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“Good day! How’s your breath?”
It’s not precisely widespread for a convention occasion to start with that question. However when Sundar Balasubramanian, PhD, posed that query to attendees on the Sedona Yoga Pageant final weekend, everybody understood precisely what was being requested of them. Lengthy, gradual exhalations adopted.
Dr. Balasubramanian, a cell biology researcher and TEDx speaker, was one in all dozens of presenters on the five-day competition, which was launched in 2013 and shortly grew to become a revered and anticipated occasion the place dozens of lecturers share the custom and science of yoga. The latest gathering drew greater than 700 attendees of all ages—together with rookies with no yoga expertise in addition to those that have been instructing for many years—who may entry 160 workshops, panel discussions, immersions, lessons, concert events, and trainings.
Classes included discussions of neuroplasticity, Ayurveda, how you can educate chair yoga with the founding father of the Accessible Yoga Affiliation, Jivana Heyman, in addition to a panel dialogue of sacred activism with Reggie Hubbard, Saul David Raye, and Ana Camacho-Hansen. The occasion additionally supplied a 20-hour trauma aware yoga coaching led by Lara Land.
“There’s a lot range—all backgrounds are right here, all styles and sizes are right here, each trainer right here is providing diversifications,” explains Arundhati Baitmangalkar, yoga trainer coach and founding father of the Let’s Speak Yoga podcast, who served on this system group for the competition. In one in all her talks, she shared with lecturers her first rule for making a supportive atmosphere for college students, which is a reminder that “Academics, it’s not about you.”
It’s that understanding of scholars’ wants and expectations that prompted Baitmangalkar to rethink one side of the competition. “I believe college students have an understanding of a yoga competition as this huge social gathering,” she explains. Though there’s nothing improper with that, she says, the time period might restrict one’s understanding of the training going down in the course of the 4 days.
Heather Sherée Sanders, longtime producer of the Sedona Yoga Pageant, feels the identical. “I believe you hear ‘competition’ and also you assume barefoot and spinning round on the bottom,” she says with amusing. “But it surely’s actually extra of convention with a competition vibe. We’re all right here finding out, working towards collectively, honoring the traditions of yoga, and exploring it actually deeply.”
Sanders considers the occasion extra of a “consciousness evolution convention,” which has been its tagline lately. “As a result of we provide such a wide-ranging number of strategies and kinds all through the weekend, I typically say you may get a yoga training just by exploring all of the lessons as you design your private schedule,” she says.
The higher a part of a yr is spent working planning the theme and taking functions for audio system in addition to reaching out to lecturers who aren’t drawing a variety of consideration however are doing superb issues, explains Sanders. She coordinates audio system and the schedule at the side of her small programming group, together with communications director Lisette Cheresson, who assist make sure the content material is numerous in all methods. The small print of the occasion are finalized at the side of a crew of proficient volunteers.
Sanders emphasizes that it’s doable to attend the convention and nonetheless obtain a really deep understanding of yoga with out doing any asana, or bodily poses. Roughly one third of attendees aren’t yoga lecturers. They differ from rookies to regulars at studios who need to perceive extra about yoga with out turning into a trainer. “We’re all right here with each other and including to one another’s understanding,” she explains.
That understanding takes many shapes. “This convention is so particular since there are such a lot of small workshops,” says Molly Nixon, director of the Yoga Mandala Undertaking, which leads trauma-informed coaching for yoga lecturers who assist refugees.
Nevertheless, Nixon’s studying wasn’t restricted to the classes. After three days attending scheduled occasions, she spent her fourth day not attending any of the lessons she’d supposed. As an alternative, she discovered herself drawn into dialog after dialog with different lecturers and panelists with comparable and opposing viewpoints, which she thought-about to be simply as instructional. As Nixon defined, “It’s simply magic.”
Subsequent yr’s Sedona Yoga Pageant will happen Could 1-4, 2025. Discounted tickets can be found till March 31, 2024.
Images by Ty Dobbs.