Ryan ‘twinkle’ Backer

TATIANA AND TWINKLE! WARMLY HOLD THE SPACE THIS WEDNESDAY 7PM ET ONLINE + @briquexbrique DM for PW See you there! Suggested Dana $ 10-20 #queersangha #queermeditation

Wednesday! What transitions are you moving through right now? 🌊 Life moves fast, but we don’t have to. We’re opening up a space to pause, ground, and integrate those shifts together in community. Join @coralshort and @rypatback for a two-person Dharmette - an exploration of soft, compassionate practice and deep presence. The Flow: 🌱 Intro round to land in the space 🙏🏻Guided meditation Dharma reflection & shared discussion 🗣️ Whether you’re joining us in person at @briquexbrique 💜 or tuning in from home, you are warmly welcome - experienced meditators or newcomers. If you’re coming in person, arrive a little early to get a cup of hot tea, a pillow, blanket and settle in. ☕✨ #nonbinarybuddhists #soberqueers #buddhistcouple #montrealqueer #queersangha

We finally went to the beautiful and spooky Othello Tunnels in Hope BC Unceded land of the Chawathil, Shxw’ōwhámél, and Union Bar First Nations #othellotunnels #latergram #beautifulbritishcolumbia

Spring Clean Your Inbox! A Digital Clear Out Event! 📅 Sunday March 29, 2026 ⏰ 10am - 3pm ET (5-hour drop-in session) 📍 Online via Zoom Do you struggle with email overwhelm? You’re not alone in this suffering. Join our supportive digital decluttering cleansing ritual where we’ll transform email anxiety into email agency. Try out body doubling to support you to get organized! PWYC / NOTAFLOF More info in my linktree 🌱

When: Sundays in April 2026 (5, 12, 19, 26 April) Time: 1:00–3:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT) Where: Online via Zoom Commitment: 4 weeks of live practice, education, and community connection. Register in bio! Age Now is a somatic exploration of life in our bodies across the entire arc of our existence. Moving beyond cultural narratives of youth supremacy, this radical course invites us to dismantle ageist myths and reclaim age pride through embodied practice. Over four weeks, we will transition from disorganized, constricted age-confusion to steadier, more expansive age-compassion—shifting from intellectual understanding to lived wisdom. We’ll celebrate the body as a continuous, unfolding archive of experience, moving through time and space into the now. We are all ageing together. When: Sundays in April 2026 (5, 12, 19, 26 April) Time: 1:00–3:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT) Where: Online via Zoom Commitment: 4 weeks of live practice, education, and community connection. What to Expect: Each session includes three guided somatic practices, dedicated time for personal reflection/writing, small-group breakouts, and a large-group “harvest” to share collective wisdom. Price: Early Bird: $120 (pay by 23 March) Regular: $155 (pay 24 March – 5 April) There is a limited number of scholarships available for BIPOC and trans women How to pay: 📍Canadian participants: e-transfer to [email protected] 📍International participants: PayPal to [email protected] 📍US residents: Venmo to @Ryan -Backer

Get to Know Co-Organizer Twinkle 🌙 Twinkle (aka Ryan) was born in 1988 in New Jersey and is a white non-binary feminist anarchist witch in recovery. As co-founder of @queersangha they love creating welcoming spaces. twinkle brings their whole Gemini self to this work—someone who loves to meditate, knit, write poetry, and go hiking with their adventure cat, Fitz. They’re passionate about sober spaces where people can show up in a more embodied way. Their approach to organizing centers care, creativity, and a radically friendly presence that invites others to do the same. Come say hi at Queer Healing Day! ✨ Follow Twinkle: @rypatbacker Check out their anti-ageism work: @trustsomeoneoverthirty ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨ Faites connaissance avec le co-organisateur Twinkle 🌙 Twinkle (alias Ryan) est né en 1988 au New Jersey et est un sorcier anarchiste féministe non binaire blanc en rétablissement. En tant que cofondateur de Queer Sangha, il crée des espaces où la méditation, la communauté et la guérison se rencontrent. Twinkle apporte tout son être à ce travail—quelqu’un qui aime méditer, tricoter, écrire de la poésie et faire de la randonnée avec son chat d’aventure, Fitz. Il est passionné par la création d’espaces sobres où les gens peuvent se présenter de manière incarnée. Son approche de l’organisation met l’accent sur le soin, la créativité et une présence radicalement amicale qui invite les autres à faire de même. Venez dire bonjour à Queer Healing Day! ✨ Suivez twinkle✨ : @rypatbacker Découvrez son travail anti-âgisme : @trustsomeoneoverthirty

This autumn I had the privilege to go on a 6-week silent Buddhist meditation retreat. The teachers were incredibly supportive, the teachings were poignant, the food was delicious, and being with all the other yogis was heartwarming. And the forest creatures! And the silence… 

Here are some before and after photos, with a few pictures of my favourite spots at @insightmeditationsociety in between- including my altar and awesome view, the famous bowling lane where His Holiness the Dalai Lama played at one point (and where I did lots of walking meditation), my favourite clock, my favourite part of the yoga room, my favourite Buddha, my favourite Kuan Yin … even though I was practicing not having preference, I swear! Thanks so much to my amazing partner on this path @coralshort for supporting me to get to this place, literally and figuratively, and to all the other dedicated yogis who walked this path before me!

Summoning as much joy as possible to celebrate reaching 13 years clean and sober. It is not easy to do any of this with so much pain in the world- staying substance-free or celebrating. Mostly just posting this to say if you need help, I hope you will reach out to me or anyone else doing it.

Also online! Link in my bio • • • • • • • Rest-Oration • • • • • • • A slow conversation between Victoria Stanton, Coral Short and twinkle looking at the pedagogical—and revolutionary—role of rest, pause, refusal, slowness, care, and “doing nothing” within contemporary artists’ time-based works and the parallel social justice implications of integrating slow philosophies in the post-secondary studio art classroom. Audience members will be part of research-in-action, while also invited to enjoy the discussion and participate in a Q&A. This event is part of Stanton’s research for her PhD in Art Education at Concordia University and will be recorded for research purposes. Date: June 17, 2025 Time: 2 to 4pm Location: online and 4TH SPACE, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal (Métro Guy-Concordia) Admission: Free The event will be taking place in English. The venue is on the ground floor with three steps and can be made accessible with an added ramp for any guests requiring this. An artist, researcher, curator, and educator Victoria Stanton places observation and dialogue at the centre of her performative works. She has co-authored two books (Impure, Reinventing the Word, conundrum press, 2001, with Vincent Tinguely, and The 7th Sense/Le 7e sens, SAGAMIE édition d’art, 2017, with the TouVA collective), published texts on the performative in material and time-based practices, and has presented performances, infiltrating/relational actions, exhibitions, and videos in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Cuba. A 2018 recipient of the PRIX POWERHOUSE, Stanton is a SSHRC-funded Canada Graduate Scholar pursuing a research-creation PhD in Art Education at Concordia University focusing on rest, slowness and doing nothing in art world contexts and everyday spaces like the (art) classroom.

My dharmette “It’s about time” is now available on YouTube. It is a talk I gave at Queer Sangha about our relationship to time. Here I am quoting Japanese Buddhist Dōgen: “Open your eyes and let’s see time from a different angle! When you see your life from the broad view of time, you see that your life is not something separate from time—your life is time.”

Joy is an act of resistance. -Toi Derricotte #agequeer #agequeer #changingageing #changingaging #screwageism #undoageism #queerage

It is twinkle time! ✨Meditation and dharma talk with @rypatback (& @trustsomeoneoverthirty )✨ it’s about time⏳🕰️⌚️ This Wed 1/29 7pm ET online, link in bio, pm for pw Ryan ‘twinkle’ Backer is a Queer Sangha organizer, currently finishing up their tenth year as a serious. meditator. and student of Buddhism. They spend a lot of time on time, uncovering why we don’t always like travelling through it, and how to soften that dislike. At this week’s Queer Sangha, timing is everything.