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More
about Robert Horton
Robert was born in 1956 and grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts. He
left home shortly after high school to attend the Naropa Institute
summer program in Boulder, Colorado, where he studied Buddhism and
poetics and began practicing meditation. He moved to the San Francisco
Bay Area in 1976 to study with poet Diane di Prima. He has lived
there ever since.
Between
1976 and the founding of The UNtraining in 1994, Robert followed
a path that included certification in printing from San Francisco
City College, where he later taught computer classes; owning and
operating a desktop publishing business in downtown San Francisco;
and pursuing his interest in music by starting several experimental
bands. He was active in tenant's rights issues in the early 1980s.
Robert became a meditation instructor and taught beginning and advanced
classes at the local Dharmadhatu centers. Although The UNtraining
is not "buddhist," the awareness and compassion fostered
by meditation practice are a key part of his approach to working
with himself and others.
In
addition to leading The UNtraining, Robert continues to create music.
He is married to Janet Carter.
How The UNtraining Got Started
In 1989, chronic health problems led Robert to become involved with
Process Oriented Psychology (aka Process Work). He studied Process
Work for the next 7 years. The most significant event for him during
that time was meeting Rita Shimmin at a five-week Process Work intensive
with a diverse group of participants from 13 different countries.
Rita was there checking out whether or not she would recommend Process
Work to the African American community. She and Robert became friends.
Eventually Rita also became his teacher and mentor, and the catalyst
for founding The UNtraining.
Frequently
at Process Work events, after large group processes around racism,
the people of color would ask the white people to work on racism
themselves. At one point Robert, being a typical white liberal,
asked Rita, "Why doesn't somebody do that?" Her reply
was, "Why don't you do that?" This was the first seed.
As
Robert's relationship with Rita deepened and they worked on racism
in the context of their friendship, Robert didn't want what he was
learning from Rita to end with him. Also, he was struck by the enormity
of the work that people of color have to do to have white people
as friends. He began adapting what he'd learned from Rita and translating
how she worked with him into exercises and ways of working with
other white people. The result was The UNtraining.
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More
about Rita Shimmin
Rita's
work is fundamentally about people. She has coached individuals,
couples, families, line staff, managers and senior executives. She
has work-shopped and lectured groups of 200, small groups, groups
that were all white, all people of color, groups of mixed race,
ethnicities, and class backgrounds; groups of all ages and all sexual
orientations. She has worked with people who have the responsibility
to hold society together and those who are driven to deconstruct
it; with happy people and depressed people, people identified as
crazy and people identified as normal.
Rita
teaches people to define their sphere of influence and their work
in the world, and to enrich that work with new tools, strategies,
supportive relationships and increased capacity to play and create.
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