In this series of stories, we’ll highlight the workshops being offered on Workshop Saturday, June 25. Sessions Coordinating Committee and staff experimented this year with offering a one-day online event that includes five workshops on different topics of interest to Friends in our yearly meeting. We will gather and listen deeply together on a day of connection, learning, and meaningful conversations.
Read on to learn more about the facilitators and intentions of this Workshop Spotlight, and register for a workshop by Thursday, June 23.
Interview with .O & Dana Reinhold
Q: Can you give us a short introduction? What are three things you like to share about yourself in an introduction?
.O — I am a love activist. I have demonstrated the transformative power of love through community organizing in the Philadelphia area and have followed the path of healing, well being and wholeness as my soul’s mission.
Dana — I am a mother, a Quaker and lifelong seeker of Truth, and a psychologist.
Q: If relevant to the workshop, tell us about your professional qualifications/career/work life.
.O — To address both environmental and social justice issues I became a certified massage therapist 1979 and have made health and well-being my life’s purpose. I worked in the field of medical education at Temple University as a Patient Instructor. As a member of a training team, with much joy I provided education to assist medical students in developing their clinical skills for interviewing patients. I am a group facilitator with many years of experience in body wisdom, stress modification and the healing powers of love. I have also expressed my ministry by participating in theater, promoting social transformation and addressing issues involving domestic violence, drug abuse and economic injustice. I have provided presentations and workshops for various organizations such as Women for Sobriety, in Quaker communities. I have appeared on radio and TV talk shows.
Dana — I have been a psychologist for 30+ years, now in private practice after starting my psychology career working 20 years in the federal prison system.
Q: Tell us about your Quaker belonging. When were you introduced to Quakerism? What does belonging in a local (monthly) meeting mean to you?
.O — I was introduced to Quakerism when I was 10 years old by a friend who was also newly introduced to Quakerism. At my first meeting for worship i knew i was at home. Belonging to me means being seen, heard, valued and accepted as a part of the fabric of life that God has deemed necessary. In being treated as a valuable part of the conversation that is needed to support and sustain wholeness, we embrace each other and work together as a single body with all members playing a significant role in the healing of life. The feeling and experience of belonging is a powerful and profound sensation that has the ability to heal ancient wounds. To be embraced by a local meeting is an opportunity to participate in relational repair that can transcend time/space and heal past, present and future exchanges.
Dana — I knew some Friends as a child, attended Friends Select School for high school, and first joined the Tallahassee Friends Meeting in Florida in 2003. I have been a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting since 2006. I feel that serving as Meeting clerk of CPMM “grew me up” and I have loved becoming more and more deeply engaged with my monthly meeting community.
Q: Tell us about your workshop. What makes you passionate about what you will be covering? Does it relate to any of the answers above? Why do you think your workshop is critical/very important for Friends and other members of our community?
.O — What makes me passionate about this workshop is providing the opportunity for the community to reclaim the wisdom of their bodies for personal and communal healing.
Dana — This workshop has in large part grown out being friends and housemates with .O for much of the past few years, which has given us many opportunities for deep conversation from which we have both learned a lot. Having begun attending racial healing workshops in 2016, I found that the more deeply I explored racism and let down my defenses against understanding what I had been blind to, to more alive I felt and the more joy I could have. Racial healing has the potential for opening us up to be closer to one another.
Q: What is one of the most important things you want people to learn from your workshop?
.O — No matter what the question, Love is the answer: self-love, relational love, communal love, planetary love.
Dana — Understanding that our responses of anxiety, fear and anger are pretty automatic, and learning to turn that “threat response” off through activating the system of emotional connection can help all of us learn to collaborate with our nervous systems rather than be controlled by them.
Q: What do you hope will change for people who learn from you in your workshop? How do you see this change improving the faith, happiness, community impact, etc. of an individual who participates in your workshop and their wider circles of community?
.O — What will be transformed is that participants will gain information that is practical and can be practiced in one’s daily life.
Dana — Learning about the evolution of the autonomic nervous system and how we respond biologically to perceived threats can be life-changing. Practices that use and develop our capacity as mammals to “turn off” the threat response can help us shift into greater openness. Developing this insight and the skills to act upon it can open the way for deeper listening and greater capacity to sit with intense feelings as we heal and connect across racial, class and cultural lines.
Q: What are some other ways people can learn more about/do more in the area/subject you will be covering in your workshop? Where do people go from here?
.O — Reading books about Polyvagal Theory and meditation, and any resources related to Deep Listening skills.
Dana — Stephen Porges, Ph.D is the scientist best known in the field of “Polyvagal Theory,” and has spent a long interdisciplinary career learning about the autonomic nervous system, the threat response and how to turn it off. Deb Dana has translated a lot of his work for clinicians and for non-professional readers and audiences. They both have many books and videos available.
Image: Dana Reinhold, Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (left), .O, Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (right)
