The Dancing Monastery
Practicing the Joy and Wisdom of Ensoulmentwelcome
I'm Cynthia
Thank you for checking in here
As host and curator of The Art of Ensoulment, weekly dance chapels, and this Dancing Monastery, my greatest curiosity is “How do humans best create from body and soul? What is the body wisdom of soul? And, how do we best practice soulful wisdom both individually and in community in these times?
a little about my context
I’m a white cisgender woman born and raised in middle-class circumstances, fueled by diverse communities. As I began studying dance at UCLA, my initiations began as an artist, educator, and highly sensitive spiritual leader.
I make my home along Cum Mayo, Roundhouse River (the American River), in Fair Oaks near Sacramento, with my partner, in an eco-housing village that offers us ways to share life, meals, labor, and resources as I support local Nisenan people and reparative movements that recognize and transform harm and practice centering the BIPOC community.
I’ve served churches, nonprofits, universities, grassroots arts communities, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and the Sophia Center in Oakland. Alanon is intrinsic to my spiritual grounding.
Philosophy
In 1989 I co-founded InterPlay with Phil Porter. Together we designed an improvisational, art-based community-building practice that lifts up the physicality of grace and strengthens each body's wisdom. The InterPlay fundamentals have given me a body-wise language and community grounded in the birthrights of movement, voice, story, and stillness. As the InterPlay community restores our natural artistry, we grow as people who don't take ourselves sooooo seriously. The flexibility and freedom found in our improvisational approach grows from listening to our organic roots in what body and soul want.
Across Cultures
My greatest longing is to foster freedom in myself and others. As a woman, I partner with Black, Indigenous, and marginalized guides on behalf of a healthy, earth-centered way of life. Examples of my commitment include renouncing my ordination in the Christian Church when systemic racism and patriarchy still prevail. Understanding that a body cannot renounce its history, I honor the graces in my Christian lineage but now tend to center in relationships and practices outside dominant institutions.
Earthwise practices
The Ensoulment Arts that I teach are countercultural, earth-wise practices. In my vows to the Tree and River of Life, I heed organic life and the dignity of all beings. As I recognize assaults on the integrity of Creation, my work is committed to the health of body and soul, racial equity and transformation, and Earth Wisdom. I served on the YES board to support young activists, developed InterPlay as an Art and Social Change practice, catalyzed Waking Up White workshops, and toured the Changing the Race Dance Workshop with Soyinka Rahim to help people share their understandings and misunderstandings of socialized systemic racism. I also developed an InterPlay Art Responder Practice to help people realign people to the beauty of a place after trauma.
Community is Key
Finding a healthy alignment of body, soul, dance, and other creative expressions lives at the center of my research. Such an alignment can never be an individual endeavor. Body, soul, dance, and art always intersect in social, energetic, and even cosmic ways. I am grateful to the faculty at UCLA where I was honored with a President’s Fellowship to study dance and spirituality in Sierra Leone, West Africa, to Pacific School of Religion where I received a Master of Divinity and was later honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award and as an Arts Minister of the Year from the Center for Art, Theology, and Education. I honor the teachers at the Graduate Theological Union, where I did doctoral work in “Theology and the Arts,” and at the Western Institute for Social Research, where I furthered my studies in "Multicultural Education."
Service
I've been blessed to have been in the presence of indigenous peoples in India, Africa, and the United States and to bear witness to teachings that transcend anything we know in the west. Along the way, I've pastored a church, choreographed and performed with Body and Soul Dance Company, and co-directed Wing It! Performance Ensemble. I've taught for Holy Names University’s Sophia Center, Pacific School of Religion, Spiritual Directors International, Spiritual Directors of Color, University of Creation Spirituality, the National Chaplains Association, the International Expressive Arts Association, Out and Equal Workplace Advocates, the United Religions Initiative, the Parliament of World Religions, Abbey for the Arts, and Spiritual Wanderlust. Service to my family and marriage are of utmost importance to me.
Certifications
I’m A folk artist. I paint, draw, and make shrines.
Writings
My books include Chasing the Dance of Life: A Faith Journey by Apocryphile Press, Dance: The Sacred Art: Discovering the Joy of Movement by Turner Publishing, and Move: What the Body Wants by Woodlake Press. “Grace Operatives: How Body Wisdom Saved the World” in Phenomenologies of Grace edited by Marcus Bussey by Paraclete Press. I self-published The Self-Care Playbook for the Art of Ensoulment and The Great Dance: an intergenerational children's book designed by Marla Durden and illustrated by Ruth Schowalter.
I owe everything to The Tree of Life, the living wisdom of first peoples, my ancestors, the Archangel Metatron, and Jesus. Holy friends and guides include Phil Porter, Ruth St, Denis, Thomas Merton, Doug Adams, Sheila Collins, Carla de Sola, Barbara Elliot, Jake Empereur, Ruth King, Robert MacAfee Brown, Connors McConville, Roberta Meyer, Soyinka Rahim, Judith Rock, Ginny Whitelaw, Flora Wuellner, teachers at Berkeley Psychic Institute, friends of Lois and the creators of the 12 steps, Operation Crossroads Africa, and more loved ones than I can name.
