Yoga

This is a yoga of awakening. Learn to expand your awareness and differentiate subtle levels of sensations within the body. As you sense the movement of your bones, diaphragms, fluids and organs you will come to know yourself anew ---- enjoying the endless flow of movements within movements. Surf the waves of breath, effortlessly allowing gravity to free you of habitual tensions. Instead of stretching surface skeletal muscles, extend the space between all the vertebrae, setting your bones afloat in a sea of soft tissue that effortlessly lengthens. This creative awareness enables you to ride the crest of human evolution, participating consciously with the self-organizing intelligence that heals and renews.

Somatic Meditations^SM

No matter what your health issue, there is something powerful and healing that you and only you can do about it. Similar to isolating specific muscle groups when exercising, you can significantly improve your health by 'isolating' the specific organs and tissue groups involved in your injury or disease and 'exercising' them.

First, you must get underneath and begin to sense your body's 'live' experience. The organs and tissues of your body are constantly sending signals to one another and your health problems are being continuously described and formed by them. Through carefully initiated subtle movements you can learn to 'listen' in on and participate in these 'organismic dialogues ^SM.'

As you learn to sense these impulses - learn to feel the meaning of your body's inner vocabulary - your somatic intelligence begins to inform your breathing and movements and align them into the service of your healing. You begin to dialogue with your inner self. Somatic Learning^SM is the inside-out discipline of learning to differentiate and exercise.

Luscious Movement^SM and Dance:

This practice guides you through a series of Somatic Meditations^SM to reveal your intimate somatic vocabulary. A whole new dance begins here, from the wellspring within, a poetry of unfolding meaning and form. These luscious movements will awaken you to the richness of your silent experience. You will no longer settle for less than tasting the deliciousness of being wholly embodied and giving full expression to the flow of feeling. This is a performance art of transformative learning and change. You will develop a repertoire of movement modalities ranging from the subtlest micro-movements to large movements in space. Learn how each mode of sensing and initiating movement has unique implications for healing and regeneration and how they can be used for your particular health condition.

Dialogue

The roots of our personal and collective dilemmas lie deep in the transpersonal structure of "thought." Sharing in this understanding, many distinguished scientists, psychologists and theologians pioneered dialogues-group processes through which people could access and exercise these structures.

Driven into modern practice by the work of David Bohm, Carl Rogers, Patrick DeMari and Martin Buber, dialogue is employed today by many organizations and communities around the world. From developing "learning organizations" in business to resolving racial and cultural conflicts in communities, dialogue unleashes and connects the intelligence of individuals and groups.

As in any important endeavor many authentic and distinctive disciples are emerging to facilitate dialogue. Some are unique in the particular "methods" and "tools" they encourage, others, in how dialogue is conceptualized. In the work of Dr. Risa Kaparo, people learn to engage in dialogue from a significantly different inner awareness. In Dr. Kaparo's approach, dialogue reaches beneath the verbal surface of our minds and engages the somatic intelligence to inform our whole being.

The Yoga of Dialogue: Somalogics^SM

Somalogics^SM represents a unique approach to dialogue, enabling individuals to participate in dialogue via the depths of their somatic intelligence.

In Somalogics^SM, meaning is not something verbal, abstract or located "out there." Rather, meaning is experienced as fluctuations in the stream of "here/now"---fluctuations most fully understood when our understanding is rooted in our somatic intelligence.

Just as we can sense a change in temperature, light or the weight of something we're carrying, we can learn to sense fluctuations in the flow of meaning. Individuals proceeding from such an inner referencing can "sense" and contribute to dialogue more authentically.

As this sense becomes heightened, we extend our capacity to perceive greater complexities and subtleties in meaning-we develop the inner disciplines from which the "co-presence" of dialogue occurs.

Creative Writing

Somatic Learning^SM offers a variety of experiments to loosen the hold of habits in thought and to encourage play with language, thus freeing up creativity. In conjunction with Somatic Meditations^SM, the act of writing turns into a channel for expressive movement, performance art, self-exploration and renewal.

When we accept what is and bear witness to it, speaking from our truth, from the depths of our feeling, sensing, knowing, something powerful happens, not only in ourselves, but in the world at large.

When we read what someone has written, and the truth resonates within, a deeper embodiment occurs in each of us. Nothing will ever be the same. We often identify with the stories we tell ourselves, but our uniqueness resides not so much in our stories as in that which is most deeply felt and, paradoxically, that which connects us to all that is.

Somatic Learning^SM explores the process of writing as a method of self-exploration. Re-mythologizing the meaning we make from real life events and the resonance of their significance in the evolution of human experience as a whole. It is an exploration of what sustained us, through the trials of life, even when we lose or feel more than we think we can bear, beyond hope and hopelessness, when we can no longer rely on anyone, not even ourselves. As we learn to deepen this dialogue with oneself, the process of writing can sustain us, enriching our solitude by nourishing us from within.

We employ writing as a discipline for extending presence into new depths of meaning-- as a way of living into the unknown and renewing ourselves.

Epistemics and A Psychology of Self-Renewal

A New Approach to Psychological Healing

For many people, the experiences of childhood inevitably erodes self-esteem. For others, the stress of modern life causes recurring psychological conflict. Whether rooted in childhood or adult trauma, pain abounds in a variety of forms. Lack of intimacy, self-destructive behavior, chronic ill-health, shame, anxiety and depression all frustrate our attempts to live fully.

What underlies these problems? What leads to healing?

Just as our hand avoids pain by moving away from a hot stove, we similarly retract from experiencing psychological pain. Unlike the intelligent physical response, psychological withdrawal actually sustains painful conditions. Unfortunately, many approaches to psychotherapy tend to reinforce this withdrawal. Somatic Learning^SM offers a new approach to psychological healing to engage the whole person. In the process psychological pressures - including assaults to self-esteem -- become a learning environment to heal and extend your presence into a wider range of living.

"Each session helps you integrate a new spark into day-to-day living".
Mark Wilson, O.M.D.
Doctor of Oriental Medicine - Campbell, CA

Psychological healing requires a change in how we pay attention to ourselves and the world. Rather then analyzing oneself as a separate observer, we learn to participate in the movement of living. Just as a swimmer glides effortlessly through the water. A self-sensing awareness gives us a "here-now" understanding of how we function psychologically-encouraging a participation in life that is both soul-engendering and life-affirming.

"Working with you has been a deep homecoming".
Lynn Dhority, Ph.D.
Professor of Critical and Creative Thinking - U.MASS

To deepen this intimacy with ourselves we engage our whole person in a "dialogue" that brings awareness to the silent level of our experiencing. This dialogue marshals a range of disciplines including Affect/Script Theory, Energy Medicine and Energy Psychology, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Epistemics that reveal the operative scripts conditioning our responses and that empower us in learning to maximize flow, affectively, somatically and cognitively. Epistemics, is the discipline derived from epistemology and General Semantics, for developing awareness and self-management skills as preparation for innovating in human participation and evolution.

Facilitated Somatic Learning^SM: Support in the Healing of Illness, Injury and Chronic Pain

Injuries and illness that resist conventional treatment compel us to ask: What does full healing require? Many therapies miss the mark because they focus on injury or disease as conditions separate from the whole person. But healing calls on each of us to become fully and consciously engaged in the process of how we live. In this way an injury or an illness becomes a learning environment, with the behaviors that sustain these conditions revealed. Through a "self-sensing" awareness you learn to participate consciously in your own healing. The symptoms of injuries and illness then become doorways -- not simply to health as we normally conceive of it, but to a much greater sense of aliveness.

"This is an excellent method for working with chronic pain, reversing deterioration and improving functioning".
Jarvin Heiman, M.D.
Los Angeles, CA

"Somatic Learning is very effective in coordinating the mind and body and bringing about deep physical changes".
Mark Abramson, DDS, Cranial Facial Pain
Specialist, Redwood City, CA

Therapeutic Services

You were born with a finely-tuned system that provides subtle feedback about how you function as a human organism. Facilitated Somatic Learning allows you to refine your "listening" and participate consciously in your own healing. The process includes a comprehensive range of therapies and disciplines, among them:

• Somatic Therapy and Touchwork

  Hands-on "touchwork," a process that extends from the cellular level to integrating physiological systems as a whole. This non-interventionist work had a huge range of therapeutic effects. The range includes: dissolving adhesions, freeing the mobility of the organs and membranes, regenerating injured tissue, unraveling strain patterns or curvatures of the spine, reducing blood pressure, recovering lost function, as in recovering range of movement, speech, etc. Through a very skilled "wombing" or taking up of your energetic forces and tensional patterns, your organism is freed up to dis-organize and re-new itself, as a chrysalis, enables a caterpillar to dissolve out of one structure and transform into a butterfly. You learn a "self-sensing" awareness that makes it possible to participate in healing, restructuring and renewal.

• Therapeutic Dialogue

  A dialogue between therapist and client that facilitates an awakening to the behaviors - both physiological and psychological -- that sustain injuries or ill-health.

• Movement Education

  Developing a subtle awareness of your capacity to release tension and stress continuously throughout your daily activities. This brings an ease and efficiency of movement that improves energy and performance.

• Individual Consultations: with Dr Kaparo and certified Somatic Learning^SM Facilitators
• Consultations with couples, families, groups, corporations and institutions: Dr. Kaparo and Inquiry staff bring creative strategies for transformative learning and change, ranging from conflict resolution and performance coaching, to organizational development, and the international peace process.
• Supervision: individual and group supervision in Facilitated Somatic Learning^SM for all kinds of therapists, health practitioners and educators with Dr. Kaparo
• Talks and Seminars: Dr. Kaparo and Inquiry staff also present at various conferences, institutions, universities and medical schools. If your are interested in sponsoring a program for your group or institution: Contact Us (info@somaticlearning.com)
• Workshops and Intensives: Inquiry offers programs for the general public in the Somatic Learning^SM disciplines all over the world. See Calendar
• Professional Training and Certification Programs: Inquiry offers Somatic Learning^SM trainings (ranging from weekends in specific Touchwork techniques to year long, Certification Programs in teaching Yoga & Somatic Meditations^SM Facilitated Somatic Learning^SM Practitioner Trainings and Somalogics^SM Dialogue Facilitator Trainings.
• Learners can also participate in these programs in conjunction with graduate and undergraduate degree programs at a several universities.
• CEC's available on some programs
• For more information on any of these programs and services: Contact Us (info@somaticlearning.com) or call (808) 821-8884

The practice of extending your presence can be likened to an old fairy tale in which a Handless Maiden comes upon a drowning child. Despite the impossibility, she reaches to save the child and hands miraculously appear.

Risa Kaparo's own life, like that of the Handless Maiden, was transformed when a life-threatening illness challenged her to grow beyond the conventions of her training and learn how to heal from the inside out. The process radically changed her life and eventually led to the birth of her life's work, developing a methodology of transformative healing and renewal. The practice empowers learners to extend their presence as we all experience such moments where impossibility is overcome by necessity, where we are challenged to extend beyond our limitations, where we have no choice but to embrace the gift of what is.

Risa Kaparo is an award-winning poet, educator, practicing psychological and somatic therapist and minister. Her writings on consciousness studies and organismic functioning and dialogue have reached a national audience through a variety of publications. She maintains a private practice in California and Kaua'i, and lives with her daughter on Kauai. Her book of poems, Embrace, is published by Scarlet Tanager Press.

In addition to earning graduate degrees in fine arts and psychology, Risa benefited from working with several mentors who profoundly influenced her life and work, these include Carl Rogers, David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti, and most personally, Gary David and Vanda Scaravelli.

She has always loved teaching and has committed a major portion of her life to that passion. As a teacher, Risa has taught levels ranging from pre-school through graduate programs, and has worked with variously disabled and learning-disadvantaged populations. Her experience teaching art to the blind in the late 60's had a significant influence on her later work as it challenged her to sense what was given in her silent experience that was not based on images and memory. Risa was commissioned by the federal government to create play and learning environments for Native Americans; co-founded several alternative and experimental schools, developing their educational vision, philosophy and curriculum; and served on numerous college faculties. She has served as a program coordinator for Sierra University and chaired the art department of the White Mountain School.

For the Dialogue Project at MIT's Center for Organizational Learning, Risa taught "The Principles of Dialogue." She also served on the faculty of the California Institute for Integral Studies' Doctoral Program in Transformative Learning and Change, and of the John F. Kennedy University Masters Program in Holistic Health and Consciousness Studies, the first fully accredited programs in these fields.

Recent projects include collaboration in researching energy medicine at UC Irvine Medical School with Joie Jones, MD and working on a documentary exploring the scientific basis of transformative healing.

Risa developed Somatic Learning^SM as a discipline for empowering individuals and groups to creatively participate in human evolution and endeavor from the depths of their somatic intelligence. As the founder of Inquiry, a division of AIWP, a non-profit organization, Risa has developed seminars, workshops and training programs for educators and health practitioners around the U.S., Canada, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. These programs offer a rigorous course in non-interventionist approaches to transformative learning and healing, based on a synthesis of psychological, somatic, and meditative disciplines.

As a result of her passion for understanding the micro-time dynamics of attention, Risa has developed and conducted seminars for educators and writers around the U.S. and Canada. She has consulted for businesses and schools, and conducted research for team learning in businesses, organizations, and educational institutions.

"Risa Kaparo is an award winning poet and songwriter. Most recently she won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest grand prize for her song "The Bible Before" off her upcoming album, Feel of a Woman's Tongue."

Contact Us to locate a Certified Somatic Learning Facilitator or to sponsor a seminar or workshop in your area.

Inquiry's Advisory Board:
David Surrenda, Ph.D.
James Oschman, Ph.D.
Karl Maret, MD
Kay Snow-Davis
Gail Shafarman, Ph.D.

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