"Somatic Intelligence to Ease Chronic Pain" - SF Examiner

"Somatic Intelligence: To Be or Not to Be

That is the question. In excruciating pain, and told she would never be able to have children, Dr. Risa Kaparo decided at an early age to take matter into her own hands. Since the doctors did not have an answer for her very hurt body, she decided to literally look into the matter; into the body, herself."

Click here to read the rest of Madalyn Suozzo's article on Examiner.com


Madalyn herself is a medical intuitive with many years of experience treating cancer patients using regenesis.  Her own deep work in the healing arts lends her a unique perspective on the matter, and I was delighted to be interviewed by her.  Be sure to check out her site: www.originalwave.com.

Thanks, Madalyn!

- Risa

Simple Embodied Mindfulness Practices you can Engage Anytime, Anywhere

Part 2, taken from Allan Davidson's (ThroughYourBodyMastery.com) interview with Risa Kaparo

Click to download a free excerpt - Risa Kaparo, PhD & Allan Davidson

Dialogue as a Form of Social Meditation: Developing Proprioception of our Thought Process

Taken from Allan Davidson's (ThroughYourBodyMastery.com) interview with Risa Kaparo
Click to download a free excerpt - Risa Kaparo, PhD & Allan Davidson

Gratefulness, the heart of the Somatic Learning practice: Receive the gift of your embodiment.

The following is an excerpt from our November 17th 2012 Somatic Learning workshop:

Brother David Steindl-Rast tells a story of going to visit a family and bringing a gift to a child. The child takes the wrapped gift and very politely says “thank you.” Then carefully opens it and says “thank you” again, then puts it down and goes and plays video games all day. Another day, he visits another family and brings a gift to a child there. That child rips open the package without remembering to say thank you and plays with it all day, finding every possible way to use it. Which child is really grateful?

How do we receive? What is most delicious in any moment that we can lean into, like a swan gliding through water, the full depth of this fluid substance completely supporting it. Giving yourself to what you love and being able to find what you love.  When you have to wait for evidence from the Universe that it’s all going to turn out all right you are in a state of distrust. We are wired/oriented to catch every possible negative threat (from our days on the plains with lions, tigers and bears). Our brain is tuned to negative states because at that time, we had to be aware of all impending dangers or we might not be around another day to enjoy life. Now our stresses are less immediate and longer term, but we are stuck in a stress pattern. This doesn’t serve us any longer.  It is destructive to our immune system, deep thought, creativity, compassion. Instead, lean into riding the waves of joy and interest. These are the only two positive affective states—joy (on a scale to ecstasy) and interest (on a scale to excitement).  When we are in these states, we are functioning optimally.

All other affects—shame, fear, disgust, dismell, etc. take us into bracing and constraint in the system.

Gratefulness—recognize this moment and find how you can receive what’s there. All the efforting and tensing towards a goal, protecting, defending, upholding and bracing will never serve you. Just lift the oars up and the boat will turn around on its own.

Many thanks to Lisa Chipkin for this transcription.

 

Part Five: Practice as Chrysalis

This week's post is the fifth in a seven-part series of excerpts from our soon to be released companion video to the book, Awakening Somatic Intelligence: The Art & Practice of Embodied Mindfulness.

^"You can use the Somatic Learning practices to hold the field, like a chrysalis, for you to unravel, from one state into another … letting go of our dualistic orientation of the observer and observed, to enter into a non-dual realm of pure presencing. This practice is a portal into vast, unbounded spaciousness.  At the same time, You can receive the structure of your practice as an embrace, a container where you can feel safe enough to enfold into a more fluid state and drink in the deliciousness of being fully alive.

In the same way that the chrysalis supports a caterpillar’s metamorphosis from one state of being into another, and a womb allows an embryo to grow into a fetus bathed within the amniotic landscape, your Somatic Learning practice can womb you, so that you can give birth to yourself as the embodiment of the vast, unlimited consciousness that is your birthright.

I want to speak to you, dear viewer, about how to best receive this practice. Employing your will in an effort to achieve some predetermined goal or image turns your determination against you, perpetuating a subtle kind of violence. Our belief that we need to fix or improve ourselves reflects our identification with a very limited image of who we are. If we could see ourselves as source, then we would not feel the need to fix or improve ourselves. We would simply want to live the fullest expression of what we really are, unmediated by limiting beliefs and images."

Part Four: Leisure as a Practice in Detachment to Time

This week's post is the fourth in a seven-part series of excerpts from our soon to be released companion video to the book, Awakening Somatic Intelligence: The Art & Practice of Embodied Mindfulness.

^"When we engage our somatic intelligence, we awaken to our true nature as the embodiment of luminosity and spaciousness.   This awakened mode of perception dispels the curse of mis-identification with image/object bound experience.  You are already home, expressing in the world all the juiciness of this ecstatic union with the beloved. 

Let’s begin by exploring how we relate to the idea of “practice” to enter into  dimensions of experience unlike anything you have ever done before.

Your practice is the time you create for yourself to give birth slowly. It is an embodiment of leisure, or timelessness, the way you detach from the pressurized field of time. 

As my friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast defines it: “Leisure is the expression of detachment with regard to time.” He goes on to say that “leisure … is not the privilege of those who can afford to take time; it is the virtue of those who give to everything they do the time it deserves to take.” 

This is one of the best descriptions of practice I’ve heard."

Part Two: An Open Dialogue between the Conscious and Subconscious parts of the BodyMind.

This week's post is the second in a seven-part series of excerpts from our soon to be released companion video to the book, Awakening Somatic Intelligence: The Art & Practice of Embodied Mindfulness.

Click here to download the audio excerpt.

"The art and practice of Somatic Learning optimally supports the full embodiment of the quality commonly referred to as “mindfulness” in our lives through awakening somatic intelligence.  Somatic Intelligence refers to the way life knows itself in the bubbling, bursting, blooming forth of consciousness in the here and now. This is how we know ourselves at no distance, from the inside out.  In contrast, to how we were conditioned to know ourselves from the outside in.  In other words, assuming that the object we are perceiving at a distance - the way you look to me from a few feet away or I look in a mirror - is the same as what is actually here at no distance. 

Somatic Learning develops an open dialogue between the conscious and subconscious parts of our body-mind. This dialogue allows what we sense in the depths of our silent level of experience to influence and update our way of perceiving ourselves and the world.  Like fine tuning a radio receiver, Somatic Intelligence enhances our ability  to accurately attune with the body’s impulse to thrive. ,As we sense the feedback arising from the body-mind, we learn new ways of functioning that are congruent with non self-limiting beliefs. The old programmed  reactions are gradually erased, and our habitual tensions release into a more enlivened and integrated functioning. 

We learn from utilizing feedback - just as we wouldn’t learn to swim without water - we need the feedback of our feelings and sensations to become more self-organizing.  This changes not only our awareness, but our actual physical structure and physiological functioning.  We learn to bring spaciousness throughout the body-mind, allowing us to move with grace and efficiency, to prevent injuries and reverse the deterioration that often accompanies aging.  We strengthen our immune system, change the stress responses to ones that are more restorative and intelligent, and heal from trauma and stress related illnesses.   

And, Just as our physical movement becomes less dense and mechanical, so does the way we think and feel, become more fluid, creative and resourceful. 

Through the Somatic Meditations we develop a more highly differentiated response-ability.  This enhanced capacity for self-sensing, self-organizing (self-correcting), and self-renewing is the hallmark of the practice of Somatic Learning."