http://berkeleyalembic.org/, https://linktr.ee/TheAlembic

The Alembic, 2820 7th Street, Berkeley, CA (2026)

03/03/2026

Events at the Alembic March 7-8
Saturday
Soulful Flow with Anne Rene
Word from The Western Gate: Tea and Poetry
Higher Mind Part 2: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism for the Spiritually Curious with David Odorisio, PhD
Between Breaths: A Guided Ambient Music Journey for Deep Rest with Sophia Shu Wang
Sunday
The Empty Room: Discovering Zen Essence with Rebecca Ryuen Long Okura Sensei
MOVESHOP: Eye See You with Rachael Sharkland
From Ocean to Ember: A Butoh Movement Meditation of Unmaking with Maya Kaufmann
Circling for BIPOC Homies with Ahran Lee
In the Beginning Was the Story with Jeremy Crawford

02/25/2026

Join Wystan for a guided meditation exploring heart-centered practices from early Buddhism, with an emphasis on the brahmaviharas. The practice will gradually transition toward nondual inquiry and resting in awareness, drawing connections between early Buddhist teachings and later contemplative traditions.
In addition to the guided meditation, the session will include plenty of time for discussion and Q&A. This offering is suitable for both experienced practitioners and those curious to explore how heart practices and nondual perspectives can complement one another in meditation.

About the Teacher
Propelled onto the contemplative path through his own experience of suffering, Wystan has trained and continues to study within Theravada, Soto, Rinzai, Kagyu, and Nyingma lineages, as well as Shinzen Young’s secular system. His teaching emphasizes early Buddhist brahmavihara and jhana practices, paired with nondual recognition found in later traditions.

02/24/2026

Maria Mangini will be in conversation with Jahanara Romney, one of the founders of the Hog Farm, which is often considered the longest-running hippie commune in the United States. The Hog Farm became internationally famous at Woodstock, where they organized the festival’s unorthodox security team, the “Please Force.” Together Jahanara and Maria will dive into Jahnanara’s fascinating tales of improvisation, circus arts, music, pranks, and communal creativity. Tonight will be an exceptionally rare opportunity to hear OG psychedelic women draw deep from the well of humor, art, and collective joy.

If you are looking for the online version, you can find it here: https://momence.com/l/J1hJOwqv

Jahanara Romney is one of the original Hog Farm members and continues to anchor the Hog Farm community today. Born Bonnie Jean Boettcher, she grew up in Minnesota and became involved in the region’s emerging folk music and arts scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She attended the University of Minnesota, where she became part of the lively Dinkytown cultural environment—the same scene in which a young Bob Dylan was forging his early musical identity. Some of Dylan's earliest recordings in 1961 were recorded at her Minneapolis home and she is sometimes described as an early girlfriend.

Jahanara worked as an actress in Los Angeles in her twenties, appearing in Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. Jahanara met Wavy Gravy in LA in a diner where she worked called Fred C. Dobbs, frequented by Marlon Brando and other luminaries. It was love at first sight and they got married in 1965. In 1966, they and some other offshoots of the Merry Pranksters were offered a place to live on a mountain top in exchange for feeding the resident hogs. This was the beginning of the Hog Farm, which became a place where they could host big gatherings and people would just show up. They were gifted an old school bus and the community painted it psychedelically and took it out on the road.

02/23/2026

Dianic witchcraft emerged in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s – a creative, improvisational tradition with no central leadership, no hierarchy, no gods, and no men.

In this dialogue with Sam Webster, Linda Rosewood reflects on discovering Dianic magic as a young feminist seeking a women-centred spirituality. They will trace its early development through Zsuzanna Budapest and its spread through women’s circles, recalling her own experience of forming a coven. They will explore the influences on Dianic Wicca and how it influenced other traditions, like the Radial Faeries. The Dianic worldview has a lasting value, one that can be easily gained now. As the interview takes place on the publication of Rosewood’s debut novel A Circle Outside, they will discuss the appearance of real magic in literature, and the ethics of depicting private ritual in public works of art.

Linda Rosewood is a writer and poet. Her new novel, A Circle Outside, draws from her experiences as a Dianic witch in the 1980s, when feminism met imagination and women made magic. She currently lives in Ireland but spent most of her life in Santa Cruz.

02/23/2026

March 2nd-6th at the Alembic
Monday
Meditation and Contact Improvisation Lab With Nick Smith and Amma Thanasanti
Tuesday
Alembic Community Co-Working
Cultivating Emotional Balance: Monthly Practices for Making Our Tender, Messy Emotions the Path with Eve Ekman
Office Hours with a Mage with Sam Webster
Wednesday
Medicine Theater Presents: An Evening of Co-created Mythic Story Making with Asher Lyons
The Chalice: Toward the Fun: Life and times of the Hog Farm
Thursday
Alembic Community Co-Working
Deconstructing Yourself with Michael Taft
The Western Gate: Tea and Conviviality at the Far-edge of Day
Friday
Wisdom Healing Qigong with Hiromi Vardy
Higher Mind Part 1: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism for the Spiritually Curious with David Odorisio, PhD

02/23/2026

This Weekend at the Alembic, February 27-March 1, 2026
Friday
Wisdom Healing Qigong with Hiromi Vardy
Saturday
Soulful Flow Yoga with Anne Rene
Practice Circle with Erik Davis and Jennifer Dumpert
Sunday
Sacred Garden Sunday Service
Mosaic: A Women’s Psychedelic Integration Circle with Dr. Lyssa Menard

02/22/2026

Experience the power of call-and-response chanting and mantras, set to exquisite music in the Indian devotional tradition. This gathering offers a welcoming, embodied introduction to kirtan as a living spiritual practice, inviting participants to rest in rhythm, melody, and shared voice.

Led by Acharya Mangalananda, a longtime teacher in the lineage of Anandamayi Ma, the evening draws on decades of immersion in Indian spiritual life, mantra initiation, and devotional music. Mangalananda’s teaching is grounded in lived experience — from years spent in ashrams in India and the US to traveling internationally offering kirtan concerts and classes. The practice, which emphasizes presence, devotion, and the joy of collective sound, is opena and accessible to all. Tonight Mangalananda and Gloria, performing lead vocals and harmonium, will be joined by Robert Adamich on acoustic guitar, Susan Shloss on violin, Ramana Erickson on tabla, and Greg Barnett on bass. Together they create a rich, supportive musical container that invites deep listening, participation, and moments of uplift and stillness alike. This is an opportunity to sing, listen, and reconnect with the heart through sacred sound in community.

Mangalananda began his spiritual life in 1972 under the guidance of Swami Satchidananda, a direct disciple of Swami Sivananda. Following a profound inner experience with Anandamayi Ma, the great woman saint described in Autobiography of a Yogi, he traveled to India with Swami Satchidananda’s blessing to find her. During 1973 and 1974, he journeyed with Anandamayi Ma throughout India and received mantra initiation from her. Since that time, he has lived within her lineage alongside many of her senior disciples in ashrams across the United States and India.

In 2001, Mangalananda was sent back to India by Ma’s principal swami, Swami Bhaskarananda, to help establish a school at one of her ashrams. He lived in central India for twelve years, teaching at the school and traveling extensively throughout the country.

02/22/2026

Led by environmental psychologist and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Dr. Lindsay Branham, this workshop explores erotic ecology as a framework for understanding the relationship between sensory awareness, embodiment, and the living world. The experience focuses on cultivating attention to two interconnected landscapes: the body and the Earth.
Participants will engage in a mix of short lectures, guided embodiment practices, reflection, and group discussion. The workshop includes an introduction to the eight stages of interoceptive awareness, with time to practice noticing internal sensations and how they shape perception, emotion, and connection. Simple ritual elements and structured sharing will support integration of these ideas in lived experience.
Rather than aiming for peak states, the workshop is designed to help participants slow down, tune in, and explore how sensory awareness can support vitality, relationship, and a felt sense of connection with the natural world. Drawing on ecological psychology and somatic inquiry, the session invites participants to reflect on aliveness as a relational and collective experience. As Audre Lorde writes, aliveness can be a source of shared strength and liberation.
With each ticket purchase, participants will receive a copy of Lindsay’s newest book, Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees.

Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist, author, Emmy-nominated film director, and eco-doula. Her PhD research titled "The Body of the World" envisages spaces of performance and art that are co-created between humans and the living world as sites of colonial resistance and imaginative fields for radical futurities. Lindsay’s first book, Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees releases March 10th, 2026. Through intimate encounters with trees and forests as kin, Heartwood weaves personal narrative with environmental psychology to remember belonging to the living world. Lindsay’s experience with contemplative practices and perennial philosophies spans decades. She has led gatherings that explore an expanded spiritual paradigm and facilitate an experiential entanglement with nature.

02/22/2026

Creative expression is a way to integrate phenomenon and visions experienced in altered states of consciousness, whether they be meditative or entheogenic in nature. From the very first forms of mark-making to the caves of Lascaux to the works of Pablo Amaringo and Alex Grey, humanity has sought to understand our internal landscapes through visual expression.

Alligator Lizards in the Air: Healing and Integration through Creative Expression, is a once a month chance to bring these experiences to life through two dimensional mark making.

Art mediums from paint to colored pencils, crayons to markers, will be available for everyone to use along with paper and canvas. Krisztina Lazar will be your visionary guide in creativity and will help you realize your experience before your eyes. No art background needed for this class. All you need is an open mind and a willingness to explore.

No one turned away for lack of funds. If this applies to you, please pay at the door.

Krisztina Lazar is a visionary artist primarily working in oil paint, watercolor and drawing. She is a Mische Technique lineage holder, a mixture of oil and egg tempera painting invented during the Dutch Renaissance and revolutionized by modern master, Ernst Fuchs. This technique creates an opalescent under painting that the colors are then glazed over, rendering each painting out of light rather than shadow, bringing the images to life with fractal clarity.

Utilizing this transformative style that she learned from visionary pioneer, Brigid Marlin, her current body of work explores painting a hybrid of Mische and Alla Prima to render hyperealistic sacred art. With these two techniques combined, Krisztina creates images of Pop Shamanism, portals and visions that speak to today’s cultural climate of the occult, magic, fantasy, psychedelics, meditation, pop, nostalgia, and the environment movement.

02/22/2026

Please join us for a community tea session featuring a wide array of Chinese teas, including oolong, red, and puerh. A separate pot of herbal tea will always be available for those who prefer to avoid caffeine.
These gatherings are designed to cultivate a contemplative atmosphere. Through the shared enjoyment of tea, we will create space to explore the imagination by offering poems, dreams, reflections, and other forms of creative expression.

Perhaps like many other that attend events at The Alembic before returning to their study, Scott has spent decades exploring the various exoteric and esoteric traditions of the East and West. His abiding interest in the intersection of Yoga, Ta**ra, and Ayurveda deeply informs his approach to gongfu tea curation. Beyond the teas that are selected and their method of brewing, Scott is particularly interested in the qualities of becoming that constellate among friends, both old and new, around a tea table.

What will be discussed this or any evening...? Whitman's Leaves, The Experiment at La Chorrea, the sublime ethos of Judas Escariot, the vagaries of hyperreality, the Dark-Haired Girl, The Alembic itself!?
.given time (and tea)...even eternity will reveal itself...

02/22/2026

In this retreat, Tina offers an accessible overview of the Heart Practices, a core category of meditation drawn from both Theravadan and Tibetan Buddhism. The Brahmaviharas are known as the “divine abodes of the heart” and include metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (empathetic joy), and upekkha (equanimity).

Tina will teach the four Brahmaviharas as an integrated set of practices. While they are often taught individually, their full power is revealed when they are explored together. As a constellation, they offer a profound way of orienting to the human condition, allowing us to meet almost any situation with an open and unhindered heart. Tina will also offer the Forgiveness practice — what she calls the “fifth Brahmavihara” — and will touch on Divine Love, the nondual essence these practices ultimately point toward.
Though sometimes overlooked or reduced to simple phrases we repeat for others, the Brahmaviharas are actually central to deep inner work. They are as rigorous and transformative as the other major meditation categories: Focused Attention (Samatha), Open Monitoring (Vipassana), and Self-Transcending (Dzogchen). These “purifications of the heart” help us metabolize universal human material that otherwise obstructs our spiritual unfolding. They are also a balm for the challenging times we face, both individually and collectively. Let them steady, soften, and clarify the heart.

Find the online version here: https://momence.com/l/nmhGJO2g

Tina Rasmussen, Ph.D., began meditating at age 13, and has practiced in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions for 30+ years. In 2003, after many years of Buddhist practice, she was drawn to undertake an intensive year-long solo retreat in which profound experiences occurred. In 2004, Tina took refuge with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and was initiated into the Nyingma lineage. In 2005, Tina attended a 2-month retreat with Burmese meditation master Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, who ordained her as a Theravadan Buddhist.

02/22/2026

Ryuen Sensei returns to The Alembic to uncover the basic essence of Zen teachings, how this essence speaks to modern culture, and how it applies to your everyday life. By honing in on the physical posture of meditation and the essential foundations of deep practice, the roots of reality begin to reveal themselves. In Zen, we call this "Zazen"- to sit enlightenment directly.

Sensei’s teaching style is lively, funny, clear and direct. For this workshop, Sensei will cover the basic principles of Zen and its core practice of zazen, peeling them away from the religious and cultural layers they took on in China and Japan, and revealing Zen's relevance and vibrancy now and here.

We will spend the day exploring various Zen methods of meditation, delving deeply into the empty room, and experiencing how sitting practice can inform, open, and refresh your everyday mind.

TEACHER BIO

Sensei has been studying Zen for 22 years in the White Plum lineage. Sensei received transmission from her teacher in 2020, becoming a recognized Zen teacher. She is the current Vice Abbott of Lost Coin Zen. A bibliophile and long student of Chinese literature, Sensei is also the founder of Old Truths Library & Reading Room in Salt Lake City.

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