written by Ruth Schowalter, certified InterPlay leader and Art & Soul Creativity
PLAYING WITH BALANCE. I invited participants to play with balancing the light and dark in their lives by connecting with one another, leaning, counter-balancing, and intersecting.(photo by Ruth Schowalter)
InterPlay offers ways to celebrate occasions and mark time! On Friday, September 25th, I was so happy to facilitate InterPlay twice--"Spirit Play" at the Shambhala Meditation Center and then "InterPlay Lift" at the Decatur First Christian Church! For both of these InterPlay sessions, I decided to "play" with the theme of the FALL EQUINOX. Taking place on September 21st, we left summer behind and began fall, signaled by the shortening amounts of light each day and growing proportions of darkness. At the beginning of of both equinoxes (spring and fall), we get the experience of living with "equal" parts of day and night...at least until the hours of darkness increase (fall) or decrease (spring).
Marking this seasonal change gives us all the opportunity to dive deeper into our lives. Facilitating "Spirit Play" with poet Debra Hiers in Jennifer Denning's absence, I had the pleasure of meditating about the theme "change."
CHANGE. These fading purple petunias greeted me as I walked up to the Shambhala Meditation Center here in Decatur, Georgia, on September 25, 2015. Their leggy abundant growth was a reminder that the end of summer was here.(photo by Ruth Schowalter)
You will change says the stars to the sun, Says the night to the stars. -excerpt from "Change," by Kathleen Jessie Raine We began "Spirit Play" with meditation seated on supportive blue cushions in the spacious gathering room at the meditation center. We could hear the light rain tapping on the roof above us. Soft light filtered in around us through the trees outside the windows. Following our meditation, we did some "tellings" or "babblings" about pumpkins, apples, falling leaves and more. We stretched our bodies in our InterPlay warm up mirroring the trees and reaching branches outside our meditation room. Playing with the form, "Walk, Stop, Run," we experienced "change" in our bodies and our choices to move in community with one another. After reading the poem, "Change" by Kathleen Jessie Raine, we reflected on "change" by making shapes and holding them until we found we wanted to "change" our shape into another different shape. Movement and stillness is such a relaxing meditative InterPlay form. Participants were then invited to write their own poems on "change" and share them with the group.
REFLECTING ON CHANGE. On the right, poet Debra Hiers reflects on the poem written and read by Joyce Kinnard (left)about her reflections on change after playing around with movement and stillness.(photo by Ruth Schowalter)
Before "Spirit Play" came to an end, we gathered for a "selfie." Even though we had few participants, the quality of play and reflection was very rich. I hope you readers will join us for a future "Spirit Play" session.
SPIRIT PLAY SELFIE.Relaxed after playing with change. (photo by Ruth Schowalter
In the evening, I arrived early at the Decatur First Christian Church for my "InterPlay Lift" class. The rain was light--almost a mist--but enough to discourage people living in the metro Atlanta area from going out into interstate traffic. Right after arriving at the church, I received a text from someone stuck in traffic because of a roadway accident. Earlier, I had received another text from a regular participant who was coming down with the sniffles. FALL was definitely in the air!
POWERFUL FUN. Changing seasons...light fall rain, fall sniffles, fall travels and new arrival. Attendance was low for this "InterPlay Lift."(photo by Ruth Schowalter)
For this evening InterPlay class, "InterPlay Lift," I wanted to play with the BALANCE between "light" and "dark" and how we experience those two qualities in our lives. Lighting candles at the beginning of our play time together, we told stories, moved, experimented with our voices and found stillness.
PLAYING WITH STORY.(photo by Ruth Schowalter)
We witnessed one another's stoires. We whispered to one another the kind of balance we desired to manifest in our lives and danced on each others behalf. We relaxed. We rested. We got the big view of the Fall Equinox from "play."
That's InterPlay Atlanta with Ruth Schowalter! What will PLAY will you find in your life today? How are you marking the change in our life as the fall season begins? What balance do you want in your life?
INTERPLAY LIFT, THE LAUNCH. On Friday, July 24, 2015, Ruth Schowalter, certified InterPlay leader, began a Friday evening InterPlay class that will take place once a month in Decatur, Georgia, USA. (art by Ruth Schowalter)
The idea for my monthly InterPlay
Atlanta class began with HOT AIR BALLOONS! I envisioned colorful and
buoyant balloons ascending over the Atlanta skyline.Playing around with words: rising, uplift,
uptake, ascension….I happened upon the name for my Friday evening InterPlay class—InterPlay
Lift!
POWERFUL FUN. Ta dah! Here I am arriving early to open the doors for the first night of "InterPlay Lift"! InterPlay Atlanta is growing its offerings with the addition of two newly certified InterPlay leaders, Ruth Schowalter (me) and Christine Gautreaux (who created the InterPlay Atlanta sign show here in the photo and offers InterPlay in Norcross). We join Jennifer Denning, who has been leading InterPlay in Atlanta since 2008. (photo by Tony Martin)
“InterPlay Lift” would
offer people a way to “rise” after a week of work instead of falling into
exhaustion.Playing together with one
another on a Friday night might allow everyone to shift perspectives so that
their weekends could begin with a little bit more energy and connectivity with
themselves and one another.
One InterPlayer in
Atlanta, Callahan Pope McDonugh,
proclaimed this Friday night, “Date Night,” including all of us players as her
“dates” along with her husband Bill! What a thought! A communal date!
COMMUNAL DATE NIGHT--INTERPLAY LIFT! Twelve people showed up for the first Friday night Atlanta InterPlay class offered in downtown Decatur at the First Christian Church, across the street from the Post Office. Christened "date night" by Callahan Pope McDonough, who took this photo, we all felt that "InterPlay Lift" had given us a great way to have fun on a Friday evening. Afterwards, we went across to the Irish pub, The Marlay, for refreshment and conversation.
Exformation was my main
goal for this first “InterPlay Lift” class! Listening to what my body wanted
and needed, I crafted 90 minutes of activities that would allow us to
release—“exform”—some of the excess information, both good and bad, that
accumulates in our bodies. InterPlay co-founders, Phil
Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry, consider information “physical” and
something that can be “moved” out of our bodies. So I set forth and executed
the following plan after introductions and warming everybody up.
EXFORMATION ACTIVITIES
LAUGHTER YOGA (I’m a
certified Laughter Yoga Leader so that is an added plus I bring to InterPlay!)—We
did small front-of-the-mouth mmmm’s, progressed to back of the mouth heeheehee’s,
and moved onto to large belly hohoho’s, and finished with handshaking laughter,
punctuated with “very good, very good, yays.”
SHAKING IT ALL OUT—Oh yes
to two continuous minutes of all out moving and shaking out, dedicated to
shaking whatever body part needed to be shaken to the rhythms of drumming.
BREATHING AND SIGHING—Resting
but still exforming, we breathed deep breaths and released hearty sighs at our
own individual paces.
BABBLING IN A MADE UP
LANGUAGE—Players were invited to tell stories in a made up language about the
exformation practices they already use in their lives while incorporating face
and shoulder dances.
BAD IDEA BEARS—Borrowed
from the play “Avenue Q,” I introduced the “Bad Idea Bears,” who encourage you
to do all of the “wrong” things that you want to do but deny yourself.“Bad Idea Bears” is an activity during which
Players help each other expand on their “bad ideas” by cheering each other on
and exclaiming, “YAY” and waving their hands wildly. So if you say, “I have a
great idea. Let’s get a cake and eat it all tonight.” The other Bad Idea Bear
agrees and suggests if one cake is good, two cakes are better! YAY!
“Noticing” is something we
do in InterPlay after we “do stuff” like the exformation activities described
above. InterPlay Lift Participants noticed after playing around with “Bad Idea
Bears,” that it felt releasing and energizing to express all those “bad” or “wrong”
ideas that run through our minds instead of repressing them. Even better? To
have someone agree with you in hedonistic raucous pleasure! YAY!
SIDE BY SIDE STORIES. How fun, exformational, and energizing it is to tell a story about whatever activities you do to "exform" alongside another person and to be "witnessed." Yes to all of that! (photos by Ruth Schowalter)
After these Exformation
and other activities like “Side by Side” stories, I thought that I would play
around with resting inside of stillness and offered Participants the
opportunity to stretch out on the floor and breathe.
SOLO ONE HAND DANCES. A time for stillness and a time for moving on behalf of whatever it is we need at the end of the week and entering the weekend. (photo by Ruth Schowalter)
Then after a period
stillness (had they descended from the LIFT that InterPlay exformation provided?),
I introduced the solo hand dance, which progressed into a duet hand dance with
a nearby lounging partner. So they scooched their heads together and created a
serene hand dance to this song, “Kinder” by Copper Wimmin:
As we were nearing
completion, I wanted to play around with the concept of “rising and falling”
that Cynthia Winton-Henry introduced this past spring in Dancing the Ruby
Way, her Monday online dance class, and is written up in her book, Dance
the Sacred Art. We practiced gently rising from our pillows and falling
back down on them in different ways, again and again during the length of a
song. Thus, experiencing for ourselves, that “falling” is part of “rising”—they
are in perpetual relationship to one another.When we fall, we have only to rise again! (See my blog entry, “I
Fall Down, I Get Back Up: Embodying the Rise and Fall of Life,” that I
wrote in reflection about my experience.)
Yay for InterPlay
Lift…it is the rising part of the fall! When we fall down, we get back up!
Thus, the imagined hot air balloons rising served my creative process in the
creation of this Friday night InterPlay class! Hurray for imagination and
visual images that guide us! (Thanks to friend Trish Weaver for creating this video using my InterPlay Lift art!)
I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. --e.e. cummings
I hope you will join me
for InterPlay
Lift in the upcoming months in 2015 (August 28th, September 25th,
October 23rd,November 20th,and December 18th)! We will
certainly be playing around with “Bad Idea Bears” again and rising and falling.
Wishing you a great lift in your day! SOUL BLOG with me on my blog, Coffee with Hallelujah,
and share what your activities are to “exform.”
