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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
AHA! has long received kudos in town for its success in equipping teenagers, parents, and educators with social and emotional intelligence and strategies to serve as an antidote to everything from apathy to despair. In addition, AHA! has had great success interrupting hate-based behaviors such as bullying. The organization’s programs have become touchpoints for transforming […]
With its special streaming presentations of main stage operas on pandemic pause, Opera Santa Barbara takes a youthful turn, offering an online reprise of the culmination of last summer’s Santa Barbara Youth Opera two-week camp: a production that brings Homer’s epic tale to life via Ben Moore and Kelly Rourke‘s Odyssey. The livestream of the […]
Back in the academic art world, the AD&A Museum at UCSB has launched a preview of “Field Day,” its annual Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition. The pre-show features projects in progress and studio shots, revealing the process of creating works for the show that includes sculpture, photography, installations, video, and painting. The exhibit […]
This issue arrives on May 7, which, in normal times, would have been a time for art lovers to gather downtown on lower State Street and nearby blocks to partake in the gallery, museum, and boutique self-guided tour known as 1st Thursday. That would’ve meant huge crowds jamming the two big open spaces at Sullivan […]
Claudia Hoag McGarry has been involved in writing and literature for decades. Her resume includes more than a dozen screenplays, several novels and, more recently, a handful of theatrical plays as well as 30 years of serving as a Santa Barbara City College English skills teacher. Then COVID-19 arrived, shut down just about everything, and […]
Tristan Harrison, founder of the Center for Humane Technology; Nichol Bradford, CEO and founder of the Willow Group and co-founder of Transformative Technology Lab; Liana Sananda Gillooly, development officer, MAPS; and Jamie Wheal, co-author of global bestseller Stealing Fire and co-founder of the Flow Genome Project are among a dozen thought-leaders, researchers, academics and entrepreneurs […]
Jenny Boyar’s Sunday Writing Series at Yoga Soup – which takes place the first Sunday of the month May-July, stems from the premise that writing can turn things that feel intangible and difficult into something tangible while also allowing us to invite others into our experience, something especially valuable in moments of isolation. The primary […]
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 […]
Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks’ Ojai-based Foundation for Conscious Living has created a number of new resources for meeting the coronavirus crisis on the home page of the organization’s website, where visitors are able to connect with its Restoring Resourcefulness faculty for coaching and education about how to shift from fear to create wellbeing and creative […]
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 […]
The Santa Barbara Institute for Conscious Studies’ most recent newsletter includes more updates, meditation sessions and other materials from founder Alan Wallace along with another gem: a prayer and practice involving Tārā the Curer of Infectious Disease. H. E. Dagyum Chenmo Kusho Sakya has advised, translated and offered the practice at this time of global […]
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. […]
Patagonia, the Ventura-based designer/distributor of outdoor clothing and gear, is helping the local community combat the coronavirus through offering several yoga classes online free of charge. A three-part Yoga & Wellness Series with Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Yoga Instructor and Wellness Coach Julie Peacock, comes to a close on April 28 with a 30-minute vinyasa practice […]
DiviniTree Yoga, the studio located across the street from city hall in downtown Santa Barbara, doesn’t have any workshops planned over our next week, and also doesn’t offer as many different streaming classes in the time of COVID-19 as its two main competitors. But newbies to the virtual studio can sample all of them for […]
Santa Barbara Yoga Center’s free monthly introduction to the practice, principles and purposes of yoga haven’t been postponed due to the pandemic. They’ve migrated over to the Zoom platform, where veteran teacher Kat Connors-Longo will lead the two-hour class designed for beginning students who would like to learn the basics before attending an ongoing class, […]
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 […]
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 […]
What do communication techniques have to do with spirituality? Perhaps only everything we encounter on the human plane, as Nonviolent Communication, aka NVC, according to some, goes far beyond self-help communication skills to serve as a consciousness based on the intention to create positive connections. The core idea is that rather than be motivated by […]
If COVID-19 hadn’t caused everything to come to a close, and everyone to halt, suddenly in the middle of March, George Yatchisin would be hosting the sixth annual “Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry” reading at The Good Lion lounge this Friday, April 24, when the “Drinkable Landscape” columnist for Edible Santa Barbara and […]
Veteran local singer-songwriter and educator Nicola Gordon has been hosting showcases at MichaelKate Interiors for years. But with the showroom shuttered during the pandemic, the music has migrated over to Zoom. The third showcase in her now twice-a-month series takes place on April 29, during the usual on-site date of the last Wednesday of the […]
Among the other area artists who are performing frequently via Facebook Live, Instagram or Zoom are the great Glen Phillips, the frontman for Santa Barbara-born pop band Toad the Wet Sprocket and a significant solo singer-songwriter. Phillips, who lived for more than two decades in Montecito, has been playing live acoustic living room sessions several […]
Tina Schlieske and her sister Laura are sheltering in place separately in Santa Barbara, but it’s hard to keep sisters apart for weeks on end, especially if they get along as well as the Schlieskes, who have been making music together for nearly all of their lives. Tina is best known for her solo gigs […]
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 […]