
Watering Our Roots, Planting Seeds:
Exploring South Asian Lineages and Collective Futures
Saturday, July 11th 2026
12:30 pm to 5:30pm PT
In-person at EBMC (2406 Webster St., Oakland CA)
Online via Zoom
Masking is strongly encouraged. The center is wheelchair accessible and fragrance-free.
Together with Access to Zen, EBMC is excited to invite EVERYONE to attend our biggest summer event, “Watering Our Roots, Planting Seeds: Exploring South Asian Lineages and Collective Futures”! Join us for a very special afternoon dedicated to uplifting the South Asian histories of Buddhism, music, dance, and yoga. We’ll also look at what it means for a diverse community to practice with these lineages today and in the future.
Let’s come together to celebrate past and present, our personal and shared heritages, and an afternoon of joy in community! All are welcome, including families!
Featuring:
- Live Indian classical music concert with Srinivas Reddy (sitar) and Ferhan Najeeb Qureshi (tabla)
- Panel discussion about with Srinivas Reddy, Jyoti Argade, and Anjali Rao, moderated by Rahil Rojiani
- Opening ritual with Sakkshi
- Interactive altar designed by Shreya Shankar
- DJ, dancing, food, and social time!
- Coloring corner for kids (and kids at heart)
PLEASE NOTE THE ADDRESS OF EBMC’S NEW BUILDING:
2406 Webster St., Oakland, CA
[If you are using a navigation/map app, DO NOT type in East Bay Meditation Center. That will take you to our 285 17th St. location instead.]
In person attendance: Space is limited to the first 200 people who register.
Please allow time for parking! We recommend using public transit if possible.
Schedule:
12:30 pm Doors and altar interaction
1:00 pm Program begins
1:30 – 2:30 pm Panel discussion with Q&A
3- 4:00 pm Live music concert
4 – 5:30 pm DJ, dancing, food, mingling
Cost
We’re continuing to fundraise for EBMC so that we can keep our center sustained. The tickets are sliding scale and there is an option to name your own donation amount. We humbly request that folx give at the highest level they can for the benefit of the collective. If you are able, please purchase a Generosity Ticket for someone who cannot afford to buy one for themselves (you can donate any amount). Thank you!
If you wish to RECEIVE a Generosity Ticket, please email kristal@eastbaymeditation.org
Our Organizations
Learn more about Access to Zen here.
SPECIAL GUESTS!

Srinivas Reddy (musician & panelist) is a scholar, translator and musician. He studied classical sitar in the traditional guru-shishya style with Pandit Partha Chatterjee, a direct disciple of the late sitar maestro Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. Srinivas also trained in classical South Asian languages and literatures at Brown University and UC Berkeley. He has released three CDs and published five books including the latest Illuminating Worlds: An Anthology of Classical Indian Literature (Bloomsbury 2024). Srinivas is currently Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at Nayanta University in Pune, India. www.sankalpana.org

Ferhan Najeeb Qureshi (musician) is a senior disciple of the legendary tabla master Ustad Tari Khan. Prior to his ongoing training with Ustad Tari Khan, Ferhan took his initial lessons in Hindustani music theory and practice with Surinder Singh Mann. Ferhan studies the Punjab gharana of classical tabla which both of his teachers represent. In addition to performing tabla lehra (tabla solo), Ferhan Qureshi has also accompanied numerous distinguished classical artists (vocalists, instrumentalists and dancers) both in the United States and in Pakistan.

Anjali Rao (panelist) brings an intersectional and decolonial feminist lens to the study of philosophy and religion integrating storytelling, art and poetry. Deeply influenced by her yoga practice and dance training, her work emphasizes an embodied approach and explores how spirituality, power and politics intersect. Her first book, Yoga As Embodied Resistance: A Feminist Lens in Caste, Gender And Sacred Resilience in Yoga History, North Atlantic Books was named as one of the 10 most inspiring, insightful and seriously worthwhile books of 2025 by Yoga Journal and “a scholarly work and a deeply personal journey” by L.A Book Review.
She is on the faculty of multiple yoga education programs. She considers herself a first, foremost and forever a student and is currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy and Religion (Women’s Spirituality) in California Institute of Integral Studies.

Jyoti Argade (panelist) is a bharatanatyam artist, scholar, and educator whose work sits at the intersection of devotion, embodied practice, and critical inquiry into South Asian performance traditions. Born into a family of bharatanatyam teachers, she trained under her mother, Srimati Veena Argade, and later with V.P. and Shantha Dhananjayan in the Kalakshetra style. She has performed at The Asia Society, The Brooklyn Museum, The Guggenheim, The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, and the American Dance Festival, among others.
Jyoti holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and served as Chair and Associate Professor of Dance at the University of East London. As a producer, she produced Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company’s historic first tour to India, where she chaired public dialogues on diaspora, identity, and the politics of contemporary South Asian dance. Her scholarly work examines the historical, devotional, and political dimensions of South Asian dance traditions, with ongoing research into the devadasi lineage and bharatanatyam’s modern reconstruction for nationalist and global stages. She runs a bharatanatyam studio in Berkeley and leads The Actual Project, a consultancy focused on leadership and organizational development. Jyoti is also the mother to two extraordinary humans.

Rahil Rojiani (they/them) (panel moderator & planning team) is a queer, genderfluid, South Asian facilitator and healer, currently swimming the waters of capitalism as an abolitionist trauma-oriented psychiatrist. They are committed to a path of weaving together the many threads and contradictions of their life, spanning decades of community organizing, neuroscience research and medical training in ivory tower academia, contemplative and somatic healing practices, and a primary orientation toward Spirit. Rahil’s spiritual lineages include Mahamudra and Dzogchen schools of Buddhism, the esoteric tradition of Ismaili Islam in which they were raised, and Hindustani classical music through sitar under Srinivas Reddy and the Ali Akbar College of Music. They feel most alive when supporting queer and trans BIPOC communities in healing complex trauma through conscious use of psychiatric tools, liberatory somatics, shadow work, and reconnecting to Spirit for the sake of our collective liberation in apocalyptic times. When not making long lists, you might find them climbing, gardening, reading, or deliciously lost in deep conversation and cuddles with their dear ones.

Shreya Shankar (interactive altar designer) Shreya’s practice is where ancestral forms and futurisms meet across the mediums of design, mythology, worldbuilding, place-keeping, and meaning-making.
Their work engages collective memory and the radical imagination, seamlessly prototyping across mediums and forms to create functional ritual sculptural art objects, sacred architectures, altars, sets, literary and visual art.
With degrees in Environmental Policy, Urban Planning, and Architecture from UC Berkeley and CCA, Shreya Shankar draws from spiritual ecology, folklore, and foresight to explore the rich territory between ancestral cosmologies and liberatory near-futures.

A SF-based Bay Area native, Neha aka jaag strives to weave different genres into a cohesive rhythmic fabric to create an environment of liberation, joy, and connection. Raised on the genre-bending South Asian producers of the 90s, the hyphy movement of the 2000s, and the vocalists of ancient Carnatic music, her mixes keep you on your toes while taking you on a journey. She blends breaks, electro, leftfield bass, trance, acid, and a plethora of global percussive genres, and runs a party series called Maja Blast with fellow SF dj nofi, which is centered on a genre-less, set time-less experience where party goers can allow themselves to fully trust the dj and be surprised on the dance floor.

Sakkshi (she/her) (opening ritual & planning team) is a Queer immigrant rooted in Indian lineage and the living tradition of Sanathana Dharma the eternal Vedic path she has walked alongside her family for over three decades. Her practice is supported by the rhythms of ancestral ritual and the wisdom of Jyotish aka Vedic astrology, where our energetic footprint becomes a way to explore the relationship between karma and dharma, a journey she holds space for through her Jyotish practice, Cosmicdesi. In her work as the founder of a boutique residential design firm, she brings this same philosophy into the spaces people inhabit, understanding that the places we build are extensions of the lives we are creating. She is a devoted student of ancestral veneration and healing, understanding that the wounds and gifts carried in our bloodlines are portals to collective liberation. For the past four years, she has been co-facilitating weekly meditations at East Bay Meditation Center. At the heart of her work lives a single conviction: that separation is an illusion, and that through conscious creation, our remembering, and aligned action we can return to a living relationship with our metaphysical existence as our birthright.

Sarwang Parikh (he/they) (planning team) is a decolonial psychotherapist and meditation teacher based on unceded Ohlone land in the SF Bay Area. Born into a devotional Indian lineage with an immigrant, working-class background, Sarwang has been practicing and studying the Dharma for over 25 years through their ancestral traditions of Vedic yoga, Theravāda, and Indian Vajrayāna. They have completed various multi-year teaching and study programs, including East Bay Meditation Center’s (EBMC) 2-year Spiritual Teacher Leader program, and are currently in Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader cohort. Sarwang teaches with Dharma Homies, East Bay Meditation Center, Braided Wisdom and Inward Bound Mindfulness where they also serve on the board. Rooted in a liberatory approach to mindfulness and healing, Sarwang integrates deep ancestral wisdom with contemporary practices. They find joy in playing their handpan, frolicking with friends in nature, and getting free on the dance floor.


