Calendar
Ubuntu & Brahma Viharas with Nobantu Mpotulo
Ubuntu and Brahma Viharas: Weaving Ancient African Spirituality and Buddhism
This program shares the age-old African Wisdom of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is about inter-connectedness and inter-beingness. This helps us to connect deeply with ourselves, with others, and with Mother Nature. Ubuntu promotes non-duality and uses the heart and the body to connect with all beings seen and unseen. We will explore how to use Ubuntu to bring the Brahma Viharas alive.
Nobantu Mpotulo has been a Buddhist practitioner and a teacher for over 20 years. She is trained in the insight mindfulness practices. She is also an Insight Dialogue Teacher and integrates Insight Dialogue with Ubuntu an ancient African Indigenous Wisdom which emphasizes interdependence and non-duality. Nobantu is also a Diamond Approach student and in her practice of Diamond Approach she uses Enneagram to support her. She is a certified Enneagram Teacher. Nobantu is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leadership Programme (CDL 4 Cohort), she has also completed the Dharmapala Programme under the tutelage of Kittisaro and Thanissara. She is a Trustee at Dharmagiri. Nobantu promotes Afro-dharma in her Buddhist teachings by integrating Ubuntu. Nobantu is an internationally acclaimed coach, mentor, facilitator and leads peace circles.
Her favorite quote is by Victor Frankl,
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."
Earth Based Initiatives For Our Times With Elder Medicine Woman Mbali Marais - Nature
About Nature Session
Nature’s mirror reminds us of truth. It invites us to remove the masks of disingenuity and playing small. It calls us back into the magic and mystery of our life, where change and transformation is essential and it moves us to remember that death and rebirth are a part of life.
About the Series
How do we practice in these times? The real question is how do we not? Amidst the chaos and conflict of the individual and collective fires raging around us, there is an invitation to find our primary call to creativity and tend to the deep self. When we realise we are not all there is, we awaken to the call to find our wholeness in the mystery and the greater earth story of who and why we are here.
In this five part elemental series hosted by Braided Wisdom we explore earth based practices to guide us in this time. These practices are grounded in the 5 elemental cosmology of the Dagara tradition - fire, water, earth, mineral and nature - and cross-cultural ways of knowing. We will draw from the wisdom of intergenerational circles. We will look to the past in order to support us in the present to move forward and leave a legacy of earth stewardship for the next generations. We will return to the age old practices of radical ritual, contemplative practices, reflection, storytelling, ceremony and the arts.
About the Teacher:
Mbali Marais is a descendant of a Khoi Khoi ( Khoi Khoi means -The Real People) peoples on her mother’s side from the Western Cape, South Africa and the Amaghebe clan of the Xhosa peoples on her father’s side in the Eastern Cape. She is mother to a Xhosa boy (who came into her life when he was 9 years old) a sister, daughter, aunt, mother to many. Her lineages include Dagara west Africa (adopted) Bushmen, Shangan, Grique, Khoi Khoi, Dutch, French Hugeunots and Portuguese.
Mbali Marais is the founder of the Return to Origin non-profit organization. www.returntoorigin.org.za an organization that works with young underserved people in South Africa to return them to their origins. She has facilitated the three year Indigenous Knowledge Leadership Program and graduated leaders where inner and outer work are at the heart of transformation.
Earth Based Initiatives For Our Times With Elder Medicine Woman Mbali Marais - Mineral
About Mineral Session
We will journey with mineral, the bones of the earth to evoke us to re- remember, re-vision and re-imagine our bigger earth story and the gifts inscribed in our bones. When we claim all that we are and have been, we are alive with purpose.
About the Series
How do we practice in these times? The real question is how do we not? Amidst the chaos and conflict of the individual and collective fires raging around us, there is an invitation to find our primary call to creativity and tend to the deep self. When we realise we are not all there is, we awaken to the call to find our wholeness in the mystery and the greater earth story of who and why we are here.
In this five part elemental series hosted by Braided Wisdom we explore earth based practices to guide us in this time. These practices are grounded in the 5 elemental cosmology of the Dagara tradition - fire, water, earth, mineral and nature - and cross-cultural ways of knowing. We will draw from the wisdom of intergenerational circles. We will look to the past in order to support us in the present to move forward and leave a legacy of earth stewardship for the next generations. We will return to the age old practices of radical ritual, contemplative practices, reflection, storytelling, ceremony and the arts.
About the Teacher:
Mbali Marais is a descendant of a Khoi Khoi ( Khoi Khoi means -The Real People) peoples on her mother’s side from the Western Cape, South Africa and the Amaghebe clan of the Xhosa peoples on her father’s side in the Eastern Cape. She is mother to a Xhosa boy (who came into her life when he was 9 years old) a sister, daughter, aunt, mother to many. Her lineages include Dagara west Africa (adopted) Bushmen, Shangan, Grique, Khoi Khoi, Dutch, French Hugeunots and Portuguese.
Mbali Marais is the founder of the Return to Origin non-profit organization. www.returntoorigin.org.za an organization that works with young underserved people in South Africa to return them to their origins. She has facilitated the three year Indigenous Knowledge Leadership Program and graduated leaders where inner and outer work are at the heart of transformation.
Community Healing Council - Imee Contreras & Aubrey Gates
In most cultures, the symbol of a circle represents wholeness, and the potential for unity. When we come together as an intentional community, for personal development and healing, we are honoring the sacred. We will cultivate the collective practice of listening, witnessing, and holding space for the whole as we heal ourselves by acknowledging what needs to be healed. We will work with the Seasons, Elements, and Nature as direct mirrors for the healing process. Indigenous cultures recognize that the healing of self is connected to the whole community.
We offer the Community Healing Council as a complimentary and follow-up class to the Original Medicine 4-Part Series. The council is a sacred space where we can practice being in community in an open, authentic, and compassionate way.
Attendance in the Original Medicine 4-Part Series is not a pre-requisite for registration.
**If you do not receive the zoom link in advance, please check your spam folder for an email from info@braidedwisdom.org.**
This event registration is for the last healing circle on Saturday, February 4, 2023 from 4:00pm - 6:30pm Pacific Time. A Zoom Link will be sent the Thursday & Friday prior to and the day of the event.
TBD
Earth Based Initiatives For Our Times With Elder Medicine Woman Mbali Marais - Earth Session
About Earth Session
Being born is validation enough and yet our sense of belonging and home is often sabotaged by our not enough-ness, our need for validation, and a feeling of being lost in the world. We often walk the path of the homeless in scarcity looking for an identity, a recognition, and a place to bring our gifts to our community. As we dig deep into the earth element we may find that abundance is rightly ours and the earth never said you don't belong. We come into sacred reciprocity with the earth. We come home.
About the Series
How do we practice in these times? The real question is how do we not? Amidst the chaos and conflict of the individual and collective fires raging around us, there is an invitation to find our primary call to creativity and tend to the deep self. When we realise we are not all there is, we awaken to the call to find our wholeness in the mystery and the greater earth story of who and why we are here.
In this five part elemental series hosted by Braided Wisdom we explore earth based practices to guide us in this time. These practices are grounded in the 5 elemental cosmology of the Dagara tradition - fire, water, earth, mineral and nature - and cross-cultural ways of knowing. We will draw from the wisdom of intergenerational circles. We will look to the past in order to support us in the present to move forward and leave a legacy of earth stewardship for the next generations. We will return to the age old practices of radical ritual, contemplative practices, reflection, storytelling, ceremony and the arts.
About the Teacher:
Mbali Marais is a descendant of a Khoi Khoi ( Khoi Khoi means -The Real People) peoples on her mother’s side from the Western Cape, South Africa and the Amaghebe clan of the Xhosa peoples on her father’s side in the Eastern Cape. She is mother to a Xhosa boy (who came into her life when he was 9 years old) a sister, daughter, aunt, mother to many. Her lineages include Dagara west Africa (adopted) Bushmen, Shangan, Grique, Khoi Khoi, Dutch, French Hugeunots and Portuguese.
Mbali Marais is the founder of the Return to Origin non-profit organization. www.returntoorigin.org.za an organization that works with young underserved people in South Africa to return them to their origins. She has facilitated the three year Indigenous Knowledge Leadership Program and graduated leaders where inner and outer work are at the heart of transformation.
Balance Restored: Remembering the Indigenous Design of American Democracy - Dr. Leslie Gray
Balance Restored: Remembering the Indigenous Design of American Democracy
It is now manifest that life in the United States in the 21st century is perilously out of balance. Hundreds of years of warnings from Indigenous leaders, as well as roughly 70 years of dire predictions from scientists, social philosophers and artists, have gone unheeded. In this 2 hour presentation Dr. Leslie Gray will elucidate the original, ingenious design of American democracy. She will highlight the deep intelligence and emphasis on personal agency embedded in this design that were intended to be a roadmap for righting oneself in the midst of chaos.
The removal of civics instruction from schools, the proliferation of false narratives on social media, the failure of political leadership to uphold governmental norms and laws —as destructive as these things may be — they are not, Dr. Gray proposes, sufficient to account for the extent of the helplessness, delusions and violence permeating American society today.
To come to terms with our dispiritedness, and to remedy it, Dr. Gray suggests we must first take an “x-ray” of the hidden structure that sabotages American life, and second we must fill in the fundamental gap in our education about democracy. In this way we can reveal basic human (not superhuman) characteristics that drive and sustain a healthy democracy, thereby positioning ourselves to be spirit-warriors who restore the balance.
About the Teacher:
Dr. Leslie Gray, executive director and founder of the Woodfish Institute, is a Native American psychologist who has studied with medicine people and elders from various tribal backgrounds. She advocates (and embodies) a new vision of health care—the integration of ancient healing and modern medicine.
Dr. Gray has a private practice in San Francisco, California, teaches workshops and seminars worldwide, and conducts travel/study programs to ancient sites. She has lectured at various universities including the University of California at Berkeley and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She consults with individuals and organizations on the practice of ecopsychology, and her work has been featured in such periodicals as East-West Journal and Re-Vision Journal, as well as in the book Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Dr. Gray has served on the board of directors of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, and is currently an Associate of the Milton Erickson Institute of the Bay Area.
Earth Based Initiatives For Our Times With Elder Medicine Woman Mbali Marais
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About the Teacher:
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