Calendar
Original Medicine 4-Part Series - Fall 2025 with with Medicine Elder Xolotl
Original Medicine 4-Part Series:
Nahuatl Wisdom on Living & Blooming
Sabiduria Nahuatl para Vivir y Florecer
In Tonahuayuhcatilizpa Tictemohtinemih in Toyolca in Toneuhca
with Medicine Elder Xolotl
Session Description:
Join us for a special session with Medicine Elder, Xolotl, where we will explore the Nahuatl worldview, who believe the life path for a human being starts with their birth. Xolotl will speak on the roots of the nahuatl language, and how Danza integrates and embodies the elements, allowing us to see and be connected to the mathematical cosmic order. He will share how the count of time influences our path in this lifetime. Reclaiming our ancestral wisdom and giving it meaning and application in today's world.
This session will be offered in Spanish with English captioning and simultaneous interpretation.
About Original Medicine 4-Part Series
Original Medicine 4-Part Series is a platform for Indigenous elders, teachers, and healers from all four corners of the world to come and share their wisdom. This series seeks to illuminate the often overlooked and unheard voices of Indigenous people. These sessions offer a psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and mindfulness approach that weaves Indigenous Wisdom, Buddha-Dharma, and Earth-based practices. We work with each Season as a teacher, featuring a different guest speaker every Season, so that we may be in an intentional practice of connecting ourselves with the natural world.
About the Teacher:
Xolotl was born José Luis Chávez Martínez in Mexico city Tenochtitlan, his father was from Guerrero and his mother was from Veracruz. From very young he has been interested in the nahuatl language and culture and he has dedicated his life to understand it and to share its ancestral wisdom. Xolotl teaches Mexica worldview, philosophy, the count of time (Aztec Calendar), Danza and the nahuatl language. He studied in the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and teaches nahuatl and culture to local and international students. Xolotl believes that Danza allows us to connect with ALL (the universe) and to be free. He has been part of Danza since 1989 and is in charge of the education and activities of Calpulli Tlatlatzinc. Xolotl was also initiated to offer ancestral temazcal practices of healing and traditional medicine.
EcoDharma Exploration with Konda Mason
EcoDharma exploration
A Path Towards Trust & Equanimity:
How to Nurture Beloved Community in Divided Times
This special monthly series of EcoDharma Explorations is offered in partnership with One Earth Sangha and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. A recording of the conversation will be provided for those who cannot attend the gathering.
Session Description:
Join us for a timely and powerful conversation with Konda Mason on how to re-center relationships and nurture beloved community as a response to systems of dehumanization and polarization. Together, we’ll explore what pathways toward deeper trust and equanimity can look like in these uncertain times.
Guiding questions include:
In what ways do the other three brahmavihārās — loving-kindness, compassion, and appreciative joy — support or deepen the cultivation of equanimity?
What role does compassion play in healing the divisions within and between us?
How do we return to connection, commonality, and the spiritual center within ourselves, our communities, and our democracy?
This session looks at the practices of deep listening and collective remembering as vital doorways into compassion and relational grounding. We recognize that the work of bridging divides cannot happen without an embodied understanding that the self is inseparable from the Earth, and without the courage to engage in our own inner healing and transformation. Together, we’ll explore these practices as both personal and collective commitments — a foundation for building bridges across differences and co-creating authentic communities rooted in trust, care, equity, and shared humanity.
About the Teacher:
Konda Mason is a social entrepreneur, earth and social justice activist and Mindfulness teacher. She is the founder and President of Jubilee Justice, Inc, a nonprofit working to bring climate resilient farming and economic equity to BIPOC farmers in the rural South in order to restore and accelerate Black land ownership and stewardship and create thriving Black farming communities. Jubilee Justice also convenes deep transformational learning journeys with multi-racial participants exploring conversations at the intersection of Land, Race, Money and Spirit.
Konda is Co-Founder and founding CEO of Impact Hub Oakland (newly renamed Evolve Oakland), a beautiful co-working space that supports socially engaged entrepreneurs and changemakers. She is the Strategic Director of the Runway Project Oakland, a micro-lending fund for African American entrepreneurs, and the co-founder of the annual COCAP (Community Capital) conference in Oakland, with a focus on closing the racial wealth gap, restorative economics and a next economy just transition. Konda’s work is fueled by a passion to tirelessly work to help create a world that is environmentally regenerative, spiritually fulfilling, socially just and economically equitable. As a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, Konda understands all life on Earth as interconnected and longs for the day when humanity wakes up to this truth and builds a world based on interdependence, compassion and belonging…where all life is valued equally.
Let’s Practice Together with Jen Racho
Let’s Practice Together with Jen Racho
The Elements as Guides:
Coming Home to Ourselves and the Natural World
About the Session:
Let’s explore what it means to have an embodied presence of the four elements. Inviting a sense of play, wonder, and kindness, this guided meditation can support a natural letting go of our busy minds, fragmented attention, and self-importance.
By attuning to the qualities of earth, water, fire, and air within ourselves and in our environment, we can be nourished, grounded, and liberated by the truth of our interconnectedness and constantly changing nature of experience.
This is a practice that we can bring into our everyday lives–as reminders to come home to ourselves and feel alive with the world around us.
About the Series:
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the group and the teacher.
At Braided Wisdom, we strive to cultivate an online space that supports connection, presence, and collective care. While we invite participants to have their cameras on to help nurture a sense of community, we wholeheartedly honor that there are many reasons someone may choose otherwise. We encourage you to meet yourself where you are, and if any needs arise around this, you’re warmly invited to reach out to us at info@braidedwisdom.org.
Please note, there is a possibility the session may go over 15 minutes. It would be great if you can stay, and we understand if you need leave at 11:30 am PT.
ABout THE teacher
Jen Racho
Guest Teacher
EcoDharma Exploration with Join Kaira Jewel Lingo
EcoDharma exploration
Becoming a Force for Nature:
The EcoSattva Journey
This special monthly series of EcoDharma Explorations is offered in partnership with One Earth Sangha and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. A recording of the conversation will be provided for those who cannot attend the gathering.
Session Description:
Join Kaira Jewel Lingo for this very special EcoDharma Exploration. We’ll come together and launch into the latest edition of EcoSattva Training.
Life on Earth is really going through it right now. Humanity’s reckoning with itself is on, and we’re all feeling, albeit unequally, the very real and interlocking consequences of centuries of human and ecological exploitation.
To make a bad situation even worse, we also must contend with the unfolding chaos, injustice, violence, breakdowns, and instabilities of all orders and magnitudes across the globe. It’s a hard time. Many of us are trying our best. We work to increase our awareness of the massive systems of harm, connect with aligned others, and act courageously, and yet, here we are.
Where do we begin, again? In this EcoDharma Exploration, we’ll gather ourselves and our inner resources, gather each other and the resources we share, and reflect on our global situation. We’ll map out the EcoSattva journey, and how we might set the conditions for a compassionate transformation of the profound, collective suffering that characterizes our time into an empowered and courageous response.
About the Teacher:
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in spirituality and social justice. Her work continues the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh, and she draws inspiration from her parents’ lives of service and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King, Jr. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally in the Zen lineage and the Vipassana tradition, as well as in secular mindfulness, at the intersection of racial, climate and social justice with a focus on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and activists, as well as artists, educators, families, and youth. Based in New York, she offers spiritual mentoring to groups and is author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation. Her upcoming events and teachings can be found at www.kairajewel.com.
Let’s Practice Together with Jonathan Relucio
Let’s Practice Together with Jonathan Relucio
About the Session:
Details to come.
About the Series:
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the group and the teacher.
At Braided Wisdom, we strive to cultivate an online space that supports connection, presence, and collective care. While we invite participants to have their cameras on to help nurture a sense of community, we wholeheartedly honor that there are many reasons someone may choose otherwise. We encourage you to meet yourself where you are, and if any needs arise around this, you’re warmly invited to reach out to us at info@braidedwisdom.org.
Please note, there is a possibility the session may go over 15 minutes. It would be great if you can stay, and we understand if you need leave at 11:30 am PT.
ABout THE teacher
Jonathan Relucio
Guest Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Nimali Jayasinghe
Let’s Practice Together with Nimali Jayasinghe
About the Session:
Mindfulness of thoughts is one of the four pillars of practice. In our meditation together, we will explore the cultivation of a caring and compassionate relationship with the life of mind. Practicing together in this way, we will touch into the experience of a deeper shared consciousness.
About the Series:
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the group and the teacher.
At Braided Wisdom, we strive to cultivate an online space that supports connection, presence, and collective care. While we invite participants to have their cameras on to help nurture a sense of community, we wholeheartedly honor that there are many reasons someone may choose otherwise. We encourage you to meet yourself where you are, and if any needs arise around this, you’re warmly invited to reach out to us at info@braidedwisdom.org.
Please note, there is a possibility the session may go over 15 minutes. It would be great if you can stay, and we understand if you need leave at 11:30 am PT.
ABout THE teacher
Nimali Jayasinghe
Guest Mindfulness Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Sarwang Parikh
Let’s Practice Together with Sarwang Parikh
About the Session:
In today’s world, our attention is constantly hijacked, fragmented, and commodified by technology and media. Yet the Buddha taught that awareness, in its natural state, is vast, dynamic, and free—like a wild forest. In this guided practice, we will explore what it means to “re-wild” our awareness: returning to a more spacious, natural way of paying attention that can hold multiplicity without becoming overwhelmed. Together we will practice tending this living field of awareness with care, discovering how it supports us in meeting a noisy, distracted world with greater clarity, creativity, and love.
About the Series:
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the group and the teacher.
At Braided Wisdom, we strive to cultivate an online space that supports connection, presence, and collective care. While we invite participants to have their cameras on to help nurture a sense of community, we wholeheartedly honor that there are many reasons someone may choose otherwise. We encourage you to meet yourself where you are, and if any needs arise around this, you’re warmly invited to reach out to us at info@braidedwisdom.org.
Please note, there is a possibility the session may go over 15 minutes. It would be great if you can stay, and we understand if you need leave at 11:30 am PT.
ABout THE teacher
Sarwang Parikh
Guest Teacher
EcoDharma Exploration with Dr. Leslie Gray
EcoDharma exploration
A Tree of Peace: The Power of Remembering the Indigenous Design of American Democracy
This special monthly series of EcoDharma Explorations is offered in partnership with One Earth Sangha and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. A recording of the conversation will be provided for those who cannot attend the gathering.
Session Description:
At the core of American Democracy is an image of renewal that retains its inspirational power in the face of any adversity. It is the image of the roots, trunk and branches of a living tree. Some of us today can see this tree quite vividly, and for others the image is outside of awareness—but all may invoke it at this perilous moment in history and remember its message of strength in unity.
The Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee flag, representing the six nations of the Iroquois.
You are invited to envision the towering beauty and sparkling leaves of the mighty pine trees of the Eastern woodlands. They can grow as high as 230 feet, can have a diameter as wide as 8 feet and a canopy as broad as 50 feet. You are invited to see these trees not as metaphors or archetypes—but rather as a separate nation of breathing beings with a deeply intelligent organization from which we humans can learn. Only this level of respect will enable you to understand how an indissoluble federal government could derive from a tree.
The Eastern White Pine was the bio-mimetic source of Gayanashagowa (the sacred alliance of the Iroquois) which united five fiercely divided Indian nations. Thereafter it profoundly influenced the binding together of the English colonies into a United States of America and later the joining together of the countries of the world into a United Nations.
By examining The Great Law of Peace—an oral constitution rooted in unity, balance and mutual respect—we will uncover how indigenous concepts of collective governance, consensus building and communal responsibility helped shape democratic ideals embraced by the “founding fathers”. We will also look unflinchingly at what was specifically omitted when they borrowed from Native governance and see in this both the terrible human cost that followed as well as the roadmap to repair.
About the Teacher:
Dr. Leslie Gray is a Native American clinical psychologist with a private practice in San Francisco, CA. She has taught Eco-psychology, Anthropology of Consciousness and Native American Psychology at numerous Bay Area universities including U.C. Berkeley. Leslie offers workshops for the general public in the U.S. and abroad, as well as specific trainings for practitioners seeking to blend Indigenous worldview into their work.
Leslie is founder/director of The Woodfish Foundation which promotes sustainability grounded in Indigenous knowledge. Leslie’s writings on the therapeutic power of incorporating Indigenous perspectives into contemporary organizations can be found in numerous publications, including “Ecological Medicine” (Sierra Club Books) and “Original Instructions.” Leslie is an Associate of the Milton Erickson Institute, a Member of the Society of Indian Psychologists, and is Vice President of The Association for Transpersonal Psychology.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Seeing Clearly, Resting Deeply
Contemplating the 32 Body Parts with a Tranquil Breath
About the Session
This guided meditation blends the calming breath of Ānāpānasati with the traditional reflection on the 32 parts of the body. Beginning with the fourth step of breath meditation—tranquilizing the bodily formation—we allow the breath to soften the body, quiet the nervous system, and ease the mind into stillness.
From this spacious presence, we gently contemplate the body—not as self, but as a collection of natural elements. This practice reveals the impermanence and impersonal nature of the body, helping release attachment and fostering inner clarity.
Held in compassion, the session closes by radiating kindness to ourselves and all beings who share this human experience.
Ideal for those seeking stillness, insight, and a deeper connection to the truth of the body.
About the Program
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the group and the teacher.
At Braided Wisdom, we strive to cultivate an online space that supports connection, presence, and collective care. While we invite participants to have their cameras on to help nurture a sense of community, we wholeheartedly honor that there are many reasons someone may choose otherwise. We encourage you to meet yourself where you are, and if any needs arise around this, you’re warmly invited to reach out to us at info@braidedwisdom.org.
Please note, there is a possibility the session may go over 15 minutes. It would be great if you can stay, and we understand if you need leave at 11:30 am PT.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano
Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Imee Contreras
Let’s Practice Together with Imee Contreras
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the group and the teacher.
At Braided Wisdom, we strive to cultivate an online space that supports connection, presence, and collective care. While we invite participants to have their cameras on to help nurture a sense of community, we wholeheartedly honor that there are many reasons someone may choose otherwise. We encourage you to meet yourself where you are, and if any needs arise around this, you’re warmly invited to reach out to us at info@braidedwisdom.org.
Please note, there is a possibility the session may go over 15 minutes. It would be great if you can stay, and we understand if you need leave at 11:30 am PT.
ABout THE teacher
Imee Contreras
Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Margarita Loinaz
Let’s Practice Together with Margarita Loinaz
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and teacher.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Margarita Loinaz
Guest Teacher
EcoDharma Exploration: Fierce Vulnerability with Kazu Haga
EcoDharma Exploration Series:
Fierce Vulnerability with Kazu Haga
Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse
The world is in a state of panic and injustice is escalating. We need actions to alleviate suffering. Yet if we respond from a place of urgency, we are only adding more panic to the world.
How do we move in ways that honor that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast?” As we face the poly-crisis, how do we escalate our actions without escalating a worldview that keeps us from interdependence? How can we view injustice less as a political issue and more as a manifestation of collective trauma? And how can Buddhist teachings and practices support us in responding skillfully to these times?
Fierce Vulnerability invites us into building a movement with the power to stop injustice while cultivating the love necessary to heal it. One that has the vulnerability to accept the depth of the crises we are in and the fierceness to not get frozen by it.
Kazu’s latest book, Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse, is available for purchase through Parallax Press or your local bookseller now.
This EcoDharma Exploration session is part of a short series in collaboration with One Earth Sangha, Spirit Rock’s ecoDharma & Transformational Culture Program, and Braided Wisdom. We’re honored and excited to work with our new partners.
ABout THE Speaker
Kazu Haga
Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network, a founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective, a Jam facilitator and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. He works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country and has over 25 years of experience in nonviolence and social change work. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA, where he lives with his family. You can find out more about his work at his website.
Let’s Practice Together with Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal
Let’s Practice Together with Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal
Guest Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Amana Brembry Johnson
Let’s Practice Together with Amana Brembry Johnson
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Amana Brembry Johnson
Guest Teacher
Amana Brembry Johnson, Residential Dharma Teacher and Community Leader, is a Core Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC), located in Oakland, CA and co-Guiding Teacher of EBMC’s Spiritual Teacher and Leadership Training. Amana mentors local and international groups of emerging Mindfulness teachers through the Mindfulness Meditation Training Certification Program (MMTCP) designed and developed by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Her life’s work emerges from the intersections of spirituality, social justice, somatic practices, and intuitive creativity. An accomplished visual artist, Amana creates imagery that exposes emotional and spiritual barriers of the heart as portals into kindness, compassion, self-love, and fierce action.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Program Overview
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
This offering calls in curious practitioners desiring a deeper understanding of their meditation practice in community. It's an opportunity to be in inquiry and to ask a seasoned teacher questions about one's practice that everyone can learn from. Each session will include collective meditation practice and time for Q&R (question and reflection). Please join us if you're interested in deepening your practice while cultivating connection with a sangha.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with all registrants. During the session, practitioners who don't wish to be recorded may offer their questions in the chat.
Sincere and dedicated practitioners of all levels are welcome.
We welcome a donation of $10 however will not turn anyone away due to lack of funds.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
In-Depth Original Medicine Program with Carol Cano 2025
In-Depth Original Medicine Program with Carol Cano 2025
The In-Depth Original Medicine Program with Carol Cano is a psycho-spiritual cross-cultural mindfulness approach to healing and personal development. The contemplative teachings weave together Indigenous wisdom, mindfulness, and earth-based practices. This deeper level program teaches participants how to work with the four seasons as tools of self-awareness to learn the process of tracking one’s own changes, working with the false-self system and to connect to one’s own natural phenomena as a human being.
Who is this series for?
It is designed for those who have completed a full year of the Original Medicine program or attended the Original Medicine Earth-Based Intensive Retreat. This offering provides guidance and a deeper understanding of the teachings. Together, we will explore how to embody these teachings in everyday life with authenticity and gratitude, fostering a profound sense of harmony within yourself and with the world around you. The teachings of the Buddha and Indigenous wisdom build this foundation of truth, trust, and love. Applications are welcome by January 24, 2025.
Session Dates
Tuesdays, 6:00-8:00 pm PT
February 4
April 8
June 10
August 5
October 7
Original Medicine Yearlong Program 2025
Original medicine yearlong program 2025
Original Medicine Yearlong Program is a psycho-spiritual cross-cultural mindfulness approach to healing and development. The contemplative teachings weave together Indigenous wisdom, mindfulness, and earth-based practices. This program teaches students how to work with the four seasons as tools of self-awareness, to learn the process of tracking one’s own changes, and to connect to one’s own natural phenomena as a human being. In Indigenous societies, there are long-standing practices of creating the sacred, cultivating stillness, and embracing silence. They cherish being in nature and conducting rituals to acknowledge the coming changes in the worlds within and around them.
Indigenous societies recognize individuals holding their personal power as their Original Medicine. The shadow of the false self is purified as humans strengthen their authentic selves through the practice of coming home to their truth and power. The teachings of Buddha and Indigenous wisdom build this foundation of truth, trust, and love. Together we will explore ways of coming into our own Original Medicine and enhance our personal growth and purpose.
Applications for the 2025 program are due January 7, 2025. Please click below for more information about the program and how to apply.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
This offering calls in curious practitioners desiring a deeper understanding of their meditation practice in community. It's an opportunity to be in inquiry and to ask a seasoned teacher questions about one's practice that everyone can learn from. Each session will include collective meditation practice and time for Q&R (question and reflection). Please join us if you're interested in deepening your practice while cultivating connection with a sangha.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with all registrants. During the session, practitioners who don't wish to be recorded may offer their questions in the chat.
Sincere and dedicated practitioners of all levels are welcome.
We welcome a donation of $10 however will not turn anyone away due to lack of funds.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
This offering calls in curious practitioners desiring a deeper understanding of their meditation practice in community. It's an opportunity to be in inquiry and to ask a seasoned teacher questions about one's practice that everyone can learn from. Each session will include collective meditation practice and time for Q&R (question and reflection). Please join us if you're interested in deepening your practice while cultivating connection with a sangha.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with all registrants. During the session, practitioners who don't wish to be recorded may offer their questions in the chat.
Sincere and dedicated practitioners of all levels are welcome.
We welcome a donation of $10 however will not turn anyone away due to lack of funds.
Remaining Dates:
November 16
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
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."
Restorative Economy Series With Guest Speaker Melissa Crosby
About the Discussion
In this talk, we hear the great wisdom of Melissa Crosby, also known as Crosby, who currently serves as co-director and collective member of Movement Generation. Crosby gives an igniting talk that brings together social justice and political economics. They talk about the second iteration of the Just Transition movement and the effort to address the destructive impacts of the extractive and exploitive economy. They share a compelling perspective on the maturation cycle of our human species, how not all humans have had the same impact on the world, and where we are right now in this cycle. Lastly, we hear about what ecological justice is and how we can shift to a new regenerative economy through building, beloved community, centered on sacred care, greater unity, and cooperation. Learn more about Crosby here.
Additional Resources:
Restorative Economy Series With Guest Speaker Konda Mason
About the Discussion
We launch the Restorative Economy series with guest speaker Konda Mason. Konda is a social entrepreneur, eco-spiritual thought leader, mindfulness teacher and justice advocate. In this conversation, Konda digs into the problem of our existing economy, helps us reimagine a new way, and describes the path forward using evolving frameworks based in solidarity and restorative justice. Learn more about Konda Mason here.
Additional Resources