by Lara Land | Apr 10, 2017 | COMMUNITY, EVENTS, LARA LAND, Yoga
Too expensive. That was the main reason to keep me from going to yoga festivals for a long time. I thought, how many classes can one possibly take a day and how can it ever be worth it, spending so much money? I got the chance to answer my questions and review my doubts when I got invited to Yoga Conference Germany in Cologne. The experience reached far beyond the practice of yoga asanas. In those two days I laughed until I cried and I cried until I laughed again. I hugged strangers and became close friends with people I had known from yoga classes for a while but never really connected with. I sweat a whole ocean, I sang, I danced and slept like a baby – and overall I felt inspired, happy and in love with my life.
Yoga festivals are a special and sometimes life changing experience. I cannot wait to check out the numerous yoga festivals of North America: In summertime there is a yoga festival happening almost every weekend in the United States and Canada. These events can be pricey, yes. But they don’t have to be: Almost every festival offers selected classes and side-events for free. Most of them have spots open for volunteers that donate their time to support the festival team in exchange for attending classes for free. So, money considerations shouldn’t necessarily stand in the way.
If you are still not sure about whether a day-long yoga celebration is the right jam for you, here my top 5 reasons to at least give it a try.
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Relax and Re-new: A yoga festival is an active mini-retreat
If a yoga class can be your mini-break from everyday routines of moving (or mostly not moving) and thinking (or mostly worrying), a yoga festival can be a mini-retreat and your go-to when you need quality-time for and with yourself. You might need time to unwind and relax or space to be inspired and feel alive: Yoga festivals give you both and so much more.
Whether the event is happening in a far away place or right in front of the door: As soon as your feet touch the festival grounds you are entering a completely different world. Everything here is set up to make you feel awesome! Far away from your daily routines and to-do-list(s) all you need is to exhale stress and enjoy the offerings of the program to relax and energize. Yogis are known to be a mostly positive, warm and open community wired to connection, so don’t worry to come along on your own or bring a friend if you can.
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Summer 2017: Yoga Festivals in the USA
You need a time-out from daily routine and a chance to re-boot your system? You are craving new impulses for your yoga practice and inspiration for your life? You would love to meet a bunch of inspiring people and make new friends? Don’t waste a lifetime: Grab your mat and hop on an intense ride of yoga, meditation and music.
Shakti Fest
May, 12-14, 2017 in Joshua Tree, CA
SoulFest NYC
May 20, 2017 in Harlem, NY
Downtown Yoga Festival
May 20-21, 2017 in Salt Lake City, UT
Wanderlust
June 9-11, 2017 in Snowshoe, WV
June 22-25, 2017 in Bondville, VT
Nantucket Yoga Festival
July 7-9, 2017 in Nantucket, MA
Telluride Yoga Festival
July 20-23, 2017 in Telluride, CO
Beloved Festival
August 11-14, 2017 in Tidewater, OR
Floyd Yoga Jam
August 31 – September 3, 2017 in Floyd, VA
Bhakti Fest
September 7-11, 2017 in Joshua Tree, CA
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Learn from masters: Renowned yoga teachers share their personal practices
Yoga festivals usually invite the most renowned teachers from all over the world that have dedicated their lives to yoga. Some of them teach traditional Yoga styles like David Williams who was one of the first Western students of Ashtanga founder Pattahbi Jois in Mysore, India. Some teachers created their own yoga style like Dana Trixie Flynn and Jasmine Tarkeshi (Lotus Flow), Bryan Kest (Power Yoga), David Life and Sharon Gannon (Jivamukti Yoga). Some are known for their physical mastery of yoga poses like the Canadian yoga Goddess Meghan Currey. Others have specialized in the philosophy and mythology of yoga like Alanna Kaivalya.
Where else do we have the opportunity to meet and practice with so many different expert yogis on one day? It is extremely inspiring and motivating to listen to and learn from passionate teachers who live what they are teaching and teach what they are living.
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Be inspired, stay inspired: Time to explore and discover new sides of YOU
Most of us in everyday life stick to our one or two favourite teachers and beloved routines without hardly ever trying something new. Yoga festivals are a great opportunity to explore new territory: Most yoga festivals offer a wide range of yoga styles and related topics. The die-hard Power Vinyasa Yogi might discover the bliss of Yin Yoga. The serious Ashtangi may fall in love with the playful Acro Yoga. One might explore mindful and fun “sister” disciplines like aerial yoga, thai yoga massage, dance, hula hoop or parcour. The other might find the time and peace to dig into meditation and breathing techniques.
As much as we need certain routines to save energy, the constant drive on auto-pilot, that many of us so easily get trapped into, can eventually make us feel chronically tired or even depressed. A week-end in the vast and colourful yoga-world is opening the door to step out of our comfort zone: Meeting new people and absorbing new ideas can inspire us to a new perspective on our practice and on our life.
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Unity in Diversity: Meet your tribe and celebrate togetherness
Yoga attracts people of diverse cultural and social backgrounds. While the diversity of the community makes part of its beauty, separating concepts of our mind like age, nationality, gender, religious beliefs or political backgrounds dissolve into a sphere of acknowledgement, yet insignificance when you meet in yoga pants.
Breathing and moving together creates a sense of belonging with others around you and really brings the uniting practice of yoga to the forefront. Being present at a yoga festival allows us to celebrate that fact with other like-minded people, from all over the country or even the world, while celebrating the wonderfulness of the practice itself.
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Heading to your first yoga festival? This is what you need to know.
* Best deal: Look for Early Bird Prizes OR apply to be a volunteer: This way you are supporting your favorite yoga festival and get to go to classes for free. Yay!
* First come, first serve: Reserve, if possible, or come to classes early and save your spot: Most workshops, especially those of very popular teachers, will be filled and sold out quickly
* Plan your day ahead: Prepare a schedule with favorite classes and one alternative class. That way you can quickly re-schedule if needed, and you still have enough time to go to a different location.
* Plan wisely: It is best to alternate asana classes with physically less demanding classes like meditation, massage or mantra chanting. That way you are less likely to burn out and can enjoy the practice even more.
* Food and water: Don’t forget to take breaks to eat and digest. Most yoga festivals cater with delicious vegetarian and vegan meals and desserts. Treat yourself – your body needs the nutrients and hey, this is your quality-time, remember?
* Pack list: You might need to bring your own yoga mat as not every festival offers rental mats. Also: Water bottle, towel, enough yoga wear to maybe change during the day and a cardigan or sweater for cosy savasanas, healthy snacks like fruit and nuts, flip flops for changing locations and public bathrooms, tigerbalm for sore muscles, tampons, since the next drugstore might be far, and a personal journal to note down every spontaneous insights you will probably have
* What to expect: Hundreds of happy and gleaming people in pants or shorts. It can be overwhelming at first but don’t shy away: You are one of them. Latest after the first class you will feel it.
* Don’t forget: Unless you are practicing aparigraha, Sanskrit for non-greediness or temperance, you might want to bring some extra cash and extra space in your luggage. There will be some stands with tempting yoga wear, ayurvedic oils, yoga books, malas etc…
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Wild and free: Wholehearted living outside the comfort zone
It is this open and safe space of acceptance that can open doors you might not have known even existed. Suddenly you catch yourself climbing on a stranger’s body in acro yoga as if you were born to do so (most probably your are). You take the courage to try that handstand off the wall and fail in laughter. You gaze into a fellow student’s eyes in a partner meditation and don’t feel shame for tears running from your own eyes. You sing and dance your heart out at the Kirtan concert and forget that, just a minute ago, “chanting” didn’t seem to be your thing at all.
Words cannot describe sufficiently what exactly makes the seemingly impossible possible. It is a heart opening mixture of intense practice and a supporting and warm community that melts away inner limitations and, beyond fear, (self-) doubts and shame wakes a deeper truth of ourselves: We are full of potential. Our life can be ecstatic and adventurous. We are wild and free.
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Melanie Lotz
As teacher and student, Melanie is dedicated to the fluid and creative yoga practice of Laughing Lotus NYC. With a background in Modern and Contemporary Dance, somatic education like the Alexander Technique and Traditional Thai Massage, in her yoga classes the German native combines her love for healthy alignment with her passion to inspire a life full of expression, truth and love. Melanie wants to watch you become the most radiant and happy version of yourself.
You can follow Melanie on
www.melanielotz.com
www.facebook.com/melanielotzyoga/
www.instagram.com/melanielotzyoga/
by Lara Land | Feb 14, 2017 | COACHING, LARA LAND, LECTURES
Most people think of Parvati or Radha when they think of love Gods, not Lord Ganesha. Me? I think of the elephant headed boy come to dissolve all obstacles. I think of Him because I know the truth, that love isn’t lost and in need of finding. Love is everywhere and in everything, seemingly lacking often due to our own interference.
Rumi said it best.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Ganesha is great for this! If you are troubling in love I encourage you to make this one change and see what happens. Instead of asking for God or Goddess to send your match or find your mate, ask Ganesha to help you relax your worries, remove your limitations and quiet your objections so that you can allow the love that is there in front of you to be seen, felt, and accepted within.
Limiting beliefs and deep seeded feelings of unworthiness are common in most of us and keep us from the love we deserve. Use these techniques to overcome those hinderances and get all the love you deserve.
1. Journal all the characteristics you desire in a partner. Circle the three you can’t live without.
2. Sit in meditation and a great sun above you come to fill you with golden rays of “Havingness”. Bask in those rays. Offer up your wish in giant balloon that goes to the heavens.
3. Dissolve any anxieties or objections that come up by giving them over to the elephant boy.
As always, Let Me Know How It Goes in your comments here and SHARE!
by Lara Land | Sep 7, 2016 | COACHING, LARA LAND, SELF-IMPROVEMENT, SPIRITUALITY
Did you think vision boarding was January? I bet some of you thought right before the new year. You aren’t off, but you could be even more ON! Reworking, writing, seeing your life’s vision is an ongoing affair. As we change (and we change a lot) doorways for new potential open up for us. If we don’t take a moment (or two) to re-evaluate outside our linear minds, we may miss that something has shifted.
Can you feel the shift?…
The air has changed. It’s fall. No matter how old you are the memories of slick smelling school books, freshly sharpened pencils and clean journals live inside your every pore.
Don’t fight it! Be a kid again!
The child’s instinct to play, to create, uninhibited, is within you and is bursting out with the autumn sun.
Get on the ground!…
Children are low to the ground and have their hands in things. That’s where you want to be for your best creations. Get yourself heaps of magazines, scissors, crayons or markers, and some glue and a large board or my preference blank journal. I use an extra large beautifully bound journal to flesh out sections of my big picture vision in a way you can’t do on a large board. I’ll get to that in a minute!
My highest recommendation is that you actually collect and cut out from magazines all year long and keep a large envelop of your cut outs handy for that day when you have both time and inspiration. Then you can toss them all out on the floor and pick the ones that speak to you on your vision boarding day and save the rest for later.
Most people don’t know what they want! Most can’t see the VAST and UNBOUNDED nature of what they could be, because of deeply routed and passed down (through generations!) assumptions. That is why I HIGHLY recommend guided meditation before vision boarding to get beyond the prison of the 10% brain and into FEELING, POSSIBILITY, & WONDER. Register for my mailing list where I’ll have new very soon about recorded meditations and other offerings that will be for SUBSCRIBERS only or email me to request my Train Your Brain program where we discuss how this whole process works to REWIRE your brain and actually GET YOU WHAT YOU DESIRE!
After mediation you may want to JOURNAL automatic-writing style where you stay as close to your meditative state as possible as you write what you saw. You’ll want to make sure you’ve prompted yourself with a list of categories such as Career, Travel, Home, Health, Education, Creativity, Pastimes, Family, Friendships, Relationships, Etc, because otherwise you are bound to do all your imagining around the subjects that come EASIEST to you. (Not the plan at all!)
From your journaling you can then create your big picture VISUALLY. I’ve recently started using the feng shui bagua pictured below to inform my vision boarding and I find it really working!
Add affirmations, personal photos, even three dimensional tokens that mean something to you.
Don’t stop there though! The road to your BIG PICTURE vision has lots of BIG MOMENTS within it. For example: Let’s say your big picture has you as head Veterinarian at a new clinic, but you haven’t completed Vet school. You may want to draw that picture separately including all the people who’ll be standing around you. Get it?! Livening up your plan brings the ACTION element into it that is so often left out. The more excited and passionate you get about your vision, the faster it cooks, so draw all your colors in and add words which make YOU moved! Don’t worry about any one else’s vision of themselves and release yourself of all others dreams for you! Even those that have your “best interests” at heart. This is the deep and important work we do at Train Your Brain to make sure you aren’t manifesting someone else’s vision of who you are…
Rinse, Wash, & Repeat cause like I said, vision drawing and dreaming is never done! I don’t believe you need to look at your board each day, which is another reason I prefer a journal. Keep it available. Have it by you when you light a candle. Don’t harp on it. Keep it childlike, creative, and fun!
Summed up tips for vision boarding:
1. Keep your visions alive by working on them seasonally.
2. Meditate before you create.
3. Go big and bold with colors, images, and words that excite you.
4. Create pictures of your story along the way!
5. Make it all your own!
by Lara Land | Jun 29, 2016 | LARA LAND, LECTURES, POSTON BLOG
You may think it’s hard to practice in the beginning when the body is tight, but it’s easy compared to what happens when the growth spurt has past and it seems like nothing is happening. That is why a strategy for long-termed practice is so important. I spoke on this topic for Land Yoga’s Five Year Anniversary Chai Talk. These are the notes from that talk.
Patangali says in yoga sutra 1.14 “sa tu dirghakala nairantarya satkara asevitah drdhabhumih” that in order for practice to be effective it should be long termed, without interruption, and devotional.
Long-Termed means for the course of the life-time (and future life-times) until Enlightenment is attained. Any practitioner will tell you it’s the accumulation of years of practice that brings the immense benefits. It’s widely recognized that the base of the practice is the first ten years and I’ve even heard Sharath say that’s how long a student should wait before teaching.
Uninterrupted means of course without starting and stopping. The point of the practice is the practice which means we put our whole energy in and let go of expecting any specific results. Understanding and accepting this concept of non-attachment helps with not taking a “break” from practice when we aren’t getting certain expected results. We invest in the process.
Most people take their first break from practice due to illness. One shouldn’t practice the physical aspects of Ashtanga yoga if one has fever. (Other issues like colds and injuries can be practiced around.) It’s important to know that your physical practice may need to be modified or shortened during certain periods because of life circumstance. This shouldn’t stop you from getting on the mat.
The danger around taking a break even for fever is that the pause from practice causes that little window of dullness to open, sending us down a dangerous cycle. It’s amazing how even a short break in routine can knock years of habit off course! Patanjai explains it well by listing the predictable obstacles that get in the way of practice:
Illness – Dullness – Doubt
Negligence – Laziness – Cravings
Misperceptions – Loss of Resolve – Instability
You can see how these lead one to the next until the practitioner finds herself moving backward.
The antidote to the obstacles is one pointed focus. Knowing about them in advance will also help the practitioner be prepared and be able to identify when then they are activated sooner. This will help her to avoid a long slump. Patanjali suggests cultivating faith, putting great energy toward your goal, using your memory, having deep concentration, and developing crystal clear discrimination to help you to avoid obstacles. (y.s. 1:20) These characteristics will make it easy for you to know when you are not in practice because your mind has cunningly taken you off track verses because you are truly ill.
Starting practice over and over is painful and much harder than cultivating an ongoing habit. To help avoid interruptions of practice, understand early on what kind of practitioner you are: mild, medium, or intense, and practice accordingly in respect to your energy expenditure and time. It’s much better to commit to a medium level, short daily practice each day that you can promise to maintain for a lifetime than to go full force and burn out in two weeks. Think long term and know yourself! That is what the practice will teach you anyway.
Devotional means offering up your practice in service to the Highest Good, and knowing that it isn’t about you at all. You’ve been called to the practice and so you must do it. Once touched, a practitioner will always hear the call to come back. It’s much easier to know and remember that and never stop than to stop and start again. If it isn’t feeling great or looking great, that doesn’t matter because the goal is to be unattached to the results of the practice and focus only on the energy we bring to it. Each day is a new day and I look at my arms in wonder as they lift up over my head and give thanks. Finding and remembering that feeling of gratitude that came easily early on will help you too when challenges arise later.
Just like we shower, sleep, and brush our teeth each day, so do we practice, because it is what we do. The practice is like an internal shower, releasing unprocessed emotions and setting us free to experience the now without forgone conclusions. As we move through our practice year after year the distractions will change and different challenges will arise, but as long as we know we are in till the end, we will never take those hurdles too seriously. Just knowing you are committed makes each challenge not even a blip along the way to enlightenment.
by Lara Land | Feb 6, 2016 | COMMUNITY, LARA LAND, POSTON BLOG
If you look at the images of yogis strewn across the Internet, you’d have to believe that all yoga practitioners are continuously and exceptionally happy. In fact, it may have been one of the reasons you’ve decided to take up yoga yourself. Yoga has been marketed as a positivity pill and that promise of unbreakable cheer has attracted many to it. The downfall has been an increasingly dangerous pressure on yogis and yoga teachers to cleave to a facade of positivity no matter what the situation. This skin deep display keeps us from experiencing and expressing our real truths that are much more healing and helpful to society than going around simulating bliss.
See the rest of this Huffington Post article HERE.
by Lara Land | Dec 9, 2015 | LARA LAND, POSTON BLOG
Temazcal is a place where the elements, air, fire, water and earth intersect. Physically it is a small hut with a pit in the middle where rocks (typically volcanic) are burned along with medicinal herbs. The participants are encouraged to breath deeply in the steam produced, occasionally chanting sounds led by a Shaman guide.
I did Temazcal with my New Year New You Yoga Retreat Group in Tulum. The ceremony opened by standing in a circle and conjuring the energies of the four directions each of which corresponds to one of the elements. After, we entered the small hut. Up to this point I was fine. I felt open and present under the night sky and close to my recently deceased grandfather who came to my mind as the Shaman referenced “Grandfather Wind”.
Inside the Temazcal I sat crossed legged and straight spined in back, waiting for what was to come. We were asked to share an intention or prayer for the ceremony which I did, choosing something deeply personal and setting the stage for an intimate experience. Then, without warning, the door dropped shut and the sound of a gong reverberated. I couldn’t breath. The Shaman asked us to imagine the safety and warmth of the womb, but all I could think of was the claustrophobia of the casket I’d end up in if I hyperventilated. I crawled out not sure the Temazcal was for me.
Outside I considered returning to the hotel but knew I’d regret missing out on an important experience. I looked for an opportunity to return. That came fairly quickly, when between elements, the Shaman opened the cave door. I sat back down (this time close to the exit) ready to try again. I felt immediately more safe, knowing there would be breaks in intensity and reclaimed my spot in back.
What happened next can only be described as like what one experiences when hallucinating. Images so vivid I became them entered my sphere. I literally saw though my third eye, testing this often by making sure my physical eyes were actually closed. I was assured of my purpose, my ability to fulfill that purpose, and my connection to the Universe. I am forever changed.
I came out of Temazcal reborn and with the feeling of exiting a holy bath. My eyes were brighter which I photographed. It reminded me of the way my students look once a year after our New Years Eve Candle Lit Yoga and Meditation which also involves a lot of sweat and a fire ritual, though never before directly conjured the four elements. This year it will. I now know how I am able to transform others and how to do it more deeply and authentically and we will enter that Temazcal space this December 31st. I invite you to join holy bath and emerge in 2016 reborn.
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