From Interruption to Inner Flow: How to Use Play As a Path to Wholeness w/ Alana Shaw
🤖 AI Summary
Overview
This episode explores the transformative power of creativity and play in fostering self-expression, healing, and connection. Alana Shaw, founder of Turning the Wheel, shares how her nonprofit empowers underserved youth through arts-based programs, helping them reclaim their stories and discover their value. The conversation also delves into how adults can cultivate self-love and emotional wholeness by embracing similar practices.
Notable Quotes
- What happens if we're not interrupted in our own loving of ourselves?
– Alana Shaw, on the importance of uninterrupted self-expression.
- Here I am, and I know who I am.
– Alana Shaw, introducing a grounding practice for self-connection.
- The basic human problem is that we feel we’re unlovable, and so we’re looking everywhere for an indication that we are.
– Katie Hendricks, on the universal struggle for self-worth.
🎭 Creativity as a Path to Visibility
- Alana Shaw describes Turning the Wheel’s mission to empower underserved youth through creative arts like theater, dance, and storytelling. These activities help participants express their unique stories and reclaim their visibility in a culture that often overlooks them.
- The programs emphasize co-creation, where youth collaborate in performances, breaking stereotypes and fostering teamwork.
- Katie Hendricks highlights how this approach shifts focus from external validation to creating from within, allowing participants to discover their essence and life path.
💔 Healing the Wound of Invisibility
- Many youth served by Turning the Wheel come from environments of violence or neglect. The program creates safe spaces where they feel seen and valued.
- Alana Shaw shares how appreciation and trust-building transform even the most resistant participants, helping them access parts of themselves they didn’t know existed.
- The ripple effect extends to families and communities, as these young people begin to show up differently in their relationships.
🌀 The Power of Play and Presence
- Katie Hendricks emphasizes that play is a vital, yet undervalued, tool for healing and connection. It bypasses the analytical mind, allowing for heart-to-heart interactions.
- Alana Shaw explains how play restores flow and fosters emotional breakthroughs, even without verbal processing. For example, two boys initially resistant to participation ended up performing a sacred hand dance, a moment of profound transformation.
- Teachers observing these programs often express amazement at seeing children laugh, collaborate, and connect in ways they hadn’t before.
💖 Practices for Growing Self-Love
- Alana Shaw introduces a simple yet powerful exercise: slowly moving a hand down the spine while repeating affirmations like, “I am here, and I know who I am.” This practice calms the nervous system and restores inner alignment.
- Variations of the affirmation can include, “I am here, and I am loved,” or “I am here, and I will show up for myself today.”
- Katie Hendricks underscores the importance of speaking affirmations aloud to fully embody them, creating a deeper connection between mind and body.
🌱 Reweaving Wholeness Across Generations
- The conversation touches on how adults can heal their inner child by reclaiming their value and breaking cycles of invisibility. Katie Hendricks notes that claiming self-worth can ripple backward to heal past wounds and forward to influence future generations.
- Sophie Chiche reflects on witnessing healthy parenting dynamics, where children are seen and valued without losing boundaries, as a healing experience for adults who lacked such attention.
- Alana Shaw shares how her own challenging childhood inspired her work, transforming personal pain into a mission to create environments where others can thrive.
AI-generated content may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon as a sole source of truth.
📋 Episode Description
Creativity isn’t just a skill, it’s a lifeline in a play-deprived society.
When young people feel unseen, unheard, and unwelcome, they shut down. Their development gets interrupted. Their story gets cut short.
But give them the joy of movement, and a place to express their creativity, and something transformational happens. They come alive.
Not because someone told them what to say or how to be, but because someone finally asked: Who are you? And what’s inside you, waiting to be expressed?
In this episode, we explore what happens when we stop trying to “fix” kids and instead create the conditions for them to be fully seen, felt, and valued. We look at how creativity, play, and radical presence can disrupt cycles of invisibility and disconnection, not just for youth, but for adults too.
We’re joined by Alana Shaw, founder of Turning the Wheel, a national nonprofit that brings creative expression to underserved youth across the country. Her work restores flow, it’s not just about performance, but a return to inner wholeness. How does the power of play translate into healing? How do we reclaim our value and heal our inner child?
In this conversation, Alana shares what happens when we invite kids to lead with their play and creativity, and how adults can grow self-love, regulate emotion, and begin reweaving the threads of their own stories.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
Creativity as medicine What if expression, not explanation, is what really heals us? How can movement and play reach the parts of us that words can’t?
The power of being seen So many of us carry the wound of invisibility. What shifts when someone meets you with full-bodied presence and says, “You matter. I see you.”?
How to love yourself for real Self-love isn’t just a concept. It can be a practice we return to daily. How do we do this with more ease and joy?
Growing wholeness in others (and ourselves) Healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken, but about restoring the flow from within. How do we cultivate environments where people feel free to unfold?
Guest Bio
Alana Shaw is the founder and executive director of Turning the Wheel. She is an inspiring and empowering speaker, teacher, and guide. Alana has facilitated joyful and healing movement events in cities in the US and Canada for over 30 years. Her dynamic and energetic presentation style is both humorous and transforming, and consistently positive and uplifting for her audiences. She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado with a thesis on healing and reintegration through creative expression. Alana's books, "Dancing Our Way Home" and "The Body Now" catalyze her mission to inspire a new paradigm for inclusiveness, collaboration, and community engagement. Both bo