An in-depth, three part series on working with ancestors, identifying ancestral guides, ghosts, and demons. Navigating the karmic warp and weft, the blessings and afflictions of our unique ancestral inheritance through to resolution and freedom.
Integrating the View teachings of Shamanism, Daoism, Buddhism, Astrology, Feng Shui & East Asian Nondual Cosmology to help deepen, widen & enwisen our understanding of all the myriad dimensions of life that our ancestors inhabit.
A highly experiential & individualized series, utilizing the Zi Wei Dou Shu Polestar astrology system & natal chart as our main road map for identifying the ancestral terrain through which we will be exploring.
36 CEU hours in Category 1 approved by the California Acupuncture Board.
RSVP for more information to: seminars@redbamboomedicine.com
Part One: RECOGNITION
Saturday & Sunday, April 27 & 28, 2024
10:30am - 5:30pm (PDT)
The first seminar will be an in-depth study focusing on certain palaces of the Zi Wei Dou Shu natal chart (e.g., Ancestors, Ming, Children, Health Palaces, etc.) and specific stars (e.g. Zi Wei the Emperor, Tian Ji the Oracle, Wu Qu the General, Tian Fu the Empress, Qi Sha the 7 Killings, Po Jun the Rebel, etc.) to identify and uncover the most significant ancestral imprints and influences within a person's lifetime.
Students will work with their own natal charts to reflect upon these dimensions of their life and begin the process of honing in and recognizing specific beneficial ancestral guides, "lost" ghosts, and afflictive demonic ancestors in their respective lineage streams.
Students may volunteer their own chart to use for in-class examples and illustrations of teachings, while other students who prefer to keep their personal charts private, will be able to easily follow along with the material being offered and apply it themselves throughout the class. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon and/or share their own personal stories and family histories throughout the series to enhance the dimensions explored.
Prerequisite: to have received a Zi Wei Dou Shu natal chart reading from myself, or my teacher Liu Ming, or another practitioner from my lineage who has studied Polestar Astrology directly (live and in-person) with Liu Ming.
Part Two: RITUAL
Saturday & Sunday, July 20 & 21, 2024
10:30am - 5:30pm (PDT)
The second seminar will be a deep exploration and guided practice of various methods and rituals for invocation of, and on-going communication with, specific ancestral guides. Astro-geomantic methods, e.g., working with the Tong Shu (Chinese almanac calendar) to identify auspicious times as temporal portals for communication. Feng shui and setting up altars, ritual spaces for working with ancestral Qi. Calibrating and imbuing talismanic objects as vehicles for ritual ancestor practice.
Practices for clarifying, purifying, and attuning sensory perception for channeling, clairsentience, chanting, and visualization. Dream practice for working with ancestors. Working with the Yi Jing and other methods of divination.
Again, we will investigate the natal chart to help identify the areas of innate capacity and clear beneficial Qi to work with in formal ritual or ceremonial practice. We will also look into the dimensions of a person's life where the seemingly "mundane" (yet incredibly potent) rituals of every day living can also act as portals of ancestral communion, resolution, and liberation.
Part Three: RESOLUTION
Saturday & Sunday, October 12 & 13, 2024
10:30 - 5:30pm (PDT)
The third seminar will open and broaden our view towards the vast innumerable possibilities of ancestral and karmic resolution we are all (inevitably) heading towards. What does it mean to be complete or to find completion? Everything is always and already heading towards resolution. We may not always recognize it because we are so often blind-sided by our own expectations of what we hope for or want it to look like.
From the spontaneous to the strenuous, from the relentlessly inescapable to the tenuously uncertain, we will explore the complex interwoven dance of fate, freedom, and destiny through the patterns of resolution as expressed through the natal chart. We will examine the astrological configurations and patterns of relationship between houses and specific stars to expand our understanding of what ancestral resolution looks like and how that can play out within, across, and between the various dimensions of a person's life and then, also, echoing both backwards and forwards in time and space from our ancestral precedents to our future progeny.
TAMARA JA, L.Ac., Dipl.O.M. is practitioner of all eight limbs of Chinese Medicine. She has studied Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Tibetan Buddhism with various Daoist priests and Buddhist teachers for nearly 30 years. She has been a practitioner of Indigenous Amazonian Shamanism for nearly 20 years, having apprenticed extensively in the Indigenous Shipibo-Conibo lineage. She is also an Astrologer, specializing in Zi Wei Dou Shu - Polestar Astrology, and the Tong Shu - Chinese Almanac Astrology.
A portion of these proceeds will be donated to Da Yuan Circle
With deep roots in Wisdom Traditions from the East and West, Between Heaven & Earth Seminars offer an integrative, cross-cultural synthesis of a wide range of topics from eastern cosmology, holistic healing, Chinese Medicine, Chinese Astrology, Indigenous Amazonian Shamanism, ancestral work, holding ritual-ceremonial space, herbal and plant medicine, chanting, and non-dual practice.
Classes provide an on-going space of learning, dialogue, and cultivation in the understanding of our experience as human beings, the discovery of our natural condition from the non-dual perspective, and how we can incorporate all of these into being of benefit to the earth and all sentient beings.
Working with the Five Spirits: Nondual Cosmology, Chinese Medicine, Amazonian Shamanism
December 10 & 11, 2022 and February 4 & 5, 2023
10:30am to 5:30pm PDT
The 5 Spirits — the Hun, Shen, Yi, Po, Zhi and their associated 5 Zang organs — the Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, Kidneys — together constitute an all-enfolding continuity of transformation and coherence that can be discovered throughout various and diverse dimensions of the human experience, from the embodied to the immaterial. This seminar series will delve deeply into the 5 Spirits (5 Shen) of Chinese Medicine, their correlations to the 5 Elements, the 5 Zang organs and their dynamic interrelationships, in particular, through the lens of shamanism, shamanic healing, and the view teachings of Daoism, Buddhism and East Asian nondual cosmology.
We will discuss the 5 Spirits & 5 Zang organs in terms of healthy normal physiology as well as pathology, while also investigating disharmonies that go beyond the “medical” into the realms of the shamanic and spiritual. The 5 skandhas and 6 hell realms of Tibetan Buddhism, various types of possession by external pathogenic/elemental factors, non-human entities, ghost, ancestral possession and how these play out in terms of illness, disease and/or pathological psycho-emotional states will be introduced.
We will also be continuing our studies of Chinese Astrology, taking a deep look at each of the 12 Chinese Zodiac Branch Animals, specifically in terms of health, illness, treatment, and resolution. We will also examine the unique qi qualities of each Branch animal which can help them discover and manifest their own potential capacities for becoming healers.
We will explore working with specific Master plants (“Maestros” and “Maestras”) to cultivate them as our allies on the healing path in the tradition of Amazonian shamanism, but with a cross-cultural integration of plants from the Amazonian, Chinese, and North American healing traditions.
We will also learn to work with honed intention, visualization plus sound/chanting as a focused practice to heal the 5 Zang organs, re-seat the 5 Spirits, and enact the process of transformation/transmutation from a state of illness into health.
Shamanism: Flowing with the Time and Space of Embodiment
June 24 & 25, 2023 and August 26 & 27, 2023
10:30am - 5:30pm PDT
Shamanism is a practice of observing, working, divining, and flowing with the interwoven dynamics of Time and Space: Time as astrological-astronomical factors and Space as geomantic-feng shui factors. In this seminar series, we will delve deeply into the 12 Earthly Branches (aka, 12 zodiac animals) of Chinese Astrology, seen as distinctly diverse patterns of Qi in the cycles of Time, and the 12 primary organs of the body in Chinese Medicine theory as embodied spatial representations of geomancy within our internal terrain.
Each zodiac animal is associated with a primary organ of the body, we will examine the celestial intersections and embodied associations between them, in particular, through the lens of shamanism, shamanic healing, and the view teachings of Daoism, Buddhism and East Asian nondual cosmology. We will discuss the 12 primary organs from a Daoist alchemical-physiological perspective, as well as disharmonies that go beyond the "medical" into the realms of the shamanic and spiritual. We will thread this into our discussion of the 12 zodiac animals, examining each in terms of their Qi tendencies towards health, illness, healing, ancestral possession, and karmic resolution. We will also examine the innate qualities of each zodiac animal which can help them discover and manifest their own potential capacities for becoming healers.
We will take a very deep dive into each of the 12 zodiac animals in terms of compatibility and relationship from a psycho-spiritual and psycho-emotional perspective (e.g., relationships between parents and children, romantic partners, work relationships, extended family members, etc.). We will discuss elemental pairs, harmonious trines, oppositional relationships, and how to work with them in a similar transformative way as with the 12 primary organs in patterns of health and disharmony.
Chinese Astrology, Cosmology, and the 12 Zodiac Animals
March 5 & 6, 2022 and May 7 & 8, 2022
10:30am - 5:30pm PDT
With historical roots in ancient shamanism, Chinese Astrology developed over millennia as a way of understanding the ongoing, interconnected cycle of all that arises and resolves in Nature. Every thing and being that "appears" in Nature, does so for a period of time. That period of time is imbued with a particular kind of Qi quality. Every thing and being that arises during that time also shares this Qi quality.
What characterizes that being or time with a certain Qi quality is not anything inherently abiding in of itself, but rather, the fact that it follows after the arising and disappearance of another being/period of time. Nothing much is actually revealed from their own appearance as such but instead, is found in how they move from one to another throughout the cycle of time. it is only in this movement from one to another that they come into being/appearance and thus become meaningful.
These seminars will begin with fundamental principles of understanding Chinese Astrology according to Eastern cosmology. Topics covered:
Women's Healing, Women's Medicine, Women's Ritual: A three-part Women's Circle series
September 19, 2020 and October 10, 2020 and October 24, 2020
10:30am — 12:30pm PDT
Our Mother Earth is in need of great medicine. For too long, we have ignored, abused, pillaged, dishonored, and demonized her. An antidote to these times will be in navigating our way through a profound recalibration of our world: a Great Turning. A great transformation to find our way back to balance, in a world where renegade out-of-control Yang has become unbearable and unsustainable. In order to heal and realign the forces of Yin and Yang within ourselves individually and collectively, a reclamation of the Feminine, of the Yin is being called for.
Our first seminar will be an investigation into those aspects and dimensions of ourselves as women that are long overdue for healing. To deeply reflect on the places in our psyches, our consciousness, our health and our well being, our lives and relationships where we have compromised our femininity and endured abuse and injury (consciously and unconsciously) to our own embodiments for the sake of living in a patriarchally-driven world. What have we sacrificed in our understanding of ourselves as women, in our relationship with others, in particular with other women? How much have we internalized the dominant patriarchal mindset that equates aggression with power and denigrates compassion and generosity as so-called weakness. How has this manifested in our relationship to our bodies through suppression and denial? Our topics will range from sexual trauma, menstrual and gynecological disorders, pregnancy and fertility issues, eating disorders, addiction, autoimmune disease, familial and ancestral inheritances, education, money, marriage, career issues and more.
In our second seminar, drawing from an integrative, cross-cultural holistic perspective we will explore a variety of different medicines, remedies, and therapies that are especially appropriate for our bodies and ourselves as women. What ways of healing can we learn from our Mother Earth herself? What are the medicine paths we can cultivate in ways which benefit and heal the feminine and the Yin force within us? How can we, as women, realign the yin and the yang within us? What medicines can support us to holistically acknowledge, accept, and honor both the feminine and masculine within ourselves, our lives, and our relationships?
The third seminar will serve to help recognize and welcome in rituals which honor our embodiments as women. Both formal rituals as well as informal rituals for everyday practice will be introduced. How can we invoke and invite the spirit of the Divine Feminine (from bountiful Mother Goddess to destroying Wrathful Protector and an infinite array of possibilities in between)? What are the ritualistic practices through which we can reintegrate the feminine back into our lives as women? How do we hold faith with our formal spiritual practices and simultaneously celebrate the ceremony of our everyday lives as women? In particular, for those of us who have dedicated our lives to the path of healing, what does it mean to guide and hold ritual space as a woman? How can we work with our female embodiments (not against them) to help us hold ritual healing space? What are the ways we can reclaim and recreate those paths of beneficial service to better align with our natural cycles and embodiments as women? This third seminar will help to integrate the previous two and provide guidance through the passage of Women's Healing, Women's Medicine and Women's Ritual.