Hello everyone,
This issue of Temple Guardian brings together Episode 7 of Roots of Change, our November 14 Garden Day, new course badges, updates to the Beginner’s Guide to Shaolin, and our work with children at an Oakland school through the Bruce Lee Foundation. We also celebrate the young women who completed Own Your Space and share the dates for our 2027 women’s self-defense course and Three Treasures workshops.
We’re sharing these updates to recognize what our community is growing together and help you choose your next step—whether that means practicing, joining a class, or caring for the land with us.
Roots of Change — Episode 7: “The Call, Part II - The Clearing”
In this chapter, answering the call becomes the work of making space. As students and neighbors offer their skills and begin clearing the land, the community’s vision starts to take shape. The teaching carries into our own practice: growth asks for attention, shared effort, and room for something new. Our Garden Days offer a way to put that spirit into action together.
“You must empty before you add.”
— Master Xuan Gui
Support Save the Living Tradition
Garden Days — Practice, Stewardship & Supporting Our Future
Join us for Community Practice & Garden Day on Saturday, November 14, 2026, from 10:00 AM to noon Pacific in Oakland.
Come together for meditation, Qigong, gardening, plant education, and community stewardship. The gathering is free and open to the public, with no previous experience required. Children and families are welcome when accompanied by an adult.
Please register through the Garden Day page. After registration, you’ll receive an email with the location information.
Register for November 14 Garden Day
Wear comfortable clothing that can get a little dirty, and bring water, comfortable shoes, and gardening gloves if you have them. Some tools and supplies will be available.
Caring for the land and protecting its future go hand in hand. Join us in tending this place of practice, learning, and community. You can also help sustain the work by contributing to or sharing Save the Living Tradition.
Support Save the Living Tradition
Course Badges — Celebrating Your Practice
Deep Root course badges are available now for select courses, with more to come! Progress often happens in small steps: returning to a stance, noticing a detail, or making time to practice again. Our new badge system makes your learning milestones visible, helping you recognize your effort and choose what to work on next.
We’re starting with Shaolin Foundations: Essential Stances for Kung Fu, Qigong & Taichi and the 8 Step Golden Section Sequence (Ground).
As you complete the required learning activities, you earn badges that celebrate milestones along the way. All your earned badges appear together on your profile, as shown above, so you can see your progress across courses. Points and rank progress offer another way to follow your journey and find encouragement to keep learning. Advancing to a new rank can require specific badges as well as enough points.
How to get started
- Open your course. Open your Deep Root library, sign in, and choose one of the participating courses.
- Learn, practice, and complete. Follow the lesson and mark it complete as directed. Some badges require a course knowledge check.
- Check your collection and choose your next step. See your earned badges on your profile, then use your course’s badge collection to find a milestone you’d like to work toward. Return to that lesson and keep practicing.
Let each milestone be an invitation to return with fresh attention. The value comes from the time you spend learning, exploring, and applying what you discover. Look for badges in more Deep Root courses as we expand the system.
Shaolin Book Updates — Returning to the Foundations
We’ve updated the Beginner’s Guide to Shaolin with expanded striking patterns, continuing our work to make the teachings easier to study and revisit between classes.
The guide covers Shaolin history, school etiquette, terms and concepts, our training system, combative geometry, a stance glossary, and basic fist anatomy and expanded striking patterns. Use it as a reference for connecting what you hear in class with what you practice.
Reading gives us questions to bring to training. Practice gives us the experience to understand the answers.
Get the Beginner’s Guide to Shaolin
Three Treasures — Live Workshops Return in 2027
Make space for a deeper practice in the new year. The Three Treasures Qigong Workshop Series with Master Sheldon returns live on the last Saturday of each month from January through March 2027.
Across three workshops, we’ll explore building internal awareness, caring for ourselves through Qigong, and the principles behind movement and practice.
- January 30 — Building Internal Awareness: Explore intention, the senses, and awareness of the body.
- February 27 — Sacred Self-Care Through Qigong: Explore self-massage, body drumming, and other practices for caring for yourself.
- March 27 — Qigong Secrets from the Temple: Look more closely at the principles within Shaolin and Tai Chi stances and movement.
All three workshops begin at 10:00 AM Pacific. Visit the series page for attendance and registration details. Come with curiosity and give yourself time to practice between sessions.
Own Your Space — Celebrating Progress and Looking Ahead
Our six-week Own Your Space workshop for young women has wrapped up, and the participants’ anonymous feedback gives us much to celebrate.
All seven respondents reported increased confidence in using grounding, applying a practiced skill to create space and move toward safety, and choosing a next step when something feels unsafe. Their own words bring that progress to life:
- “I’m able to set stronger boundaries!”
- “I’m more confident to yell or be loud”
Students also described greater attention to their surroundings and an interest in more time to explore and practice. These are encouraging reflections on their confidence and learning. Continuing regular training gives us time to revisit the foundations, answer questions, and build on that beginning. We’re proud of their effort and grateful to the families who supported them.
Women’s Self-Defense in 2027
We’re looking ahead to Own Your Space: Women’s Self-Defense in 2027, offering adult women a place to practice awareness, boundaries, voice, movement, and physical responses.
Through guided practice, we explore recognizing pressure, communicating boundaries, making decisions, and taking action to create opportunities to get away. Participants may pause, observe, modify, or skip an exercise.
The four-week adult series meets Sundays, April 11, 18, 25, and May 2, 2027, from noon to 1:30 PM Pacific. Standard tuition is $247 for all four classes—one registration covers the full series.
Register for 2027 Women’s Self-Defense
Bruce Lee Foundation — Keeping the Art Alive in an Oakland School
Since September, Deep Root has been teaching Kung Fu to young children at a local Oakland school through our connection with the Bruce Lee Foundation. Through these classes, we’re sharing our art with a new generation and helping keep Bruce Lee’s legacy alive.
The work continues the spirit of our instruction at Camp Bruce Lee in Oakland this July: bringing martial arts into young people’s lives through opportunities to learn and practice together.
From Camp Bruce Lee in Oakland this July.
What We Are Growing in Oakland
When we share this art with the children and adults in our community, help someone practice using their voice, or gather neighbors to care for the land, we are also practicing how to live together. The work asks us to pay attention, take responsibility, and recognize that what we do with our strength matters.
At Deep Root, martial arts and healing practices carry a larger purpose: helping build a city where people have places to belong, traditions they can learn from, and opportunities to contribute. A school classroom, a training floor, and a garden can each become a place where that future takes shape.
Keeping a tradition alive means putting its teachings to work in the place we call home. Here in Oakland, that means teaching the next generation, making room for people to learn at every stage of life, and caring for land where this work can continue. It means asking what our practice makes possible for someone beyond ourselves.
Every person who teaches, practices, volunteers, or gives helps carry that responsibility. Thank you for being part of it.
Our roots grow deeper through what we practice together. Our legacy will live in the people who carry that care forward.
See you in practice,
Master Sheldon
Executive Director, Deep Root Center for Spiritual Studies
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