Loving Container Focus Sessions for BIPOC
ONLINE
By appointment • See details below
The Loving Container is a healing container of love, a sacred space, created by InterPlay Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) for BIPOC, using InterPlay Focus Session Form. The InterPlay Focus Session Form is where a sacred space is created that provides for a one-on-one or group healing session between a Certified InterPlay Leader (CIL) and an individual requesting relief, support, and/or guidance and direction for a specific issue, challenge or concern.
This sacred healing space takes place in a one-on-one Zoom Meeting Room with the CIL. If the person requesting the Focus Session would like to participate in a Focus Session where the CIL is joined by a small supportive group of individuals (BIPOC) who help the CIL hold space, that is also an available option. The sessions are free
Why BIPOC ONLY? BIPOC communities, according to many sources, including but not limited to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updates and the Associated Press—both have reported that these communities have been disproportionately impacted to a larger degree than others by the pandemic and racial oppression. That’s not to say that other communities have not been impacted, and aren’t grieving. However, the trauma associated with grief, loss, and sadness experienced in communities of color is old hat. For centuries the BIPOC community has dealt with whatever has come and continued to press on to the next adversity, most times without addressing or healing from what lay beneath the surface of deep suffering and hidden gaping wounds. InterPlay offers unique body wisdom tools and forms that provide release, and relief, to individuals receiving focus sessions towards their self-empowerment.
How the Loving Container works? The container works in support of BIPOC with grief, sadness, trauma and/or issues related to COVID-19 and/or events directly related to racial oppression and the impact on BIPOC bodies. If interested in a Focus Session, you start the process by sending an email to: LOVING@interplay.org. Whether you want your Focus Session conducted in a group setting, or one-on-one, the CIL will work to honor your request as part of scheduling the Focus Session.
Cost: Free!
Registration/Information: To set up a time, email
Leaders
Masankho Banda
Masankho is a multi - disciplinary Performing Artist, Certified InterPlay Leader, Educator and PeaceBuilder. He brings many unique perspectives to his work around the world. He learned the fine arts of storytelling and dance from his Malawian culture spending many long days and nights listening to stories and dancing to music that captivated his mind, shaped his being, nourished his soul and strengthened his spirit. Using performing arts Masankho motivates and inspires people of all ages to work together to bring about peace, social justice and cultural understanding. In 1997, he started UCanDanc—African Healing Arts to bring his passion for dance and storytelling to communities around the world. Masankho has been a Certified InterPlay Leader since 1999.
Masankho can also be reached at these phone numbers: +265 99 255 5338 or 88 113 8655 (available on Whatsapp / FaceTime)
Also: Skype : kamsisi
Facebook / Twitter: storytelling4u
Natalie Abdou
I have been on a life-long journey of curiosity and creativity, and have spent the last 10+ years connecting and collaborating with diverse communities, in North America and the Middle East, by co-creating learning environments that are founded upon shared values of diversity, love, respect and self-empowerment - embracing a vision of solidarity, social justice and change from the inside-out. I weave in elements of embodied wisdom, Theatre of the Oppressed and other visual/movement/story arts into my practice and see/feel the arts as portals for personal and collective transformation, providing space for our souls to dance, breathe, heal and unleash the deep wisdom that resides within. That is why my heart exploded with resonance and childlike joy when I came into connection with Interplay in 2015 - since then I have had the gift of mentorship and leadership within the Arts & Social Change program, of mentoring alongside Cathy Ann in the Life Practice Program, and co-creating with Interplay POC community as we explore and better understand the ways in which this diverse unique group body plays. I feel deep gratitude for the way in which InterPlay has danced its way into my life bringing with it so many quirks and magic.
Kaira Jewel Lingo
Kaira Jewel Lingo teaches meditation and mindfulness internationally, with a focus on activists, people of color, artists, educators, families, and youth. She began practicing mindfulness in 1997. An ordained nun of 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, she leads retreats in the U.S. and internationally, offering mindfulness programs for educators and youth in schools, as well as individual spiritual mentoring. In addition to her roots in the Zen tradition, she practices and teaches in the Insight tradition and will graduate from Spirit Rock Teacher Training in 2020. She explores the interweaving of art, play, ecology and spiritual practice and is a certified yoga teacher and InterPlay leader. She has loved training in dance and other expressive arts since childhood. She edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s, Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children and has articles and chapters published in numerous magazines and books, including Real World Mindfulness for Beginners. She is currently based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, but will move to Louisville, Kentucky in May, 2020. Visit kairajewel.com to learn more.
Lois Toni McClendon
Lois "Toni" McClendon (she/her) is a Storyteller in the African American Oral Tradition, as well as a peace & social justice activist. Toni serves on the Board of Body Wisdom as Secretary. She is a Life Practice Program Leader and a Certified InterPlay leader from Pittsburgh PA USA. Always walking the Beauty Way, Toni believes in building Bridges to Unterstanding between people of all ages from around the world. She is totally committed to Racial Equity and Transformation and strives to emodying the principles and practices of InterPlay in her life's work.Toni is also a member of ABAFASI, a women's West African-style drumming and performance group.
Soyinka Rahim
Soyinka Rahim (GSP) is a grassroots spiritual practitioner who is the founder and artistic director of BIBOLOVE.US which stands for "breathe in breathe out love." She was also the founder of OurThing Performing arts company, where she created the modern-day folk dance play An Altar Piece to Alter Peace, a multimedia, intergenerational performance piece for peace. Her work BIBOLOVE taps into the power of sound, movement and visual art, raising the love vibration of peace, love, joy, happiness, health, grace, and ease. BIBOLOVE supports our personal and collective life challenges by feeding the love frequencies for generational, cultural, racial, body, and economic unity. Soyinka has brought her wisdom as a spiritual director, conference weaver and workshop leader to InterPlay Certified Life practice, Facing Race, National Association for Independent Schools for Teachers of Color,
Boys and Girls Clubs, Spiritual Directors International Conference, and the Parliament of World Religions.
Carolyn Renée
Carolyn Renée Morris (she/her) is a teaching and healing artist with more than a decade of service/experience in the creative and healing arts. She’s the former executive director of the ArtsXchange, a 37-year-old art and social change organization, and Alternate ROOTS, a 44-year-old social justice organization lifting up art as activism in the Southeast USA. Carolyn Renée is committed to the pursuit of art and social justice, health, and well-being for BIPOC on the frontlines of advancing justice. She is a certified InterPlay Leader and in 2008 became a health and wellness practitioner to heal herself from an illness which led to combining the healing and creative arts. With InterPlay, she creates Sacred Space for BIPOC and partners with USA/Ghana-based A Life of Peace Wellness Education Institute to ensure every home has an engaged artist/healer. She goes by “Carolyn Renée.”
Coke Tani
Coke Tani, is a movement and literary artist, spiritual companion, and teacher/facilitator. In addition to having co-led the Secrets of InterPlay & Life Practice Program, Coke served as InterPlay's first Liaison to Leaders of Color, where she introduced the expansion of InterPlay forms for embodied anti-racism education, and co-created InterPlay's first BIPOC Daylong Retreat. Currently, Coke leads InterPlay in communities of color and faith-based settings, as well as in 1:1 focus sessions, She serves on InterPlay's Culture & Curriculum Pod of the Racial Equity and Transformation Committee. In former years, Coke was a community-based therapist and solo theater artist. She holds an MSW, MFA and MDiv.
Masankho is a multi - disciplinary Performing Artist, Certified InterPlay Leader, Educator and PeaceBuilder. He brings many unique perspectives to his work around the world. He learned the fine arts of storytelling and dance from his Malawian culture spending many long days and nights listening to stories and dancing to music that captivated his mind, shaped his being, nourished his soul and strengthened his spirit. Using performing arts Masankho motivates and inspires people of all ages to work together to bring about peace, social justice and cultural understanding. In 1997, he started UCanDanc—African Healing Arts to bring his passion for dance and storytelling to communities around the world. Masankho has been a Certified InterPlay Leader since 1999.
Masankho can also be reached at these phone numbers: +265 99 255 5338 or 88 113 8655 (available on Whatsapp / FaceTime)
Also: Skype : kamsisi
Facebook / Twitter: storytelling4u