Illuminating Paths

BY YONAT SHIMRON - STAFF WRITER

RALEIGH -- It begins much like an exercise class. Participants gather in a circle and take deep breaths. They stretch. They sway from side to side. They bend down to touch their toes.

But this is no warm-up for yoga or aerobics. For one thing, there's an opening prayer. For another, there's an exercise known as "babbling" in which two participants are given a nonword: deedlebops. They face each other and babble about it for 30 seconds.

Finally, participants are paired and asked to touch their partner's palm. Then they are asked to move around while keeping their palms touching.


This class is called InterPlay, and it is an interactive, creative method of movement intended to bridge the spiritual and the physical. Once a month, at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, clergy members and spiritual directors from across the Triangle gather for a series of exercises intended to integrate body, mind and soul.

For two hours, participants reach inside and try to give expression not only to their heads but to their hearts and bodies, too.

"When people involve the whole body, they access information they cannot access through their own thinking," said Ginny Going, an Episcopal deacon and a certified InterPlay leader.

For too long, Going said, people have compartmentalized different aspects of their beings. InterPlay allows participants to merge them even if it looks silly or awkward. In InterPlay, there are no mistakes, just variations.

Clergy members say the experience has taught them how to feel more at ease in performing rituals such as communion or baptism. It has also given them a greater awareness of what congregational members may be saying to them through body language.

"I'm so dependent on words for so much of my life, it's a huge gift to connect with other people and get out what's in me in ways other than words," said the Rev. Brian Ammons, co-pastor of a new Raleigh church called Trinity's Place.

But InterPlay isn't just for clergy. Going and her husband, Tom Henderson, offer monthly InterPlay workshops in Raleigh and Carrboro. There's even an InterPlay ensemble called "Off the Deep End."

At a time when so many people live behind computer screens, avoid eye contact with co-workers and then retreat to their scattered suburban homes, InterPlay offers a way to reconnect physically with others.

Among InterPlay core practices are those designed to release pent-up energy. The clergy class, for example, began with participants standing in a circle, taking a deep breath and exhaling what leaders call a "noisy sigh."

Another practice calls for participants to lie on the floor and to let their arms do a one-hand dance in the air.

For many people, inhibition is one of the biggest hang-ups; InterPlay gives them permission to let loose.

"We deal with so many serious things as pastors," said the Rev. LuAnn Charlton, associate pastor at Hayes Barton United Methodist Church in Raleigh. "This allows us to play. It's a real gift."

Charlton used the last session to give expression to some of the emotions she felt after returning from a mission trip to Haiti the day the earthquake struck. The Rev. Stacy Grove, an ordained interfaith minister and spiritual director, said InterPlay gave her a similar type of release after a trip to Rwanda.

"It touches a part of me that might otherwise stay locked up," Grove said.

At a session this month, for example, participants expressed a kind of a cappella lament for all the people in Haiti who lost their lives in the earthquake. Going began by intoning a flat "Aaah," then everyone else joined in with their own "Aaahs," creating a mournful yet wordless chant.

Part of the experience of InterPlay is being open to the moment rather than trying to control the outcome.

To some, such as the Rev. Brent Bissette, that kind of openness to physical expression is a kind of spirituality he calls "embodied."

"For me, at the core of Christianity is the claim that God is alive in the flesh," said Bissette, pastor of the Congregational Church in Pinehurst. "Practicing embodied spirituality is a way we're most aware of God's presence in us and in our community."

All religions at their best, Bissette said, can guide people beyond words to a deeper place, combining words and movement.

yshimron@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4891