In-Person and Online: What Is Freedom? Rest, Wise Effort, and Nourishing What We Want to Grow
Part of The Body Remembers Freedom Series
with Kaira Jewel Lingo and Linds Roberts
Thursday, January 15th, 2026 | 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET
In-Person Location: New York Insight at 115 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
At the start of a new year, many of us feel compelled toward striving and self-improvement. That same pressure often follows us into our spiritual practice, layered on top of long-standing habits of pushing ourselves and harsh self-judgment.
This evening workshop with teachers Kaira Jewel Lingo and Linds Roberts draws on the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Right Efforts, exploring how freedom develops through learning when to apply effort, when to rest, and how to listen to the body’s intelligence. Rather than tightening the strings of the lute or letting them go slack, we practice tuning them so clarity and ease can emerge naturally.
Through meditation, gentle movement and play, shared inquiry, poetry, and moments of quiet, we explore how to nourish what supports clarity, joy, and steadiness, without forcing change or improvement. This work invites a direct, embodied sense of how freedom is cultivated through wise effort rather than pressure or self-correction.
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: January 15 | February 12 | March 12 | April 9 | 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.