June 20-26 you’ll find members of the BARMH collective presenting workshops at the
Women and Trans Action Camp in Cascadia check it out at http://twac.wordpress.com/

July 24,25,26 Portland Zine Symposium. The best place to submit and purchase our zines.
Plus workshops on mental health and body image. This is an awesome event check it out at
http://www.pdxzines.com/

lunAcy Distro will be having a table again at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair for One Day only:

Saturday March 14th, 2009

Due to rising shipping and printing costs, this is the BEST place to get the zines and books of
your choice.

If you have zines in pdf format please send them to lunacydistro@riseup.net

If you have access to making free copies we could really use your help…..

Hope you are well and look for new web updates soon… xo lunAcy

Radical Relationship Workshop
Sunday, June 8th at 7PM
Long Haul Infoshop
3124 Shattuck Ave. (2 blocks from Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA, Tel: (510) 540-0751
$20, sliding scale, Everyone Welcome
http://www.thelonghaul.org/

RADICAL RELATIONSHIPS WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:
At a time when our nation is determined to keep us on the warpath, what better time to raise our voices against intolerance, hatred, and violence? At a time when our government propels us into a new dark age of fascism, what better time to talk about radical love, or the right to love who we want, how we want, and as many as we want? Loving openly and freely in these times, whether you are straight or queer, is a brave political act. We have been conditioned by outdated social norms that limit our perceptions and shackle us to unhealthy cycles of dissatisfying relationships. Yet we also live in a time when we can choose our gender and redefine our sexual identities. Don¹t we then have the right to decide what kind of relationship best suits our lifestyle? Declare yourself a revolutionary of the heart. Find out how you can expand your potential to love, transform your lifestyle, and together we can threaten the social forces of patriarchy!

Soma is a series of sessions/experiences using body games to create a group dynamic, inspired by principles of self-organisation and solidarity. When Roberto Freire created ‘Soma – an anarchist therapy’ in Brazil, more than thirty years ago, he was looking for therapeutic methodologies that could help people emotionally who were fighting against the military dictatorship. Changing therapy into experiment, we have turned the Soma (which means ‘totality of being’ in Greek) approach away from an emphasis on neurosis (we have something wrong) towards the gaining of skills (we can learn something new).

This approach breaks with the traditional rational way to develop skills, where the mind is split from the body, the individual removed from its surroundings. Soma games are proposals to play in a group – sharing experiences of collaboration, trust and responsibility. It’s this group dynamic created by Soma games that stimulate the whole being to engage with the world. After the games, the participants will process their experience, talking about their perceptions and behavior playing together.

The body is the material to work with: movement, perception and contact with each other to dare to be creative in everyday life. Play is a way to rediscover the body, just as collaboration helps to rediscover relationships.

Traditionally, the series of Soma sessions extends over a year’s time, and involves the martial art, Capoeira Angola. These two workshops will be an introduction to the process and kinds of games used in a Soma group. They will be led by Arthur Swindells, who has been involved with Soma activities in London for three years, with Jorge Goia.

FIRST WORKSHOP: at the Suigetsukan Dojo, 103 International Blvd, right by Lake Merrit in Oakland. 7PM-10PM, Sunday, Jan. 27

SECOND WORKSHOP: at Station 40, 3030b 16th st. (at Mission) in SF. 7PM-10PM, Tuesday, Jan. 29

Suggested Donation: $3-$5. No one turned away for lack of funds.

will be….

Monday January 7th, 2008
2231 Ashby Ave
Berkeley CA

…………………………

e-mail with ?’s
lunacydistro@riseup.net

Next Radical Mental Health Meeting
starts at 5pm

See you then….
All are welcome

NEXT MEETING:
Hello – we will be having a get together
Thursday December 20th where we will be
reading mental health zines and re-viewing them for the
web site and zine distro. If you have a zine or book
you would like to see added to the distro please
bring that as well.

www.radicalmentalhealth.net

5pm – 7pm sharp
bring a laptop if you have one
bring dinner sorrta stuff if you can (theres a trader joes across the street)
bring a friend
being a story
ok well just bring you…. thats great by itself.

E_MAIL: lunacydistro@riseup.net for directions

bus lines take you right there www.511.org
also a quick bike ride from 19th street or lake merritt bart’s

see you then – BARHM

Sunday December 9th
4pm
2231 Ashby Avenue – You’ll see a wooden fence with Cell Phones on it.

As you all may have noticed, the Bay Area Radical Mental Health
Collective has been on a bit of a hiatus for the last few months. But
inspirations has struck once again, and we’re ready to regroup, and
figure out what we want to do next, and what is sustainable for all
involved. To that end the collective will be meeting on Sunday,
December 9th, from 4-6pm, in Berkeley, and we’d love to meet others in
the community who would like to work with us. If you are interested in
participating, please get in touch for the location.

In Solidarity,
Isis

You’re INVITED:
Instigating The Icarus Project: Five Year Anniversary Party!
Community Potluck, Story-Sharing, and Performances
Saturday November 24th 6pm-9pm

AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd Street, Oakland, CA
(between San Pablo and Telegraph, accessible from 19th street BART
station)

From one person’s story in the SF Bay Guardian to a blossoming
international activism & support network, The Icarus Project has
touched the lives of
thousands of people with its powerful metaphors and radical message.
Over the last five years this work has helped redefine social
conceptions of “mental illness” for a generation raised on Prozac and
“Oppositional Defiant Disorder.”

Come celebrate Mad Pride Community with a bunch of the projects
founders and behind the scenes movers and shakers that
help make the Icarus Project
happen. Come share your own story/performance about Icarus and/or
radical mental health, bring your favorite dish or thnxgiving leftovers, make a mad
pride music mix disc to listen or swap, hear tales from our recent adventures, check out new publications and
help dream up the next five years to come.

Please fwd to folks you think would want to take part. Thank you! w/
Big Mad Love on the Aspire!

http://theicarusproject.net

a short piece on Icarus aired this past wknd on NPR/National Public
Radio.

see pics & listen to it here:

http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/11/10/
mad_pride_at_virgini.html

RSVP to:

madigan@theicarusproject.net

Sharing Radical Mental Health in a World Gone Mad!

The Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective Present:
A workshop on Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
with author Pete Walker.

• Sunday July 8th
• Dinner at 6pm
• Workshop starts promptly at 7pm and ends at 10pm (please be on time)
• Location: The Long Haul
  • 3124 Shattuck Ave.
  • Berkeley Ca.
  • (2 blocks from Ashby BART, Across from La Peña Cultural Center)

• Any ?’s – Please call 510-594-2450 ask for Jamie

You will learn about Stress, Trauma, and Responses to Trauma and how to
understand and manage these experiences.

Pete’s Workshop Description:
FLASHBACK MANAGEMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF COMPLX PTSD

People extensively abused or neglected in childhood frequently suffer from
Complex PTSD and its recurring, life-spoiling emotional flashbacks.
Emotional flashbacks are intensely disturbing regressions to the
overwhelming feeling-states of childhood abandonment – typically a
bewildering mélange of fear, shame, helplessness, hopelessness and
depression.

This workshop presents an eclectic blend of CBT, Psychodynamic, Somatic,
and Relational approaches to obviate peoples’ unnecessary and
pain-exacerbating reactions to flashbacks. When flashbacks are treated on
cognitive, emotional, somatic and behavioral levels, their frequency,
intensity and duration is greatly reduced. A trauma typology is also
presented to differentially diagnose four key instinctual defensive
structures: Fight [narcissistic], Flight [obsessive-compulsive], Freeze
[dissociative], and Fawn [codependent]. The developmental arrest of
self-nurturing and self-protective functions characteristic of complex
PTSD is also addressed.

I hope you can make it!! Please Fwd to Your friends and lists.

The Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective is a grassroots group of political activists, who see an urgent need for addressing emotional and mental crises in the radical left community. Activists are particularly vulnerable to trauma at the hands of the state, which too frequently leads to individual burn-out and fragmentation of the community. We are committed to helping empower people to negotiate the sustainability of their activism, and encouraging mutual and community-based support, grounded in compassionate solidarity, rather than paternalistic intervention. Our goal is to open discussion about alternatives to the current “mental health” system, to provide resources, and to inspire dialogue about unconventional states of consciousness and psychological wellbeing. Many of us have been or are “clients” of the “mental health” system, some more willingly than others, and in that context some of us have been “diagnosed” with psychiatric labels. As a collective we hold different opinions about the validity of those diagnoses, and about the diversity of our states of minds, but we are firmly united in the belief that the system that claims to care for people labeled “mentally ill” is in need of revolutionary change.

Ongoing Weekly events:
Monday Night Support Group
at the Berkeley Free Clinic
2339 Durant Ave in Berkeley
Mondays 6:30-8:30

Join Our Mailing Lists:
radicalmentalhealth@lists.riseup.net
madpride@lists.riseup.net