Exploring Kinship:
From Presence to Practice
Saturdays, February 21, March 21, April 18, and May 16, 2026
4:00-5:15 pm PT (Los Angeles), 7:00-8:15 pm ET (New York)
Kinship cultivates the natural connection of one heart to another, fostering harmony, goodwill, and caring action. Kinship inspires people to work together to serve those in need, to protect and restore the web of life on Earth, and to create a more just and beautiful world. In this series, we’ll explore amplifying voices of unity, the kinship worldview, embodiment practices, and the relationship between mysticism and activism.
Dates & Themes
February 21/22: Amplifying Voices of Unity — with Khatidja Rodriguez-Ruiz
In acknowledgment of Black History Month, we will explore contemporary guiding voices working in the name of uniting the children of earth as one, single family. We will focus on voices from Oceania and North America who are working to overcome the divisions created by our shared histories of colonialism and slavery. Join us as we explore these individuals and share our own daily experiences and hopes for the future.
March 21/22: A Kinship Worldview — with Majid Vowells
Majid, with special guests Darcia Narvaez and Four Arrows The authors of the much-loved book Restoring the Kinship Worldview join us to show how kinship lifeways facilitate becoming and maintaining our full humanity. These include respectfully attending to spiritual energies, connecting to the land, and recognizing our mutual dependence on others, both human and more-than-human. As unnested adults, we can shift to the kinship worldview through practices like trance-based healing and re-nesting ourselves.
April 18/19: The Embodiment of Kinship: Anchoring Presence — with Raqib Jonah Yakel
We move from understanding to practice, exploring accessible tools for nervous system regulation that support our capacity for kinship. We’ll work with specific techniques—breathwork, grounding practices, and somatic awareness—that help us recognize dysregulation and gently return to states of safety and presence. Through guided experiential practice, we’ll discover how these simple yet profound tools become daily companions on the Sufi path.
May 16/17: Mysticism vs. Activism — with Raqib Jonah Yakel
The world is troubled. Wars, climate change, pollution, extinction, people enslaved or made refugees—how are we responding? What does sacred activism look like? What does Sufi activism look like? Join us to explore these questions in the light of Murshid’s teachings and share our own experiences.
Details
This program is open to everyone. No payment is required to participate, but offerings of any amount are welcome. A note about our March 21/22 session: We’re delighted to welcome two guest speakers for A Kinship Worldview. If you’d like to contribute toward this session for their time, a suggested donation of $10 is appreciated.
All sessions are from 4:00–5:15 pm Pacific Time / 7:00–8:15 pm Eastern Time. For those in Oceania, sessions are on Sundays at 11:00 am in Sydney, Australia and 1:00 pm in Auckland, New Zealand.
If you have questions about Kinship, please email us at kinship@inayatiyya.org. For registration questions, please email astana@inayatiyya.org. To stay connected with Kinship, you can follow on social media: Instagram / Bluesky
Speakers
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Khatidja Rodriguez-RuizKhatidja Rodriguez-Ruiz was initiated into the Inayatiyya in 2008 and is a graduate of the Suluk Academy (Naubahar). She has previously served the Inayatiyya as a Kinship Council Member, as a member of the North American Board of Trustees, and as a chair of the Fundraising Committee. Khatidja has focused her academic studies in the area of urban community and public policy. In her daily life, she works in education philanthropy with a goal of expanding accessibility and inclusivity in higher and performing arts education. She is passionate about building networks of community and mutual aid, as well as elevating the visibility of marginalized groups. She is motivated by the belief that our diverse outlooks and experiences make us a stronger whole, if we work collaboratively to weave a unifying ideal of love, harmony, and beauty. She currently lives in Forest Hills, NY with her husband Wesley.
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Majid VowellsMajid David Vowells is the Kinship representative for Aotearoa New Zealand and discovered the Sufi path when he moved there over twenty-five years ago. The Maori, Pacifica, and African cultures he has met have shown him much about the living experience of kinship. He has taught in culturally diverse schools and seen the challenges refugees face. He shares the experience of being an immigrant with his Ethiopian wife and her extended family. They have two adult children, and Majid has grandchildren in England and Japan. He has found that the message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and particularly the teachings on kinship are a potent way for the human family to work toward unity and peace in these troubled times.
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Raqib Jonah YakelRaqib Jonah Yakel was initiated into the Inayati Order by Pir Vilayat in 2000. For many years, he was an active member of the Washington, DC, Baraka Center and is a graduate of both the Suluk Academy (Gulzar/2015) and the Raphaelite Program with Himayat Inayati. He spent ten years in Kansas City, where he led a Sufi center and later served as a mentor for the Suluk classes of Naubahar and Na-koja-abad. His service in the Kinship Activity began in 2010 as a rider for the Spirit Rides the Wind fundraiser, a five-day bike ride from Washington, DC, to the Abode of the Message. He later led early Kinship circles in Kansas City. After several years focused on health and healing, he returned to the Kinship Council in 2023. Professionally, Raqib is a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner specializing in brain health, chronic inflammatory conditions, and mold-related illness. In addition to his private practice, he works closely with Raqib Kogan at the George Washington Center for Integrative Medicine in Washington, DC. Raqib currently resides near Portland, OR, with his wife, Jeni.
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Darcia Narvaez Ph.D.Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D. is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Narvaez’s prior careers include professional musician, classroom music teacher, business owner, seminarian, and middle school Spanish teacher. Her current research explores how early life experience influences societal culture, well-being, and sociomoral character in children and adults. She publishes extensively on moral development, parenting and education. She is the co-author of Restoring the Kinship Worldview with Four Arrows and recently has been studying the Evolved Nest, which posits that modern children and adults suffer from a lack of species-typical nestedness.
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Four ArrowsFour Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, Ph.D., Ed.D., is the author of numerous books, peer-reviewed articles, and chapters on applications of the Indigenous Worldview as a proven solution to our existential world problems. Former Director of Education at Oglala Lakota College, and currently a professor of education for change at Fielding Graduate University, his academic work, spiritual life, and social/ecological justice activism have received international recognition, including a book on his work by Dr. Michael Fisher entitled Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows. You can learn more about his work at fourarrowsbooks.com.
