To dream big is to adventure into the wild, holy daylight where Edger Cayce said, “Dreams are answers to tomorrow’s questions.” What are you dreaming? Share in the comments below! InterPlay connects things, people, ideas and DREAMS!

In many ways InterPlay is a dream come true allowing InterPlayers in 2012 to gather in Australia, Scotland, The Holy Land, Germany, India, Amsterdam, and the US. InterPlayers will uplift women’s voices and spirits, empower men, and awaken life in kids as we walk, stop, and run in news ways together.

• InterPlayers will serve visionary organizations and leaders in places like Out and Equal, Prasad, Saint Mary’s Senior Center, Alexian Brothers Mental Health Community, Youth for Environmental Sanity. learners in elementary to graduate level classrooms, and practionners in Buddhist Communities, churches, and temples.
• InterPlay will raise up different stories, cultures, languages, and views at places like the International InterPlay Convergence!
• Dynamic global leaders seeking embodied wisdom and playfulness will gain tools and support in the Life Practice Program.
• InterPlay will serve as an incredible wellness resource for professionals exploring the InterPlay Way thanks to CathyAnn Beaty and others.
• Next Gen/Millennial Leaders will lead in integrating body mind heart and spirit in artful, passionate ways to foster health on our planet.
• InterPlayce in Oakland will celebrate its 3rd leap year birthday! Which one is that?
• InterPlay will play more online.
• And here is a wild dream. InterPlayers will rest. How? Because rest is vital and we know how to play in reality’s great synchroniCity!

To support the dreams, I’m offering Mystic Tech: Stuff they don’t teach in Sunday School, Temple or P.E.  This online, yet personal way to learn and share body wisdom practices teaches more sophisticated practices that help to balance energy, attune vision, manifest dreams, and show up as artists. Subscribe to get emails at the Mystic Tech blog. I send gifts to those who do.

Letting go is easiest when we have space and time. Perhaps that’s why it is said, “The young shall dream new dreams, and the old shall see a mighty vision.” The middle-aged do well to hold on to each other through the great years of care-giving.  Yet, we dream, even if we get a little frozen as Shel Silverstein poem says in”Frozen Dream,” from  A Light in the Attic,

I’ll take the dream I had last night,
And put it in my freezer,
So someday long and far away,
When I’m an old grey greezer,
I’ll take it out and thaw it out,
This lovely dream I’ve frozen,
And boil it up and sit me down
And dip my old cold toes in.

Raise your wandt. What do you dream for 2012 or a future season? I’d love to know! Little dreams count!

On November 5th, 2011, at a festive San Francisco Bay Area Million Connections Fun-Draising Brunch celebrating InterPlay Outreach, we presented our 2011 Spirit of InterPlay awards to filmmaker and activist Katrina Browne and St. Mary’s Center which serves low-income seniors in the East Bay. We honor those who are making a world of difference using creativity and body wise smarts for social change!

Katrina Browne, 1998 Bay Area Life Practice Program participant, brought InterPlay to Boston, co-taught a Life Practice Program group and offered workshops on racial dynamics at the First International InterPlay conference in Nashville.  Katrina just moved to Washington DC and hopes to InterPlay there soon!

Katrina is Producer/Director of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, a documentary about her slave-trading ancestors, the hidden history of New England’s complicity in slavery, and questions of repair and reconciliation today. She met film co-director Juanita Browne in an InterPlay-inspired multicultural Women’s Performance Group.

Traces of the Trade premiered at Sundance in 2008, aired on PBS to reach over 1.5 million Americans, was nominated for an Emmy, and contributed to the Episcopal Church’s vote to atone for its role in slavery. Today, the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery creates heart-opening dialogue on issues of white privilege and the legacies of slavery.

Her award certificate read, “For your exceptional contribution to the world through your potent, creatively inspiring, and open-hearted film Traces of the Trade and your commitment to spreading its truth through unflagging outreach, education and relationship-building.”

Saint Mary’s Center and InterPlay Oakland have been friends for years. InterPlayers have engaged their board, staff, and community at many events. St. Mary’s believes in the arts, friendship, and people-led social change causing one InterPlaying social worker to say, “This is the first agency I’ve been in that was also a community!”

Thanks to a County of Alameda Mental Health Innovation Grant, three InterPlay leaders, Phil Porter, Coke Nakamoto and Connors McConville and St. Mary’s staff are offering low-income seniors activities in the winter shelter program and other settings.

We acknowledge Carol Johnson, executive Director for her wise, open-hearted, people friendly leadership over these years. The certificate presented to St. Mary’s read, “For providing heart-felt services to low-income seniors, families and pre-schoolers in the East Bay and for fully embracing the arts as a part of their ‘whole person’ approach to addressing the needs of their communities.”

Fundraising, grants, fees for Body Wisdom events help us strengthen connections among movements of people seeking the vision, energy and peace to get where they want to go in surprising, healing, creative. miraculous and world-changing ways.

Join us at an event or click here to play a part with your pocketbook.

Cynthia Winton-Henry
cynthia@interplay.org

Some lucky kids head into their bumpy teens with InterPlay’s power of affirmation, improvisational creativity and tools to claim body wisdom.

Stan Stewart Sawyer and Anita Bondi know. They InterPlayed with Susan Featro’s 7th Graders in Pennsylvania.

In Mumbai, India Ligia & Jaime da Fonseca enthrall teens in a School Orientation programme.

Come play, have fun and relax and get refreshed, renewed with more body spirit. Is this possible?

We enter the room with a lot of love, hope and excitement.  A room full of over 50 youngsters with eager eyes await us. They only know that it is the day for their Orientation Programme. What does it mean???? A lecture, or an interactive group discussion…….?  Something to orient them into what???? It surely cannot be play which is indoors in a school building.

We begin by centering ourselves and listening to our hearts as we close our eyes. Initially there are smiles and then like angels their bodies begin to smile from within. They love the singing gong!  It’s resounding sound starts the music in their hearts.

Warm up, stretch and yawn, they surely do and respond so easily and shake off all that they would like to, like leaves falling from the trees. Shake, Shake, Shake!!!! The loud sighs and sounds help them exform so easily.

What fun imagining we are kicking dry leaves (and just like Mother Earth transforms everything into manure) they also eagerly  spread the goodness around to each other and then to the rest of the world.  Even the quiet ones are slowly warming up to play.

Now begins the fun…. We walk slowly…… even slow is fast with youngsters as their world is on the move all the time. Each time we go at a slower pace and then…..  They love the still moments…… Some find it so difficult to close their eyes. Are they the shy ones or the scared ones? Maybe both, but with personal encouragement they give it a try and slowly begin to enjoy this world with closed eyes that helps them go on their inward journey.

…Their reflection after an experience of joyful connections with everyone is so deep as they go round connecting in a circular form. They realize how important it is to connect with all, even though our differences are great…. Their eyes open wide as they see possibilities of initiating connections in their families and friends circles. The experience is so profound, there is a loud request for MORE….

When we once asked some 12 year-old kids,” what do we gain by listening to our hearts?: what amazed us was the wisdom of one child that said,”  My  heart tells me what is the most loving thing to do in a situation.”  Another girl once said “My heart tells me how each time I can make a new beginning.”  This is truly how InterPlay is all about participating in a mystery, going to the unknown and evolving from there.

Story telling and babbling brings out a world of imagination and fun and allows us to get into their world. We all begin to dream together and get into each other’s world as our subconscious speaks.

Tired yet peaceful we lie down to rest, relax , refresh ourselves and allow our hand to dance, surrendering our spirits to our creator we now curl up and get into our bodies closer to our hearts and souls. The dance between body, mind and spirit has begun and will go on…….

Imgine InterPlay for homeroom, health, art, writing, as a way to help a project flow, to let go of stress so learning can happen!

We appreciate your support for the 2011 group of 20 and 30 year old’s from around the world currently gathered in Oakland for Arts and Social Change: InterPlay for Next Gen Leaders. We are moving toward a future that embraces the body wisdom of the earth and one another in hopeful and inspired ways.

Want to know more about InterPlay’s approach to the Economics of Grace? Read this article by Phil Porter!

Find some InterPlay! If you can’t make it to a group, check out the Friday Virtual InterPlay Practice. Subscribe or unsubscribe anytime!

In ancient practice three actions lead to Great Love. 1) Let go. 2) Deeply welcome life. 3) In singular fullness, unite with self, other, all.

It hit me. Improvisation is the discipline of letting go. And, it’s hardest when we’re scared, stressed, or upset. In other words, most of the time.

But an improviser loves to play with life and ride it into the big “YES!”  An improviser will gladly flop if the payoff leads to making love with creation. This is why InterPlay is my playground, discipline, and where I feast on love for life.

Clinging is the opposite of letting go.  I need both dynamics to be human, but to get to Love, InterPlay sets up practices that build confidence in the flow of our own voice, moves, stories, connection, and self understanding. Incrementality!

Adult play gives us a “safe enough” place to follow and go with the materials of experience until we can do it for longer periods with all we encounter, even death. We discover we are alive, powerful, and that we are having fun!

In community we get strong enough to merge with a greater field that helps our social body heal from the bumps of daily life. What does this look like? A dance. A song. Drumming. A community sharing the quiet. When we point toward Something Bigger we touch ecstasy. Peace, joy, hope, laughter, tears return.

What is your discipline for letting go? Do you practice as a mover, a teller, a person with voice, breath and stillness?  Is it fun?

What if peace-making required more lovers and fewer problem solvers? Would you know how to play into love?

Are you ready for the disciplines of this strange age: learning to improvise and love? Come InterPlay! Maybe you are called to come learn lead it!

I am sorry to say that I do get depressed (oddly sad, achy, grumpy, and sometimes worse). This is one of a myriad of reasons that InterPlay exists. I learned that certain behaviors empower my healthiest self  like creativity, movement, surprise, big bodied expression, goofing off, silliness, spontaneity, love, affection, truth-telling, and connecting with others and with life. As you can see I am as smart as a rat tracking the cheese.

The doc called my brand of depression dysthymia. a mild case of low serotonin…a bit of sluggish mental health immunity. This explains why I need a higher power to keep myself out of the ditch, why I need to take care of myself instead of wallow, why I need to dance and sing and make jokes about depression and everything else that gets to me, and why I am a ridiculously intent go-getter. When I’m unconscious I get seriously worked up–fueling adrenalin into my system instead of a good diet of creating, resting, and playing.

Am I ashamed about depression? No. I wish I didn’t have it, but disease does not define the soul, it only informs it.

Many who InterPlay are as shocked as I am that InterPlay is like getting a multi-vitamin booster shot. Playing with five core freedoms-1) movement 2) voice 3) telling stories 4) stillness 5) connection in a reasonably safe way is sneaky deep! Bad moods and rude attitudes shift. ITS CRAZY!

Of course you needn’t be depressed to benefit! Last week a guy came to my group for the first time, a scientist who was understandably dubious. After an hour he said, “I haven’t moved like that in I don’t know how long. I felt free. It’s just good for you!”

In Kansas City Devi Whetterer led a group and afterward Laird Schaub wrote about his first InterPlay experience on his Community and Consensus blog. Over a weekend, this community networker & group process consultant gleaned the power of o Slowing Down o Moving Consciously from Stress to Grace o Working with What’s in the Room o Being Brave with Strangers o Working Inside While Playing Outside o Trusting the Body’s Wisdom o Using Movement, Touch, and Voice as the Vocabulary of Emotional Expression. He wrote

“I think that Interplay is powerful because, as a culture, we are starved for emotional authenticity, and highly inhibited in our bodies. (There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but you get the point.) Interplay tries to open both of these doors, giving us a taste of what fuller expression might feel like. Though the context of the workshop is as benign as possible, we got a glimpse of what this might look like if we approached problem-solving this way, where our voices and bodies were fully welcomed at the table.”

Someone said, “The opposite of depression is not happiness. It’s movement.” I like that–not feeling stuck in my disease or the culture’s. Making art, telling little truths, resting, singing, connecting, putting my energy into what works is why InterPlay got an innovation grant to offer wellness to homeless seniors, why its part of a social change strategy for groups and individuals who rely too much on adrenalin and not enough on good looks body wisdom. And, it’s why helping professionals are adopting this fun, wonderful tool set for self and client care in The InterPlay Way. 

It turns out play is medicine. All the smart people are saying so. And that’s pretty funny.

In India we saw it. InterPlay could make miracles happen. Traveling into places of great need, over and over caregivers would question whether their community would respond. Repeatedly, men, women, parents, children ROSE UP. Factory workers ROSE UP. People with multiple sclerosis, leprosy, mental illness, disabled vets seized hope from the InterPlay teachers. Women in the slum laughed and rejoiced. They wanted to live.

We see the same thing happen in the US. InterPlay’s set of simple-to-do invitations lead people to reconnect, move, give voice and speech, and enjoy stillness. This rising phenomenon happens among homeless men in a shelter and among privileged, educated men and women often at odds, depressed, and despondent about the world.

How does one live? Mystics and artists enter the dance of life, the color, the song and breath of life. Do not wait for suffering to end. Life brings its own medicine. Our creative spirit is this medicine.

Prashant, Hazel, Jaime and Ligia contribute great heart to life, peace, and the love of the Divine in India. Yet, InterPlay was founded in the US amongst people who deeply need the integration of grace and wholeness. Doesn’t it make sense that those saturated in western, body-anxious ways would also need to find balance and life? Trying to understand the relationship of dance, the body, and theology I trained with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant scholars at the Graduate Theological Union. Father Jake Empereur SJ, was a pivotal doctoral program advisor. He also taught ballroom dance.

I am grateful to all individuals so full of grace, wisdom, and fun who taught me. But most of all I am grateful to the wisdom of our body, the best teacher on the planet for those who are ready to rise.

I am always glad when I get to that place. Why? Because spaciousness soon follows.

I don’t know about you but I find a lot of life overwhelming. National budgets for instance. The weather. My inherited privileged position. Parenting. Being parented. Cooking dinner. Insidious nonverbal messages which tell me to eat more, do more, buy more and to feel bad when I do. Crazy. Over the last few weeks I admitted it. “I am deeply disturbed.”

Yet, body wisdom has other advice. There is another way. Slow down, touch stillness, rest, and if  lucky get with people with arms wide open to mystery, people who sing or dance with abandon to remember who they really are, or at least readily admit they are not in charge. When this happens answers can arrive without force.

Can we do something like this on a wider collective level, welcome that spaciousness that begins with admitting and opening the body to something greater?

We need to allow room for it. It won’t come with a 5 year plan. Oddly, it comes most quickly when we “hook up” our strangely wonderful dance-song-spiritbody.

Yeah, this still surprises me, too. They get it in India. But, it’s a hard sell in a country founded by super serious guys who tried to talk, write, and decree everybody be free the same as them, with NO DANCE on Sundays.

The body knows best how to get to greater wisdom. That is why Phil and I cooked up the InterPlay Secrets of Effective Groups: “bodies, not machines.” When groups can shake out some rampant expectations, take some deep breaths around the fury of activity, learn what the body wants, and let it communicate– we see something new. Most of the time they don’t even have to dance to see it.

How do I know? I watch and listen to the body. People feel better. They start to like each other. In their powerlessness, space opens. They get some power back.

Phil and I will share the Secrets for Effective Groups in Oakland and also in Berkeley at the Pacific School or Religion this summer. When we are in your area we’d love to share them with your work or community.

It is a strange gift to overhear people who don’t know me say that after struggling with heavy hearts, stormy lives, and depression, for the first time in a long while in an InterPlay class something new happened. They felt joy. Hope.

I know. InterPlay is heaven-sent to me, too. Hope is a miracle.

Naomi Pridjian, all 72 years of her, writes a blog on hope. She went to Jane Siarny’s InterPlay group in Chicago after hearing her friend Anne Sigler (Albuquerque) talk it up. Now she’s hooked. She said,

“My goal is joy in exploding colors of the rainbow—the same experience as being in love—an experience of complete, indescribably harmonious fulfillment. I get that when I dance at my InterPlay sessions and am transported beyond my self…into my Self…together with God. My cup is not half full or all full, it runneth over. How this happens is pretty simple: I drive to the place where the InterPlayers gather, participate fully and receive not only happiness, but Joy. It is a type of prayer and worship. Each time I go, I make a down payment on more of it. I haven’t lost my concerns or troubles, I’ve turned my mourning into dancing for a while and the color of anxiety/despair/hopelessness lightens…” Read the rest here.

Why is it so delicious when something you do matters? Dunno. Just know that it makes me glad.

Thanks to all of you who create containers for hope! You may be giving someone a memory they’ll never forget!

Phil will be in Chicago soon! Check it out…come play even if you want to just watch! There is much more to see on the website happening in Chicago!

Arts and Social Change 2010 Grads

I am taking every bit of juicy InterPlay as a birthday present to me! Yes, I am another year older. And no I am not in my twenties, thirties or forties! But the next amazing group of artist-activist-life enthusiasts who have applied is! Prepare for the 2011 July Arts and Social Change Training

This year 15 dancers, media artists, theater artists, musicians, activists, writers, chaplains, expressive artists, and community organizers have applied. Two from India. Two from Australia. Others connecting with InterPlay in Seattle, Indiana, Kansas City, Pennsylvania, Raleigh North Carolina, and California.

I can’t wait to meet people like Rehana who said,

My interest in community education grew and took me to work as a cocreator/facilitator of youth lead community learning spaces in the informal settlements of Nairobi and in social neighbourhoods in Toronto. Regardless of the issue at hand – be it sexual and reproductive health with adolescent girls in Nairobi, or water conservation and quality with youth in Toronto, I always managed to incorporate theatre and dance as forms of expression, to apply theory to practice, to observe ourselves, to co-vision, build community, transform conflict and to re- imagine our realities. And although I managed to incorporate these elements of art into my work, I was often left yearning for more theatre, more dance, more movement needs which my positions within structures could not always satisfy.

Or Stephanie from Sydney who wrote with typical Aussie humor

I was 5 years old and the school implemented a program called “electives” which was a few hours one afternoon a week where we could choose a class and participate in an all age ‘interest group’… I chose percussion, and I was quite excited. During the first session I was no doubt thumping some maraccas with great gusto when the group was interrupted by a teacher who told me as we left the room that I would now be in the singing group. I was disappointed, until I learned that I’d been selected to star in the school musical as the baby elephant who asks too many questions… “stop asking questions, you ask to many questions, you’re always asking questions all day long” is the chorus that the other animals in the cast sang to me. I loved it! I still love to perform and, do I ask too many questions? Well, that’s a matter of opinion I guess!

How thrilling this last year to follow through with 2010 Next Genners Agnotti (now organizing Masankho’s Chicago Cultures of Peace in November), Sally (interning with us at InterPlayce next year supported by Mennonite Voluntary Service) Joy Anna (organizer for Masankho’s May trip to Asheville) and Olivia with whom I’m scheming to put art on the front of InterPlayce! (Talk to me if you think this is the coolest idea!) The others are up to much magic, too!

When wonderful people connect to wonderful people in wondrous ways, what in the future is possible? Help us find out!