We honor and remember Cyndy Sheldon, M.S.W.

Cyndy died May 11th 2021.

Gestalt therapist in her heart, part Navajo in her soul, Cyndy’s life and work is of special meaning to us as it travels decades of , from it’s infancy in the United States to the present time. Cyndy and her fellow travelers, with great energy, intelligence and joy supported and nurtured the beginnings – The Gestalt Institute of San Francisco joined it’s sister ships The New York Institute and The Cleveland Institute – sponsoring workshops with Frederick Perls and many other great talents in the budding Human Potential movement.

I give you this one thought to keep I am with you still – I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift, uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not think of me as gone – I am with you still – in each new dawn.

This was the “unincorporated Territory” of Gestalt therapy. There were no organized training programs, no “tracks,” no certificates. Groups brought in teachers, mentors, workshop leaders. Some good, some not so good. Excitement was high. It was a good time to be alive. Cyndy’s friends and associates and trainees remember her here:

From Victor Daniels:

ABOUT CYNDI SHELDON

Cyndy Sheldon was a lovely gentle soul who practiced the classical style of Gestalt therapy that was dominant at in the old days and at the original San Francisco Gestalt Institute. Her warm manner was supportive when appropriate and confrontive when necessary. I knew her at the S.F. Institute and then through several years of connecting at the Southwest Gestalt meetings. She was a living refutation of the assertion by some that the brilliant working process Fritz developed and his sometimes-abrasive personality were one and the same. She artfully combined the theory and methods of classical Gestalt work with her own way of being-in-the-world that was dramatically different from that of Fritz, while never putting down his work or the work or ideas of other practitioners whose styles differed from her own. I will miss her, and I am sure that so willl many others whose lives she touched. -- Victor Daniels

Victor Daniels, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor, Sonoma State University

From Frank Rubenfeld

I first met Cindy in 1973 when I joined the faculty of the Gestalt Institute of San Francisco. After she moved to Washington, we would re-connect at Gestalt and Humanistic Psych conferences. Always a pleasure.

She lived the life and walked the talk of a Gestalt teacher and practitioner, and did so in her own unique way. I will miss her.

Just to keep things clear. We were the founders and early members of the Gestalt Institute of San Francisco .. in the nineties, Morgan Goodlander formed “the San Francisco Gestalt Institute.” We asked him to pick another name, but he refused.

The good new is: the heart and soul of Gestalt remain very much alive in the Bay Area in the form of both the Integral Counseling Center ( the Gestalt training clinic at the Institute of Integral Studies), and some of its graduates who formed the Bay Area Gestalt Institute about six years ago.

The Bay Area Gestalt Institute https://www.bagisf.org/san-francisco Lu Grey, a graduate of the Gestalt Institute of San Francisco, led the Integral Counseling Center at CIIS for many years . John Smolowe and myself were part of the faculty for more than ten years.. The trainees during the early 2000s are now running the Center and doing a great job. Debbie Stone has been the director for these past two years, and Vicki Spears is the assistant Director. They have continued the program on line during the past year. The training is for real, and incorporates Interpersonal and intersectional facets that we didn’t get into back in the seventies.

-- Frank Rubenfeld

From Selma Ciornai:

CYNDY SHELDON, co-founder of The Gestalt Institute of San Francisco - the 3rd Gestalt Institute in the US, died this month, on May 11th . She was my teacher at the Institute, my psychotherapist for 2,3 years , a feminist, family therapist who trained with Virginia Satir , and was very close to who asked her to start a Gestalt Institute in San Francisco. Always interested in different cultures, she worked for several years with the Navajo Indians in the US and lived for a while near Puebla in Mexico. She published 2 books and gave recently (January 2021) an interview to the project Humans of Gestalt. We met few times after I left the US, in San Francisco and at AAGT´s conferences We´ve been in closer contact this last month and I feel very moved by her death. She told me calmly that she knew she didn´t have much time left. Her interviews, books etc can be seen seen in her site www.cyndysheldon.com. Lately she spoke about egalitarian gender relations in Gestalt therapy. At a time in which confrontative work was very common in Gestalt, she was always very supportive. She was a admirable woman. Wonderful trainer and a role model for me while I lived in San Francisco. you´ll be always in my heart Cyndy.

– Selma

Yes, Molly , you may put my words about Cindy in the memorial . In fact I am very touched that she did a movement to reach out for me in her last month of life…. She sent me her interviews, wrote that she didn´t have much time to live….. she wrote 5 or 5 long emails from April 4th to April 21th…. From Cyndy:

She had Leukemia …. In her own words:

Selma, Good to hear from you. I am very sick leukemia or related illness……I’m in good company as Jim Simkin, Jack Downing and Jerry Kogan died of this… I’m ok leaving soon, and actually had the best class I’ve taught in years yesterday with one of my two zoom classes. I have found wonderful ways to work on zoom, which I thought was impossible.

– Cyndy, April 19th From Michael Vincent Miller

Cyndy Sheldon was a woman with a large and generous soul and thereby a woman thoroughly capable of loving others. It always mattered to her to give herself to an effort to bring out the best in the people she worked with, whether friends, patients, students, or colleagues. Because of these qualities she played an important role in people’s lives wherever she lived and worked. She certainly played a dramatic role in my life. When I first met Cyndy, she was still Cyndy Werthman, meaning that she was still married to my best friend at the time, Carl Werthman. This was in Berkeley, California, where I was a graduate student in English at U. C. Berkeley, and Carl was on his way to teaching sociology at the same university. It was the 1960s, and Carl and I were both very involved in the politics of the student left on and off the campus fighting for civil rights and an end to the war in Vietnam. Cyndy was up to something quite different, I didn’t understand what exactly, until one day she said to me that I had to experience the work of this extraordinary man who was training her in an unusual form of psychotherapy. When Cyndy was excited by something, she wanted to share it. The extraordinary man turned to be Fritz Perls, and Cyndy’s training turned out to be taking place in a group of Northern California therapists that Perls was teaching both in San Francisco and Esalen. Somehow Cyndy managed to get permission for me to participate, which I did including a turn on the famous “hot seat.” And that was it for me. From that time forward I was headed for a different life than I had thus far envisioned. I continued training with Perls and other in Gestalt therapy, I changed from working on my doctorate in English to finishing one in psychology and sociology at a different university. And though I taught literature for a few years, eventually I went into private practice of Gestalt therapy and eventually training people in it. And that has been my career for more than forty years, thanks to Cyndy! Alas, Cyndy, I saw you very infrequently after you moved to Arizona and Washington, and I moved first to Boston and finally to New York—only here and there we met a few times at conferences. I think I never thanked you deeply enough to really let you know that you changed my life in such a fundamental way. Now I can only thank you by letting everyone else know who reads this and the other memorial writings telling the world what a significant and influential life you lived.

– Michael Vincent Miller New York, NY and Santa Fe, NM [email protected] From Jerry Rothstein

As for some lines for Cyndy's remembrance, simpler is better for me:

In the founding days of the San Francisco Gestalt Institute, Cyndy was an essential element of the core. She brought curiosity, perspective, confusion, courage, humour and a lot of nourishment to the effort. She and Janie Rhyne easily balanced out the men's energies (still trying to be dominant) while waiting for the power of Gestalt ideas to really enter their work. In the foundation for her remarkable life, it was an honour to know her then. Jerry Rothstein, Director Gestalt Institute of Canada at Penelakut Island

And also from Jerry:

Another sad event announced today in the death of Anna Halprin at 100. I would have called Cyndy on this one! Anna was a brilliant creator through the medium of movement and dance, and as it says in her Washington Post obituary:

"In the mid-1960s, Mrs. Halprin became acquainted with the psychologist Fritz Perls, whose method of psychotherapy had a profound effect on her work. Perls encouraged patients to think only about the present moment instead of judging oneself or getting mired in the past. Given Mrs. Halprin's fondness for improvisation, it was fitting that she was inspired by someone whose work focused on tuning in to intuition and impulse."

As usual Fritz gets credit for something that this writer had flipped. Anna was an inspiration for Fritz as much as he was for her, and he asserted that clearly many times.

We had a number of workshops with Anna at the SF Gestalt Institute--one I remember vividly was held at Paul Baum's unfinished house in the wilds of Marin County. Some of us spent the mornings working on the roof before the afternoon and evening sessions with Anna.

From Lois Brien

Thanks Molly for keeping up with me. I met Cyndy when I first moved to the San Francisco area with Elaine Kepner, both of us from the Cleveland Gestalt Institute. We settled in to the SF Gestalt Institute with Cyndy's help and she became a fast friend and colleague of mine until her death. I visited with her many times after she moved to Bellingham, WA. and I had moved to southern California (Long Beach). Throughout our careers we led countless Gestalt workshops and training groups together and were office mates as well. I had spoken with her after her medical diagnosis including about 5 days before she died. I was not prepared for her death to come so quickly; I had already written her about what her absence would mean to me , and presently am living with not having her in my life. I miss her immensely! --Lois From Stella Resnick

As I reminisce on my experience of Cyndy, her smiling face appears vividly to me. I can hear her soft, lush voice giving me her take on a Gestalt principle or a client. She is here with me. Her eyes twinkle as she speaks; her hands dance as though shaping the contours of her words. She is more than merely intelligent and knowledgeable; she is wise. I listen intently to this model of gentleness, so different from the confrontive approach that some of our colleagues have adopted.

When I first meet Cyndy, she is Cynthia Wertheimer just coming out of a divorce as she transitions easily to Cyndy Sheldon. She’s a leading trainer at the San Francisco Gestalt Institute where I have been welcomed on the training faculty after my work with Fritz Perls at the Gestalt Training Center at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island, Canada. I have spent the previous year living and running workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. The year is 1971.

I join a lively faculty where Cyndy is at the hub of a wheel that includes Gestalt luminaries Abe Levitsky, Jack Downing, Robert Hall, Claudio Naranjo, Janie Rhyne, John Enright, Steve Schoen, Joel Latner, Elaine Kepner, Lois Brien, Paula Bottom e, Jerry Kogan, and Sid Gershenson. We are young, some in spirit if not in years, and we are on the cusp of a movement in psychotherapy. Most of us have been trained by Fritz Perls and by Laura Perls and influenced by Erv and Miriam Polster, Isadore Fromm, and Joe Zinker among many others. We meet in a beautiful Victorian house converted into offices on a sunny pocket of Union Street, surrounded by great cafés and tony shops, with a lovely little park right on the corner. A group of us women often take our lunch break at the Coffee Cantata down the street. We sometimes bring a client for a stroll through the park to help them to become present to the sights, smells, and sounds of nature so close by. We are in love with Gestalt as a way of being. We are spreading a philosophy we believe can change the world and Cyndy Sheldon is at the core of that psychological and social movement in San Francisco.

Yes, she had cancer. I just found out myself. I spoke to her not so long ago but she never mentioned it. I think she didn’t want that to be our conversation. – Stella Stella Resnick

From John Smolowe cyndy was my trainer for a quarter at the gestalt institute of san francisco in 1975 when i was a psychiatry resident at stanford. she was also my therapist for a while, then my colleague when i was a trainer at gisf, then a friend. in my experience, cyndy and jack downing - close friends - were the most charismatic of the trainers at gisf and the best teachers. neither cyndy nor jack were cookbook technicians. both were great at reading character and making creative interventions. both were warm, animated, and funny. i remember from my first individual session: i knocked, came in, sat down awkwardly - self-conscious in the face of her beauty. she told me to get up, walk out and knock and come in again. i remember telling a dream in which dea agents were trashing my cottage, throwing belongings in the (lit) fireplace. i was standing quite still hoping they wouldn’t notice me. cyndy suggested i take some action. i imagined fighting them or summoning a gun. she suggested, “no, try calling the police.” i remember gisf faculty meetings at cyndy’s lovely, 2-story, wood-frame house in mill valley, with it’s great back yard. if you want a sense of the young cyndy, verbatim, the wonderful last chapter of jack’s book, “dreams and nightmares,” features 2 dreams of cyndy’s. it’s still available on amazon both in print and ebook. i just downloaded a copy to add to my print copy. best, john

In the 1990's Cyndy worked with Arizona State University in their program to train Social Workers from the indigenous peoples of North America.

There is an active program at ASU and some of you might be interested,.

While we tried, it was too long ago and no one from ASU responded to our emails. Neither did the Tribal Councils that we contacted.

She probably worked with some of these folks:

Office of American Indian Projects (OAIP) Click here for the American Indian Social Work Student Association (AISWSA) Indigenous and Tribal Social Work Educators’ Association (ITSWEA)

Background

The Office of American Indian Projects (OAIP) was founded in 1977, based on the advocacy of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the Indian Health Services, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Navajo Nation, the Phoenix Indian Center, and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. The purpose of OAIP is to develop the capacity of American Indian communities and programs.

Vision:

The vision of the project is to develop strengths in both individuals and systems within the social work arenas of American Indian communities, in conjunction with the emerging federal mandate for tribes to assume responsibility for the delivery of social services to American Indian people. Cyndy worked with the Arizona State University School of Social Work https://socialwork.asu.edu/content/office-american-indian-projects https://socialwork.asu.edu/student-life/student-organizations

From Patrick Dougherty:

As I sit down to my computer to type this, I’m aware of the aloe plant in the large pot to my left, filled with healing juices, patient, still, and ready to be of service, while slowly growing to be of greater use. I’ve had it in my therapy office since 2014, just a few months after I met Cyndy Sheldon.

Cyndy struck me then as she did every day until her passing last week: Gentle, rooted in Egalitarianism, her radio tuned to helping others understand her walk of Gestalt as a Way of Life, (the title of her book), which appeared to me to make her practice as a Gestalt therapist seem effortless.

I was fortunate to start attending her training group shortly after meeting her, never being more than 7 or so people in a therapy office, or her homes around Bellingham, WA. I fondly remember being instructed to go into her garden and experience each plant as a child who has not yet discovered the words to describe what I encountered, rooting myself back to pure experience; Sitting across from another, sharing what I’m experiencing through my senses and when a thought would arise, exclaim, “I’m having a thought” and struggling to leave it at that as my mind wanted to describe itself; and sharing the training space with several non-therapists, as Cyndy imbued the greater world with Gestalt principles and thought that cultivating Gestalt in community was a virtuous and worthy endeavor. Not the least of these was her voice so melodious in my head now: “I don’t believe in labels.”

I now sit in a place of wealth, that I received a morsel of the greatness she offered, and knowing that the lives she touched will be forever joyful that they were lucky enough to bask and learn in her presence. If you didn’t know Cyndy well, I encourage you to peruse her website, especially her books and videos, and other sharing about the development of the Gestalt world, from someone who watched Fritz Perls doing empty chair work with Sigmund Freud, and was at those early meetings with Fritz as the first West Coast Gestalt institutes were established.

www.cyndysheldon.com/about

www.cyndysheldon.com/the-original-gestalt-institute/

https://www.cyndysheldon.com/consulting (videos, including Humans of Gestalt interview) With Love, Peace, and Awareness of my fingers on my keys, glancing at a handcrafted skull from Mexican artisans that today represents a great and masterful human that is Cyndy.

-Patrick Dougherty, Eugene, Oregon, USA

From Bruce Hostetter:

As a friend, a student, and occasional handyman of Cyndy's, I would like to add a few thoughts to Patrick's. I was introduced to Cyndy as a handyman after she moved into her home on Samish Way. Because we're both curious and talkative, it didn't take long for her to discover that I was studying to be a life coaching, and I discovered she was a Gestalt therapist. Based on her instincts and reasons I still don't understand, she inv ited me to take part in her Gestalt training group. That was about five years ago and I've been a student ever since.

I have been with her during every step of her journey since falling ill. I was able to visit her in the hospital up until the end. W hat really strikes me the most about my experience of Cyndy, is the congruency between the way she expressed her self in life and her teachings. Her teachings were deeply embodied in Cyndy the person. Even in the hospital, even when she was weak, when she shared a frustration, she fully asserted herself in a way that was respectful to others, consistent with her teachings. I also remember her dealing with some of her frustrations in the hospital, and then turning to me with great interest and re-focus, asking about one of my recent life experiences. I remember Cyndy as a full spectrum human being. Over time, whatever her range of emotional expression, I would be able to see and appreciate all aspects of who she was as a person. And she as well could receive all aspects of mine. I found that with Cyndy it was as easy to laugh as it was to be vulnerable. Cyndy, lived her principles.

Of all the principles of gestalt I believe that “Contactedness” stood out as one of the most important to Cyndy. What I consider to be the greatest gift received as her friend and student, is how these principles have slowly, through practice, become embed into own life. I was Cyndy’s “handy-man” and she was my “handy-woman” who fixed as many things in my life as I did in hers. Another manifestation of her deep, deep belief in the importance of egalitarian relationships.

I believe her spirit lives on in all she has touched emotionally.

– Bruce Hostetter From Cyndy’s students in Bellingham Washington:

From Adam Ward:

Cyndy Sheldon left four video interviews and two books in her wake; as a student and friend since 2010, I feel led to celebrate Cyndy and her life's work by inviting you to dip into the wisdom within the accessible material she left behind.

The four (free) video interviews offer a first-hand account of the founding decade of Gestalt Therapy on the West Coast, personal accounts from her time with Fritz Perls (between 1961 and 1969), and an introduction to one of her major contributions to Gestalt: unpacking the Egalitarian aspects (and opportunities) within Gestalt Therapy.

To watch her videos visit: www.cyndysheldon.com/consulting

As for her books, perhaps the themes in one of her titles resonates with you:

Gestalt as a Way of Life: Awareness Practices as Taught by Gestalt Therapy Founders and Their Followers;

Don’t Tell Me What to Do… Ask Me!: Creating Egalitarian Relationships from a Gestalt Perspective.

To access her books visit: www.cyndysheldon.com/books

My life is richer for knowing Cyndy, and the many people and ways of being I came into contact with through her. I am grateful Cyndy left behind ways for me to share a sense of her (and her work) with you.

Adam Ward, Washington State (US) From Eric Werthman Brooklyn, NY

I had not seen Cyndy in years even though she usually sent me and my family a Christmas card, but on a visit a few years back to the environmental activist Joanna Macy in Berkley we bumped into each other in Joanna's living room!

While she was living in Bellingham the last few years we exchanged emails from time to time and then she wrote, in an extraordinary letter, to tell me that she was ill and probably dying.. A couple of months ago she wrote and said that her condition had become better and she hoped to live and asked to see a film I did with Danny Glover and I sent her a Vimeo copy but did not hear back. I heard the fatal, sad news from Heather Keyes.

I suspect that you and others received the same first email telling us that she was ill. It was an extraordinary letter (email) and I am sending it onto you and you can decided if you want to publish it in the remembrance. It is strong stuff.

Before I send it I will share one remembrance myself: I had not seen Cyndy for close to 10 years when my brother suddenly died of a heart attack in Sacramento. A memorial was organized in Berkeley mostly by his old friends from his graduate days but a number of colleagues from the government and his organizing days in Hunter's Point showed up. I was scheduled to speak and I was "unaware" very nervous. I drove out to Cyndy's place in, I think Marin, and we sat around her house reminiscing about Carl and her days with him. It was my brother who suggested she go down to Essalin because he thought something was happening down there and she ought to check it out. We know the rest. As the afternoon drew to a close she quietly switched gears and in a serious but supportive voice suggested we explore what I was going to say at the memorial. I became aware and understood she had picked up my nervousness without me saying anything about it and was gently nudging me to go over it with her. Driving back to San Fransisco I realized that Cyndy was probably an extraordinary therapist and her long and successful career only proves the point. She was very sensitive to shifts in feelings and moods and I am sure she was very good in helping her clients - and friends - understand what was happing to them in "the moment" that they were themselves unaware of what they were experiencing.

If you have not seen it here is what she emailed to "us."

Dear Friends,

I never imagined I’d be doing what I am going to do now. I’m on a totally unexpected journey...

1) Five days ago I was taken by ambulance to the ER here in Bellingham…and a day or two later was diagnosed with AML: Acute M Leukemia, with a prognosis of 1/2 months. I leave hospital tomorrow for home with the help of retired nurse friend neighbor. Then comes the unloading of all my life’s accumulations from wonderful travels around the world, visits from those who can come see me…and possibly a nursing home and hospice as I near the end of this life. (I was tested for Covid, which I don’t have.)

2) Since I’ve had a foot both in the world of science and alternative ways of life I now am involved in a meet-up group that has two wonderful healer friends who have been working on aspects of me that are not part of what is wrong with me now, tho I must remember everything is connected! They are now busy working on my blood which went haywire suddenly 15 days ago, as are the scientists.

So both sides are working on the same aspects of me…from different orientations. One is future oriented with death as an outcome, the other is more allowing the present to unfold. This leaves me in the middle between the two, and how hard it is to stay in the present with these two polarities so different from one another.

My Gestalt orientation has been so useful to staying in the unfolding present. And to accept what is in the moment. If I don’t do that I might jump into the future with a theory such as “what is happening to me feels larger almost like some kind of divine intervention”. I don’t want to “thing-a-fy” it as my mentor Fritz Perls might say, as then I’m into the future having made a theory about it all, which fools me into thinking it is THE reality, not another one..

So back to the UNKNOWN NOW.

I can’t write each of you individually now as I am too exhausted….but if some of you want to email me, that is fine. i’d love to hear from you. As you have all been important to me over the years, and many of us have shared some incredible moments together. (I prefer not to get calls as phones are too hard to deal with now.)

This was taken 2 months ago on my 85th…

So whatever happens to me, know I’ll never forget you! EVEN on the other side! Much Much Love, Cyndy (Cyn or Cynnie)

The Warm Winds

May the warm winds of heaven blow gently on your house, and may the great spirit bless all who enter. May your moccasins make happy tracks in many snows, and may the rainbow always touch your shoulder. Here are some pictures, earlier to later – of Cyndy, her friends and associates.

EARLY DAYS OF THE GESTALT INSTITUTE OF SAN FRANCISCO Cyndy on the left, me (John) in the center holding the baby of Cyndy's friend on the right. I cannot come up with the friend's name, sadly. This was at Cyndy's house in Berkeley, in the days of the high energy core group of the Gestalt Institute of San Francisco (Bob Hall, Janie Rhyne, Jack Downing, Paul Baum, Abe Levitsky) and some close allies like Larry Bloomberg and Dick Miller who were working under the rubric The Institute for Multiple Psychotherapy.

– John Smolowe

From Victor Daniels