InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

Connecting, Inspiring & Supporting Women from Around the World through Play & Meal Sharing A woman from Egypt, head covered in a hijab, bursts into a big smile as she enters the Little Five Points (L5P) Community Center Café in Atlanta, Georgia, for a morning of InterPlay and meal sharing. She sees a roomful of women, many wearing hijabs – and until this moment – she has felt isolated in this metropolitan city of five million from women like her. Although these other women in hijabs are Turkish, there is a visible commonality signaled by the scarves covering their heads. Likewise, a woman from Mexico, softens as she steps into the room filled with international women – she is not the “different one” as the only “foreigner” present.  Sharing Stories Across Turkish & Egyptian Cultures Over the next 30 minutes, close to thirty women arrive. They are asylum seekers, American citizens, internationals working or studying abroad. They differ in age, nationa...

InterPlay is an active, creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body, and I am fortunate to the have the opportunity of offering InterPlay to my community in many venues - science  and  business communication, English language fluency, empowering women who have resettled here in the United States, and  creativity! Recently, I had the pleasure of bringing the gift of InterPlay to my community YMCA. On a Friday night in the middle of September, as a way of giving to my YMCA community in Atlanta, Georgia, I led participants in making marks, telling stories, and “leaping” from these “storied lines” in movement - knowing that through play we can “dance” with our creative spirits.  By making taking incremental steps - one mark, one move, one story, one partner at a time - we find the way back to the juiciness of our imaginations and into the flow of infinity. And we do it in the company on the “playground” with others! Wheee!  I'm so thank...

Creativity Flowed Like Georgia Streams! Written by Ruth Schowalter, Certified InterPlay Leader On the evening of Friday, March 24 th , 2017, after dinner and the poster session, InterPlay Atlanta’s Ruth Schowalter “broke the ice” for a community of volunteers and environmental researchers who had come together across the state of Georgia for the annual Georgia Confluence. In collaboration with her husband Tony Martin, an Emory professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Ruth offered gentle but energetic steps bringing these people together who monitor the health of the water in streams near where they live in Georgia.   The spacious community room at the Environmental & Heritage Center in Buford, Georgia, lent itself to expansive movement and storytelling that InterPlay provides. This almost 30-year-old improvisational system hailing from California is an active creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body. But how does the “science of monitoring str...