Tag archives: Yoga Soup
The SKY Meditation program was just getting a toe-hold in Santa Barbara earlier this year when an unexpected personal situation caused a step back just as the technique, popular around the country, was getting ready to begin a series of regular trainings. After an eight-month hiatus, SKY returned with two free intro evenings earlier this […]
The monthly downtown art-and-culture tour is generally focused on visual art, performances and imbibing glasses of wine, not so much on seeking meaning and higher connection. But the holiday season brings time of reflection, so the December event, which takes place on December 6, has a couple of choices that might be a bit uplifting. […]
Goat yoga, the phenomenon of practicing poses amid wandering full-grown goats and kids that began barely two years ago in Oregon, has made its way down the coast to our little slice of Eden-By-The-Sea. Goat yoga actually showed up in Isla Vista last December, and apparently the latest trend is here to, pardon me, namaste, […]
Laguna Beach native Baba Bhagavan Das – the master kirtan wallah and orator, bhakti yogi and shakta tantra adept – first traveled to India back in 1963 to find his gur, and became the first American to live in the jungle of the Himalayas as a hermit-sadhu. Bhagavan Das was given the Holy Name of […]
Adam Hall spent more than a quarter-century as a real estate executive, building a business that made him quite wealthy in an area that focuses on private ownership of land and property. But then something shifted and he started exploring the deeper meanings of life, a journey that led him to co-found the Evolutionary Leaders, […]
Joan Halifax is the rare Zen Buddhist visionary whose background and education traverses Western and Eastern practices and study, and it’s an astonishing background that has brought her to where she is today. Among the many early accomplishments of the activist, author, caregiver, teacher, and Zen Buddhist priest, who will be the subject of the […]
Sunburst Sanctuary’s silent retreats are not like typical ones where there is truly no vocalizing of any kind and as little interaction as possible over an extended period of time. While it’s definitely nothing approaching a gab fest, the morning and evening programs of Sunburst’s three-day-and-night weekend retreat are programmed, with yoga or stretching or […]
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 […]
Brent Anderson has been singing in Barbershop Harmony choruses for 40 years, the last 19 as part of Pacific Sounds, a group he co-formed back in 1999 to serve as a competition and show choir long before anyone heard of TV’s Glee or the Pitch Perfect movies. Part of the 700-chapter-strong Barbershop Harmony Society, Pacific […]
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 […]
DiviniTree, the yoga studio just steps from State Street in the heart of downtown across from De La Guerra Plaza, has new owners – and a new attitude toward events. A Breath Work & Sound Healing Workshop, slated for this Saturday, August 18, offers participants the opportunity to harness the power of their own breath […]
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 […]
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 […]
Nearly everyone has a relationship they’d like to, ahem, adjust, perhaps wrangling with a romantic partner, sorting out sibling situations, still feeling frustration over family foibles, or maybe handling conflict with a co-worker. But transforming relationships starts with making changes in ourselves, says Crystal Stokes, who has offered transpersonal/spiritual psychology and coaching in Santa Barbara […]
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 […]
As the one-year anniversary of the Thomas Fire and Montecito debris flow approach, we’re imagining there will be several local events to commemorate the milestones of the twin tragedies. Ojai, which was hit early and hard by the fire, as the village’s Community Healing Sanctuary – a collaborative group that has hosted such events as […]
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 […]



