Eighteen youth and eight adults came together outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina for this year's Play in the Wild! International Youth Intensive.  There was one youth from Wales, one from Australia, four from Quebec, and the remaining twelve from the United States, although, three had immigrated in the last year, from Morocco, Tanzania, and Venezuela.  Fortunately, we had facilitators who were able to do French, Spanish and Swahili translation.  The mellifluous mix of language was a daily reminder that we were indeed an international, multi-cultural camp.

What do we do at a Play in the Wild! International Youth Intensive?  We unplug from phones, iPods, and computers so that we can plug into humanness.  We show up for each other and remember what it feels like to be fully in our bodies, scared, courageous, authentic, open, powerful.  We come together to feel and share our deepest longings and biggest fears, our pain and despair, our joy, inspiration, creativity, compassion, and humour.

Sure, there is hiking, canoeing, tenting, painting and writing; but we're uncovering authentic aliveness, regardless of the activity.  Certainly, we cook meals together, dance and drum together, share poetry and song together; and, we open more and more to our true selves as our connection and interdependence deepens.  Of course, there are improvisational games and games of connection and board games and water play, ping pong, badminton, and soccer.  And, all the while we attend to everyone's sense of belonging and mattering so that the fun really comes alive.  Oh yes, there is meditation, yoga, journaling, silence, community circles, empathy, honesty, and fasting.  Through it all is a thread of connection, connection to all needs, our needs, all humans' needs, and the earth's needs.  Our community is a microcosm of what Jeremy Rifkin calls an empathic civilization (look for his entertaining and informative Empathic Civilization video on YouTube).

It's tradition for Play in the Wild! Youth Intensives to end with a performance for the greater Chapel Hill community.  We take what we've experienced over the previous nine days, combine our collective creativity and inspiration, and co-create an unforgettable evening performance.  This year's performance included an original song, improvised dance, improvised comedy, collective rhythmic clapping, poetry, drumming, guitar, singing, piano, flying needs-hearts, seven languages, a human slide show, and more.  We brought our full aliveness and blew the audience open-there were tears, smiles, gasps, laughter, expressions of gratitude, and lots of questions.  The audience members wanted to know, "What do you do at Play in the Wild!?"  We were more than happy to answer.   

It's very healing for me to be a facilitator at Play in the Wild! and support youth in the ways I needed to be supported when I was their age.  As I engage with the youth over nine days and watch them come alive, the parts of me that shut down as a teen get to see that it is possible to belong and be accepted and celebrated while being an authentic, feeling, creative, caring, excited human being.  I leave Play in the Wild! Youth Intensives inspired to keep healing the parts in me that shut down, to keep writing, dancing, trying to sing, listening deeply, sharing openly, learning, growing, and loving.  I have the sense of reuniting with an old friend that I lost long ago.

To see a short video clip of the opening of our performance, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Road-to-Compassion/266719088160?sk=wall

For more about Play in the Wild! please go to www.playinthewild.org

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