FROM THE MIND-BODY LOS ANGELES CALENDAR:
Updated: 8/16/2021

WEEK OF AUGUST 16-22, 2021

This season, we look west of “Central Los Angeles” for free, low-cost, sliding scale, or by donation “alternative” or “complementary” mind-body healing modalities. (The explanation of this project appears below the following list.)

​

SPECIAL THIS WEEK!

(All times are Pacific Time.)

TUESDAY (every 3rd Tuesday of the month)

August 17, 1:00-2:00PM. “Personal Connections”: Virtual art chat for individuals with early-stage dementia or Alzheimer’s disease (plus their care partner), FREE, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

WEDNESDAY (every 3 Wednesdays)

August 18, 12:30-12:45PM. Virtual Bilingual Yoga (Japanese / English), FREE, Japan Foundation Los Angeles

SATURDAY

August 21, 7:00-8:30PM. Native American Dance Demonstration (IN-PERSON), FREE, Thousand Oaks

WEEKLY

MONDAY and THURSDAY

12:30-1:00PM. Free Virtual Drop-In Meditation, UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center

SUNDAY

1:00-2:30PM. Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Group (Virtual), FREE (donations welcome), Southern California Counseling Center

9:00-10:30AM. 11th Step Yoga in the Park (IN-PERSON), Woodbridge Park. Note: These events occur most Sundays, are promoted only on Facebook, and usually not until Saturday. Check the link to confirm!

ON-GOING

Emperor’s College Clinic, Santa Monica. A wide range of reduced fees for services including acupuncture. For example, $0 for veterans, $15 ear acupuncture, $30 master’s theater (with students looking on)

Lucy Postolove, L.Ac., West Los Angeles. Standard rates, except no-cost acupunture for vets

EXPLANATION OF THE ABOVE LIST

​

Mind-Body Los Angeles began on April 22, 2015, when I created a Google calendar to promote free, low-cost, sliding scale, or by donation meditation, Tai Chi, Yoga, and other so-called “alternative” or “complementary” healing modalities, as offered by providers in the Greater Los Angeles area.

At the time, I had been working as a psychotherapist at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center’s Addiction Medicine Department for 13-1/2 years, teaching Intro to Meditation workshops all along as part of the Day Treatment Program and leading “Mind-Body Recovery Techniques” (Integral Qigong and Tai Chi) classes since fall, 2011. Most of the Day Treatment participants had had no prior experience with meditation. Over the course of their fourteen 6-1/2 hour days in the program, I would give them a taste of a limited variety of meditation approaches: concentration, guided imagery, mindfulness, “moving meditation” (Qigong and Tai Chi), and then provide them with resources (mostly handouts, indicating area meditation centers) for their continued explorations. Ultimately, creating a Google calendar came to mind as a way they might see what was available to them in their neighborhoods on a day-by-day basis at little to no cost. (I didn’t want lack of funds to be an obstacle.)

When COVID forced the discontinuation of in-person gatherings, those providers who could found a way to continue online. I resigned my Kaiser position abruptly and prematurely, and then spent the next 13 months reorienting myself to a new, shelter-in-place life and as the owner of a new private practice! Finally now, I have the bandwidth to revisit all the data I had compiled over 6 years to see how much of it is still valid and what kinds of local mind-body services are available at this point in time. Here’s a first shot at providing resources for “complementary” healing modalities: those named above, as well as acupuncture, Reiki, Pranic Healing, sound baths, etc.

As an organizing system, I have decided to reference indigenous solar and lunar calendars, following seasons determined by cross quarter days, rather than solstices and equinoctes. By this reckoning, here on August 16, we are entering the third week of autumn! In Traditional Chinese Medicine (which shares Daoist roots with Qigong and Tai Chi), autumn is the season of the Lung energy system and corresponds with the west. So, what you will find here are providers west of “Central Los Angeles” (the area so-identified by Google Maps). Between now and the cross quarter day that marks the beginning of winter, we will proceed from west through west north-west through northwest and north north-west, before arriving at—spoiler alert—due north on November 6.

Once I’ve reworked the actual Mind-Body Los Angeles Google Calendar, I will provide a link. That is going to take me quite a while. In the meantime, providers and dates and times (where appropriate) will simple appear here in list form. If you know of an additional entry I should include, please email me the info at MindBodyLosAngeles@gmail.com.

​

See also Facebook pages Mind-Body Los Angeles​ and Lee Conger, Integral Qigong and Tai Chi.

​

From 2020 ...

​
URBAN WILDERNESS QIGONG + NATIVE HABITAT RESTORATION
ON HIATUS, DUE TO CORONAVIRUS

• Select Saturdays or Sundays (month-by-month schedule below). By donation or barter or "time dollars" or pay-it-forward (details below).

• Format

  • 10-11AM Integral Qigong and Tai Chi session​

  • 11AM-12PM. Optional native habitat restoration (details below)

  • 12-1PM. Optional zero waste potluck picnic.

• Location: "Paper street" segment of Adelbert Avenue (See directions below.)

• Fee:

  • General public: By donation. No one turned away for lack of funds.

  • As an alternative to a cash donation, please consider helping me with some native habitat restoration project, immediately following the Qigong session. This could be simply weeding out non-native invasive plants and grasses that compete for resources with natives. I will have a list of tasks, from easy to strenous. (There's a LOT of work to be done month by month!)

    • Members of any neighborhood chapter of the Arroyo S.E.C.O. Network of Time Banks will pay 1 "time dollar" to the Silver Lake Time Bank account for the 1-hour Qigong session. Any member who stays afterward and helps with native habitat restoration will be paid "time dollars" equivalent to the number of hours worked.

    • Any participant via Trade School Los Angeles (an organization that offers barter-based classes) will bring any one of the following items as barter:

      • Hügel-making material, such as a log or branch or bag of raked leaves (please don't use gas-powered blowers!) or newspapers or cardboard boxes with labels and tape already removed (none with glossy finishes, please)

      • a bag of mulch

      • organic produce

      • a jar of whey (the liquid left over after straining organic yogurt overnight in muslin cloth)  

• Recommended directions: Meet me, Lee Conger (Certified Integral Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher) in front of the Ortiz Taylor House (Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #1144), 2650 Lake View Avenue, Los Angeles (Silver Lake), CA 90039 at 9:45AM sharp. I will lead everyone to the hard-to-find "urban wilderness" location on the "paper street" (unpaved) segment of Adelbert Avenue.

• Otherwise, follow these directions: From Silver Lake Blvd. behind 365 Market, turn uphill on India Street. Take the first left onto Silver Ridge Ave. and park right away. On foot, proceed uphill to the first left (also Silver Ridge Ave.) (Please do not park on this level stretch of Silver Ridge.) Keep walking straight, following Silver Ridge downhill. The pavement ends. Keep walking straight ahead onto a grassy / muddy footpath. You will be on the "paper street" (unpaved) segment of Adelbert Avenue. You will be walking high above and parallel to Fletcher Ave. In about 500 ft., you will find us in a sycamore and yucca grove, practicing Qigong.

• Optional picnic potluck at 12PM. Bring enough to share. Zero waste, please: Bring reuseable containers and utensils! No styrofoam, no single use plastic or paper.​