Spotlight: Creating a Culture of Belonging at The Innerwork Center
Photo: Kim Lee Schmidt
Mindfulness is a powerful device for looking inward and learning your place in the world. It can also be used to cultivate a “culture of belonging,” which is what The Innerwork Center has set out to do. We sat down with Executive Director, Rachel Douglas to learn about their awe-inspiring work in the Richmond Region.
Read ahead for Rachel’s words:
CultureWorks: Who are you and what is your relationship to The Innerwork Center?
Rachel Douglas: My name is Rachel Douglas and I'm the Executive Director of the Innerwork Center.
CW: Tell us about the Innerwork Center! What is it and how did you become involved?
RD: It's one of my favorite stories! I was working at VCU in the Division of Community Engagement, as the Director of Nonprofit Learning Point, and I found out there were these teachers; a couple, Philip and Kay Davidson, that were teaching mindfulness around town, and I signed up to hear them teach an introductory class, and it was huge for me. On my way out of the class, there was this piece of paper on the wall that said, "Chrysalis: exploring spirituality beyond the conventional boundaries of religion.” I Google "Chrysalis," and I see that there's a keynote speaker, Dr. Jim Gates, coming to The Science Museum. The whole premise of his keynote was there are things science can't explain, but it doesn't mean they're not real, it means that we haven't been able to explain them yet- and that's okay. I called my wife, and I said, "There’s this amazing keynote happening, we've got to go."
Within the next two days, I see that Chrysalis is hiring its first Executive Director. I applied, and I would call the interview Love at First Sight. I was completely in love with how they viewed spirituality, and really, what it was, was inner work. I told them I have no spiritual development background, and I don't even consider myself a spiritual person, but they were like, "That's okay, we got you."
That was 2015, so by 2018, I had gotten to know the organization, and where there was opportunity for growth. We realized the name "Chrysalis" was a huge barrier to us, being named something that people didn't know what it was or how to spell. So, we changed the name to the Innerwork Center and it’s just exploded. Since then, people understand they might not know exactly what inner work is, but they get the sense that they're doing some deep introspection, and we offer practices and thought-provoking classes to help you along the way.
CW: Do you have any projects that you're focusing on right now at the Innerwork Center?
RD: Something I'm really looking forward to right now is this work we're starting to embark on with the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, and they're in D.C. They are an organization that goes to war-torn countries and helps transform the trauma that is happening. They have people who are trained in these mind-body practices that they deploy into these places, who then train other people on the ground. It's a peer-delivered program, rather than someone coming in and saying, "You should do this." It really comes from the people in your community.
So, we're bringing the founder, Dr. Jim Gordon, to Richmond on April 28th, and he's going to do a keynote event. Then, the next day, we're inviting a group of people who are working in this trauma-informed space to meet with him to see how we can kick something off like this in Richmond. That's what I'm really excited about right now. It's really basic things that we can use to tap into our bodies that we're just not taught, and they're really easy and portable. Anyone can do it anywhere if you know how to do it, and that's the key there.
CW: How have you felt the Innerwork Center connect with the community around you through its different experiences and growth?
RD: When people say things like, "You're the most hidden gem in Richmond!" I'm like, that's not exactly a compliment- it is, but it isn't! We need to be well known. We want people to know that you are welcome and that we work really hard to create a culture of belonging. We want people to know it's not elitist, or that you're going to be coming into a room full of experts. It's everyday people just like you, and we're all doing our work together. None of us have arrived anywhere. It's a continuous examination of who we are, what our purpose is, and how we want to be in the world.
We moved to this beautiful space in the Museum District. Connecting with the community is so important to us on many different levels. Creating a culture of belonging is about 30% of our work. It's not all about creating these programs and putting out content. It's also about how we open ourselves up to the Richmond region in a way that feels welcoming and celebratory.
We spend a lot of time, effort, and energy decolonizing our minds and our work and becoming an anti-racist organization. And, it's not just becoming anti-racist, but also queer-friendly and disability accommodating. All of those are different ways that we create a culture of belonging.
CW: The term "culture of belonging" is so purposeful for what you are trying to achieve as an accessible organization. I’ve never heard that used before, but it makes so much sense!
RD: Yeah, we felt like it was very us and we do feel like we are speaking to that point. We do feel like we are a cultural organization in Richmond. Because we used the word “spiritual” in the past, that was a huge barrier because people associate spirituality with religion, which is not what we were doing at all. What we mean by “spiritual” is just a deeply moving, meaningful understanding that you’re part of something bigger than just you. We’re aiming to create a wiser, more compassionate Richmond region. By wiser, we mean understanding the interconnectedness of all of life. So, that is a cultural shift. It's creating the conditions for compassion to exist and to flourish, and that is cultural work.
CW: How has collaboration played a part in your organization? Have you had meaningful collaborations in the past?
RD: I could go on and on about it. Collaboration is really integral to what we're doing. I can't list all of our collaborators because amazingly, it's so long and it's everyone from artists to institutions to corporate to other nonprofits; it's vast and it's beautiful. There's that phrase, "alone is hard, together is better,” and we strongly live into that. A part of how we reach our wider audience is by collaborating with other people.
We do pop-ups at the VMFA. We've done meditations on Chloe, on the Tibetan artwork, on the reeds. What I love to do is a participatory public art project along with maybe a keynote theme. There was one that we did in collaboration with the ICA & Art on Wheels, and we created a huge globe-like light fixture where we asked the participants, "What is the color of your voice?" We really try to pull in the arts because the arts can say things that people can't in ways that people can.
CW: Where do you look for inspiration and how do you stay inspired?
RD: I'm continuously inspired by programs at the Innerwork Center. One of the things we do is purposefully create moments of awe. I'm also very inspired by nature, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed, and I have big problems. It's really helpful to go outside and recognize my smallness in comparison to the vastness of the universe; that actually my problems are not so big, and then I'm really just a speck in the grand scheme of things. I feel like that inspires me and also keeps me humble. Also, I'm continuously inspired by my wife, who is an extraordinarily grounded, solitary person and a very creative person. I'm very extroverted with lots of ideas all the time, pinging constantly, and so she is what I need.
CW: What has been an experience or moment that really made you feel like all the work you had put into The Innerwork Center was worth it?
RD: We have this one class that's called Mindful Self-Compassion, and it's eight weeks. The class teaches you to be aware of when you're experiencing suffering and then connects it to our human condition. It's the things that you think are just you, and then you realize, so many other people are struggling with this too, but they think they're alone as well. The crucial part is knowing all of that, and how you learn to be kind to yourself.
I've taken it once a year because it really is my work to do in the world. I came from a super academic family as a child of an immigrant where there are expectations that you not only be perfect, but better than perfect, and that pressure is crushing. It creates a lot of deep grooves of shame in your brain. By doing these practices through this Mindful Self-compassion class, I've learned to create new grooves of enoughness, and it's helped me in so many ways. I'll continue to take it because I think it's my life's work to be able to. I have been given this beautiful life, even with all of its sorrows and hardships and seeing the worst in humanity. I am here now, and that's finite, so I want to show up to my life.
CW: Recognizing that the Innerwork Center is an arts and culture organization in the community, what do arts and culture mean to you and why does it matter?
RD: Where do I even want to start? I want a culture of belonging to be larger than just our organization. I want it to be larger than Richmond. I want it to be larger than what I don't even know, I don't know yet. That's the kind of world I want to live in, and there are a lot of things that the world needs to be a place like that. One person can't do all of those things; we just can't, because we're human, but that doesn't mean that you abandon it all. So, I believe that creating the conditions for compassion to exist is like this net underneath all of those individual issues.
My deep introspection has taught me that what we're doing at the Innerwork Center is my work to do. I want to talk to people about what it means to do self-awareness and self-care. Sometimes it's hard and painful, and that's why we called it inner work. What we do at the Innerwork Center is really looking inside and not always liking what you see, but working towards it anyway, because you value your humanity and the humanity of others. That's what culture means to me, and that's what I feel like we're doing.
To register for Dr. Jim Gordon’s keynote speech on April 28th: https://innerworkcenter.org/keynotespeakers
To lean more about The Innerwork Center: https://innerworkcenter.org/
To stay updated with The Innerwork Center: https://www.facebook.com/innerworkcenter / https://www.instagram.com/innerworkcenter/