In-Person and Online: The Body Remembers Freedom – Meditation, InterPlay, and the Art of Coming Home to Yourself
with Kaira Jewel Lingo and My Tong
Thursday, December 4th, 2025 | 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET
In-Person Location: New York Insight at 115 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
Offered monthly on 1st or 2nd Thursdays, 6:30 – 8:30pm ET — see full list of dates below. This series is offered in a hybrid format for the Dharma teaching and the meditation. During the InterPlay portion of the evening, My Tong will guide those on Zoom while Kaira Jewel guides those in person. Afterward, both groups will come back together again for the closing practice.
What if freedom wasn’t something to earn — but something your body already remembers? What if your body already carried the wisdom you need to heal, connect, and come home to yourself? What if play could be a blessing?
The Body Remembers Freedom is a monthly gathering where we explore the intersection of meditation, dharma, and embodied practice. Each session includes time for stillness and contemplation, a dharma talk or shared inquiry, and InterPlay — a playful, powerful practice using movement, voice, storytelling, and deep listening to unlock the wisdom of the body.
Together we create a space that welcomes laughter, tears, rest, and joy — a space where you can move freely, feel deeply, and be held in community. Through this practice, we remember what it feels like to trust ourselves, to breathe fully, and to belong.
Participants are supported to be:
- More grounded and connected to their bodies and each other
- Reconnected to joy, creativity, and inner resource
- Better able to meet life — and themselves — with compassion and presence
We gather to remember the sacred in the ordinary, to bless our own aliveness, and to reconnect with community, the earth, and the truth in our bones.
Come as you are. No performance, experience, or flexibility required — just a willingness to be curious and present.
We suggest you wear comfortable clothing that you can move in freely.
Save the dates for additional Thursday sessions in this series! These upcoming sessions will open for registration soon:
2026: January 15 | February 12 | March 12 | April 9 | May 7 | June 18 | July 9 | August 13
In-Person Registration:
Please register below. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Bring a Buddy: If you are a member of our Circle of Friends, you’re invited to bring a Dharma buddy to this program for no additional cost. Simply select “1” from the drop-down next to the Bring a Buddy level, and enter your special discount code (provided in your Circle of Friends welcome email) to reduce the price to that of a single, standard registration. This registration will grant attendance for you and your buddy.
Online Registration:
Please register below. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Bring a Buddy: If you are a member of our Circle of Friends, you’re invited to bring a Dharma buddy to this program for no additional cost. Simply select “1” from the drop-down next to the Bring a Buddy level, and enter your special discount code (provided in your Circle of Friends welcome email) to reduce the price to that of a single, standard registration. This registration will grant attendance for you and your buddy.
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.
My Tong
My Tong has been involved in the Wake Up movement of the Plum Village tradition since 2011 and helped organized and facilitated over 30 mindfulness retreats. She is also a certified InterPlay leader. She is currently bringing her passions in sculpture, sound healing, labyrinth land art and paramita practices to create a community ceramic studio in Ukiah, CA. You can connect with her more on Instagram.