We just finished up the Steamboat Movement Festival yesterday. We laughed, we cried, we did backbends. This is not a review, but instead, this post will explain why a yoga festival is a perfect way to understand the deeper aspects of yoga.
Yoga festivals are a big deal right now.
Because yoga makes you feel good.
However, the idea of a full day (or days) of yoga sounds like a bit too much for most folks. I’m writing this to tell you that if you are a yoga skeptic, signing up for even a single day of a yoga fest might be the best way to figure out if it’s for you or not.
Yoga is not a “proper” religion, so don’t worry about the chanting
One of the major things that repels people– especially guys– from yoga is the chanting and the spirituality element.
I don’t blame you. It can be a little much sometimes, and I almost always find myself cringing when the hyper-enthusiastic musicians at yoga fests start warbling devotional chants in Sanskrit.
Sure, it’s meaningful to some folks, but it can also be an eye-rolling opportunity for a skeptic to say “see?! It’s weird!”.
Well, yoga can be a little weird, but that’s why a yoga festival is such a good opportunity to understand that there is a lot more to yoga than chanting and patchouli.
Take the Steamboat Movement Festival that just wrapped up. Over the course of the weekend, there were classes about everything from breathing, to meditation to positive self-talk, to understanding the autonomic nervous system.
There were also plenty of chances to move around and do some “yoga”.
Sure, there was some chanting, etc. but there were also lots of very rational and intelligent people talking about things that are meaningful to literally every human being.
Like how to breathe properly.
Or how to calm down in stressful situations.
Or how to look to your children for inspiration and meaningful relationships in your life.
Yoga has elements that can turn some people off, and yes that devotional band sounds eerily similar to a Christian worship band sometimes. I like my yoga like I like my religion: secular and not pushy.
A yoga festival is a great way to expose yourself to both sides of the coin and to broaden your horizons.
A Yoga Fest is a truly endearing (and tribal) shared human experience
I’m not so sure I can say this about the super-mega fests, because just like any other gigantic event you’re bound to lose a little humanity in the long lines and humongous classes.
A small, community-oriented festival like the one we had this weekend is just the opposite though. It’s an opportunity to connect with people in a deeply meaningful way.
Lauren and I made some friends, we networked and we touched and embraced a lot of total strangers. These events deliberately take you out of your comfort zone in a lot of different ways. Here’s one:
At the conclusion of one particularly excellent class that involved movement, breathing exercises, and conscious relaxation, the teacher asked us to look into the eyes of the person next to us. With three different people. For about a minute each.
This is an incredibly intense and meaningful experience.
Humans in America, in general, are not only bad at eye contact, but to hold the gaze of a total stranger is enough to make your skin crawl.
But it is truly beautiful to just look into someone else’s eyes, to truly see their experience, and to know that you’re in this together.
I would not have had this opportunity had I not been there, and it totally altered my state of mind.
It exposes you to many new perspectives on movement and life
So you don’t like the chanting and stuff. Okay, well just walk over to the next session where you can do an Asana (yoga movement) practice. Maybe it will make you feel a little more open-minded or calm to go experience something you’re less comfortable with.
That is the bread and butter for why a yoga festival is so amazing and crucial to this community. Variety.
For example, were you to only do five Asana classes on a given day, you would be exposed to five different teachers giving you five perspectives on the nuance and detail for a particular pose. By the law of averages, you would be more efficient at understanding why certain things work for you and others don’t.
You would get stronger mentally and physically simply by being there.
Furthermore, there are always a ton of opportunities to try something new, check out a new perspective, and open your mind a little bit.
If you didn’t even take the classes and simply walked around talking to people, you would be amazed at the variety of different humans who are there, and the myriad reasons that they have come to embrace yogic practices.
You could find inspiration to improve your practice based on that alone.
I don’t want to ramble too much about this stuff, but I can confidently say that every person I walk past on a given today could benefit from a small, intimate yoga festival. I am grateful to have had this experience, and I’m looking forward to my next one already.
Maybe I’ll see you there 🙂
PS: limited tix are already on sale for the Winter Movement Festival. You can sign up here.
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