“In the way that we help others grow, we grow ourselves,” says Dora Montoya.
A mind, body, spirit practitioner and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee adviser in the Advanced Opportunity Center, Dora holds this as her philosophy of life and for living.
Capacitar means “to empower,” says Dora and the organization’s webpage. Through practitioners such as Dora, Capacitar International seeks to heal the world, one person at a time. “If we heal ourselves, we help heal the world,” according to Dora who was born in Durango, Mexico and raised on Milwaukee’s south side. She is working to empower individuals, communities, and nations. “I’m working to connect grass roots communities together in their efforts to change, grow, and strengthen.”
She fervently believes that these types of practices are the key to realizing Capacitar’s vision of “healing, wholeness, and peace” in the world. “I was volunteering at Casa Romero Renewal Center on 4th and Bruce and learned that the center’s director was doing a body, mind, & spirit practicum,” said Dora. She was intrigued with his work and decided to learn more about this practice. She ultimately decided to go through the training.

I’m a person who likes to learn things that will help me in my personal growth

Because of her personal philosophy of helping others to help herself, she has been working in a prison in Durango, Mexico for the last two years. There was an inmate there who she was able to help with her mind, body, spirit practices. “He couldn’t sleep,” she recounts. Through work with Chakras (Centers of Energy) she was able to help him overcome his insomnia. “The next day he told me that he’d had the best sleep ever” since his arrival at the prison,” she said.

As a practitioner, Dora is trained in a number of modalities to help others achieve balance in their lives and to awaken their energy centers. These modalities include T’ai Chi meditation, body movement, finger holds, acupressure points, hand and foot massages. She believes that her training and her practice has “made me more in touch with myself, my body and more intuitive of others’ needs.” She shares these gifts as well with her students at UWM to help them manage and relieve stress.

This mission to help others was “instilled in me at an early age by my grandmother – this belief that by using our gifts for the betterment of others – God will prize us in different ways for our efforts.” A lesson she has already begun sharing with her six-year-old daughter, Luvia who, she beams “is the love of my life!”

Dora Montoya, a bona-fide “people person.” Not the cliché we hear from others who profess to like everybody, but a person who demonstrates her belief in the power of people to do the impossible by touching and healing, helping and empowering.
-Sheena M. Carey