11. Ramon Parish: Discipline and Delight–An Embodied Education

People already know many things. People arrive at school with their own intelligence, and they come here to cultivate that intelligence through contact with one another - embodied contact with teachers, administrators, other students - as well as with various resources and wisdom traditions, academic traditions. Real learning and transformation both take place in that contact, not through the input or memorization of knowledge or information. They come through grounding and body-based awareness - embodied mindfulness - whole-person embodiment. When we start dealing with difficult and challenging - and eventually rewarding - situations and concepts, you already have a kind of nervous system of self-knowledge. The embodied curriculum at Naropa can help you develop and cultivate both a social and sociological self-knowledge.