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The Mandala Medicine Movement:A Community-Driven Art Experience
Welcome to the Mandala Medicine Movement, a collaborative and inclusive way we paint large Mandalas on the street and parks in our communities. Our method ignites creativity, fosters community identity, and celebrates unity. Our journey began in the autumn of 1993 in the heart of the Ojai Valley in Southern California, where we started painting large mandalas in the main intersection of town, in the middle of the night, the night before our Ojai Day celebration. ​ Looking ah
River Sauvageau
22 hours ago2 min read
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Journey Week 2024: Beyond Boundaries Mandala: An Interview with Susan Evergreen Hericks, Ph.D., and River Sauvageau
Susan Evergreen Hericks, Ph.D., and River Sauvageau invited Journey Week participants to take part in creating a community mandala at the Ladera campus on September 27, 2024. ​ Angela Borda: As a child, I learned about mandalas in the context of Tibetan monks spending months making elaborate designs with colored sand, as a form of prayer or memorial, and then at the end, undoing the mandala, as an acknowledgement of the impermanence of all things. So let’s start with the basi
River Sauvageau
23 hours ago9 min read
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Mandala of Wind and Water
By Carin Rich. 10/12/25 Morning unfurled her saffron shawl in Ojai, where paint met prayer and color became breath. At the Libbey fountain, the circle was born again, spirits of wind whispering through pigment, ancestors stirring in the blue between breaths. Brushstrokes became wings. Children ran past like bright intentions, their laughter folding into silence, the kind that speaks in symbols. By afternoon, the compass was complete, a wheel of gratitude turning in the sun. A
River Sauvageau
Oct 241 min read
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The Day with Painted Streets
-Carin Rich The morning opened like stained glass, a circle of color poured onto asphalt, faces and fish swimming in the same sky. A green face blinked against the sun, its mouth half-smile, half-question, like it had just learned the secret of becoming. My dog sat in the mandala’s center, not guarding, not waiting only being, a white curl of breath in the geometry of light. Children laughed, their voices painted brighter than pigments, while strangers bent low, brushes dripp
River Sauvageau
Oct 241 min read
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Opening Ceremony Speech Ojai Day 2025
River giving speech for opening of Ojai Day 2025. Note: Video is only half the speech, the rest is written below. We are here to celebrate our lives, lived together here in the Ojai Valley on this beautiful day. We recognize and acknowledge that we inhabit the stolen land of the Chumash people, the first peoples of this land. Because of genocide, violence, appropriation and bigotry we are sharing the privilege of living together in this sacred valley. We acknowledge the Chuma
River Sauvageau
Oct 243 min read
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The Face I Paint is Green
The Face I Paint is Green
A Mandala Meditation in Ventura
By Caren Rich
After the final bell fades
Through the bones of the middle school walls,
And the chalk ghosts of algebra
Still float in the air,
I drive to the mission
To kneel at the feet of color.
Here, on the street,
We paint what cannot be spoken
A mandala stitched into the ground
With sun rays, prayers,
And a green-faced dream
No witness can erase.
The face I paint is green.
Not rebellion, not error
But chloroph
River Sauvageau
Oct 32 min read
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Altadena Healing Mandala
The Eaton Fire burned almost 10,000 homes in Altadena, 9400 homes by count. There were numerous people I know In Ojai who were grieving...
River Sauvageau
Jul 96 min read
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