Lifestyle

The Telluride Yoga Fest: brief history and appraisal

In the summer of 2007, Telluride local and Jivamukti instructor Aubrey Hackman had just returned from her third yoga teacher training, a four-week intensive taught by lineage founders David Life and Sharon Gannon. Her bum wrist, the result of years of cumulative stress from hitting it hard on the mat, was really acting up. The wrist is an extension of the heart chakra, the center of emotions such as love, happiness, compassion and loving oneself in a non-egoistic way. The message came through loud and clear.

Scott Blossom and Chandra Easton return to Telluride Yoga Fest

For Telluride Yoga Festival board member, teacher, and healer Scott Blossom and for his wife, Chandra Easton, also a gifted teacher and healer, 2009 was a transformative year. For starters, Scott and Chandra had a second child, Tejas, now nine months old.

Scott Blossom also experienced a major shift in direction in his professional life, a career change triggered by a trip to India with his long-time hatha yoga teacher, Shadow Yoga founder Zhander Remete, and his Ayurvedic mentor Dr. Robert Svoboda. The epiphany was related to a discovery: the synergy between Shadow Yoga and the two other disciplines in which he is highly trained, Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine.

One of the results? After five years as a rising star on the national teaching circuit  (last year, Yoga Journal named Scott Blossom and Chandra Easton two  of  the "21 under 40" Yoga teachers shaping the future of yoga)   Scott decided to significantly curtail his travel schedule both to be to be with his family and to be able to offer more focused and in-depth Yoga studies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Richard Freeman returns to Telluride for Yoga Fest

When Richard Freeman returns to the Telluride Yoga Fest this weekend, June 10 – 12, for his encore, legions of devoted followers will be lining up for his classes on alignment, mulabandha (not what you think), backbends, shoulder stand, and headstand – and with good reason: Richard Freeman is unique, even among  princes of the mat, a magnetic combination of guru, gumby, and wit.

 Freeman is a teacher's teacher, who lost his principal teacher last month, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, 1915-2009,  the smiling, pot-bellied man who favored Calvin Klein shorts and famously said, "Do your practice and all is coming." Yoga is 99 percent practice and 1% theory.

Yoga has entered the mainstream in the West, particularly in urban centers: everywhere people who drive Priuses and eat organic veggies are practicing one of the many flavors of Hatha yoga, the yoga of action. Devotees are divided into tribes: Iyengar students obsess about building precisely articulated poses with straps, blocks and bolsters.  Ashtangi just go for it: they tend to be ripped from all the stretching, toning and balancing moves of the six series. Freeman, originally an Astangi, is no exception – but with a mind as toned and flexible as his body.

Telluride Yoga Festival welcomes Tias Little 

Like a number of his colleagues in town this weekend for the 2nd annual Telluride Yoga Festival, Tias Little could be described as a rock star in the Yoga world. He certainly has legions of devoted students and followers – however, message tank tops and loud music, increasingly popular in yoga studios across the country, are not his stock in trade.

Tias Little guides his students elegantly and efficiently according to the principle of vinyasa krama, taking the right steps in the right order to cultivate a mind-body connection through asana, pranayama, meditation, sensory sensitivity,concentration practices, and the study of sacred texts. The payoff: self-awareness, health and serenity.

Karl Straub scheduled to teach at the Telluride Yoga Festival

Telluride, you are not alone. The stats are compelling: in the 21st century, in America alone, over 20 million people have come to include some form of yoga in their wellness regimens. There are packed classes in town at the Telluride Yoga Center and in the Mountain Village at The Peaks. The 2nd annual Telluride Yoga Festival, this weekend, July 10 – July 12, is attracting senior teachers such as Karl Straub, and devoted students from all over the country , who fell head over heels for Telluride and the Festival after participating last year in the inaugural event.

At the Telluride Yoga Fest, obsessed practitioners will be assuming the postures of a Noah's arc of animals: dogs, fish, scorpions, camels, frogs, cows, pigeons, dolphins, you name it. Let's face it, in the West, most people become interested in yoga through the door of physical fitness, through asana. Generally speaking the real juice, mental, emotional, and spiritual, comes later, but senior Jivamukti instructor Karl Straub got it right away: The sacred art and science of Yoga is not just about getting lithe and limber. It is a comprehensive discipline with a single purpose: transformation through enhanced self-awareness.

Kirtan with Russell at Telluride Yoga Fest

A sound experience –  kirtan – has been added to the schedule of the 2nd annual Telluride Yoga Festival, June 10 – June 12, 2009.

On Friday evening, 7 – 10 p.m., under the stars at the Mountain Village Sunset Stage, just a short walk from Yoga Fest hospitality, attendees and friends are invited to attend two performances of kirtan, one given by Durango's Prema Shakti, a 12-person energetic kirtan group. The second is led by David Russell and friends.

Plato pondered the powers of music and sound in "The Laws"  and other dialogues. Shakespeare also intuitively understood: several of his most poignant scenes dramatized music's soothing effects on troubled souls.
Pre-dating Western scholars, the Yoga tradition has known for centuries that sound is the new aspirin or apple –  only more so. Proof positive lies in the bible of Yoga, "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali," where the great sage explains that the mystic sound "OM" is not just the name Isvara (a God analog), but is Isvara, the actual form of God. Humming"OM" is a summons: the sound brings God to you.

Kirtan is a group practice of singing Sanskrit mantras that are set to simple melodies. These mantras are sound vibrations which roll and vibrate through the seven energy centers (chakras) of the body creating well-being in body, mind, and spirit. It really doesn’t matter what the words mean because the sound vibrations alone are a direct plug-in to the experience of Source, or God Consciousness, or whatever you choose to call Isvara.