“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>
Heading out the door? Learn this text on the brand new Exterior+ app accessible now on iOS units for members!
>”,”title”:”in-content-cta”,”sort”:”hyperlink”}}”>Obtain the app.
“Hi there! How’s your breath?”
It’s not precisely frequent for a convention occasion to start with that question. However when Sundar Balasubramanian, PhD, posed that query to attendees on the Sedona Yoga Competition 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 among dozens of presenters on the five-day pageant, 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 current gathering drew greater than 700 attendees of all ages—together with freshmen with no yoga expertise in addition to those that have been educating for many years—who may entry 160 workshops, panel discussions, immersions, lessons, concert events, and trainings.
Periods included discussions of neuroplasticity, Ayurveda, the right way to 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 provided a 20-hour trauma consciousness yoga coaching led by Lara Land.
“There’s a lot range—all backgrounds are right here, all sizes and styles are right here, each trainer right here is providing variations,” explains Arundhati Baitmangalkar, yoga trainer coach and founding father of the Let’s Speak Yoga podcast, who served on this system crew for the pageant. In one among her talks, she shared with lecturers her first rule for making a supportive setting 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 pageant. “I believe college students have an understanding of a yoga pageant as this huge occasion,” she explains. Though there’s nothing improper with that, she says, the time period might restrict one’s understanding of the training going down through the 4 days.
Heather Sherée Sanders, longtime producer of the Sedona Yoga Competition, feels the identical. “I believe you hear ‘yoga pageant’ and also you assume barefoot and spinning round on the bottom,” she says with fun. “Nevertheless it’s actually extra of convention with a pageant vibe. We’re all right here learning, working towards collectively, honoring the traditions of yoga, and exploring it actually deeply.”
Sanders considers the occasion extra of a “acutely aware evolution convention,” which has been its tagline lately. “I at all times stated you could possibly get a masters in yoga studying about all of the lessons in your schedule,” she says.
The higher a part of a 12 months is spent working planning the theme and taking purposes for audio system in addition to reaching out to lecturers who aren’t drawing numerous consideration however are doing wonderful issues, explains Sanders. She coordinates audio system and the schedule together with her small programming crew, together with communications director Lisette Cheresson, who assist make sure the content material is various in all methods. The small print of the occasion are finalized together with 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 freshmen to regulars at studios who wish 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 periods. 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 academic. As Nixon defined, “It’s simply magic.”
Subsequent 12 months’s Sedona Yoga Competition will happen Could 1-4, 2025. Discounted tickets can be found till March 31, 2024.
Images by Ty Dobbs.