OMA CENTER FOR MIND BODY AND SPIRIT INC
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Mission Statement
Through experiential education and clinical resources, OMA Center for Mind Body and Spirit, provides all individuals opportunities to explore and honor one's journey in healing and wellness of mind, body and spirit. Our vision is based on a commitment to provide a comprehensive health and wellness resources from a holistic standpoint, to those who are seeking alternatives to conventional medical and therapeutic treatments.
About This Cause
OMA's programs, aligned with our mission, are accessible to everyone free and we only ask for a donation from heart. OMA’s success is the outcome of many volunteer hours and private donations. Program include: 1. Lecture series twice a month. Each lecture highlights different holistic practitioners and experts from the Pittsburgh area and beyond and invites them to share their knowledge with attendees. Topics are varied, and all relate to mind-body-spirit wellness providing opportunities for attendees to begin or continue their journey with personal wellness. 2. Workshops in Mind, Body & Spirit from practitioners locally, nationally and internationally are scheduled throughout the year. OMA hosts the Mystery School Workshops from Damanhur University, Italy which includes two workshops over four days four times per year. More recently OMA held a workshop on Trauma Informed Care with a focus on children. 3. Food for the Soul Series is held twice a year. This series brings all who participate into deep community as a group with a sense of interdependence and commitment to one-another’s growth. This initiative for OMA is designed to give participants an opportunity to share in a simple meal of soup and bread as well as discussions regarding introspection/ideas on various subjects of body, mind, and spirit. 4. Surviving to Thriving is our vision is for Pittsburgh to become one of many models for best practices in social and emotional learning and in trauma-informed care and resilience. In order to support this vision, we have held Surviving to Thriving training and holistic healing seminars for Art in the Garden educators, community partners, staff, family members and others working with youth. In the future, OMA is planning to expand this program to be held in select areas of Pittsburgh that will be most beneficial to the community and open to all Educators. 5. Trauma Conversations, “You are not Alone”, was launched this past year during the pandemic. This is a virtual, monthly, program over a one-year period, that provides support and a forum for anyone who has experienced trauma from childhood or as an adult. Each session provides a panel of up to five who have experienced trauma, and/or a therapist, and a moderator. The panel session is designed to create a space for the telling and sharing of our stories around our diverse life trauma experiences and to explore the connections between us all. The panel’s disclosure and ‘breaking the silence ‘of their own history of abuse and the steps they have taken to heal, will facilitate each person’s own ability to share their own story and begin or continue to take the steps to ending their own silence and ending the pattern of victimization and heal from whatever their history of trauma has been in their life. In order to facilitate this, participants are provided a toolbox of techniques proven to help individuals cope with the sense of grief, reduce the negative effects of trauma, heal from the trauma, and move on with their life’s journey. 6. Sponsoring International Speakers is an activity OMA hopes to increase. In 2018 OMA sponsored Marianne Williamson. In 2020, we sponsored Suzanne Giesmann. 7. Art in the Garden (AITG), Art in the Garden, is a year-round youth program designed to intentionally address the impacts of early childhood adversity and trauma on health and learning. It’s centered around investing in the resiliency and social and emotional development of Pittsburgh’s youth. Art in the Garden supports youth in holding themselves and others in compassion and helping them to grow in connectedness to themselves, each other, and the earth. Art in the Garden includes a six-week summer program hosted at Borland Garden and is focused on meeting the needs of underserved youth in East Liberty and surrounding neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, the majority of whom are youth of color. Guided by a thoughtfully and professionally developed curriculum that focuses on secular mindfulness and emotional well-being. In collaboration with community partners, youth engage a variety of activities—from West African drumming and dance, to learning about food justice and building healthy soil, to creating ceramic sculptures—all of our programming invests in the resiliency and social and emotional well-being of Pittsburgh’s youth with an approach that addresses the effects of adversity and stress. Through daily art and environmental activities, youth develop their ability to identify and process emotions and to channel their emotions into creative activities and self-affirming forms of expression. The curriculum and programming of AITG also responds to the demands set by youth themselves in the Youth Climate Strike platform which calls for mandatory climate education. As youth build awareness and literacy around ecological choices--i.e. through sharing, writing, or making art about their experiences and visions, growing food, sequestering carbon, composting, reducing consumption, and being in and with nature--ecological literacy develops as does and their abilities to care for themselves and others as well as the water, land, and air. In collaboration with Earthen Vessel, all youths attending the summer camp receive a free breakfast and lunch daily. In collaboration with Youth Enrichment Services (YES), Art in the Garden also trains teens to be counselors and use a trauma-informed approach with young campers (i.e. remaining calm, attuned, and predictable); provides opportunities for students to use their voices in the arts and ecology; provides a space for students to engage issues around land access, food apartheid, regenerative gardening and farming practices, composting, and paths to individual and collective healing. (This program was due to start in 2020, but it is on hold due to considerations around Covid-19) Following the summer camp, activities occur throughout the year for youth who attended AITG as well as youths who want to join the program. It is believed that by having activities throughout the year, the youth can build stronger family and community relationships, and build trust and confidence with the youths who attended AITG. Year-round programming has included: community mural making, family days in the Garden, a Fall event with pumpkin carving, storytelling, and on-line yoga and meditation. In 2020, Art in the Garden programming was structured for most of the programming held on- line and limited events in the garden following CDC guidelines. 2021 we are able to bring back the full summer camp. Art in the Garden is OMA’s largest program, highly successful and continues to grow annually however the program is also highly dependent on volunteer time and private donations. 8.Inflexion Point Podcast is a podcast sponsored by OMA with the goal to cultivate change from the inside out. Activism through coaching serves as a model for antiracism activation built on four pillars: courage, conversation, relationship, and accountability. The conversation is based on the premise that dismantling racism goes beyond laws and legislation or politics or economics. It’s an inside job where personal transformation and accountability impact social change in multiple dimensions: individual, interpersonal, systemic, and structural. Inflexion Point Podcast is a place to get comfortable with deconstructing your inner thoughts, ideas, and beliefs to examine what flows out into the world through your words, actions, and behaviors, particularly towards others who are different from yourself.