As a recovering serious person, I consider InterPlay my 12-step program and my life practice for having more ease and grace. I've been InterPlaying for 27 years and have watched the blooming and spread of InterPlay all over the world with gratefulness and delight.

For the past 13 years I've been immersed in the development and growth of the Leader Training Program and currently serve as the program coordinator. I love offering people the "big body" tools of InterPlay for telling their stories, especially people on the margins of our communities. I am also passionate about embodied spirituality, engaging people in prayer and worship forms that include and honor the body. It has been an amazing experience to participate in and teach InterPlay in many places around the world.

Currently the Leader Training Program is being reshaped to integrate Racial Equity and Transformation into all aspects of InterPlay leader training. This is truly an exciting and exhilerating time to be part of the world-wide community of InterPlay!

Sheila K. Collins is the director of InterPlay Pittsburgh and the Wing & A Prayer Pittsburgh Players, an InterPlay-based performance troupe she founded in 2006 to assist human service agencies and art organizations in accomplishing their noble purposes. A former professional dancer, Sheila has described herself as a “dancing social worker” for over 40 years, throughout her careers as a therapist, social work professor, and writer.

She is the author of Stillpoint: A Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, Time to Breathe, and Reclaim Joy, which since its second edition, co-authored by Christine Gautreaux, has become a popular weekly online class, and Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals That Heal.

She’s been known to travel the country enlisting InterPlayers to help her Perform her Books, demonstrating how InterPlay tools help us get through life’s ordinary and extraordinary, “tough challenges”

Her latest book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve, and Live Our Best Lives explores how the arts of storytelling, dance, music, and visual arts help mourners navigate episodes of grief, process loss, and extract meaning and wisdom for their future lives.

sheilakcollins@gmail.com 817 706-4967 120 Chapel Harbor Dr Pittsburgh Pa 15238