you an old teacher,wherever you are.
As ever,
Bob Hall"
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So who has anything to add about Fritz or Robert Hall?