Ready for Risk: Relational Courage for complex times
It is time to slow down, expand beyond reactivity, and experiment with steadier ways of relating to ourselves and one another.
Ready for Risk is an 8-session VIRTUAL program for people who feel the strain of these times in their bodies and relationships, and want to meet life with greater steadiness, care, and choice.
Begins April 3rd!
We are living in a time shaped by rapid change, polarization, and sustained nervous system pressure, and these conditions are shaping how we experience ourselves and one another in everyday interactions.
Many people notice heightened alertness, quicker reactions under stress, and increasing difficulty staying present when fear, disagreement, or uncertainty arises, patterns that affect trust, communication, and our sense of connection.
In the meantime, we feel a growing desire to respond to the issues our world face's and contribute meaningfully to a just and equitable world.
For that, we need to be able to increase relational capacity and courage.
Ready for Risk is a program in response to these conditions, with the understanding that relational capacity and courage are learned.
It is for those who want to expand relational capacity in relationship. It is especially for those who trust, or are learning to trust, that the body holds a deep intelligence that can serve as a north star in uncertain and unstable times.
The program offers structured support for building steadiness and responsiveness in the midst of complexity, and for strengthening the skills that help people stay engaged without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.
Trust and courage grow when we learn to notice impulse, recognize patterns of protection, and make space for more authentic choice in how we move, speak, and relate.
This program offers space to practice strengthening attention, building confidence in our responses, and developing steadier ways of meeting one another in all our complexity.
Without realizing it, many of our behaviors are shaped by patterns of protection that organize outside of awareness. These patterns influence how we speak, listen, move, and make sense of one another, often long before we have time to reflect or choose.
We learn to manage how we show up in order to stay connected, avoid rupture, or maintain belonging (through masking or performativity).
While these strategies often develop for good reasons, they can distance us from our own impulses and make it harder to respond authentically in moments that matter.
As we begin to notice impulse and understand the patterns organizing our responses, greater freedom becomes possible.
We gain the capacity to respond with more clarity, flexibility, and alignment, even in complex or uncertain situations. This matters because how we relate shapes the quality of our relationships and influences the kind of world we live in.
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SE+AM is the core method inside Ready for Risk. It's a powerful blend of Somatic Experiencing® and Authentic Movement designed to strengthen capacity for relational courage through the practice of seeing and being seen, and promoting nervous system awareness. Through the practice we learn to attune to bodily impulse, interrupt unhelpful patterning, and show up in connection with more aliveness and choice. People often believe that they are at the whim of their patterning, SE+AM offers a path of practice that reveals infinite possibility and choice.
Eight (8) LIVE ONLINE sessions we meet for 2-hours with facilitators and guests. Each session will follow a theme of exploration.
Program Elements
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Access to a private online platform (Circle) for course recordings and conversation.
What is SE+AM?
Five (5) LIVE ONLINE practice sessions for 1.5-hours to practice SE+AM, the primary modality of exploration in the program.
Integration will be supported during the sessions. If you'd like additional 1-1 somatic support, somatic coaching sessions with Tim Pauly or Karine Bell can be arranged, at a discounted additional cost.
Each session includes conceptual themes, guided movement, in the SE+AM Practice (see below) opportunities to witness and be witnessed, and reflective discussions.
An Optional In-Person Retreat (in NYC) is planned for July 18th & 19th, 2026 (10am-4pm).
More info to follow.
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Class 1 —April 3rd, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Opening Session : Laying the Groundwork
Content session DATES
Class 2 — April 10th, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Guest: Maureen Gallagher (see below)
Practice Session — April 17th 2026, 12-1:30 PM ET
Class 3 — April 24th, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Guest: Akilah Richards (see below)
Practice Session — May 1st, 2026, 12-1:30 PM ET
Class 5 — May 15th, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Guest: Jane Clapp (see below)
Practice Session — May 22nd, 2026, 12-1:30 PM ET
Class 6 — May 29th, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Facilitation: Weena + Karine
Practice Session — June 19th, 2026, 12-1:30PM ET
Class 8 —June 26th, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Closing Session: Integration + Beyond
Class 4 — May 8th, 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Facilitation: Weena + Karine
Class 7 — June 12th 2026, 12-2 PM ET
Guest: Kai Cheng Thom (see below)
Practice Session — June 5th, 2026, 12-1:30PM ET
This course is for anyone, parents, partners, collaborators, performers, and the simply curious, who wants to better understand and shift the embodied patterns that shape their relationships.
It's for those who feel the strain of these times in their body and relationships, even if they cannot always name it clearly. They are thoughtful, reflective, and often deeply caring, and they are noticing that their usual ways of staying steady, generous, or open are harder to access than they once were.
They care about how they show up with others, in intimate relationships, family life, creative work, community spaces, or social engagement, and they are aware that fear, vigilance, and reactivity are shaping interactions more than they want. They are not looking for self improvement as a performance or a quick fix, and they are not interested in spiritual bypassing or abstract theory detached from lived experience.
They want practical, embodied support for staying present under pressure, for meeting conflict and uncertainty with greater clarity, and for developing relational capacity that actually works in real life. They are willing to experiment, to feel, and to take relational risks in service of deeper connection and more honest participation in the world as it is.
Who is this For?
Weena, the creator of SE+AM, is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, movement artist, and long-time facilitator in the Rooted Global Village. With over 26 years of experience in dance and somatic practice, she supports individuals and groups in reconnecting with embodied aliveness and relational presence. Her work centers on the wisdom of the body, the power of being seen and seeing, and the possibility of building worlds grounded in interdependence.
Meet Your program Guides
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Weena Pauly-Tarr, Course Creator + Facilitator
Karine Bell, Guest Facilitator
Karine Bell is an SEP, scholar-activist, and founder of the Rooted Global Village. A bi-cultural Black woman and clown-in-training, she explores how we weave ourselves into ecologies of care that counter fragmentation and foster embodied transformation and radical friendship. Guided by curiosity and wonder, she is a PhD candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute studying somatics and decolonial depth psychology.
Tim Pauly, Guest Facilitator
I care. That’s really what roots my work—clearing the way so life can express itself more freely. My journey has always led me back to the body, through movement, meditation, intimacy, identity, grief, and growth. As a Somatic Coach trained through the Strozzi Institute and the International Coaching Federation, I help others find that same embodied connection, in service of a more alive and truthful way of being.
Kai Cheng Thom, MSW, MSc, Qualified Mediator, Certified Professional Jungian Life Coach, and Certified Somatic Sex Educator, is a coach, process facilitator, and mediator whose work focuses on the intersections of trauma healing, Transformative Justice, and social change.
A noted theorist and practitioner in the field of conflict resolution, Kai Cheng has made significant contributions towards the integration and application of conflict transformation, crisis intervention, and body-based trauma healing methods in an activist context through her writing and teaching. Kai Cheng maintains a private practice as a one-on-one somatic coach, consultant, and group facilitator, drawing from extensive professional trainings in a wide variety of healing and wellness disciplines, including politicized somatics through the Strozzi and Generative Somatics lineages, depth psychology, Processwork, somatic sex education, clinical hypnotherapy, yoga nidra, and Thai massage.
She has trained hundreds of embodiment and wellness professionals as Adjunct Faculty with the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education and is a Senior Teacher at The Embody Lab.
Meet your guest teachers
Kai Cheng Thom, MSW, MSc, Qualified Mediator, Certified Professional Jungian Life Coach, and Certified Somatic Sex Educator
Akilah Richards, Exploring Grief & Its Expression in Relationship
Akilah S. Richards is a grief literacy educator, Certified Integrative Thanatologist, and Savor coach who supports people through the often-overlooked losses of life—not just death, but shifts in identity, role, and relationship. Her work helps people slow down, honor what’s ending, and listen for what still wants to live.
For over a decade, Akilah was a leading voice in the global unschooling movement, helping families reclaim autonomy, question hierarchy, and build consent-based relationships. That legacy of liberation now lives through her grief and joy work, where she invites us to trade performance for presence and urgency for rhythm.
She is the creator of What I Let Die, a public service podcast on grief literacy, and co-creator of Bringing Flowers, a collaborative offering with Thea Monyeé that explores the sacred interplay between grief and joy. Through coaching, courses, and creative community spaces, Akilah helps us practice being with what hurts without rushing to fix it.
Whether facilitating grief circles or crafting language for the unnameable, Akilah’s work reminds us that grief is a teacher—not a threat—and that we are allowed to grieve out loud, in rhythm, and in community.
Jane Clapp, Jungian Analyst
Jane Clapp trained as a Jungian Analyst with the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts and dedicated many years to exploring the sacred relationship between body, psyche and soul. Her work brings together the wisdom of depth psychology and the intelligence of the body. She is a somatic expert, speaker, writer and educator and has extensive knowledge of the spiritual, somatic and psychic impact of trauma.
Jane has completed advanced training in other related fields, which includes Sensorimotor psychotherapy, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Yoga, Reiki, various authentic movement practices, and coaching. Her website www.janeclapp.com offers more information. Jane is the creator of Jungian Somatics™, a body of work that integrates movement, sensation, and the unconscious to cultivate a deep, lived experience of aliveness and meaning. Jane has consulted and lectured at many Jungian Societies throughout North America and beyond, sharing the soul-centred foundations of Jungian Somatics™ and the healing power of symbolic, embodied experience. Jane believes that the longing for wholeness is universal, and the soul’s language is embodied, symbolic, and alive. It can guide us home.
Maureen Gallagher, SEP & Psychoanalyst
Dr. Maureen Gallagher is a Licensed Psychologist (NY, NJ), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Faculty Member, Inner Relationship Focusing Trainer, Emotionally Focused Therapist and Supervisor and a Relational Psychoanalyst. Her work and teaching are dedicated to the embodiment of psychotherapy and related healing disciplines, in which she integrates somatic awareness and the use of somatic intervention along with adult attachment work and a relational focus.
She brings a broad range of experience and training to this endeavor, including Certifications in Somatic Experiencing, Inner Relationship Focusing, Relational Psychoanalysis, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Integral Somatic Psychology, SE Touch skills training and Biodynamic Cranial Sacral Therapy. Her clinical work integrates focusing, somatic experiencing, relational psychoanalysis and experiential and process oriented models of attachment theory. She has maintained a private practice for over 20 years. She is the founder of Embodying Psychotherapy.
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One-time payment of
$447
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TWO-time payment of
$224
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PAYMENT PLAN
FOUR payments of
$112
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Ready for Risk: relational courage in complex times
Spaces for this course are limited and registration will be capped at 60 participants. For course viability,
We also have a limited number of partial scholarships available. You can write in to: care@rootedglobalvillage.com to request one.
Please only choose this option if it is otherwise cost prohibitive to join the course.
This experience will really rest on the live interactive sessions we are in together. However, in the event you cannot attend live, we will provide a recording for a limited time (through the program run + 2 months). Sessions will be designed so that you will have opportunities to practice outside of the live sessions.
FAQs
What if I cannot attend live?
What materials or equipment do I need?
You’ll just need a quiet space where you can move comfortably, an internet connection, and a device to access Zoom. Comfortable clothing is recommended.
Is there a refund policy?
All purchases for this course are final, as recordings of the sessions will be available for the specified time. We may consider partial refunds for truly unexpected circumstances that impact your ability to attend the program. We appreciate your understanding and commitment to the transformative journey this course offers.
Is this course trauma sensitive?
SE+AM is informed by principles of trauma sensitivity and somatic awareness. While the course is not a replacement for therapy, it offers a supportive environment for exploring relational dynamics and embodied practices.
How many people will be in the program?
Maximum capacity for participants is 60 to ensure a meaningful group experience. 30 is the minimum for the course to proceed. Refunds will be issued in the case the program cannot commence.
How long will I have access to the course materials?
For the integrity of the container, recordings are made available to view for the duration of the program + four months after the program ends, before they will not longer be accessible.