Festival Spotlight: Bend Yoga Festival

Festival Spotlight: Bend Yoga Festival

Festival Spotlight: Bend Yoga Festival

By iana velez

PROFILES

Bend Yoga Festival - Group Photo
Looking for something to do this summer? 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 Angela Liesching, the founder and festival director of Bend Yoga

Festival in Bend, Oregon coming up June 8-11, 2023

Passes are on sale now for the 2023 event at BendYogaFestival.com with the lowest possible price for the 4-day full fest pass. Special thanks to Angela for offering an exclusive promo code for our community: BYFLOVE for 20% off!

What inspired you to create a yoga festival?

More than ever, we need opportunities to connect in real-time, face to face with others — no screens! Safe spaces that focus on authentic connection are necessary in order for healing to happen, and we believe that the need to heal is a universal condition of life. It’s our mission and our passion to create these safe spaces for authentic connection, joy, and unity through yoga.

What makes your festival unique?

Our location! Bend, Oregon, is an outdoor adventure wonderland, as well as a thriving and exciting mountain town, so our fest-goers get to paddle board, learn to mountain bike, take breath-taking hikes, explore a phenomenal food scene, and even learn to climb at world-class places like Smith Rock. The opportunities are endless, making our fest a perfect vacation or retreat experience!

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event?

I’m most excited about the possibility of Janet Stone headlining our festival in 2023, but all of our presenters are exceptional — any one of them could headline any festival in the world!

Learn more:
@bendyogafestival
bendyogafestival.com


SPECIAL OFFER:
BYFLOVE for an additional 20% off!

Yoga Love Magazine - McKenzie Riepen - bio pic
Bend Yoga Festival - Logo
Bend Yoga Festival - Mountain Biking
Spotlight Festival: Sedona Yoga Festival

Spotlight Festival: Sedona Yoga Festival

Spotlight Festival: Sedona Yoga Festival

PROFILES

FESTIVALS

AWAKE Festival - group shot on stage

Looking for something to do next Spring? 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 Heather Shereé Sanders, Producer of Sedona Yoga Festival who we are thrilled to partner with next April!

What inspired you to create a yoga festival?
I am passionate about Yoga, and after decades of creating events around community, sustainability, and the arts I found myself ready to retire from production work to practice and teach yoga. I was burnt out! Yoga was healing me and it was a very personal journey I was on. When I was invited to co-produce SYF in its inaugural year my original answer was “No”! I am so grateful to have agreed, as I discovered that production does not take away energy when it is matched with passion. Working in the yoga community is always interesting and not without its challenges. Moving through these challenges with grace and ease is supported by the knowing that each who is practicing yoga is seeking peace, practicing to the best of their ability non-harming, and believes in equanimity. So we move forward with that assumption and beautiful things happen. I learned as I began to produce SYF on my own in 2014 and ever since, that marrying passion (yoga) with purpose (gathering people to collaborate and co-create) is the magic formula of my life purpose. My dharma, if you will. 

What makes your festival unique? 
Sedona, of course! It is a powerful landscape for practice and transformation. In addition, SYF has long been known for offering a diverse range of deep-dive classes and workshops. We offer CEUs, we have so many presenters that no one gets to be the “rock Star” yogi. Over the years we have cultivated an audience of highly educated attendees, two-thirds of which are yoga professionals. So, it is a great place for conversation about the industry itself, and also a great place to discover your unique yoga as a practitioner, with such a wide array of offerings. 

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event? 
We haven’t announced any of the presenters yet this year but one thing we are very excited about is the expansion of our team to include a programming team. The proposals that come in through SYF’s application process are now being reviewed by a team of yoga professionals from a diverse range of backgrounds and styles. We pride ourselves in finding amazing teachers that are not always drawn to the festival circuit and curating a program unlike any other, where each attendee may choose their own adventure from the numerous offerings available on the schedule. We always have a huge roster of teachers so that none is deemed more important than the other. It is all the parts that make up the whole, as is acknowledged in this year’s theme: Emerge to Imagine. Our aim with the offerings this year is to support those who show up with the tools to increase awareness of how each unique way of being, each independent action, intention, and thought is responsible to the whole, is interdependent in that we each affect the outcome for humanity. As we all emerge from what has proven to be a time of deep introspection – shadow work, even – and increased self-awareness, we are anticipating that “self” care begins to take the shape of community care.


SOCIAL LINKS
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Linkedin

TICKETS
sedonayogafestival.com/purchase-tickets/

Frances Hunt chats with Reggie Hubbard from the SYF programming team.
Learn more and get your tickets: www.sedonayogafestival.com

Festival Spotlight: Vegandale Fest

Festival Spotlight: Vegandale Fest

Festival Spotlight: Vegandale Fest

By iana velez

PROFILES

YogaLove Magazine - Vegandale Festival
Vegandale


Looking for something to do this Sept? We are thrilled 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 Jenna Owen, from Vegandale  festival taking place Sept 24th in NYC at Randall’s Island Park.

Your name and role in the festival
Jenna Owen, and I am the Marketing and Communications Director for Vegandale.

What inspired you to create a festival?
Vegandale was founded and is led by steadfast abolitionist vegan, Hellenic Vincent de Paul, who has significant live event experience. Hellenic has hosted performers and celebrities such as DJ Khaled, LeBron James, and countless others. Hellenic began attending various vegan events, noticing they were all the same, with a farmer’s market vibe and rooted in environmentalism and/or plant-based eating. The messaging used was never about the animals, and the events were, quite frankly, boring. He saw this as an opportunity to introduce a vegan experience that breaks vegan stereotypes with a focus on ethical based messaging in an epic party environment.

What makes your festival unique?
What makes Vegandale unique is its contrasting vibe to veg fests and food festivals. It has been described as ‘Coachella meets SXSW’ with a defiant twist, due to our unapologetic messaging and major party vibe.

What offering/presenter or sponsor are you most excited about for this year’s event?
Vegandale New York is our flagship event that we look forward to every year. We are expecting over 200 vendors with nearly 50 coming from as far as the Philippines, which makes it a very unique opportunity for people to try new and innovative products they may not otherwise. This year we introduced over 40 new art installations that have been extremely popular amongst attendees for photo opps. We actually have a contest running right now where people who take a photo with our artwork and use #vegandale are automatically entered to win a free trip to our LA event in October.

Learn more:
Instagram: @vegandale
Tickets: vegandalefest.com/newyork/tickets

YogaLove Magazine - Vegandale Festival
AWAKE Festival - Ananda Dancing
YogaLove Magazine - Vegandale Festival - Vegan Food
Festival Spotlight: Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival

Festival Spotlight: Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival

Festival Spotlight: Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival

By iana velez

PROFILES

Yoga Love Magazine - McKenzie Riepen - bio pic

Looking for something to do this Fall? 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 Sonia, one of the partners of Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival taking place  in Lakota’s Farm in Cambridge, NY (just outside of Saratoga Springs) coming up on Oct 1, 2022.

Your name and role in the festival

My name is Sonia Shultis and I am joined by partners Kristen Zorda and Grace Bishop to bring the Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival back from a 2 years of cancellations due to state and national COVID-19 related mandates as well as an unfortunate situation with our 2021 venue that forced us to cancel. We three are owners and producers of the festival. Kristen produces and manages the festival programming, from presenter/music artist booking, workshop/concert scheduling, and venue, equipment and supplies logistics. Grace works on systems development, budgeting, marketing, and is our resident tech/software efficionato. I work on acquisitions for the venue, equipment, supplies, contractors, vendors, volunteers, point of sale and customer service. We all work together to fill in gaps where support is needed. 

What inspired you to create a yoga festival?

The Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival was created 10 years ago by founders Bernie and Katherine Walters. The accessibility to world renowned teachers and music artists, as well as access to the regionally and locally loved teachers, was a true blessing. It had such a huge impact on my life and my practice that I knew I had to be more involved. Luckily, Bernie and Katherine lived in the next town over, so I was able to stay in touch with them and offer my services. In early 2019 Bernie offered me a partnership in the festival and without hesitation I said yes. We co-produced the 2019 festival and it was the most challenging, rewarding, exhausting, fulfilling experience! Kristen was already familiar with the festival. In fact she attended a few years and her yoga studio was a sponsor for a couple years. My studio, now owned by another lovely yoga teacher, was a sponsor for one year. When I became a partner, I brought on Grace as a presenter in Nonviolent Communication. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Bernie and Katherine took it as a sign to slow things down and retire from producing, and they were gracious enough to pass the torch to me. Once I became full owner I knew I had to bring Kristen and Grace on board with me as they both shared a core value of nonviolence to the self, others, and the planet as well as the activism to end practices that cause violence. They both agreed to a partnership and the rest, as they say, is history!

What makes your festival unique?

Our festival was the largest indoor festival in the Northeast. We average about 700 attendees with 50 presenters/music artists and over 100 workshops/concerts over a 3 day weekend.  We have a vendor village of 40 carefully selected small businesses where Ahimsa is present through their business practice and/or services and goods. Our workshops are small and intimate, so rather than being one in a sea of 500+ people, you can be within an arm’s distance to a major headliner and even receive hands-on assists! And we believe it is because of the intimate atmosphere we create that our festival attendees show up. To be honest, though, what makes our festival unique ARE the attendees. It is their willingness to be open, raw, honest, to show up, to commune, to bare, to let go, to embrace, to challenge, to take in, to discover, to create, to love and to be loved that makes our festival so special. The common sentiment amongst our attendees is how rejuvenated and renewed they are after the festival. It’s because of reviews like that we are motivated to continue producing the Ahimsa festival.

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event?

We are thrilled with all of our presenters who are excited to present at this year’s festival! Our headliner this year is WAH!  We couldn’t be more excited about the yoga workshop and headlining concert she will put on October 1. Her music is widely known in the kirtan and yoga world and if anyone’s ever been in a yoga studio, they’ve likely heard her music. It’s a blessing and pleasure to bring her to the Northeast so she can share her gifts and music with all of us!  The festival also features Gopi Kinnicutt, Larissa Hall Carlson, Adam Bauer, Jennilee Toner, Keli Lalita, Ambika, Roberto Lim, Meg Jala, and more!  It is a very big line up for a one day festival with yoga, meditation, philosophy, kirtan, workshops with live music, DJ silent disco party, vendor village, Lakota’s Farm tour, giveaways, closing bonfire. What we’re most excited for is gathering together again. We can’t wait to see all the beautiful souls that make up the Ahimsa community. And we are honored to be a part of the magic that happens when it all comes together.

Learn more: 

Ahimsa Yoga & Music Festival
October 1, 2022

w: ahimsayogafestival.com
e: info@ahimsayogafestival.com
IG: @ahimsayogamusic

Headliner: WAH!

Also featuring: Gopi Kinnicutt, Larissa Hall Carlson, Adam Bauer, Jennilee Toner, Keli Lalita, Ambika, Roberto Lim, Meg Jala, Tomek Regulski, Beth Beaton Mausert, Kelsie Rockefeller, Jen Gerber, and we’re confirming more presenters!

Festival Spotlight: AWAKE Festival

Festival Spotlight: AWAKE Festival

Festival Spotlight: AWAKE Festival

By iana velez

PROFILES

FESTIVALS

AWAKE Festival - group shot on stage
Sept 16th
2932 Evergreen Parkway,
Evergreen, CO 80439


Your name and role in the festival
Erik Vienneau, AWAKE Festival Founder

What inspired you to create a festival?

Every morning people get up, they just want to be happy and feel good inside and AWAKE is all about helping them find the teachers, practices and paths to this true, peaceful wellness.”

What makes your festival unique?

As the western-medical system implodes on itself the wellness world is picking up the pieces. They say, “the meek shall inherit the earth.” I looked up meek and it doesn’t mean weak – it means humble. We, humble, warriors of holistic health are leading the shift to medicine/practices that heal. Out with “sick care,” and IN with true “health care.” AWAKE is dedicated to exposing folks to the most beloved teachers and businesses in the wellness field so they can heal and thrive.

What offering/presenter or class are you most excited about for this year’s event?

Tough question! With 50+ talks/workshops it’s hard to choose. I’ll have to say the Ecstatic Dance we offer on Saturday night after the kirtan. We have two DJs – Solomoon and SunDragon led by Ahva Lenay of Rhythm Sanctuary out of Denver. What’s better than a day of practice ending in completely free and in love with your inner Self and commUNITY? 


awakeexperience.com/awake-festival
eventbrite.com/e/awake-festival
https://www.facebook.com/AwakeExperience
https://www.instagram.com/awakeexperience/
youtube.com/channel/UCf4u-VXY7_dCO7LJ16MUC5w>

AWAKE Festival - Cacoa Ceremony
AWAKE Festival LOGO
AWAKE Festival - Ananda Dancing