Coming Together

Like all of us in the Montecito/greater Santa Barbara area, I have had a lot of personal reactions to the Montecito mudslide disaster coming on the heels of the Thomas Fire, from numbness to grief to fear to hopefulness and even gratitude. The latter came mostly last weekend in the wake of the community coming together in so many places and ways to offer each other comfort, support, and presence.

Just last Sunday alone, there were four or five simultaneous such sessions at yoga centers and churches, plus a bigger gathering at the Impact Hub downtown where dozens of massage therapists, chiropractors ,and counselors offered hands-on healing while food, music, and mingling created more connection. That evening, the vigil at the Courthouse was a beautiful interfaith/community leader gathering that was informative, uplifting, and, most of all, community-building.

I wanted to say much more about what’s already taken place, but I’d rather use this space to inform about events and opportunities still available, as we are just beginning the healing process that will go on, more than likely, a lot longer than the still daunting physical recovery.

Note; Santa Barbara Therapeutic Disaster Relief is a new Facebook group created to serve as a matching site bringing together a unified group of local practitioners and therapists offering free services to first responders of Santa Barbara County. Visit www.facebook.com/groups/2080756245502529/about/.

Sounding and Grounding

Dr. Gwendolyn McClure, Ph.D., L.M.T., an early practitioner of vocal sound healing who has been offering classes in Santa Barbara for more than two decades, returns to town this week to offer both group and private sessions. Her Vocal Clearing & Healing workshops takes place 1 to 5 pm on Saturday, January 20, at Unity of Santa Barbara, 227 W. Arrellaga St., while private sessions can be scheduled through Tuesday, January 23. In light of the Thomas Fire and Montecito mudslide, Dr. McClure is offering all of the sessions on a donation/sliding scale fee basis. Visit www.vocalsoundhealer.com or www.facebook.com/vocalsoundhealer for more details.

Izumi Asura Serra‘s ongoing Meditation with Sound at Center of the Heart gathers for the first time in 2018 this Thursday, January 18, at 487 North Turnpike Road. “We have been experiencing such difficult and sad time in our community,” Serra notes on the Meetup page. “I offer the time and space for you to feel relaxation, calmness, or peace with vibrations and sounds of the Crystal and Tibetan Singing bowls. You may have your own intention to achieve, whatever it may be, I hope you can feel it while you are here.” Bring blankets, yoga mats, pillows, or beach chairs to make yourself comfortable. Admission is $17 per person ($15 for first-timers). Details at www.meetup.com/Music-of-the-Spheres-Meditation-with-Sound.

Community-centric Yoga

Toward the end of last year, Divinitree announced its intention to transition into a nonprofit community center. Bringing back Free Yoga Week is a step toward that goal. All yoga classes at the downtown studios located directly across the street from Santa Barbara City Hall are completely free to everyone from January 22-28, and Divinitree hopes you’ll also bring family and friends who otherwise might not have the opportunity to do yoga. But book in your classes online (www.sb.divinitree.com) as they may “sell out” in advance.

Meanwhile, Divinitree is also offering a special Shiva And The Diva Healing Hour at 5 pm this Thursday, January 18, that just might be the thing to speed stress reduction. The class combines Chinese Energetic Medicine “Qi Gong” flow, Yoga, partner and/or solo bodywork techniques, and live music ecstatic dance in a 90-minute session.

Emotions in Motion: Update

Stace and Brie Ehret Barron, the founders and developers of Avraprana EmotoSpiritual Healing, have solid dates for the free introduction to the hands-on energy healing work this month. The intro to Avraprana – an integrative approach to the relationship between “unconscious emotive congestion, pranic turbulence, chakral dissonance, physical disease, and intuitive-based access of all kinds to the subtle realms of being” – takes place 1 to 2:30 pm on Saturday, January 20, at Airobic Fitness, 136 S. Hope St. in La Cumbre Plaza. The class then runs weekly on Saturdays, from 1 to 3:30 pm, January 27-March 3. The fee is $35 per class or $195 pre-paid for the full six-week course. Email stace@avraprana.com or call Brie (541) 326-8093.

The Barrons are also eager to help out those deeply affected by the mudslide, repeating an offer of healing gatherings they made at the tail end of the Thomas Fire. “I watched the news this morning and saw all these people rescued from their houses, trying to figure out what’s next and where to go, some of them with tears in their eyes, in shock,” Brie wrote in an email. “The emotional and physical stress these horrible events create in people is obvious, and we would love to offer support, again, like we tried during the Thomas Fire.” Contact Brie for more information.

Consensual Cuddling for Connection

Amber York‘s Santa Barbara Cuddle Connection greets the New Year with its first gathering in a couple of months, providing a safe space for singles or couples, coming alone or together, to experience a warm, nurturing, and fun group of people exploring our edges of safe, consensual connection and touch. Ice breakers are followed by Platonic Touch Therapist York setting a safe container and offering instruction before a period of fully optional free-form, clothes-on cuddling. (6:30 to 9 pm; Saturday, January 20; Santa Barbara Body Therapy Institute, 516 N. Quarantina Street; $20; www.meetup.com/Cuddle-and-Connection-Santa-Barbara).

More Meditation

The Tiny Playful Group of Meditators Meetup, which began around the same time as the Thomas Fire, took a few weeks to get going, but has been filling its weekly gathering and is ready to add a second weekly date to the ongoing Friday evening sessions. The Meetup includes a combination of mindfulness exercises, paired self-inquiry exercises, and time for less-structured connection and conversation. The gathering takes place in a downtown office at 228 E Anapamu St., #204, so there is a limit of 8 to 10 people. “Anyone who doesn’t feel some degree of bliss when they look at the feeling of ‘My self’ is ripe for this group,” Zubin says. The gatherings last between 45 and 90 minutes. Details and registration online at www.meetup.com/Tiny-Playful-Group-of-Meditators/about or call 836-1185.

Meditation on Twin Hearts is practiced worldwide by people of different nationalities and religious backgrounds. The advanced guided meditation technique, introduced by Grand Master Choa Kok Sui, the modern founder of Pranic Healing® and Arhatic Yoga®, works on the heart chakra (the physical heart) and the crown chakra (the spiritual heart), thereby enabling practitioners to increase inner illumination. The base of the meditation is the Prayer of Saint Francis, “Make me an Instrument of thy peace.” Meditation on Twin Hearts can be done by a group as a form of world service, thereby also magnifying the effectiveness of the blessings, as indicated by scientific research. Ursula Lentine‘s new ongoing Meditation on Twin Hearts Meetup takes place every Tuesday at 7 pm at Temple, at 25 E. De La Guerra St., around the corner from Divinitree Yoga. Bring a cushion or yoga mat, or you can sit on the benches or the floor. Suggested donation: $5 to $20. Visit www.meetup.com/Twin-Hearts-Meditation-and-Subconscious-Healing.

Free (Again) at Last

SBCC’s continuing education programs – for decades affectionately known as Adult Ed – once offered hundreds of classes nearly all for no tuition cost. Recession, changes in laws, and other issues eventually shifted just about all of them to fee basis. Now, with the new winter/spring session that was scheduled to get underway this week but has been postponed until Monday, January 22, because of the continued closer of Highway 101, many of the most beloved offerings are once again free.

This includes two Nature and Self-Healing courses (beginning and intermediate) taught by Rodger Sorrow, who also leads Compassionate Communication, a class in NonViolent Communcation as developed by Marshall Rosenberg, who taught many weekend workshops at Adult Ed before his death. Dana Drobny‘s How Meditation Helps – Mindfulness in Everyday Life and Teri Cooper‘s Honing the Intuitive Edge are also on the slate, as is the ever-popular Turning Points in Thought From Film, taught by CASA/Voice magazine co-publishers Kerry Methner and Mark Whitehurst, and Adult Ed stalwart Spencer Sherman‘s Consciousness, Science, and the Nature of Being. Even better, Mark Dunlap is returning to the Adult Ed fold after a four-year absence, offering a new course called Love Isn’t Enough.

Get details about all of the tuition-free classes, including courses in Art, English, Music, and Theater Arts, SBCC Center for Extended Learning, at SBCC Center for Extended Learning’s (yes, another new name) website, www.sbcc.edu/extendedlearning/olderadults.php.

Consciousness Hacking

It’s nothing new to suggest that the experience of everyday consciousness is defined by mental chatter. Our internal dialogue enables us to spot and solve complex problems, but sometimes it paralyzes us as we overthink, get stuck in loops, or get distracted from awareness of what’s actually taking place in the present moment. But what if, Josiah Hultgren asks, your body’s muscular reflexes could help you discover truths invisible to your conscious mind?

Hultgren, the founder of MindFullyAlive, a senior faculty member at California Lutheran University, a NeuroCoach, and a featured neuroscience writer on Medium, is leading an experimental salon to take a hands-on approach to exploring the “ideomotor” phenomenon (derived from the terms “ideo” [idea, or mental representation] and “motor” [muscular action]), and how you recruit the phenomenon into your life in practical ways that help you problem-solve and uncover unexpected truths.

Consciousness Hacking: Recruiting Reflexive Insight – How to Access Your Subconscious Through Your Body takes place 7 to 9 pm on Monday, January 29 (rescheduled from January 15) at Fishbon Pescadrome, 101 S. Quarantina St., and includes times for mingling and snacking before and after the presentation and participatory activity conducted by Hultgren, who works with neuroscience experts to create and curate research-backed methods for enhanced brain functioning. Free admission. Visit http://bit.ly/2AysDKV for reservations.