Reconnecting at the Berkshire Yoga Festival

Name: Kiteboarding, Slack & Acro Retreat in Madagascar
Start: 2024-10-26
End: 2024-11-02
Location: Madagascar

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This year, the Berkshire Yoga Festival was one of the first festivals we taught at since the onset of COVID-19. Our last full summer festival season was in 2019, which seems like such a long time ago!

For 15 years before the pandemic, we spent our summers traveling across the USA (usually more than once!) teaching at yoga festivals. It was a great time! We got to practice and teach our favorite things: yoga, handstands, acroyoga, and slackline yoga. Plus, we got to see old friends and meet new ones across the entire country.

Each event was very different, yet they all shared some similarities: wonderful people with beautiful energy, making space to connect, play, and explore together. We had an amazing time.

The pandemic and the subsequent decrease in events left us feeling disconnected. We missed our friends and the personal connections we developed with them through play and exploration. After all we used to connect with over 1500 people each summer! That’s a lot of missed connections.

The Berkshire Yoga Festival gifted us once more with the opportunity to connect with old and new friends, and oh, we did!

The weekend started the week before the event with all the preparations. Sam and I traveled to Albany, where our friends and YogaSlackers teachers Cathy and Scott received us with open arms, a soft bed, and a full fridge! We got to work—woodworking—as we spent a few days gathering materials and making X-frames. We had not done this work since the summer of 2019 and had forgotten how long it takes to build, prepare, and paint 12 pairs of X-frames. Given that this was our first event in a while, we wanted to do an extraordinary job, so instead of spray-painting the YogaSlackers logo, after 15 years, we made our first stickers! And they looked awesome.

After several sleepless nights and long working days, we made it to the festival ready to pound 900 nails. And we did! I’m not sure what Sam does while he pounds his nails, but I quietly chanted “OM” with each hammer stroke, with the intention to bring grounding to every line and to everyone that played on the lines that week.

During the weekend, we played and shared like in the “old days.” We reconnected with other traveling teachers like Matt Giordano, Seane Corn, MJ Yogi, and many others. We shared hugs, laughter, and stories about the last four years!

Plus, we got to share the practices that we love with an amazing group of students. Our classes ranged from 40 students to just five! We taught an intro to handstands and several slackline and acroyoga workshops. We saw students learning new skills, realizing they are stronger, more stable, learning to trust others and themselves, and playing with smiles and shiny eyes.

We saw friendships form, families become tighter, and people learning to trust—trust was a big one. Trusting the lines, trusting new partners, and above all, learning and reaffirming trust in themselves.

We left the festival filled with hope, grateful for the opportunity to do what we love the most, and filled with love towards everyone that made the event happen.

And with excitement about next year’s Berkshire Yoga Festival, which promises to be an even more fantastic event.