Our Programs

OMA Center for Mind, Body & Spirit’s Programs for 2025

OMA Lecture Series is a monthly event that highlights different holistic practitioners and experts from the Pittsburgh area and beyond, and invites them to share their knowledge and skills with attendees. Topics are varied, but all relate to mind-body-spirit wellness, and each provides an opportunity for attendees to begin or continue their journey with personal wellness. Lectures are currently priced nominally to the public and we offer scholarship assistance to anyone with financial constraints. Events are often hosted live at the Unity Church, East End of Pittsburgh while also broadcast virtually and recorded for playback by attendees.  Many events are presented as virtual only.

Workshops in Mind, Body & Spirit from practitioners locally, nationally and internationally. OMA offers a variety of workshops, for example Spiritual Healing and Human Design (Katie Rubin, 5-week class); Cultivating Change from Within-Journey toward Anti-Racism (Anita Russell); Session for Balance and Peace (Irina Grundler); Writing to Heal (Robin Clarke, MFA, MA, LSW); and The Alphabet Circle Journey (Dr. Maxine Wright-Walters, a 2-week workshop given in 2022).

We offer workshops that take place in one occurrence or over a period of weeks.  Highlighting Holistic Practitioners locally, nationally and internationally has been possible in recent years since we often broadcast virtually using Zoom. However, we are also hosted live seated events and stream them simultaneously via Zoom. We also had a women’s weekend Fall Retreat in 2022 and  co-ed weekend retreats for May 2023 and again in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024.

You Are Not Alone:  Let’s all drop the pretense that we are either normal, or abnormal. We are all in the same support group: ordinary people who must deal with the struggles that come with being human. We all carry this heavy weight—a trauma, in today’s terminology. We all at the same time struggle to meet our basic human needs for connection, community, acceptance, and validation among ones who share our culture and language, or not, for authenticity–the capacity to feel what we feel and to be in touch with our bodies and to express what we feel when we need.

Fundamentally, that is the ultimate trauma, the disconnection from ourselves. In the Fall of 2020, OMA brought together a panel of survivors to meet monthly and discuss their own individual traumas and journeys of healing. For four years, our panel covered a variety of topics and evolved into an amazing therapeutic journey for each person that shared their most intimate and vulnerable parts of themselves with the OMA community, hoping to share the message that not only is healing from trauma possible, it is also a profoundly transformative experience.

Beginning 2025, OMA will expand the work that has been done under the banner of You Are Not Alone (YANA) by offering trauma-informed trainings, lectures, workshops, and seasonal gatherings. Some of these offerings will come from our panel, but we are also reaching out to others in our community that have something special to offer to the healing discussion.

InflexionPoint Podcast: Cultivating Change from the Inside Out.  Join Host/Creator Anita Russell, and co-hosts Gail Hunter and Mavis Bauman in a brave space to ponder The Cairo Question, and engage in dialogue 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. It’s a place to get comfortable with deconstructing your inner thoughts, ideas, and beliefs for self-critical examination and begin being open to having conversations about racism, personal transformation and personal accountability. This podcast airs on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month at 6:00-7:00 PM Eastern time. See InflexionPointpodcast.com: Cultivating Change from the Inside Out.

Food for the Soul is an opportunity to share thoughts, ideas and needs on each other’s journey in the realm of Body, Mind, and Spirit in a comfortable environment of like-minded individuals. Food for the Soul events are casual, intimate gatherings led by an OMA facilitator. In these meetings, various topics of mind, body, spirit, and other interests are discussed over a light meal. Food for the Soul is offered less frequently than our monthly lectures, offering a more personal experience for individuals who may have questions about their own journeys, and who wish to seek a deeper understanding of more complex topics. Food for the Soul began in December 2017. We only ask for donations if one can contribute and if not, attendance is free.  Food for the Soul will resume at a date to be determined.

Trauma Informed Training/Education supports adults in developing mindfulness practices, strengthening conflict transformation skills, developing awareness of the effects of implicit bias, building skills that foster supportive relationships with youth, and supporting youth in developing resilience and social and emotional intelligence. Our professional and community workshops are a bridge designed to connect educators, community organizations, families and professionals across generations and the healthcare spectrum. Attendees gain an understanding of social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral health issues and learn necessary skills to support youth. Keynote speakers and workshops teach awareness and identification of trauma and ACE’s in children/youth along with concrete, actionable holistic skills adults can use to support youth in developing resilience and stronger brain architecture and the healthy overall development of our families and youth. In addition, we will provide education on polyvagal theory and its application, Breathwork, Tai Chi, Relaxation Exercises, Restorative Justice Circles, LGBQT issues and trauma experiences and Mindfulness.

A Trauma Symposium for the Healing of All Generations is a symposium and city-wide call to action to address trauma and abuse as a public health issue. We seek to address the collective arena of trauma and its effects throughout the generations to break cycles of silence and harm. We aim to address, prevent, and mitigate adverse experiences, trauma, and abuse and hold space for all people to be a part of a city-wide transformation to support the wellbeing and health of all. Through collaboration with local and national individuals and organizations, we hope to show the possibilities for healing that emerge when communities come together to provide all people with access to holistic, trauma-informed care. We believe that when we heal ourselves in the present, we heal the generations to come. See our upcoming You Are Not Alone Trauma Symposium.