Spirituality Matters

SBCC SEL in Cyberspace “Spirituality Matters” highlights two or three Santa Barbara area spiritual gatherings. Unusual themes and events with that something extra, especially newer ones looking for a boost in attendance, receive special attention. For consideration for inclusion in this column, email slibowitz@yahoo.com.

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 of classes from the division formerly (and belovedly) known as Adult Ed that have made the journey. Courses in art (including drawing, painting, collage, and flower arranging as well as appreciation), music (including several singing sessions and instruction in the ukulele and more), acting, writing, travel, film, and much more. More germane to our area, there are also plenty of personal development/spiritual practices classes that have zipped over to Zoom as well, a transition made all the more simple by the fact that most don’t require any props at all. You can choose from several section of Body/Mind Awareness; Consciousness, Science, and the Nature of Being; Essence of Compassionate Communication; Acupressure - Simple Patterns for Pain Relief and Relaxation; Health and Wellness: Active Body, Active Mind; and Naturopathic Medicine - Science and Nature Working Together, to name just a few. All of the instructors seem not only amenable but actively enthusiastic about having people join any class that’s already ongoing. A little more surprisingly, Rodger Sorrow has figured out to take people on meditative journeys through the plentiful beaches, mountain trails, parks, and such in our area through his now virtual Nature and Self-Healing classes, which have both beginning and intermediate sections (not sure how they differ since nobody is actually moving).

“I think we can still have fun with this,” Sorrow said in an email message. “We will start with some time just to visit and connect. I will bring some hiking pics and short video clips so we can talk about different trails and the special features they offer. We can have our usual discussion of a self-healing topic and then a short meditation.”

What’s new is an assignment: a weekly suggestion to go for a hike while, of course, maintaining safe social distance unless you are with the people already in your household. You can even ask during class if anyone wants to go with you and perhaps try a new trail – keeping far enough apart that you’re untouchable by COVID. Participants can then share digital pictures with the class.

Sorrow provided the Zoom link, but I’m withholding it here, because students need to register as SBCC gets funding through attendance, and low enrollment means the class might get canceled.

Even more exciting, perhaps, is the news that came just this Monday that The SBCC School of Extended Learning has also arranged to conduct the annual Santa Barbara Nonviolent Communication Conference online. In response to COVID-19, the event, curated and moderated by Sorrow, will be hosted by the NVC Academy, the existing online classroom for learning NVC concepts, meaning dedicated Santa Barbara-area NVC practitioners can stay in touch with the local NVC community and learn from the seven visiting trainers without leaving your home. There will be 20 sessions in all during the April 24 -26 conference, which will be conducted via four parallel Zoom rooms. We’ll have more details in an upcoming issue.

Visit www.sbcc.edu/extendedlearn ing/sel_online_classes.php to see the current spring schedule and register for the conference. Email Sorrow at rodgerhsorrow@gmail.com or call (805) 452-8874 to find out more about the new format.

Next Up in NVC

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 Process and associated retreats have helped hundreds of people rewire their brains and restore their capacity for self-love, something that might seem even more essential in these harrowing times.

Peyton will be offering her transformational retreat in an online format for the first time next month, so she’s holding a free session to provide a taste of what to expect. The 90-minute Introduction to Resonant Language provides an opportunity to learn resonant language skills for powerful and effective relational connections and to experience the interactive and connecting possibilities of online retreating. A live Q&A session with Peyton will follow so you can learn more about the retreat that also served as the basis for her book, Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, which was published by W.W. Norton, and brings together neurobiology, the science of relationships and Nonviolent Communication.

Visit https://zoom.us/meeting/ register/vJYkcOqprTkpnNL2bkgPbL-h5eQSL-z2yg for details and registration.

Jessica’s Journey to Zoom

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 the city, wisely in our humble opinion, shut that down in favor of flattening-the-curve isolation. So Kolbe’s COVID capitulation means classes have migrated to Zoom.

Her six live classes a week schedule began last Monday, March 30, with sessions in Qigong for Optimal Health, Qigong/Tai Chi, Tai Chi Easy™, Inner Power Qigong, Wudang Qigong/Tai Chi, and Animals and Elements Qigong. Kolbe has also made pre-recorded videos in Every Day Qigong, Phoenix Qigong, Balance and Fall Prevention, and Animal Frolics Qigong available online for free, while her friend and one of her teachers, the celebrated Qigong teacher and author Daisy Lee, is offering an introduction to Zang Fu Gong, a graceful, empowering form of Qigong renowned for its cleansing and rejuvenating powers, via a onehour video. “Qigong to Cleanse Your Organs for Better Health & Energy Flow: Receive Two Zang Fu Gong Practices to Bring Healing Energy to Your Liver & Lungs” is also being made available for free at https:// shiftnetwork.infusionsoft.com/go/ qc/a18955.

Visit https://www.qigongsb.com/ online-classes for details and to register for the six weekly Zoom classes, which cost $10 each.

Surfing Cyberspace in Search of Loving Kindness

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 every day of the week, save for Saturday, and features no fewer than 11 different practitioners with various approaches as guides. On Mondays from 12-12:30 pm it’s Anahita Holden and Hattie Bluestone “Mindful Self-compassion,” while 7-8:15 pm Weininger offers “Mindfulness and Compassion.” Tuesdays at 7 pm is Stacy Zumbroigel “Meditation and Trauma,” and Weininger teams with Danjo San for “Mindfulness, Compassion, and Zen” at 7 pm on Wednesdays. Thursdays brings

SPIRITUALITY Page 474

2 – 9 April 2020 MONTECITO JOURNAL28 “Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.” – Quentin Blake WE NOW ACCEPT FINE FURNITURE/DECOR FOR CONSIGNMENT SANTA BARBARA FINDERS KEEPERS CONSIGNMENT COMPANY WWW.SBFINDERSKEEPERS.COM  QUALITY  SLIGHTLY USED  NEW FURNITURE HOME DÉCOR  FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS  HOUSEHOLD ITEMS  BEDROOM SETS  CHANDELIERS  LAMPS  UNIQUE  VASES  RUGS  MIRRORS  TABLES  COUCHES 4441 HOLLISTER AVE. SANTA BARBARA, CA 93110 (NEAR MODOC) 805-770- 7715 SBFINDERSKEEPERS@GMAIL.COM OPEN BY APPOINTMENT ONLY everywhere, but they don’t provide the same kind of income farmers rely on from selling direct to the consumer. So many farmers are creating their own distribution systems. Golden State Papaya, Mt. Olive, and Tutti Frutti have already mobilized to reach their loyal farmers’ market customers that way.

Chefs and caterers have also entered into the fray. One astonishingly successful development has been directed by the head chef of Barbareño Restaurant, Preston Knox. Meeting overnight with Julian Martinez, one of the owners, and the staff and even their website designer, Knox has reconfigured their entire operation to provide not only prepared food for pick up but quality goods from their distributors and local produce from the farmers. Nadia Van Wingerden of Sage Hill Farms who grows some of the most sought after avocadoes in the market delivered twenty-five pounds of avocados to Barbareño and will be supplying them regularly. She’s also selling them out of her driveway in Carpinteria at 1473 Sterling Avenue for five dollars a bag, all certified organic. Preston first met Nadia when he was searching for fresh rabbit. When he started preparing it in the restaurant people went crazy for it.

Barbareño feels that the new venture is successful enough that even when things calm down and the restaurant reopens, they’ll continue distributing and preserving their unique relationship with the farmers from the market. Former Wildwood Kitchen and Julienne Chef Justin West has also created a new endeavor built around farmers’ market produce called the Market Forager, providing boxes of produce chiefly sourced from Jacob Grant’s Roots Farm. He’s also providing recipes and is offering a butcher’s box.

An investigation into already existing underlying local farm produce distribution uncovered a further intriguing possibility, especially here in Montecito. The buoyant and effusive owner of Montecito Village Grocery, Roxy Lawler, was also already buying Sage Hill avocados for the market in upper Montecito. The Village Grocery is home of one of the very best butchers in town, Tony Perocco, who whips out grass-fed filets faster than a wild west gunslinger. He’s been a stalwart of the market for thirty-six years. Ms Lawler bought the Montecito Village Grocery three years ago and has gone to great lengths to preserve and enhance a cherished landmark. ` The Market has instituted many changes in recent weeks to protect the employees as well as consumers. It had been an agonizing decision to acquire face masks for the grocery employees instead of contributing them to the hospital. But in the end, Ms Lawler felt she had to protect her workers. It’s one of the strange ironies of the pandemic that store clerks and even checkout counter baggers are exposed and provide an essential service to keep stores open and people fed.

With broken distribution chains and the heightened desire for fresh local produce the Montecito Village Grocery is innovating for the community as well. “The missing link is to have more fresh and local produce in the market,” she declared, “and we’d like to sell more local farm produce including eggs and other items. It’s a win-win for the farmers for the market and the village consumer.” In fact, it might even be a win-win-win.

“We are a community service,” she adds. Farmers can reach her regarding distribution at MontecitoGrocery@yahoo.com. “We’d like to put it out there for businesses struggling that have amazing product to offer. We’d like to hear from you.” Lori Heal, affectionately known as Mama, of Two Peas in a Pod Farm doesn’t hesitate to offer that the farm is “the love of her life.” Two Peas is a small family farm that offers some of the sweetest blueberries in the area. It’s just her husband, children, and herself and she’s been farming for thirty-six years. They’re between crops right now so the market has been slower than usual. As for the coronavirus she takes it in stride.

“Farmers are used to dealing with the unpredictable. There is always the unpredictability of weather and how the crops thrive or not,” she says. “Nothing is ever for sure in farming.” She says she has no choice but to be in the market because their entire business is markets. She feels blessed every day to be healthy and able to continue working.

“We’re taking everything day by day,” she adds. “We all have to make it, so we will make it. We are a community and we will work together.” •MJ FARMERS (Continued from page 26)

Chef Preston Knox innovates and keeps his whole staff working in new and original ways

The goods are still there along with chalk arrows for consumer guidance New rules go into effect at the Tuesday market

NEW LISTING | 736TORO.COM 663LILACDR.COM NEW LISTING | 770LADERA.COM 165MIDDLEROAD.COM

Enchanting Estate MONTECITO | $10,000,000 Kristi Curtis 805.886.6135

1185FIFE.COM

In the Heart of Montecito MONTECITO | 5BD/6BA/3HBA | $7,950,000 Sandy Stahl 805.689.1602

SOUTHJAMESON.COM

Barton Myers Work of Art MONTECITO | 3BD/3BA/1HBA | $7,500,000 V. LeeboshC. Santandrea805.452.0212

Landmark Character Estate MONTECITO | 6BD/7BA | $6,780,000 B. Fields, J. McCorkell 805.455.7019

284SANTAROSA.COM NEW LISTING | 1399PLAZAPACIFICA.COM

Birnam Wood Golf Club Home MONTECITO | 5BD/6BA/1HBA | $6,750,000 Harry Kolb 805.452.2500

Location, Location MONTECITO | $5,575,000 Greg Tice 805.886.0121

415MEADOWBROOKENNISBROOK.COM NEW LISTING | 87SEAVIEW.COM

Montecito Hedgerow Estate MONTECITO | 4BD/4BA/2HBA | $4,250,000 Jason Siemens 805.455.1165

Dazzling Oceanfront MONTECITO | 2BD/2BA/1HBA | $3,995,000 Maureen McDermut 805.570.5545

540ELBOSQUE.COM 655COYOTE.COM

Ennisbrook Mountain View Parcel MONTECITO | $3,400,000 Wes St. Clair 805.886.6741

Tree Top Living At It’s Finest MONTECITO | 2BD/2BA | $2,650,000 Julie Greener 805.895.4616

Montecito Farmhouse MONTECITO | 5BD/4BA | $2,495,000 Marie Larkin 805.680.2525

“Casa Bella Monte” MONTECITO | 3BD/2BA/1HBA | $2,250,000 Fred Bradley 805.689.8612

We’re all in this together

A Group Effort Sincerely Grateful Local Businesses

Our thoughts are with those affected with COVID-19, as well as medical professionals, government officials & organizations working tirelessly on caring for those in need. Sotheby’s International Realty supports social distancing so our teams are operating from home, working diligently and leveraging technology to ensure our clients and agents are fully supported. Our sincerest gratitude goes out to those working tirelessly to keep our communities safe, especially first responders and medical professionals.

Collectively, we are all in this together, so please do not hesitate to reach out for help. Please continue to support local businesses. Small business owners are not only working to keep their businesses going, but are also responsible for supporting many families & employees.

- SB Public Market - Kyle’s Kitchen - Carlitos Café y Cantina - Hook & Press Donuts - Tre Lune Ristorante - Renaud’s Bakery - Via Vai Trattoria Pizzeria - CAVA