Safety, Dignity, and Belonging: A Mind-Body Retreat in Liberatory Practices

Experience:

• Meditation
• Journaling
• Nourishment
• Community building
• Embodied learning
• Digital detox
• Liberatory practices

Kavitha is a mother, facilitator, bridge-builder, and practitioner.  As a daughter of immigrants to the US, she has always been curious about difference and how we make meaning and find belonging through connection to land and community.  Kavitha’s work focuses on transformational leadership, building community across difference, and using creativity and collective visioning to work towards repair and healing.  Kavitha’s understanding of the possibility of change is deeply influenced by her training in Ayurveda, yoga, and mindfulness.  She brings these tools to her work recognizing how important knowing ourselves and personal healing is in our efforts to heal our planet and build community.  She offers deep gratitude to the grassroots groups around the world that she has had the privilege to learn from, her mentor Lillie Allen of Be Present, and to her colleagues, fellow-dreamers, and co-conspirators at the Center for Whole Communities, the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, Soul Fire Farm, and the Wildseed Community Farm and Healing Village.

Kofi-Charu Nat Turner, grandson of Caffie Greene, is an associate professor of Language, Literacy and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Brought up by activist parents in the San Francisco Bay Area and alongside his grandma in South Central L.A., Dr. Turner first found a spiritual foundation to his activism as a student of Africana Studies studying abroad in Ghana. Today all his work seeks to engage and support historically underserved youth, K-12 teachers and administrators utilizing mindfulness and other embodied practices to heal the intergenerational trauma associated with white body supremacy. He received degrees from Harvard and Brown University was trained in dynamic mindfulness (DMind) at the Niroga Institute (Oakland, CA) an organization he continues to collaborate with. 

Jonathan Crowley is an educational and major gift fundraiser at UMass Amherst for a variety of academic and student affair service programs. He is a seeker and is interested in the interface between meditation, communication, service, community, anti-racism, and planetary transformation. Between 1987-2021, Jonathan was a student of vipassana meditation in the US, India and Myanmar and was previously appointed as an assistant teacher by S. N. Goenka in 2002. He conducted and facilitated Goenka’s teachings for the public, children, executives and correctional inmates from 2002 – 2020. Jonathan introduced Goenka’s 10-day silent residential meditation retreats to three US correctional facilities, including at the highest maximum-security state prison in Alabama for 17 years, the subject of a 2008 award-winning documentary, The Dhamma Brothers. He is currently a student of Beth Upton. Jonathan is enthusiastic about Intergroup Dialogue and has been examining white supremacy with a white affinity group since 2014. Jonathan has a BA in Behavioral Science from Lesley University and an MBA in Managing Sustainability from Marlboro College Graduate School. A former Iyengar yoga teacher and triathlete, he grows vegetables, a fruit orchard, and flowers where he lives in Shelburne, MA with his spouse Carolyn, 12-year old son, Julian, and cat, Luna. In his spare time, Jonathan studies astrology, ancient Buddhist Pali scriptures, natural home health remedies, loves open water swimming and baking sourdough bread.

Angélica Canlas Castro (she, they) is the Assistant Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Education for Student Affairs and Campus Life at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned a Bachelor's in Community Health and Theater Arts and a Graduate Certificate in Social Justice Education. She also earned a Master’s in Educational Psychology from Mount Holyoke College, where she served as the Associate Director of Community Engagement for a decade. Angélica began practicing yoga and meditation in 2010, and it transformed her life and wellbeing, so she became a certified yoga, meditation and energy medicine practitioner, as well as a certified leadership coach and community mediator. A heart-centered facilitator of courageous conversations, she has a deep commitment to co-creating spaces for connection, dialogue, shared understanding and healing with LOVE: Listening, Openness, Vulnerability and Empathy. Angélica has four children who inspire her curiosity and are her greatest teachers!

As the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Campus Life and Wellbeing, Dr. Cracco provides strategic vision to a cluster of programs and services supporting the wellbeing of UMass Amherst students. As a licensed Psychologist, Dr. Cracco has a 30-year career in collegiate mental health, formerly serving as Director of the Counseling and Mental Health Services at UConn, and in therapist roles at the University of Wisconsin, Holy Cross, and Connecticut College. Betsy is a certified yoga instructor, and active member of swim and bike training groups. She is interested in the power of mind/body practices to address mental health and increase our connection to communities of activity and practice.