Change Your Practice
Thank you all so much for this great beginning to this conversation! Already a lively and enlightening discussion.
When we teach the bodywisdom tool of spiritual disciplines (aka spiritual practices), the way we describe it is "to change your life, change your practice". I already see some important ideas emerging in this conversation that could lead to some different practices.
I love it when folks with organizers and marketers get attracted to InterPlay. Surprisingly, there are quite of few of those sorts of folks in our community. I'm not sure that mindset is lifted up, though, very much in our conversations, and I think others of us may even be a little suspicious. Would InterPlay be tainted by the "market"???
But here are some truths as I see them (some of which have been confirmed in other comments, others of which I may have stolen outright from you):
We have something quite significant to offer, something of great value (it is life-changing, for gosh sakes!). We are caught a bit in the overall societal devaluation of play, but I think we are capable of holding these two truths: that play can be an important something to offer and that the way we offer play has financial value.
Even the simplest InterPlay gathering involves time and effort to coordinate, expertise to lead, and perhaps space to rent. What if everytime we gathered to play, we were all committed to chipping in financially: some for the organizer, some for the leader, some for the rent, and some for ongoing development or scholarships. If we established this as a basic practice, if this became our ethos even in the most informal play gatherings, I believe it would enliven our InterPlay communities. We would be more directly "giving back" in direct response to what we have received. (And those who were going to the trouble of organizing or getting the training to lead would honored and acknowledged.) If someone didn't choose the be compensated for organizing or leading, that portion would go back into the bigger pot for future use. (There is always going to be something we want that costs something.)
Perhaps play (in general) should be free, and there are many ways that I can play that don't cost me, but InterPlay offers a very special kind of play. Someone is investing time, energy, resources, and sometimes money to make it happen. If we share that responsibility, if we more directly address the costs and benefits, if we honor our leaders and organizers more directly, if we admit that we are receiving something that is very valuable to us—if we do all those things we will actually be bringing our practice more in line with our deeper beliefs about the value of InterPlay. If we have difficulty doing that, then we shouldn't be surprised if the folks we are attracting to our events have difficulty with it.
As we go, we can also talk more about how we offer InterPlay to those may be less able to afford it. We can also talk more about the whole "grace" economy and how we give and receive it.
posted by Phil Porter, InterPlay Co-founder @ 11:11 AM
3 Comments:
Here in Goshen, Indiana we have a group that takes turns leading now when we get together as a coor group. We open our play time to anyone and the five of us who are trained or in training take turns leading each week. We all pitch in and pay an egual agreed amount of money which goes into a pot. We are still deciding what to do with the money but the pot is getting bigger. We talked about paying ourselves back each time we led but are leaning towards using the money as scholarships for area folks to attend InterPlay events.
just got a recommendation from a friend for the book,
overcoming underearning.
hi folks,
diane from tennessee here... i've been reading these posts and realizing i have just a huge amount to say about these topics that phil initiated... thanks for a way to exform, reform, transform our practices around $$ and interplay by opening up a space to share our "best practices" to share a term from my grassroots organizing days... the one thing i'm finding is that there is an economy of scale that works for me... i MUCH prefer working/playing/relating with larger groups that can more easily supply the multiple layers of mutual support that make for a healthy, sustainable group body... I'm starting my fourth full year teaching the leadership program... and though each year i've had 2-4 people participating on some level of scholarship we are now up to 36 people who have done the program, and 15 who've "graduated" (see our delightful grad pictures at our last UNtensive in Knoxville at www.interplaytn.org.) I'd rather play with 50 people paying $100 each than 10 people paying 500 each.
Finally after exercising this "YA'LL COME!" philosophy for 4 years, and several hundred gatherings of all sizes, all over the region, it's finally really beginning to take off... and it IS becoming "known"...like yoga, or NIA... found out about NIA from a teacher who came to IP!! Another thought i have is a piece of my grandmother's wisdom... "A penny saved is a penny earned"... I do work a tremendous amount of time on developing this interplay community... partly just out of my passion for exploring the art, science, spirit and joy of organizing/creating/sustaining a whole community around myself of people who delight me!
I do this by finding mostly free venues to play in, organizing collaborations with others doing other forms, and spending just about zero money (other than compensating leaders such as masankho who we bring in to enrich us) My one endulgence are the color print cartridges (ebay specials!) that i buy to make fancy flyers that make each one of our events look like the circus is coming to town!!...*grin*...
I do LOTS of bartering and I just pay in peanuts for a friend who hosts my website.... The level of networking I do is sometimes over-the-top... but is mostly joyous for me...I enjoy playing with the huge flow of resources other than money that is embodied in our InterPlay world. From my years of working in economic development with grassroots groups, I came to understand and embrace a very different set of values around money.. Supporting other community artists by doing lots of circular sharing always seems to come back... So many needs are supplied in the "harambe"... the big circle of giving and recieving... Well, it's late at night, and I'm not sure I can even begin this kind of thinking until a cup of coffee is in my hand early some morning before Ben & Sam, my twin darlin' grandbabes come for their daily play, and time on the computer is definately a commodity that is harder to come by with four tiny hands grabbing at the keys... I really do want to bring to the community some of what I know about making money with InterPlay... I think I'm just at the point of this being a sustainable supplement to my "living"... I wouldn't spend 40 hours a week (at least!) doing this if i didn't really love it... and if I didn't see that we are making a LOT of people's lives genuinely better.... that's worth a lot of gold dubloons, right there!!... *smile* more later, lovelies... i'm all about dancing out there on the "growing" edge... though sometimes it's a bit insecure... much love, diane saliba ault...
Post a Comment
<< Home