EMERGING TO IMAGINE A MORE INCLUSIVE YOGA COMMUNITY: CHANGING THE FACE OF FESTIVALS

EMERGING TO IMAGINE A MORE INCLUSIVE YOGA COMMUNITY: CHANGING THE FACE OF FESTIVALS

EMERGING TO IMAGINE A MORE INCLUSIVE YOGA COMMUNITY:
CHANGING THE FACE OF FESTIVALS

by Lisette Cheresson

PROFILES

FESTIVALS

Changing the Face of Festivals
There is no question that yoga in the west has an appropriation and diversity problem. Part of this is certainly the adulteration of the practice as merely physical — a result, perhaps, of the co-opting of yoga by white and wealthy practitioners during the 1990s and 2000s as its popularity exploded in the U.S. This was codified by sexualized imagery and contortionist asana, resulting in a public perception of yoga that was as far from its origin as Patanjali is from expensive leggings.

In recent years, there have been efforts to return yoga to its roots, led by South Asian and BIPOC community leaders and their white allies. Focusing on diversity and inclusion — and the sacred intent of the tradition — is nothing new for Heather Sanders, producer of the Sedona Yoga Festival (SYF). Over the past 10 years, SYF has continually provided a platform to elevate our collective consciousness, by holding space and extending invitations to presenters from all corners of the yoga world. This year, however, Sanders is taking this dedication one step further with the creation of a programming team, made up of luminaries: Reggie Hubbard, Arundhati Baitmangalkar, Danni Pomplun, Indy Rishi Singh, Johanna Beekman, and Sanders. Here’s what they have to say about their roles, and the importance of continuing to move the community forward with their work:

Danni-Pomplun

Danni Pomplun
Founder of HaumSF, SYF Programming Team Lead, yoga educator, mentor, mental health advocate
@dannipomplun

The world only moves forward when we do it together, and I think it’s important to seek out those who don’t normally have the opportunity to have their voices elevated. As a queer Mexican-American, my voice adds to the mix to help create more diversity and inclusivity.

Reggie-Hubbard

Reggie Hubbard
Founder of Active Peace Yoga
@activepeaceyoga

I truly believe that yoga is not a practice of comfort, but a practice that allows us to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Prior to the pandemic, the yoga industry and community seemed to be insular; a recycling of familiar names that didn’t embrace the magic of diversity. As part of the SYF 2022 team, I strove to make the lineup diverse in all manner of speaking, and this year I hope to empower new voices, support established voices, and allow all participants to be transformed by the alchemy of new experiences. These are liminal times, rife with opportunity to set new norms and make the yoga community truly representative of all practitioners.

If a group of individuals come together, aligned with pure intention rooted in the heart and from a place of service, the sum of our somethings create a tapestry of connection tempered by our collective wisdom. Our work will expose SYF guests to different points of view, supported by a loving community to assist the evolution of consciousness in these liminal times.

Indy-Rishi-Singh
Indy Rishi Singh, Wellbeing Engineer
Co-Founder of Cosmic Labyrinth, well-being engineer
@tickle_singh

Leadership is best demonstrated by those who are willing to put others first. Festival spaces are a terrific example of what human collaborative intention can produce. A lot of people have not experienced this because of a socioeconomic system that does not promote or support intentional spaces, unless they are excessively commercialized. A festival space like SYF can inspire a new presenter and empower them to facilitate healing and regenerative spaces where they live, or with communities that are facing difficult challenges. It can also inspire them to lean-in to the hope that is present when we collaborate to build something meaningful and healing for others.

Diversity allows us to thrive because we bring together different perspectives of health, happiness, and holiness. The fact that the people curating this festival are diverse speaks volumes to what will be produced. How often do we see this kind of diversity in the development of anything, let alone in the wellness space? This event may become a guiding post for other festivals to begin with a diverse curation team, instead of performance-diversity.

I’m hoping for an emergent experience of yoga that embodies the values, virtues and ethics of it. I hope the guests and the presenters/performers/facilitators learn new ways to bring those virtues and ethics to their respective communities once they leave the festival. I’m hoping that our collective intelligence supports an emergent movement to channel yoga for compassionate civic engagement that supports vulnerable communities throughout the country.

Lauren-Mitchell
Arundhati Baitmangalkar
Yoga educator, studio owner, host of “Let’s Talk Yoga” podcast
@arundhati_baitmangalkar

I accepted the invitation to be a part of this team because I want Indian immigrant yoga teachers like me to be a part of such conversations. It’s long overdue. Heather was wonderfully transparent about her intentions, values, and direction for SYF. For far too long, yoga has not been inclusive or diverse. Many times very well-qualified people are overlooked because of how they look or sound. Yoga has been templated to look a certain way here in the U.S., but there is incredible talent out there who aren’t necessarily social media savvy or “trendy,” and instead keep their focus on the timeless wisdom of yoga. My keen area of interest is to seek out more authentic Indian origin yoga teachers to become presenters.

This work helps to keep the yoga authentic. So much of yoga gets mixed with everything else — due to my cultural upbringing, having been born and raised in India, what I view is and isn’t yoga is very black and white. It’s important that our diverse voices are at the table so that in turn, a diverse audience feels represented, seen, and heard.

Johanna Beekman
Johanna Beekman
Internationally renowned singer, songwriter and kirtan artist
@johannabeekman

As a festival producer, performer, and long-time circuit-touring musician, I’ve seen a lot of productions and can understand the participant’s experience from all sides. When curating a festival, it’s important to be fair and impartial. Yoga itself is so diverse — it’s important to include a panel of practitioners to curate a balanced group of presenters. Having a strong mix of seasoned professional teachers and enthusiastic creatives who are new to the scene creates a full experience for the participants, along with a diverse array of classes.

Together, we can model a new culture of diversity, inclusivity, and the most potent, powerful practices. SYF, as it’s existed for 10 years, has always woven these values into the experience. This is a truly unique and needed perspective on yoga and spiritual life, and I’m proud to be a part of the team continuing the work.

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SWFL WELLNESS FAIR

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SWFL WELLNESS FAIR

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SWFL WELLNESS FAIR

April 23, 2023
FREE
Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers, FLA

PROFILES

FESTIVALS

The Yoga EXPO - Photos from the Event
Looking for something to do this April? We are thrilled yoga festivals are back and can’t wait to check out all the amazing events taking place around the world. This week we had a chance to connect with Alex C Wilson founder and creator of  SWFL Wellness Fair in Florida who we are thrilled to partner with! You will be able to get complimentary copies of our magazine at this FREE festival!

What inspired you to create a festival? 
Following the isolation everyone felt during the onset of the pandemic, I myself felt the need to reconnect with my community. I also felt like wellness was something that more people wanted to make a priority. So I decided to organize a wellness fair that would make local wellness options more accessible to the community, while at the same time, bringing people together to connect, practice yoga, and support local businesses.

The Yoga EXPO - Photos from the Event

What makes your festival unique?
This is an event that brings a multitude of wellness practices, services, products and professionals together in one place, so people can explore what they’re interested in or curious about in person, without searching through all the information that we’re inundated online. We look at wellness from a big picture standpoint that incorporates the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of our lives. We do not discriminate, because we want people to find the services, products and professionals that feel right for their unique interests and needs. Whether that’s acupuncture, mental health counseling, cryotherapy, yoga, traditional medicine, tarot readings, or anything in between!

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event?
This year we will have a sound healing demonstration, and I’m really excited to give people the opportunity to experience a brief demonstration of what vibrational healing can feel like.


Learn More:

@swflwellnessfair
www.swflwellnessfair.com
Tickets available on eventbrite

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SANGHA FEST

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SANGHA FEST

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SANGHA FEST

July 13-16, 2023
New Mexico

PROFILES

FESTIVALS

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: SANGHA FEST

Exclusive discount code for our community: yogalovemag
For 5% off full weekend pass 

Looking for something to do this July? We are thrilled yoga festivals are back and can’t wait to check out all the amazing events taking place around the world. This week we had a chance to connect with Vibes, producer of the Sangha Fest in New Mexico who we are thrilled to partner with! You will be able to pick up complimentary copies of our magazine at this festival! 

What inspired you to create a festival? 
I felt inspired to create this festival last year at the prompting of Robert Holmes, Tico Time’s owner and a good friend of mine, who was seeking to have a more conscious, family friendly, and wellness oriented festival at his event venue. This venue hosts many festivals from Bluegrass to Reggae to EDM, and while many of the festivals offer an atmosphere of community as well as various workshops and intentional classes, none have these elements as their focus.

Sangha means “to bring together,” or more generally, it’s the word for “Community” in both Pali (the original language of Gautama the Buddha) and Sanskrit. The motivation is just this: to come together as a spiritual community for the purpose of prayer, practice and celebration. In my own journey through anger, criminality and addiction in my earlier years, the teachings of the Buddha, the practice and philosophy of yoga and meditation, and the support of a like-minded community were crucial to my recovery and self-development. Early on, long before I got sober, I attended a small yoga festival in New Jersey (where I grew up), called Evolve Fest. At the time I had zero spiritual awareness and I was by far the drunkest individual present, however, it was my first exposure to a gathering of its kind and the seeds were planted that would eventually grow to play a large role in the cultivation of the person that I truly wanted to be.

Today, I am nearly 8 years sober and the practices of awareness and compassion and service are an integral part of my recovery. I believe that gatherings that are centered in humility, prayer, community development, and individual/social wellness can be of great benefit to those who attend, and those benefits can ripple out to many, many more.

What makes your festival unique?
This Festival is unique for many reasons. The first thing that comes to my mind is the venue itself. Tico Time is an RV and camping Park which straddles the Animus River. “Tico Time” refers to the luxurious environment found in Costa Rica and the land has been developed to replicate this atmosphere. It is has multiple ponds with soft sand beaches, tubes and paddle-boards to float on, water slides, zip-lines, a magical forest of tall Cotton Wood trees, a beautiful main-stage decorated in bamboo, with an incredible sound system, and the sacred river Animus flowing right down the center of it all.

Another unique aspect of the festival is that all the proceeds will be going to our venues non-profit, Pura Vida for Good. The mission of this non-profit is to create a Recovery Home in the area to support addicts and alcoholics who need affordable housing and care after primary treatment. The plan is to have a space to house 15-25 residents, complete with group therapy, yoga classes, meditation, job placement support, continued education support, and individual recovery coaching. Also in the plans, is to begin a small farm where the residents can work to pay rent and learn how to grow food. It is a noble vision and we are happy to be contributing to it.

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event?
Last year we had such an incredible turn out of musical artists, yoga teachers and workshop facilitators including Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band out of New Orleans, Govindas and Radha, DJ Drez and Marti Nikko, international Kundalini yoga teacher, Kia Miller, RR Shakiti out of LA, and Monica Mesa Dasi, plus many many more.

This year we are very excited to have Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band back to headline Saturday night, with female-duo and Colorado band LVDY to open for them. Dianne Bondy, Author of “Yoga for ALL” an international yoga teacher and social justice activist will be there! That is very exciting. Gwen Rebbek from NY/NJ, founder of Yoga4Sobriety will be out to teach about yoga, recovery, and the Chakra System.

We have some other people we are excited about that have yet to confirm…so stay tuned for that!


Learn More:

@sanghafestticotime
FB: Sangha Fest
www.sanghafest.org
www.puravidaforgood.org

LOVE PROFILE: IN BLOOM YOGA

LOVE PROFILE: IN BLOOM YOGA

LOVE PROFILE: IN BLOOM YOGA

Edited by Tashya Knight

PROFILES

LOVE PROFILE: Red Tail Power Yoga

We are so excited to chat with Martha Kodsy, the owner of In Bloom Yoga in New Hartford, NY! You can catch the full interview via our YouTube link recorded in the fall of 2022, and here is an excerpt of our fun IG live chat we had about what it is like owning a yoga studio, surviving the pandemic, and great things coming up in 2023!

Iana
We are chatting today with our new sponsor, new partner, In Bloom Yoga. Martha, I know that you took over ownership of the space. How long have you been there, a little over five years?

Martha
I took over in May of 2017 and I moved here in December of 2017. Immediately when I took over ownership, I said I didn’t want a one room studio and I wanted to be able to offer aerial and all different things. And now when we move again, I’m going to add two hot yoga, I’m getting radiant floors installed, and I’m going to do the ceiling panels. So I want to do the two hot yoga with the infrared lighting and the infrared heat. I like to upgrade every time I do something like that.

Iana
I love hearing you’ve been open since before the pandemic, and you survived the pandemic and you’re thriving.

Martha
We are not where we were prior to the pandemic, but we’re getting back to where we were. I would say we’re about three fourths of the way to where we were. It’s a slow but steady climb. We’ve actually seen an uptick since I would say August 2022, September, our numbers have really started climbing again. I think since September, we’ve increased our attendance steadily.

Iana
And has it been people returning back that had maybe left for a while, or is it new people that have moved in?

Martha
We are trying to capitalize on our new yogi. We added a beginner’s class. We added more classes this fall to make sure that we had the availability for people. I think that’s helped because you have to be able to have availability to your clients. People’s lives are crazy, and so you have to have something that fits their schedule, if possible.

Iana
I feel like things are more crazy now than before. The pandemic life still feels unsettled to me. Do you feel the same way?

“My son has autism, so it’s a near and dear subject, and that’s actually how I originally got into yoga, because of him.”

Martha
I agree. There’s kind of no rhyme or reason. The one thing that we also did was we got on board with an autism center. My son has autism, so it’s a near and dear subject, and that’s actually how I originally got into yoga, because of him. He in the beginning really thrived with it, really liked it. We had private lessons but now he’s not as much into it. He kind of went off that path and I still stuck with it for special needs. So we actually did a partnership with a place called the Government Center in Utica, New York. And they did inclusivity with different community places with art, with a gym and also with us as a yoga studio. We were grant funded for this class, different classes to have inclusivity. And so we started one of the classes that really stuck, it’s what we call “spirit in the spectrum.” And right now we’re still running it free because we had so much in the grant. People had special training, they paid for the instructors and we did some fundraising classes. So we were able to keep it running for no charge for the community. 

Some of the kids are like, “I want to do swing yoga.” We also offer the community an aerial inclusive class. So on Tuesday nights it’s free for them as well. They come and know that we’re going to have clients that may have some special needs and just to know that’s a part of our community and we will never give that up. We provide support for the people. We have a couple of instructors floating around the room to help the clients if they need help with poses, if they just want to take a child’s pose throughout the class, or if they want to be in savasana the whole time. We provide weighted blankets for them and weighted squishy balls. 

Iana
That’s so beautiful, and I love it because in your logo you’re saying yoga for everybody. And it’s really that! I think for a lot of people, the financial aspect can be hindered so when you offer free and then offer all these additional tools that’s such a beautiful thing. Tell me, how has your personal practice changed since you became an owner?

Martha
We were doing a lot of instagram lives for free for the community during the pandemic because we thought that it was important to keep yoga going, to keep having the community in touch. So we did that. As far as my practice, unfortunately, with the day to day life, it’s not as much as it should be. I love yin, so I have a tendency to take a lot of that. Believe it or not, I’m not an aerial person. I don’t like to hang upside down.

I do a lot of meditation, actually. We’re trying to work together with a licensed clinical social worker with one of our yoga instructors and we want to do a meditation class, but with biofeedback because there’s this tool out there called the Muse. So we want to teach people how to really do meditation to really get into that. So we’re working towards the first quarter of the year to really move forward with that class so people could really use it all the time.

Iana
So, before you owned the studio, what did you do?

Martha
I was a hospital administrator, I worked in risk management, which was a tough job. I had administrative responsibilities over different departments. Then impulsively one day I decided I’m done and I was going to be a housewife. I’m going to do things I always wanted to do before, so I wanted to do yoga. I went and met Terra Meenan, and she actually did some private lessons with me. Then of course, I brought my son. It seems like a whole different life, but it also seems like it was yesterday. 

Iana

Even though you own a studio and it’s beautiful and it’s healing, you still need that practical business side.

Martha

I tried having managers but nobody cares about your business like you do. I’m focused on the business so we can sustain it for the community because it’s become a staple in the New Hartford community.They ranked us the number one yoga studio in New Hartford, and we were also ranked for the last two years in a row by our local newspaper as the best. I think it’s because we do yoga for everybody, everybody wants something different, and we try to provide that for them.

Iana

I love that you’re sharing this with your community and supporting your community. Because if COVID and the pandemic really shone a light on anything it’s how much we need community. 

Martha

And that’s one thing that my clients have always had. I love to hear them before class on a Saturday morning, they talk amongst themselves and have developed relationships outside the community walls of the yoga studio, which is awesome. At the end of April, we’re going to the Sedona Yoga Festival. Everyone loves retreats, but we all want to go to the Sedona Festival. We’re renting a house outside of Sedona and we’re going. So far it’s only been the instructors that are jumping on board and then in January, we’ll open it up to the community.

Iana

Thank you for chatting and thank you for supporting us and our publication. This is the reason we are able to do this for our community. It’s because of partners like you. So we appreciate that so much. And I love the work that you’re doing and everything that you’re sharing with your community.

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: WELLFEST

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: WELLFEST

SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL: WELLFEST

May 6, 2023
Atlantic Beach, FLA
FREE

FESTIVALS

Spotlight Festival: WellFest

Looking for something to do this May? We are thrilled yoga festivals are back and can’t wait to check out all the amazing events taking place around the world. This week we had a chance to connect with Tracy Marko, Director of WellFest in Florida who we are thrilled to partner with! You will be able to get complimentary copies of our magazine at this FREE festival! 

What inspired you to create a festival? 
WellFest was created to fill a need for education and awareness in our community. We knew people wanted to find ways to improve their health, but sometimes the most complicated part is figuring out where to start. We believed that building an event to connect our beach community with local health resources that provide physical, nutritional, fitness, and mental health services would provide the needed education and support. We believe that the resources needed to support an individual’s health journey are right here in our backyard and we just need to build that connection.

What makes your festival unique?
We function as a non-profit in partnership with the City of Atlantic Beach. We are truly built on connecting local and discovering health. Outside of our festival we offer multiple pop-up events in partnership with local businesses, volunteer at the local elementary school supporting morning health and fitness, and we started our first community garden. WellFest is more than just a festival, we are supporting a healthier, more active community.

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event?
We have the most amazing stage line up this year. Not only are we proud to have Here Tomorrow as our Title Sponsor, but our stage class lineup features MBody Yoga, All Together Wellness, Kokoro Health and Fitness, and Nova Dance and Wellness Academy. Also, back for the second year we have a bigger than ever Coffee Crawl, featuring six local vendors serving coffee samples along a 1-mile blocked course so attendees can sip and stroll their way to the park and spend the day connecting with their community.


Learn More:

@DiscoverWellFest on FB and IG

Spotlight Festival: WellFest
Spotlight Festival: WellFest