LGBTQIA+ Pride Circle
Please join this Reimagine LGBTQIA+ gathering to witness, support, and honor one another in our grief and joy. The program will open with agreements, followed by some education, meditation, and sounding as a foundation for peer-to-peer sharing in a safer space. This is a dedicated container by and for self-identified LGBTQIA+ people.
Pride is about showing up authentically, which can shift from one moment to the next – from celebration to grief, from connectedness to loneliness.
Facilitators will offer mindfulness and somatic practices for grounding prior to opening up space to invite in the individual and collective experiences of LGBTQIA+ community members. Our facilitators will draw from their Buddhist practices while also weaving in queer liberation and grief work. The 90-minute program will offer the divine abodes of the heart (loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity) as a gateway to freedom and pride, a compassion meditation that honors our queer ancestors/trancestors, communal sounding/singing, and group sharing.
While having cameras on is welcome for cultivating a stronger sense of community, it is OK for videos to be turned off as we want to respect each individual's personal process.
Tony Pham (Butterfly) (he/they) is a heritage Buddhist, facilitator, and healer that occupies the intersection of queer and BIPOC identities. He also identifies as a 2nd generation Vietnamese American whose parents immigrated to the United States as refugees from war. Tony goes by Butterfly in spiritual spaces where they steward practices rooted in compassion, indigeneity, and sacred lineages. They are a student of Lama Rod Owens (Vajrayana/Tibetan Buddhism). They are also an alumnus of the East Bay Meditation Center’s year-long PiTA8 trauma informed mindfulness program for social justice work.
Butterfly offered a dharma talk and guided meditation about compassion during The Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit 2023. Butterfly has completed death doula training and facilitates various grief circles with Reimagine. Tony's death work was highlighted and referenced in the 2023 book, "So Sorry for Your Loss," by Dina Gachman. He is certified in Compassion Cultivation Training ©, teaching compassion and meditation at Tibet House US. Tony is honored to serve on the national board of directors of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). He now resides in Brooklyn (occupied Canarsie/Munsee Lenape land). For more information, please visit tonyopham.com.
Phoenix Song (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Korean American adoptee teacher, writer, performer and healer featured in SF Magazine's Best of the Bay for yoga music. Phoenix is a Tamalpa Associate Teacher of expressive arts and a somatic voicework teacher. They believe that everyone can sing and love to help people free their voices and rhythm in private and group classes. Phoenix is a mindfulness teacher at East Bay Meditation Center and Spirit Rock. Phoenix also leads ancestral healing, grief, and diversity/solidarity workshops and trainings that use expressive arts and somatic processes. Their next 10-month Free Your Voice and Body Stories training will begin in the Bay Area in September. To learn more about their sound healing offerings, classes, and performances, please visit https://phoenixsongmusic.com/
Community Touchstones
Confidentiality
What’s said here stays here, what’s learned here leaves here.
Everything invitational
See these questions (and this whole experience) as an invitation, not a demand. If you are moved to answer a different question than one we have listed, go for it. If you’re moved to sit and listen, that’s ok too - just being here is participating.
Speak from the heart
We’re used to speaking what we think we should, what we think others want to hear, or from ideas or stories we’ve told ourselves over and over. See if you can take risks to root into what is true and to share from that vulnerable place.
Listen from the heart
See if you can be fully present to what’s here, listening with compassion to whoever is speaking. Try on turning any judgement that arises (including judgment of yourself!) into wonder. “I wonder what brought her to this belief?” “I wonder what I don’t get?” “I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” See if it’s possible to set aside judgment to listen to others—and to yourself—more deeply.
No one right way
There’s no one right way to grieve, to do this retreat, or to express yourself (for example: totally ok to cry, and totally ok not to cry). Try to reserve judgment, of others and of yourself.
Trust the silence
Take a few breaths before even thinking of responding or offering your own words. Learn to trust the silence, and to notice what arises in it. Take your time.
Cool is the enemy
Try on the idea that you (and everyone else here) totally belong. Let’s try to be an easy crowd for each other. That means presuming welcome, and extending welcome. What if we all let go of “cool”? Cool is the enemy. ;)
Share air time
Take space & make space. Groups work best when everyone has their eye on this.
Self-focus
Speak your truth in ways that respect other people’s truths. Consider using “I” statements so that you can speak from your center, instead of generalizing or making assumptions about everyone else.
No fixing, saving, advising, correcting
No need to jump in to fix anything, save anyone, or offer unsolicited advice. Trust folks’ own processes.
Focus on stories about loved ones
This is a space in which we center stories and support. If you are here to challenge or argue the safety practices of others (e.g., masking in public, vaccinations), this is not a space for you.
