In-Person and Online: The Universe in a Hand – Encountering Our True Nature through the Four Immeasurable Minds of Love
Part of The Body Remembers Freedom Series
with Kaira Jewel Lingo and Linds Roberts
Thursday, May, 7th, 2026 | 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET (optionally, bring your dinner at 5:30pm to enjoy in community)
In-Person Location: New York Insight at 115 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
The teaching of Indra’s Net reveals a universe of radiant interconnection, where each of us is a unique jewel, reflecting and being reflected by the whole vast net of existence. This session invites us to feel this truth in our bodies and hearts through play and presence.
We’ll engage in a practice of meeting others eye-to-eye in brief, heart-opening encounters that invite us to see ourselves and each other as expressions of boundless love—cultivating kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Then, through a simple drawing exercise, we’ll map the visible and invisible elements—the people, places, and beings—that weave together to create the miracle of who we are. Together, we remember that we are not separate individuals, but a community of beings in communion.
If you are joining in person at NY Insight, you are optionally invited to arrive at 5:30pm and bring your dinner. We will eat together for a few minutes in mindfulness and then have time to share and connect before the class begins at 6:30pm.
This session will include a simple drawing exercise. If you are joining via Zoom, please have some paper and a pencil/pen/crayons/markers (whatever you prefer to use) on hand.
This workshop is part of The Body Remembers Freedom, a monthly series that brings together meditation, dharma, and embodied practice in a way that is relational, grounded, and alive. Each session includes time for meditation and contemplation, a dharma talk or shared inquiry, and InterPlay, a playful and powerful practice using movement, voice, storytelling, and deep listening to access the wisdom of the body.
Participants are supported to be:
- More grounded and connected to their bodies and to one another
- More accountable to themselves and to community
- Reconnected to joy, creativity, and inner resource
- Better able to meet life, and themselves, with compassion and presence
In times that can feel scary, overwhelming, or isolating, these gatherings offer a place to put the phone down, release accumulated stress, and reconnect with what feels trustworthy and alive. We gather to remember the sacred in ordinary experience and to be held in the support of community.
No experience with meditation or movement is required. You are welcome exactly as you are, with curiosity and a willingness to be present.
The Body Remembers Freedom is offered monthly on the first or second Thursday from 6:30 to 8:30 pm ET and is offered in a hybrid format. During the InterPlay portion of the evening, Linds Roberts guides participants joining on Zoom, while Kaira Jewel guides those attending in person. The full group then comes back together for the closing practice. You are welcome to register for a single session, select multiple dates, or join the full series at a discounted rate.
Sessions are recorded and shared with all registrants after the program, so you are welcome to sign up even if you cannot attend live.
Register for one session or the full series (at a discount!) below.
2026: | May 7 | June 18 | July 9 | August 6
In-Person Registration:
Online (Zoom) Registration:
Volunteering
All of our programs rely on volunteers to support our teachers and staff with various tasks and responsibilities. Volunteering allows you to participate in our programs at no cost. To inquire about volunteering opportunities, please fill out our inquiry form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Teacher(s)
Kaira Jewel Lingo
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher whose path is rooted in spirituality, social justice, and embodied wisdom. A lifelong lover of dance, singing, and the performing arts, Kaira Jewel integrates movement and creative expression into her teaching as a way to access joy, healing, and deep presence. Her early background in improvisational movement, dance, and capoeira, along with her long-standing practice of InterPlay—which she began in 2005 and now teaches and trains leaders in—shapes her commitment to liberation through the body as well as the mind.
She lived for 15 years as an ordained nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village community and was ordained as a Dharma teacher in 2007. Her teaching continues the work of Engaged Buddhism, drawing inspiration from her parents’ lives of service and her father’s work alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. She now teaches internationally in both the Zen and Vipassana traditions, as well as in secular mindfulness settings.
Kaira Jewel’s work bridges the inner path of awakening with the outer path of justice, focusing especially on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities, activists, artists, educators, families, and youth. She is dedicated to holding spaces that welcome the whole self — breath, voice, story, grief, joy, and movement.
She is the author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation. She offers spiritual mentoring, teaches embodied dharma, and is co-creating a spiritual sanctuary in upstate New York — The Beloved Community of Engaged Spirituality — with her partner, Episcopal priest Adam Bucko.
Upcoming events and offerings can be found at www.kairajewel.com.
Linds West Roberts
Linds West Roberts (pronouns: they/them/theirs), Certified InterPlay Leader, loves to collaborate in offering customized InterPlay classes, workshops, and retreats for groups and individuals through their work with InterPlay Colorado / Gather The Wild Collective (https://gatherthewild.love). Gather weaves InterPlay forms together with mindfulness and nature-based practices. Linds’ work is an offering towards collective liberation and social change that brings joy together with grief. They bring their fourteen years as an educator, librarian, and facilitator together with their InterPlay and eco-chaplaincy training. Linds is currently an Order of Interbeing Aspirant studying with dharma teacher Vivianne Ephraimson-Abt and an eco-chaplaincy student with Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Linds builds on their background in education as a professor and librarian engaging through storytelling and group facilitation. Community building and outreach in support of underrepresented communities has been a key part of their professional life. They explore and share the dharma through playful and artistic means, including InterPlay facilitation that brings mindfulness of our embodied experience to collective movement, storytelling, and play. Linds work creates space for individuals and groups to remember their own true nature, and connect with the dharma in ways that reduce suffering, benefit our precious planet, and all beings.