Fiscal Sponsorships
Topa Institute is committed to fostering practices that awaken connection with self, community, and place. This includes the teaching of global and perennial wisdom, promoting well-being, and community building.
Blk Crcl
Blk Crcl creates sacred spaces for Black communities to connect, heal, and build resilience through wellness and nature-based practices. We offer community circles, transformative retreats, grief ceremonies, and intercultural gatherings that restore connections to self, community, and the natural world. Since 2020, we’ve facilitated over 50 community circles and multiple retreats in Ojai CA, providing accessible pathways to wellness for communities most impacted by systemic oppression.
At Blk Crcl, our mission is to create transformative programs that cultivate healing, community connection, and resilience through wellness and nature-based practices, with dedicated commitment to prioritizing access for Black communities who have been impacted by systemic racial and social oppression.
Blk Crcl Origin Story
Alea Wade, Amber Deylon, and Irasha Talifero envisioned an organization that would cultivate transformative healing for Black communities—a place where Black people feel supported and cared for, where sacred connections to self, community, and the natural world could be restored and flourish.
Their dream was to create community-centered programs that would intentionally expand access to healing practices, centering Black communities disproportionately impacted by systemic racial and social oppression while creating ripples of transformation toward a more equitable and connected world for all.
During a time of uprisings, protests, pandemic, and collective grief, Blk Crcl held its first healing circle on June 14, 2020, in Ojai, CA with support from Anamika Jacob. With sponsorship from Light and Space Yoga, Amber launched Blk Crcl’s first of what would be six monthly gatherings and the first Blk Crcl retreat at Light & Space.
In February 2021, through Alea’s FIRE fellowship with The Ojai Foundation (now Topa Institute), Blk Crcl partnered with TOF and has since hosted nearly 40 community circles and 5 retreats, and launched Blk Crcl’s first intercultural event open to all—”A Space for Joy”—with each gathering deepening connections between people and place while fostering collective resilience and connection to nature.
Ways of Council
Our intention through creating trainings and council opportunities in person and on this web site is to have more and more people know the gift of listening, learning , working, thinking and living as a circle .
We are not missionaries but rather carriers of a way of council.
The purpose of the Ways of Council website, as have been the centers and networks of council over many years now, is to serve the growing international community of individuals, groups, communities and organizations who are drawn to circle communication processes, particularly the form known as “council” that has been practiced at The Ojai Foundation and its sister communities for the past forty years. As well, we want to acknowledge some of the other well-springs of circle practice of which we are aware—Peer Spirit and Ho’oponopono, for example—and be open to the gifts of many. As the global community of council practitioners grows, an internationally based web site can become a place for practitioners to share experiences, information and wisdom about circle practices. Our intention is to be respectful of and honor traditional and emerging practices, and, perhaps most important, stimulate circle awareness and practices world-wide.
Ways of Council is a site in progress, growing and deepening as circle practices evolve in the global community. We welcome your stories, experiences and suggestions.
Tierra Sol
Kristoph Wallin
Project Director
Tierra Sol curates art & resiliency-inspired productions, research, and community engagement. We activate new ideas, conversations, and transformative experiences across science and culture; engaging people in a dynamic response to our changing world. Creative Activism is the way forward.