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 […]
If the coronavirus hadn’t turned so quickly into a pandemic, Mick and Tess Pulver would likely have been back in Santa Barbara earlier this month to conduct a “Song of the Soul” workshop, a two-day exploration to find “the song inside you that’s just waiting to break out.” The weekend event is a truncated version […]
Suzanne Cuddy has temporarily turned her Little Free Library – one of the charming stand-alone cabinets where people can take or leave books for personal use that have popped up all over town in recent years – into a Little Free Pantry. Folks stopping by location at 2124 Bath Street, close to Pueblo Street and […]
Gene Urban, the veteran magician who specialized in close-up tricks – the ones performed within inches of your eyes – has had to take a siesta from his weekly appearances at Satellite Wine Bar and the Magic Castle Cabaret. So he’s upped the ante online in terms of not only offering updated videos of his […]
The Santa Barbara Jazz Society doesn’t have much in its own archives to air during our shelter-in-place era, but the folks who run it are offering some links to fill in the gaps until the nonprofit can stage its next monthly concert at SOhO after the all clear order. If live is king, you’ll want […]
The theater that serves as the gem in the Carsey-Wolf Center at UCSB is currently closed due to COVID, of course, but you can still watch videos of the venue’s post-screening conversations with scholars, filmmakers and TV writer-producers from previous presentations. Each week, the Pollock highlights one of its event series, providing links to stream […]
Film is a medium that lends itself perfectly to streaming and other methods of home delivery, perhaps a perfectly-placed panacea during the pandemic, entertainment-wise at least. No one needs an introduction to Netflix, Amazon Prime and the like, but perhaps some prodding is in order to visit our local cinematic specialists. The Santa Barbara International […]
Montecito’s singer-songwriter hero is logging his time during the pandemic. Kenny Loggins is staying at home during the shelter-in-place era as the COVID-19 pandemic stopped everything in its tracks. Actually, make that homes. The 72-year-old singer-songwriter, who began scoring hits back in the early 1970s in a duo with Jim Messina, found fertile ground with […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which ran at the Lobero Theatre in March, 2019, became much more poignant when Maestro Valéry Ryvkin passed away in February. OSB’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor from 1999-2008 wielded the baton for a final time for the Tchaikovsky work, and this Tuesday, April 21, audiences can […]
Camerata Pacifica was ready when the coronavirus pandemic became a crisis forcing cancellations and resulting in sheltering-in-place orders. The chamber music ensemble had already been compiling videos of its performance for more than a decade. “We definitely had a head start,” said Adrian Spence, the organization’s founding executive and artistic director. “When I see others […]
Pacifica Graduate Institute has amped up its availability of offering immersion in depth psychology to prospective students over the last several years, marketing its programs, information sessions, and campus visits all around town and beyond. Now as the coronavirus turns its Carpinteria campuses into deserted spaces, Pacifica has created a series of virtual events designed […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
K-LITE 101.7’s morning show team of Gary and Catherine quickly came to confront the COVID-19 crisis with a new feature called “Music That Matters Now!” The segment, which airs every weekday morning at 8:45 am on the popular Santa Barbara station, also combines talking with a local musician about their ideas about the role music […]
Center Stage Theater (CST), the black-box venue that makes itself available to the community through largely low-cost rentals, is also stepping up its game in perhaps an even bigger way by offering a new streaming service every night through the end of the month. The segments will run each night at 7 pm, also starting […]
The stated purpose of the Lois & Walter Capps Project is “Connecting our community through authentic and essential dialogue,” but its mission comes down to an even simpler three-word mantra, said president and executive director Todd Capps: “Bringing Us Together.” That encompasses all of the project’s enterprises from Common Table – which began a few […]
The concerts everywhere are all canceled, at least for the remainder of the 2019-20 season, and on into the summer, but the classical music organizations are doing their level best to keep in touch and keep you entertained. Camerata Pacifica might be leading the charge, as the chamber music ensemble is not only upgrading its […]
UCSB’s Launch Pad program began in 2005 as a grand experiment to offer a high-tech lab for playwrights-in-residence, UCSB theater students, faculty, and guest artists to collaborate in developing a new play each year. The residency culminates in a fully realized Preview Production, when the play completes its journey from incubation to professional world premiere […]
Unity Shoppe has come a long way back since a huge gap in its funding forced the nonprofit agency – the largest, single direct distributor of food, clothing, and necessities in the county – into briefly closing its distribution doors for two months in the fall of 2019. The nonprofit shut its doors for the […]
Episode nine of The Lucidity Festival, which was slated to take place April 10-12 at Live Oak Campground, has solidified new dates for its Regeneration Earth-themed weekend: November 6-8. The aim is to keep things as close as possible to the spring selections, from music to workshops and more, although shifting schedules always create some […]
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 […]
Carpinteria QiGong teacher Jessica Kolbe, another SBCC SEL we have profiled in these pages in the past, held out as long as possible in keeping her in-person classes going at the Linden Avenue beach, where people were easily able to stay more than six feet from each other, all the way through March 22. But […]
Speaking of Nonviolent Communication, this week offers a chance for a free session with Sarah Peyton, a Washington-state based CNVC Certified Trainer who is also an international speaker and facilitator known for an ability to weave together neuroscience knowledge and experiences of healing that unify people with their brains and bodies. Peyton’s revolutionary Resonant Self […]
What with all the online learning taking place in colleges, universities, and other educational institutions, it may not seem all that revolutionary that Santa Barbara City College’s School of Extended Learning is embracing the internet. Indeed, with the COVID-19 crisis, there was no choice but to go virtual. What is rather exciting is the breadth […]
Santa Barbara’s Center for Successful Aging wants to help combat the loneliness and isolation caused by COVID-19. So the center is extending its CareLine Telephone Reassurance Program as a free service to anyone 50 years and older, ensuring that one of its volunteers will call you every day (or on any schedule that you prefer) […]
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 […]
Holistic Health and Lifestyle Coach, yoga teacher and “Eat Here Now” author Britta Gudmunson, aka Britta GreenViolet, has long been using song to cultivate healing, confidence, and connection. She’s a song leader and co-founder of the inCourage Chorus, the low-stress, joy-filled non-audition community choir that has iterations at Yoga Soup and the Somatic Sanctuary in […]
Dharma Body’s Tuesday and Thursday in-person Somatic Meditations at its yurt temple atop Mission Canyon – which some call the “space ship” – and downtown at Yoga Soup have been put on hold in favor of virtual online meditations beginning this week. Now the space ship will come to you, leaders Timothy Tillman and Laura […]
Alan Wallace – the founder and director of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and the motivating force behind the development of the Center for Contemplative Research in Tuscany, Italy – returned stateside due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is spending time in a remote cabin in Colorado for the now-in-progress Contemplative Path Through […]
Santa Barbara healer-dancer-actress Teagan Rose’s mission is to support people in connecting more deeply to their sense of home in their body, to their truth, and to their primal creativity. Her Embodiment and Voice Activation sessions and workshops specialize in emotional liberation and integration, self-love and self-understanding, energetic balancing and clearing, embodied trauma release, and […]
Carpinteria resident Damian Gallagher has been hosting Authentic Relating Games in person at Yoga Soup for more than a year, eager to share his practice and expertise in the relational field with the local community. By his own accord, AR games have allowed him to push his edges and find deeper and more meaningful ways […]
Santa Barbara Spiritual Growth Meetup Group founder Kelsey Cordle doesn’t want to let the novel coronavirus curtail connection any more than necessary. So, she writes, “In light of what’s going on in the world, I’d love for us all to still ‘get together’ virtually.” Among the possibilities on the menu for the gathering over Zoom […]
Rebekah Powell grew up outside of Nashville, aka Music City, USA, where her family’s business, not surprisingly, was songwriting. Her father, Monte Powell, was a longtime collaborator with Keith Urban, and other artists who recorded his songs include Tracy Byrd, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tim McGraw, Collin Raye, and Restless Heart. Rebekah’s older sister, Suzannah Powell, […]
Among the spiritual centers choosing to close at least through the end of the month is Sunburst Sanctuary and Retreat Center, although the Lompoc center’s spiritual director and office staff are available by phone and email at (805) 736-6528 or contactus@sunburst.org for those seeking support. Meanwhile, Unity of Santa Barbara’s Sunday services have migrated to […]
Going to gatherings in the great outdoors appears to be safe as long as people maintain appropriate space for “social distancing.” So Ascension Academy will still be hosting Kundalini Yoga to Balance the Chakra System and Restore Inner Peace from 10 to 11 am every Saturday at the Mission Rose Garden (420 Plaza Rubio), where […]
Bodhi Path Santa Barbara has announced that it wants to help minimize the spread of COVID-19 while still providing support to the sangha and community by moving all programs to online platforms until further notice. All programs may be accessed at their regularly scheduled times via Zoom links. Tuesday night sangha-led meditations take place 6-7 […]
Radhule Weininger is cancelling in-person meetings to help stop the spread of the virus, but instead of scaling back, the veteran meditation teacher is upping the ante and actually adding meetings to its slate of online offerings. So the Zoom schedule now includes Mondays at 7 pm with Weininger, Tuesdays at 7 pm with Stacy […]
DiviniTree Yoga went one step further to make “the conscious choice” to temporarily close its physical studio and switch to offering classes online. “This was the most challenging and gut-wrenching decision I’ve ever had to make as a small business owner,” wrote owner Jill Agonias. “I know for a fact that yoga and this supportive […]