Tag archives: spirituality
There are so many modalities that can modify the body, mind, and spirit, and scores if not hundreds of practitioners offering their services in town. How is one to negotiate the maze? Word of mouth works best, of course, but for those who would rather sample on their own without having to make a large […]
The description on Yoga Soup’s website was intriguing: “A movement community experience suitable for everybody… combining guided movement meditations, structured improvisation, simple choreographed exercises, and the exhilarating experience of moving in unison with other bodies.” But then, that begs the question: In a town that has more ecstatic dancing gatherings and contact improv sessions per […]
Last year, Michael Russer and his partner, Jacqueline Lopez, created Entheomedicine Santa Barbara to bring expertise on the health and spiritual benefits of medicine journeys to the community. Now they’re diving into something even more valuable, and much easier on the systerm, than those chemically induced experiences: a process for awareness and connection they call […]
The Tibetan Buddhist monks are coming back to Summerland to work on a Medicine Buddha sand mandala, offer prayers and healing sessions, and much more, beginning this Wednesday, September 5, at The Sacred Space. Tthe Ngari Institute of Buddhist Dialectics Tour is bringing the venerable Geshe Tsewang Dorje and Geshe Thupten Tulku Rinpoche to the […]
SBCC’s Adult Education program has gone through myriad changes in recent years, but things seem to be finally coming full circle. Where once nearly all of the hundreds of non-credit offerings – which included scores of personal growth, psychology, and spiritual-examining selections – had no admission charge through the 1990s and into the 2000s, changes […]
It is hard to image today’s $27 billion yoga industry without Paramahansa Yogananda. Nearly a century after his arrival in the United States, and 65 years since his death, Yogananda remains the best-known and most-beloved of all the Indian spiritual teachers who came to the West. Yogananda’s influence remains vast, through his teachings and the […]
5Rhythms was devised by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1970s and draws from indigenous and world traditions, employing shamanistic, ecstatic, mystical and eastern philosophies, as well as Gestalt therapy and transpersonal psychology. Dancing the 5Rhythms is a practice, a dynamic way to both workout and meditate in the same breath, where the body becomes the […]
Who couldn’t use a little extra energy entering the weekend? Sure, there’s Red Bull, a double expresso or other substances. But a more natural approach is being offered by Amyris Wilson, a transformational healer and teacher who has returned to practice in Santa Barbara after several years in Ojai. The energy involved here is the […]
What’s that? You’re wondering what a column on spirituality is doing featuring an item on singing? A sensible query, to be sure, and while the answer could be a smarmy “Anything is spiritual if that’s your vantage point,” the inCourage Chorus truly takes a heart-based, spirit-invoking approach to vocalizing with melody, rhythm, and harmony in […]
Tenzin Gyatso, otherwise known as His Holiness the Great 14th Dalai Lama, has made several visits to Santa Barbara to offer his inspired messages of peace and hope for the world. Formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama at age 2, he assumed full duties at 15 in 1950 after the People’s Republic of China’s […]
His Holiness Dudjom Sangye Pema Shepa – the reincarnation of HH Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, the supreme head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism – is coming to town this week for a special presentation. His Holiness will give an empowerment and transmission of the Dechen Namrol Rigdzin Düpa known as The Display of […]
Meditation is much more than mindfulness, and a deeper state a more readily available through the body, says Timothy Tillman, M.A., CHT, a now Santa Barbara-based Somatic and Hakomi therapist who also leads weekly meditation gatherings at both a yurt at his Mission Canyon home and at Yoga Soup. Tillman – who is also a […]
Grief is a given in this life and a natural part of the human experience, but many people refuse to allow themselves to dive fully into their sadness, and definitely not in public. Yet many other cultures throughout time have processed grief in community; its expression is a casualty of our modern times. Alexis Slutzky […]
Peace Sticks seems like a super-simple concept – participants toss a pair of sticks back and forth with a partner. And that’s exactly how it started with Shane and Evan Rilling, the Ojai-based brothers who created the practice. “It came to us on a hike more than a decade ago, when we picked up some […]
Anyone who has attended any of Lisa Citore‘s Anima offerings of Women’s Ritual Theater is aware of the solid mind-body-spirit connection exemplified by the self-described “pleasure activist,” writer, sex educator, and healer brings to her work, whether in the field of performance art or sacred sexuality workshops, or anything between. But for the last several […]
The Spiritualist Church of The Comforter of Santa Barbara has roots that date back more than 125 years to its charter in Summerland in 1891, when it served as the focal point of a small community developed as a summer camp for the newly founded Spiritualist Organization. The church had to relocate when the 101 […]
“You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.” – Alan Watts In 2005, the small town of Summerland welcomed The Sacred Space to what is now the heavily decorated corner of Lillie Avenue. But the wall of green foliage, the healing Buddhas, prosperity […]
Back in February, I had promised I would write about my experiences at my first-ever silent retreat early that month at Sunburst Sanctuary. But at first, trying to put into words what was almost exclusively a sensory and spiritual experience felt profoundly unsatisfying, perhaps alsmost profane. Then time goes by, life resumes, challenges arise, columns […]
Yemaya Renuka Duby moved to Santa Barbara only last year, but the somatic therapy practitioner-health and lifestyle coach brought with her a wealth a experience. Duby is a 25-year veteran of the Rosen Method – a psychosomatic system integrating body, emotional, and mental experiences in releasing unconscious patterns of behavior – who trained directly under […]
It was early last spring, just over a year ago, that Mark Ruskin published his second book of poetry, On Love’s Path ~ New Versions of Rumi, Kabir & Hafiz, in which he intuitively interprets the words of the great mystic poets through his own heart as a Chinese medicine healer. As with his first […]
