Home | Engaging the Senses

“Poetry is knowledge, salvation, power, abandonment. An operation capable of changing the world, poetic activity is revolutionary by nature; a spiritual exercise; it is a means of interior liberation. Poetry reveals this world; it creates another.” – Octavio Paz

Illuminating the Intersection of Art and Mindfulness

ENGAGING THE SENSES FOUNDATION was created to honor the senses; to support and sustain the ability to see, smell, taste, touch, and hear our way to a consciously lived life. Our main emphasis is on waking up through the art of poetry, that “universal language that the heart holds with nature and itself” which can fulfill our primal human need for beauty and serve as a portal to mindfulness, inspiration, connection, and transformation.

What We Do

Now, as perhaps never before, we must turn to the great arts like poetry to remind us of our best selves and help guide us through the often bewildering social and political landscape. By offering dramatic films based on the lives of great poets, poetry documentaries, and mindfulness teachings that prepare us for the truths contained in poetry, along with direct support of literary organizations and presentations that bring poems and poets to underserved communities, schools, town halls, and libraries, Engaging the Senses Foundation is committed to the luminosity of the human spirit as it engages with the world through “art [as] a form of active prayer.”

“I think in times of cataclysmic change, poetry is the only language that will do. It’s the only language that speaks to the horror and the wonder, the reality and the mystery. It can hold both questions and answers at the same time without giving a pat solution or a self-help formula. Your favorite poem might be an outcry of rage that frees your voice to fill every inch of your body, mind, and being. Or it might be a poem of the inner life that returns you to a sense of wholeness. The great mystic Hildegard of Bingen said, ‘When the inner and the outer are wedded, revelation occurs.’” – Kim Rosen

Learn more

What's New

Poetry and the Senses: UC Berkeley’s Arts Research Center

One of Engaging the Senses Foundation’s most exciting new collaborations this year has been with UC Berkeley’s Arts & Humanities/College of Letters & Science. Poetry and the Senses is a two-year initiative established under the leadership direction of Anthony Cascardi, Dean of Arts & Humanities, in which poetry— including poetic and mindful modes of engaging with the world— is the central focus of creative investigation across the UC Berkeley campus and the community.

Quotes to Sustain, Comfort and Guide Us Now

We are constantly inspired to be the best we can be by the passionate, creative writers, artists, and organizations we are privileged to work with, along with some of the world's greatest spiritual and thought leaders. We hope some of these tender, profound quotes will resonate with you, too, and help you feel heard, seen, nourished, and reflected.

A Time for Healing and Togetherness

We are looking greatly forward to The Collective Trauma Summit, a free,10-day online event beginning September 22nd, that will "explore methods for working with unresolved and hidden trauma in individuals, communities, and society." Exactly along the lines of everything we believe in and strive to put forth into the world, the summit will focus on real-time solutions to the acute problems of our era along the truly life-enhancing power of mindfulness, and "the role of music, the arts, and poetry as a pathway to understanding and healing."

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through

As we all continue to cope with extraordinarily hard times in the U.S., it matters deeply that we also continue to celebrate good news. It counts for a great deal that even as we choose not to turn away from darkness, we also keep our eyes and hearts turned to hope and to solutions. And so we are thrilled to share news of the publication of the first historically-comprehensive anthology of Native poetry, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, edited by our dear friend, United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.