Events, Workshops, and Lectures

Our workshops harness the power of collective healing. Below is just a sample of recent events. Please email us or call 510-832-2605 to request an educational or healing workshop for your group.

Sustainable Change, Sustainable Service:

Caring for Ourselves and our Communities

Are you passionate about social change and serving the community - But feel burdened or burned out by:

anger/ cynicism
conflict and in-fighting
the effects of stress on your health
how impossible it all seems?

We offer you skills and tools to renew yourself each day, create mutual support, and nourish your commitment to this work for a lifetime. Come join us and other social change/social service practitioners to learn compassionate mental/emotional strategies and easy-to-master body practices that you can use right away to sustain yourself and others.

Saturday, August 13, 2011
4:00 - 7:00pm
held at Octagon Community Acupuncture
5263 Claremont Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
Registration Fee: $30

Please pre-register by sending PayPal payment to vanissar@cs.com or email us for other registration options.

Presenter Bios:

Vanissar Tarakali, Ph.D. creates learn-through-the-body workshops for people who are transforming our world. She teaches how to collaborate wisely with our bodies to heal trauma & sustain social change. Former Healing Oppression Project co-lead at CUAV & current DiversityWorks trainer, Vanissar passionately practices Generative Somatics, Intuitive Reading, Energy Bodywork & Tibetan Buddhism. www.vanissar.com

Prajna Paramita Choudhury, L.Ac., Dipl.O.M. is a Traditional Chinese Medicine physician in Oakland. Having worked with survivors of interpersonal and institutional violence and abuse for over a decade, a quest for deeper modes of healing led Prajna to the practice of mind-body-spirit medicine. She works to help people heal the ways in which stress and trauma manifest in their bodies over time. Her deep commitment is to social change rooted in love, compassion, and non-dualism. To this end, she brings mind-body healing practices to nurture and fuel those working for social change and caring for others.

Click here to see what workshop participants are saying.

Click here for workshop flier.

Reclaiming the Sacred in our Cycles:

Menstrual and Sexual Health for Women of Color

An Introductory Workshop on healing women’s cycles from a holistic perspective, drawing from indigenous and sacred healing traditions.

Are you looking for more ease around your menstrual cycle?
Would you like to promote conception and a healthy pregnancy?
Could you benefit from support adjusting to the changes of menopause?
Do you desire a deeper connection to your innate source of wisdom and power?

Please join us:
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
6:30 – 9:00 pm
East Bay Healing Collective
1840 Alcatraz Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94703
Cost: $25 - Registration Required

To register, please go to www.nirallitara.com and click on “Workshops,” and send an email with your Name, Phone, Email, Access Needs, and a brief statement about your interest in this workshop to perfect.wisdom.medicine@gmail.com.

Bios:

Niralli is a yogini, bodyworker and dancer. She has been helping women reclaim the sacred nature of their bodies’ cycles since 2001 when she began facilitating rites of passage retreatsfor girls experiencing menarche. She holds a Master’s Degree in Somatic Psychology and is an intern in private practice at the Kensho Center in Berkeley. Niralli hosts a monthly moon circle for women of color in Oakland.

Prajna is a physician of Traditional Chinese Medicine specializing in treating women's health issues. Having worked with survivors of violence and abuse for many years, a quest for deeper modes of healing led Prajna to acupuncture and herbal medicine. Her clinical experience includes working with the premier fertility specialists in the country, clinics for HIV+ and cancer patients, and many other diverse communities and settings. She has lectured widely, and her work is informed by years of qi gong and mindfulness meditation practice.

Open to women, trans-men, and other female bodied people of color. Wheelchair accessible.

This is an introduction to a series of workshops on this topic.

Click here for workshop flier.

Past Events

7th Annual Self-Healing Workshop for Women Survivors of Violence & Trauma

Have you experienced violence and trauma? Learn to move past the memories, ease the pain, and practice self-healing techniques. Over a dozen seminars, panel presentations and training workshops led by healers and experienced facilitators.

Prajna will lead a workshop on How Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine Can Help Heal Trauma in the morning, and hold an acupuncture enhanced guided meditation session in the afternoon.

FREE & Open to the Public. You must be 18 years or older to attend. www.healingforchange.info

Cold, Flu, and Allergy Prevention

At this hands-on workshop, we'll share practices you can immediately use at home to speed recovery time, stimulate your body's own healing ability, and prevent a cold at the first sign. Practices will include qi gong exercises, self-massage techniques, and acupressure points. We'll also make powerful home remedies and share essentials of your herbal home medicine cabinet.

Self-Care for Providers

Through discussion, personal reflection exercises, and experiential practices which participants can immediately take home, direct care providers access tools to promote joy and longevity in their work while preventing burnout.

Taking Care of Your Health Naturally: Home Remedies from a Licensed Acupuncturist

Interested in learning more about holistic medicine to improve the health and well-being of you and your family? Had acupuncture but know little about this system of medicine? This class will help you get a better understanding of your health and immediately apply what you learn to treat common ailments using common herbs, acupressure points, qi gong exercises, and nutritional and lifestyle recommendations.

Class 1: An introduction to a Traditional Chinese Medicine understanding of the body and health, including basic theories, balance of yin and yang, and the body as a microcosm of universal forces.
Class 2: Nutrition and digestive health
Class 3: Immune enhancement and alleviating allergies, colds and flus
Class 4: Emotional balance and well-being

Transforming the Pain: Healing from Trauma

As most survivors know, trauma can get stuck in our bodies/ minds/ spirits/ energy patterns. After the crisis, after dealing with the immediate effects of traumatic events on our lives – how do we move forward in wholeness? How do we transform our pain and suffering, to become mulch for our compassion and understanding, so that we can continue to work for a better world from a strong, centered place of health and well-being? In this workshop, we will discuss how trauma can manifest or get lodged in our bodies/ mind/ spirits, and ways in which we can move and transform this energy. Through large and small group discussion, self reflection exercises, qi-gong and guided meditation - healing methods, suggestions, and tools will be shared.

This event is a part of Community United Against Violence's (CUAV) SafetyFest. To support my fundraising efforts for CUAV, please visit www.firstgiving.com/prajna.

A New Year's Resolution for Optimal Health

One of the best things about living in a multi-cultural community is having a few different New Years to choose from – great when you need a do-over! Did 2010 not start off on the best foot for you? Or did it start off with a momentum that you'd like to keep going? Well, we have another opportunity to set intentions as we approach the Lunar New Year, bringing in the year of the Tiger.

“A New Year's Resolution for Optimal Health” will provide a supportive space for you to formulate and commit to your intentions for the health and well-being of your body/mind/spirit – a practice that also benefits those around you and the greater world. This workshop will involve discussion, exercises, and, back by popular demand, an Acupuncture-Enhanced Meditation Session, a great practice you can incorporate into your self-care practices in the new year.

Self-care is an important part of creating a better world: if we cannot be compassionate towards the one closest to us – our selves – how can we truly be compassionate to others?

We have already seen profound devastation to a part of our global body in the beginning of 2010. Just as the weakness of Haiti's infrastructure was a result of global factors, making it extremely vulnerable when a natural catastrophe occurred – the effects will also not be localized, and will affect other parts of the world community as well.

As in the macrocosm, so in the microcosm: what parts of our bodies/ minds/ spirits are vulnerable, what parts have lacked the attention and care needed to be healthy and well, what parts have we neglected or suppressed in order to move forward with our day-to-day lives? As we send the energy of loving kindness as well as needed resources to a part of our world recovering from major trauma – how can we too protect and strengthen vulnerable aspects of our selves?

Let's ponder and answer these questions together.

Workshop on Healing from Trauma with Acupuncture

Besides offering one of the safest, most time tested, effective, and completely natural treatments for just about all health and wellness concerns, Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine can be very effective in addressing the effects of trauma on our physical and energetic bodies. Stresses of all kinds are held in the body and manifest in physical ways. The purpose of TCM is to bring the body, mind, and spirit into alignment to promote optimal health and well-being.

At this event, I will lead a discussion on how trauma can manifest in our bodies, and ways in which we can move and transform this energy. We will start with an opening grounding exercise led by Rev. Ordona and conclude with acupuncture-enhanced meditation.

Ear Acupuncture at Fundraiser for MUSAS Peru

I will be donating my services providing ear acupuncture treatments at a fundraiser for Women's Initiative for Sexual Health Peru, an organization that works on various sexual health education projects including teaching women how to conduct their own breast exams; providing educational workshops on patient empowerment and about homophobia, gender, and sexuality; producing educational sexual health videos; and educating and empowering indigenous rural women, incarcerated women, LGBT communities, as well as students and health care professionals.

Ear acupuncture is similar to reflexology, in that it is based on the concept of holism, or that the whole body is often mapped onto parts of the body. Our body can be likened to a hologram, where even the tiniest fragment of a hologram still contains the whole picture. While this may seem an unusual premise, you can think about it like DNA: every cell of our body contains a map of our entire genetic makeup. Systems based on this concept of holism include ear acupuncture, Korean hand acupuncture, and foot reflexology. Ear acupuncture can be a powerful treatment for stress, addiction, all kinds of pain, hormonal imbalances, depression, insomnia, and many other health and wellness issues.

Free Talk: Traditional Chinese Medical Secrets of Health and Longevity

A free lecture at my favorite local metaphysical bookstore. We will be discussing the underlying philosophies of TCM, how they differ from the modern scientific and mechanistic views of the body, and recommendations for health and wellness.

Acupuncture-Enhanced Meditation Circle

Calm your mind and release tension in your body. Meditation during an acupuncture treatment helps to promote the healing process, and acupuncture can help the body relax in order to deepen one's meditation practice. Combining the two practices makes each more powerful and effective in countering the negative effects that stress has on our bodies and minds.

Both acupuncture and meditation have been shown to increase alpha brain waves, which calm the autonomic nervous system. The effect of this shift is to lower the amount of stress hormones in the body and calm the mind: this is the mind-body connection. Researchers believe that one of the mechanisms by which acupuncture 'works' is by altering brain chemicals that affect the body and mind. Combining the two practices makes each that much more powerful and effective in countering the negative effects of stress on our bodies.

I will be teaching a very simple internal qi-gong meditation exercise, called the microcosmic orbit, which can be practiced regularly at home for mind-body alignment and health. The microcosmic orbit meditation also helps to clear blockages in and harmonize the 7 chakras or energy centers of the body.