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[click "Play" to hear Susan's interview with Karl Straub]

Scorpions seem to like Arizona 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.

08 July, 2009 /
[click "Play" for Susan's talk with David Russell]

DaveRussell w mic 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.

07 July, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Dayne Conrad & John Ehlers on Amlavi]

Australia New Zealand April 2007 209 Listen, Telluride: It is no longer just about solar panels, wind turbines and bio-diesel. America's green revolution has infiltrated the world of beauty.

One of the Telluride Yoga Festival sponsors, Amlavi heads an alphabet of new labels representing super effective, eco-friendly cosmetics, bath products and scents, including companies making soy polish remover (Priti), producing make-up brushes fashioned from sustainable wood and brushed recycled aluminum (Ecotools Cosmetic Brushes), making nontoxic nail polish (Sula Paint & Peel), and producing mascara (Organic Wear).

06 July, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Liz Lance on the Media and Beauty]

Liz_about On Monday, July 6:30 p.m., at Telluride's Wilkinson Public LIbrary, itinerant daughter Liz Lance plans a multimedia presentation of her Fulbright research on the subject of beauty and the way mass media affects ideas about body image and femininity in Nepal.

The conversation has never been more interesting. We live in a world of swizzle stick celebrities, binge diets and surgeons armed with needles, scalpels, lasers, whatever is desired or required to overhaul anyone with a chunky checkbook from head to toe. Make-up, skin and hair care, cosmetic surgery, health clubs and diet pills rolls up to a global industry worth over $160 billion per annum.

05 July, 2009 /

by Dr. Susanna Hoffman

Sunday evening at 7:30 pm, Bluepoint Restaurant: Greece meets Telluride Farmers

Konstantine Jake and Me 028 Some three decades ago as an anthropology doctoral candidate, I decided that the sort of very abstract study that had only been done among remote tribal people could also prove true  among a  people with a long literate tradition. That gave a choice of only China, India, or Europe to conduct my research and, as a woman alone in those days, I chose Europe. That settled, I determined to go to what is considered the font of European civilization, Greece. As for where in Greece, after much reading, I fixed on a site I thought boasted a very long history, clear from Minoan times the island of Santorini. There were supposedly three thousand churches on the 16-mile island. Ah, what depth, what symbolism, I thought. Clearly this was the place for me. 

27 June, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Deidra Krois on the Festival]

RF09_poster Ridgway, Colorado, is much more than a bedroom community for Telluride.

The town is famous – or infamous – as the location for several movies, including "How the West Was Won," and one of actor John Wayne's late great movies, "True Grit," (1969), in which Wayne stars as Rooster Cogburn. The True Grit Cafe is filled with John Wayne memorabilia, but as far as we know, no drunken, one-eyed federal marshals.

Ridgway boasts an abundance of wildlife: mountain lions, badgers, deer, elk, bears, coyotes, and bald eagles are indigenous to the area. And a river runs through it.

The Uncompaghre is a great source for trout fishing and this weekend, the focus of Ridgway's second annual River Festival. The Mosaic Community Project, a local nonprofit dedicated to sustainable living practices, environmental awareness, and the arts, organized the FREE watershed celebration,11 a.m – 9 p.m., downtown, in and around Rollans Park.

26 June, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Kristin on gladiator shoes]

IMG_0232 According to Telluride Inside... and Out's fashion maven Kristin Holbrook of Two Skirts, this summer in Telluride and around the country the focus is definitely on being a slave to fashion – starting from the bottom up with your shoes.

Gladiator shoes were first spotted in the Spring 2005 collections of Balenciaga and Imitation of Christ, In its four-year run, the style was reinterpreted by designers from Azzedine Alaia to Aldo. The trend really gathered a head of steam when a pair of gladiator spikes were spotted on Sarah Jessica Parker in "Sex and the City," the movie, last summer.

26 June, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Steve Olsen discuss Telluride Wine Festival]
Pic_steve They are here in force. Telluride Wine Festivarians, the people who inhale audibly at the mere mention of the word "Bordeaux"  paired in the same sentence as the words "Chateaux Lafite Rothschild." But few of them condone torture in any form,  including phrases such as "afterthoughts of linden" and "fragrances of toasted milk bread," a few examples on a long list of poetic flights of fancy used to describe the almighty grape.

In winespeak, certain terms are universal – but nearly incomprehensible unless you happen to be in the trade and forced to pronounce words such as "malolactic" to make your assessment understood. (A close translation is creamy.) Unless you happen to be in the trade and are on a mission to make tasting fun by removing the intimidation factor and all the aforementioned pretense. Meet Steve Olson, aka wine geek, and co-director of the 28th annual Telluride Wine Festival.

Grapes may be persnickety. Steve is not.

25 June, 2009 /