Tag archives: meditation

Montecito Meditation 
By Kelly Mahan Herrick   |   June 6, 2023

A tranquil space located upstairs at the Las Aves complex across from the bird refuge is expanding its offerings next month; Montecito Meditation will now add yoga classes to the schedule, in addition to guided meditation sessions. The business, owned by Tina Lyn, opened shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and is now making […]

Yoga Après Polo with Megan Llambias
By Michelle Ebbin   |   July 19, 2022

For over 100 years the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club (SBPRC), situated beautifully in the Carpinteria foothills between the Santa Ynez mountains and the Pacific Ocean, has drawn polo players and spectators from all over the world. This year the buzz about Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and world-renowned Argentine polo champion, Nacho […]

Loving Your ‘Lurps’: New Book Offers Breakthrough
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 7, 2021

Radhule Weininger’s new book, Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom — at Last, features a brief forward by the Dalai Lama and another longer, more personal one from colleague Joanna Macy, the prolific author, environmental activist, and half-century-plus scholar of Buddhism. Additional pre-publication praise has come from locally beloved […]

Why it is Important to ‘Check in with Source’
By Ann Brode   |   July 8, 2021

Standing on the threshold of a post-COVID world feels like an opportunity to evaluate the past and make choices for the future. In such transition times, our small-self is asked to align with a big-self perspective. This is when it makes sense to listen to a resource that comes from way beyond and resonates deep […]

Pandemic Pounds: A Mindful Solution
By Nick Masuda   |   May 27, 2021

Petra Beumer, owner of the Mindful Eating Institute in Santa Barbara, is also in the digital detox camp, but also knows that there are many in the South Coast community looking at themselves in the mirror and aren’t happy with the pandemic pounds they’ve added over the past 14 months. According to the American Psychological […]

Santa Barbara Yoga Fest Feeds your Soul… and the Hungry
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 14, 2020

Enjoy a full day of yoga with a wide swath of Santa Barbara County yoga teachers from Carpinteria to Santa Maria – including many of your favorites and lots of chances to practice with someone new – in a special participatory benefit to raise money for the Santa Barbara County Foodbank, whose goal is “moving […]

Calm Conversations in the COVID Era
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 7, 2020

Gail Brenner, the longtime Santa Barbara-based clinical psychologist who held regular weekly Meetups for meditation and more, left town for an extended journey around the world shortly after publishing her book Suffering is Optional: A Spiritual Guide to Freedom from Self-Judgment and Feelings of Inadequacy in November 2018. Now back in the U.S. after a […]

Meetups in Cyberspace
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 7, 2020

Elissa Amina’s Sufi Yoga classes are continuing through May as an opportunity to explore breathwork, yoga, and meditation while invoking the divine qualities to open the heart to expansive states, and bring healing on a cellular level. Amina teaches a combination of yogas including Kundalini, Yin, Naam and Hatha, plus Pure Heart, Pure Body, and […]

Sheltering in Love Workshop
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 30, 2020

Barbara Rose Sherman – a Yoga Alliance E-RYT-500 Certified Instructor who is also a UCLA Trained Mindfulness Facilitator (TMF) and UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Practices affiliated instructor as well as a Certified Meditation Teacher (CMT) – invites everyone to join her online to nourish and nurture yourself during the coronavirus crisis. Sherman will lead a restorative […]

Krishnamurti Foundation’s May Gathering Zooms Online
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 30, 2020

Can the Mind Be Quiet? That’s the timeless and perhaps uber-timely theme in the novel coronavirus era for Krishnamurti Foundation America’s annual May Gathering, which in our “old normal” times would draw hundreds of higher-consciousness seekers to the KFA’s bucolic grounds in Ojai, reminiscent of the days when the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti himself would […]

Coping with the Crisis with Chloe Conger
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 23, 2020

Montecito yoga-meditation-QiGong teacher Chloe Conger has added a new online class, Qigong and Meditation, taking place every Saturday at 10 am, with admission by donation. Conger’s class is a moving meditation (like Tai Chi) that connects us to the effortless flow and pulse of energy that runs throughout the body, she explains on her website. […]

Soup is Soaring, with Workshops, Too
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 23, 2020

Yoga Soup, the studio located down by the Santa Barbara train station that often serves as a bookstore, gift shop, and gathering place during our “old normal” times, has managed to schedule upwards of 70 classes available via the Zoom service each week. A few weeks into the transition, Yoga Soup has also started to […]

McLean Meditation
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 23, 2020

When the coronavirus crisis first arrived in America, Sarah McLean figured she’d hunker down with her husband in the couple’s recently-purchased Santa Barbara home to wait out the shelter-in-place situation. The quarter-century veteran contemporary meditation and mindfulness teacher who co-founded the Montecito Meditation Center last year considers herself something of an introvert, and laying low […]

Multiple Meditations
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 16, 2020

Sarah McLean, the co-founder and lead meditation teacher at Montecito Meditation, which opened its doors just last summer, is embodying her McLean Meditation Institute’s motto of “sowing the seeds of peace” by offering free meditation over Zoom four times a day. “(It’s important to) take care of your nervous system and find more calmness during […]

Access to Alexis in our Anxious Times
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

Santa Barbara native Alexis Slutzky has spent decades as a wilderness guide, mentor, MFT, reclamation practitioner, and council trainer who also specializes in indigenous wisdom traditions, rites of passage, depth psychology, ritual and ceremony and community exploration. Her grief work – which has brought people from both far and wide to retreats at Arroyo Hondo […]

Virtual Meditating with Mahakankala
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

The downtown Santa Barbara center has finally also migrated over to online offerings, with resident teacher Kadam Keli Vaughan teaching and guiding meditations via Zoom several times each week. Featured are “Search for the Self: Buddhist Meditations on Emptiness” from 6-7 pm on Wednesdays, “Learning to Love” from 6:30-7:30 on Thursdays, and “Meditation for World […]

More Streaming Buddhism: BodhiPath Beckons
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

Resident teacher Dawa Tarchin Phillips launches a new three-week course over Zoom on Thursday evenings, offering “What the Buddha Taught” as a way to explore your own life’s journey in light of the Buddha’s wisdom from the perspectives of personal maturation, liberation, awakening and service. The 7-9 pm sessions April 9-23, accessed via Zoom at […]

Thai Meditation for Trying Times
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

As recently as early March, Courtney Purcell’s Santa Barbara Buddhist Meditation Meetup had a full slate of events on its calendar, with gatherings all over town, from the American Buddhist Meditation Temple on Orchid Drive near More Mesa to the foothills and beaches of Montecito, a leap year forest retreat in the expanse at La […]

Surfing Cyberspace in Search of Loving Kindness
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 2, 2020

With COVID-19 concessions confining almost everyone to their homes, Santa Barbara meditation teacher Radhule Weininger, Ph.D., just keeps expanding her ongoing offerings to the community to gather, connect, and share silence and guided meditations together. The weekly schedule produced by the clinical psychologist and teacher of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist psychology now includes events on […]

Somatically Streaming
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 26, 2020

Speaking of Somatic Sanctuary, the somatic-based healing and movement arts center in Ojai has migrated much of its offerings to live streaming, including several classes per with Meredith Sands Keator and Sultana Parvanta in Somatic Stretch for Self-Healing and Awareness Through Movement sessions with Mary Jo Healy and guest teacher Shivani Jane. A special Monthly […]