NEW OFFERINGS COMING LATER IN 2021.
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We are excited to announce that this winter, WholeHeart will be holding Rest & Release, A BIPOC Art of Listening series. This is an iteration of our previous AoL series - Amplifying Voices of Color, and will be offered as an affinity space where BIPOC artists share their creative expression in reciprocity with BIPOC participants to deepen listening and expression.
This will be an intergenerational space that invites active collaboration where participants are essential to cross-learning and diverse lived-experience enriches listening modalities. We will have three series spanning from January - April and encourage participants to sign up for the full listening experience.
Past Sessions:
Musical Immersion with Paul Byssainthe Jr.
March 2021
Music has a way of immersing us in emotion and memory. It can transform, transfix and revive us. Come explore the medium of music as a universal listening practice to feel into what is stirring within us and around us in these times. Paul and Natanya have been busy listening and conjuring this three-part journey to engage in melodies and harmonies together in community. You don’t need to be a musician, musical, or well versed in three-part harmonies. If music lifts you, this offering is for you. We will co-create a reflective and playful space to express the many layers of our identities and life journeys. Lets travel beyond the boundaries of words together. This space is offered exclusively to those who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
Paul is an accomplished, award-winning organist, pianist, conductor, and composer.
Paul is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts in Organ at Peabody, where he will hold the Dean’s Fellowship. Paul lives a life immersed in music and invites us into a world of listening and being, exploring identity and sharing community through the powerful portal of music.
February 2021: Improv with Brian Park
This three-week session will focus on listening through improv comedy. Improv comedy is entertaining and has real world benefits. You will gain an appreciation for making mistakes and the impermanence of those mistakes. You’ll understand the power of cooperation that is inherent in all improv, and come away from these sessions having practiced basic tenets of improv such as listening, accepting, and creating. This space is offered exclusively to those who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
Brian Park (he/him) is an instructor with the Vermont Comedy Club.
While he’s not doing improv, he works at UVM as a Career Counselor who specializes in supporting STEM students. He also enjoys cooking, playing video games, and volunteering at the Chittenden Food Shelf. Brian also hosts a monthly virtual BIPOC improv space.
January 2021: Restorative Yoga with Sasha Finnell
How is rest showing up in your life? In this Art of Listening series, we will be embodying a practice of deep rest through restorative yoga.
When we are rested, we are fueled. This paves the way for intuition, listening, clarity, patience, creativity, and intimacy. Each week, participants will practice through restorative yoga, journaling and reflection – melting into deeper connection with ourselves and each other.
This space is offered exclusively to those who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
Every once and awhile, take off your life, and rest.
- Nayyirah Waheed
Restorative yoga uses soft props to support the body. Suggested props for these sessions include: mat or other soft surface, 1-2 blankets, 2 blocks (or pillows), bolster (or couch cushion or several bed pillows).
Sasha is a yoga teacher and currently teaches at Evolution Yoga in Burlington, Vermont.
She is passionate about radical rest and is committed to teaching embodied ways of being through breathwork and growing relationships with the body. Find space to breathe in and breathe out and rest whenever you need to.
July 2020: Meditations on Identity with Mindy Wong
July 16, 30 & August 6 @ 4:30 - 6:00 PM EST
Join us as we engage in the curious, introspective practice of listening through writing. We will reflect on all the parts that make us who we are using creative nonfiction as a healing process to accept the identities we carry and present to the world around us.
Mindy is a nonfiction writer and teaching artist. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from The New School and Master of Science in Childhood Education. She was awarded the 2017 Emerging Writer Fellowship at A Public Space.
August: Listening To Our Heart-Song with Ferene Paris Meyer
August 4, 11, and 18 / Tuesdays / 4:00 - 5:30 PM EST
Deeply engaging with one’s story can be powerful, healing, and inspiring. Embrace the art of storytelling as we create heartfelt space for listening, connection, affirmation, and liberation!
Ferene is the creator and owner of All Heart Inspirations, LLC. She creates heart-centered spaces through storytelling workshops, community engagements, and retreats. Ferene is excited to spread love, gratitude, and affirmations within our local community and beyond!
September: Musical Immersion with Paul Byssainthe, Jr.
Sept. 17, 24, and Oct. 1 / Thursdays / 5:30 - 7:00 PM EST
Music has a way of immersing us in emotion and memory. It can transform, transfix and revive us. Come explore the medium of music as a universal listening practice to feel into what is stirring within us and around us in these times. Paul and Natanya have been busy listening and conjuring this three-part journey to engage in melodies and harmonies together in community. You don’t need to be a musician, musical, or well versed in three-part harmonies. If music lifts you, this offering is for you. We will co-create a reflective and playful space to express the many layers of our idenities and life journeys. Lets travel beyond the boundaries of words together.
October: Embodied Listening with Natanya Vanderlaan
Oct. 8, 15, 22 / Thursdays / 5:30 - 7:00 PM EST
Do you ever feel like we are a bunch of floating heads disconnected from our bodies? Join us as we discover what it looks like to connect our headspace to our heartspace. In this series, we will practice listening techniques that will better equip us to find rootedness in these turbulent times and together explore how our daily life rhythms impact our ways of being in inner and outer spaces.
Natanya holds a deep love for connection and community and has journeyed extensively in pursuit and practice of meaningful engagement and learning. She sees embodied listening as an act of resistance in a disembodied world. Join her in this deeper exploration of feeling, connection and awakening.