STRATTON — What do you get when you combine yoga, music, art, local foods, Deepak Chopra, and the Green Mountains of Vermont?
You get Wanderlust, what organizers call “an epic four-day yoga throwdown” that brings together the world's top yoga instructors, with a healthy dollop of post-yoga fun, at Stratton Mountain Resort on June 23-26.
This is the first time that this festival - which has been already been presented this year in Miami, San Francisico, Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, and New York - has come to Vermont.
Jeff Krasno, one of the co-founders of Wanderlust, said organizers take pride in making their festival unique and “very participatory.”
“Many festivals have their guests as observers,” he said. “At Wanderlust, the people here are actively and physically engaged doing yoga.”
Those attending the festival are more actively involved than one might think. Krasno said that ticket-holders “can sign up to perform in a show with the Bread & Puppet Theater, or they can also take a burlesque workshop with Gypsy Lane”.
Yoga is the main draw, though. Some of yoga's finest instructors - including John Friend, Seane Corn, Bryan Kest, Boston's Amy Wren, New York's Schuyler Grant, Elena Brower, Rodney Yee, Kristen Leigh, Barbara Verrochi, plus dozens more - will be at this event to teach and practice yoga.
After centering your body, there will be opportunities to center your mind and spirit though Wanderlust's “Speakeasy Series.” Besides Chopra, a world-renowned authority in the field of mind-body healing, other featured speakers include best-selling author and wellness coach Kris Carr; nutritional consultant, chef, and endurance athlete Adam Kelinson; Omega Institute for Holistic Studies CEO Robert “Skip” Backus; and yoga musician Krishna Das.
The nights at the festival will feature plenty of music, including indie rock artist Andrew Bird, mixmasters Earthrise SoundSystem, double bassist Garth Stevenson, Grammy award-winning percussionist Jeff Haynes, Michael Franti and Spearhead, world-renowned Indian musician Roop Verma, jazz influenced singer songwriter Sonya Kitchell, Vermont's Hot Jazz acoustic quartet Swing Noire, eclectic kirtan music group The Mayapuris, and the man his countrymen call “The Voice,” South African guitarist Vusi Mahlasela.
The theatrical lineup has a heavy Vermont flavor. Besides Bread & Puppet, other Green Mountain acts include the Brattleboro-based Nimble Arts circus company, and Vermont Vaudeville, the old-time comedy duo of Maya and Brent McCoy. They'll be joined by Gypsy Lane, a neo-burlesque company based in the Berkshires, and Shakti Sunfire (a.k.a. Laura Blakeman), who merges yoga with performance art.
If you still have some energy left, there will be opportunities for hiking, tennis, and hanging out in Kula Village, where vendors, non-profit groups, and restaurants are located. There will also be a “Spiritual Cinema” program with Chloe Crespi, director of Wake Up; Vikram Gandhi, director of Kumaré; and Parashakti, star of Dance of Liberation . These films will awaken the audience's ideas of their spiritual lives and contemplate the thought of being a leader.
While spirituality and fun are big elements of Wanderlust, environmental awareness is also a big part of the festival. It has a program to process trash, recycling, and compostable materials that eliminates 80-90 percent of materials that would ordinarily end up in landfills. There will be waste stations and people at the stations to explain the proper use and function of the waste systems, and styrofoam and non-recyclable plastics are banned.
Food at the event is being locally-sourced at the event when possible. from the festival. There will also be water filling stations at the event, and all water bottles sold at the event are made of organic corn-based plastic with water sourced from California.
To power the Pulse main stage, Wanderlust will be using B20 biodiesel from the Lake Tahoe region. With carbon offsets, each ticket-holder can donate $6 to offset the carbon emissions produced from their travel while using transportation to and from the festival.
And, for the third straight year, Wanderlust continues its “Off the Mat into the World” program. It uses the power of yoga to motivate sustainable activism and start grassroots changes. Some of its programs include community building in Haiti and the Empowered Youth Initiative in Los Angeles.
For more information regarding Wanderlust, visit the website.