Experience Joy and Compassion in Community
A Winter QTPOC-Strong, BIPOC Residential Retreat
with Fresh "Lev" White, Kimi Mojica and Ramón Honea
Dec 14-18, 2023
We want to celebrate with you!! As queer, trans, gender-fabulous, and intersex People of Color we may find themselves at odds with all the celebration and joy during the holidays. Particularly this year with attacks on our bodies and attempts to control our choices to live authentically, many of us may find ourselves left out and alone – separate from the families and communities that we need.
Please join in creating a refuge where we can meet each other as we are with compassion, as we also fuse in meditation, ritual, dharma, and music and song that encourages joy. We’ll experience silence, nature walking, and offer plenty of opportunities to rest in the magical Joshua Tree Desert.
This retreat welcomes all BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and all other people of color) and will be majority LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, and beyond). New and seasoned practitioners are welcome.
Fresh “Lev” White is a love and compassion activist. He offers mindfulness, mediation, diversity training, writings, and coaching as tools for shifting all of us towards more authentic, conscious, and compassionate living. From SF Drag King 1999, to SF Pride Grand Marshall 2016, to celebrating his 9th year as a teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, Lev uses their coaching, leadership, and teaching certifications to entertain, ground us in the present, and prepare us for the work of both meeting and creating our future with seeds of love, compassion and empathy. https://affirmativeacts.org
Kimi Mojica was introduced to mindfulness and the teachings of the Buddha in 2007 through Thich Nhat Hahn and the Plum Village tradition, and has been student and practitioner ever since. A Community Teacher at East Bay Meditation Center, their commitment to racial, gender and healing justice is evident through the dynamic and ways they hold space and as a consultant, facilitator, coach, and conflict transformation practitioner. As a sangha builder and community leader, Kimi is a graduate of EBMC’s Commit2Dharma program, Spiritual Teacher and Leader training program, has served as former Board Chair and later co-founder of Restorative Practices for Dharma Practitioners (RPDP) deep refuge group. Beyond EBMC they have had the privilege and joy of teaching at various sangha affinity groups (BIPOC, QTPOC, Queer/Trans/Non-Binary folx); daylongs and retreats at Braided Wisdom, Dhamma Dena among others. Kimi loves connecting through ritual, movement and nature, centering liberatory practices that cultivate wholeness and well-being in everyday life.
Ramón Honea (he/they) is a biracial, Chicano, gay, second generation Oakland native. For over twenty years, Ramon served the students of Oakland and San Francisco as a teacher and administrator. A career in education led to meditation and he found his spiritual home at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland where he served for many years on the People of Color Coordinating Committee. His career path led to working at Spirit Rock Meditation Center as a retreat Manager which ended with the Covid Pandemic. Currently he has graduated from the Spiritual Teacher/Leaders Program at EBMC and is working for the center supporting the re-creation of sangha/community and supporting the purchasing of a new home/building.