Adam Blatner

I realized this morning that my life is to some degree a “product” of the Human Potential Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was a sub-cultural movement that blossomed in urban centers, more vividly in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and nearby regions (such as the Esalen Institute about 100 miles south on the pacific coast). It was a special time and area, and it spoke to psycho-social freedom of expression, along with explorations of the body’s potential. This all was given new life between around 2003 and 2010 by the construction and operations of The Crossings, a Human Potential Center in the hills west of Austin, with which I was peripherally associated.) There is so little discussion of this cultural development that for a while I didn’t realize that many—indeed, most—people don’t know about it, never heard of it, and don’t care. Yet at the time it was for me and sufficient others sufficient attractiveness so that it thrived in the early 1970s. It was psychological, interpersonal, physical. Body-learning was part of it, massage, Oriental body-mind activities such as Tai Chi, and for a while at “The Crossings,” even aerial acrobatics!