Whitstable Yoga Festival challenges both of those stereotypes. Taking place in the beautiful Kent coastal town from Friday 15^th to Sunday 17^th June, it features workshops and classes, a market, and discussions, all aiming to allow people to experience yoga in whatever way works for them.

There’s intensive Iyengar and Ashtanga, relaxing Pranayama and Nidra, some partner yoga and children’s yoga, and accessible yoga. Classes are taught by teachers from across the country, with a particular focus on Kent based practitioners. The varied line up really celebrates all that is good about yoga, and aims to both challenge and support people in their practice.

I caught up with Monica Marini of Yoga Morphic to find out more about the festival.

Whitstable is a lovely location for the festival. Why did you choose it?

I have lived in Whitstable for the past 14 years and watched it go from a quirky, slow coastal town to a thriving community of artists and Yoga teachers! It is simply the right place for it and weather permitting one can practice yoga everywhere anytime: on the grass at sunrise, in the water at sunset!

Why celebrate yoga?

My journey through Yoga started about 20 years ago. I have been teaching for about 8 years and I am never tire to practice, learn or share anything Yoga.

When Bernadette Fisher and I returned from a trip in Southern India we felt that we so many Yoga teachers in the area what was needed was a Shanga.  But with all of us running from venue to venue to teach it is almost impossible to sit and share.  So the festival became the opportunity to create a moment in time when not only teachers, but everyone who practice and loves yoga could be together.  The first Festival was a blessing in every sense.  We had one of the hottest weekend in history; the beach was heaving with people enjoy the gorgeous weather; people came from as far as Ashford and Bromley and the energy generated was so powerful and the response so great we felt we had met a need for more Yoga in the area.  Hence the second Whitsable Yoga Festival.

You have a real mix of things on offer – mindfulness, partner yoga, painting to music…how do you think yoga principles infuse various aspects of life?

Yoga is life and as Rod Stryker says ‘practice is about being prepared to make good decisions when we aren’t practicing.’  Yoga finds its fullest expression off the mat: in the ways we approach our daily activities, how we live in our communities, how we manage our relationships, and the many ways we interact with each other and our environment.  I come from and environmental background and for me the applications of the ethical principles of Yoga are a progressive way forward to restore balance in the world both socially and economically.  We are still a long way, but allowing people to experience Yoga in its many forms reinforces these messages as a transformative methodology to restore harmony within and around us.  So, in a partner yoga class we can remember how to support one another and children can practice finger knitting whilst establishing mindfulness.

For information and tickets head here.

Sharing their own stories of individual and collective turning points, the contributors explore how body image and yoga practice intersect with race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, dis-ability, class and socioeconomic status, age, size, and society.

Pia Guerrero writes about how yoga was her tool to accept her body when struggling with Lupus and fibromyalgia, and like many writers in the book cites a yoga practice as a crucial tool to deal with perfectionism tendencies. ‘There is no perfection, just happiness’ writes Robyn Baker in her essay on using yoga as a way to assist with recovery from an eating disorder.

Media comes under the lens of many writers in the book, particularly the way that marketing employs ‘sneaky attempts to create or validate insecurities as an attempt to sell the solution,’ as Lisa Diers describes it. Jessamyn Stanley writes about how she has used Instagram to challenge the rich, thin, white girl image that pervades the yoga world, and Cyndi Lee speaks about her #selfie@sixty practice.

Taking up space isn’t something that we are encouraged to do in today’s world, yet that’s exactly what Gwen Soffer calls us to do. Kimber Simpkins calls on us to challenge the narratives of what constitutes a ‘good’ diet and exercise practice, and listen to the ‘expert within.’

Representation is something that the Yoga and Body Image Coalition are passionate about. In this book there are stories from people of all ages, body types and race, all of whom have found yoga as a way that they can change their own lives and the world they live in.

The aim of the coalition, and of this book, is to make the healing balm of yoga and meditation accessible to everybody, and every body. These essays are examples of how that path is beginning to be trod. It’s early days, but change is happening. We have to challenge the dominant narratives and rebel against the structures that keep us stuck, but through storytelling and practice, we can do so.

Yoga Rising: 30 Empowering Stories from Yoga Renegades for Every Body by Melanie Klein is published by Llewellyn Publications.

Foals play their only UK festival appearance, and indie legends Wild Beasts will also be whipping the park into a dark trippy frenzy, and the ubiquitous and brilliant Bonobo mixes things up. If you’ve tried to get tickets to see Laura Marling recently you’ll know that even selling multiple limbs won’t secure them, so the opportunity of seeing her on a (hopefully) sun drenched stage in summer is one not to passed over. Communion welcome to their stage soulful Michael Kiwanuka, Sylvan Esso, rockers Twin Peaks and Nadine Shah, whilst Clash & Last FM turn things up a bit with Vessels, and welcome Ben Howard’s new band A Blaze Of Feather.

You’ll also find Sunday Papers Live, Sofar Sounds and journalism experts The Frontline Club, as well as the Science Museum, FuturePlay and The Indytute offering creative exploration and events. All festivals these days need yoga and swing dancing, and Citadel is no different, bringing on board SwingTrain, Frame and the House of Voga for a dose of wellbeing. There’s also some acoustic sessions, the must see Roller Skating Fiddle Players, a family rave from Big Fish Little Fish, some sports games, theatre – and a ton of street food and craft ales.

All in all, they’ve proved me completely wrong. Nice one.

Buy tickets now.

The creators of FloVibe – Jason Pooley (The House of Yoga) and collaborator Lou Wellby of Jam Sandwich Live – have brought together all the things they love in one place, for a weekend of what they term ‘soul-nourishment.’

Starting from their five values of community, empowerment, connection, play and celebration, they’ve manifested them in a sparkling event that will take place on 2-4th June 2017 at the idyllic Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire.

There’s yoga masterclasses, dance and movement workshops, inspiring talks, storytelling, live music spanning folk, jazz, roots & reggae (including Cristobal & The Sea), incredible DJs, nutritious, delicious wholesome food and treatments in the woods. Rather than exhausting you, this is a weekend of revelry that aims to inspire and restore.

Tickets start at only £75 for the day, and are available here, with weekend and camping options available.

There is something wrong if we feel unable to cope with life, but it’s not necessarily that there is something wrong with us in a physical or fundamental sense, just that we do not have the tools or resources to manage.

I left still very much convinced that mindfulness as the practice of paying attention, on purpose, moment by moment and without judgement, nicely explained by Dr Tamara Russell, is something that offers value and support for individuals and society as a whole. Learning how to be with oneself and regulate emotions is a valuable skill and experience. But there was one point raised that really did make me think. What is our culture of wellness doing to us? A gentleman in the audience spoke of how his employees were asking for yoga and meditation at work to help make them ‘well’ – but he didn’t see them as ‘ill.’ Quite the contrary, he believed them to be bright, capable, interesting and thriving people. Is our focus on making ourselves well convincing us that we are ill? Is the drive to become better reinforcing the idea that we are somehow inadequate?
The focus on wellness puts the onus on each of us to create a healthy and balanced life. There’s nothing wrong with that, but some people are more able than others, through the resources available to them. The poor, sick or depressed are somehow posited as inadequate for not living a flourishing life. If illness, or being unwell, is posited as an individual problem that can be remedied through mindfulness, this removes the onus on changing social structures that perpetuate the causes of that illness; the fast paced life, stressful working environments, and lack of community support. There is something wrong if we feel unable to cope with life, but it’s not necessarily that there is something wrong with us in a physical or fundamental sense, just that we do not have the tools or resources to manage. It’s an unintended consequence that many end up feeling that they just don’t measure up to the standards that the wellness industry – because it is an industry – demand.
The 1 in 4 statistic from MIND’s Time To Change campaign is often bandied about, but the danger of everyone thinking that they know someone with or themselves have a mental health concern undermines the experience of those severely debilitated by illness. The person who responds to a decade long battle with anorexia with the comment, ‘oh I once didn’t eat biscuits for a week after I split up with my boyfriend’; the flippant comments about being ‘so OCD’ with no knowledge as to the restrictive and suffocating nature of the illness;’ or the belief that someone’s depression that means they can’t get out of bed is cured by a cup of coffee and a stretch – after all, you feel sad as well.
Generally speaking throughout history people have been considered healthy, or well, and then they fall ill, before being treated and becoming well once again. This changing presentation of wellness (or cult as it has been called on numerous occasions) suggests that being unwell is the default position, and that through hard graft we rise up to enlightened wellness. The well/ill, happy/unhappy and good/bad dualism becomes laden with moralising, which is what industry and advertising thrive on. If we believe that we are inadequate we are more likely to be depressed, stressed and unhappy – and thus need to seek out their help to change things.
It’s not mindfulness that is the problem, but the way that an industry has grown up around it that preys on insecurities. I still love mindfulness. I find it bloody hard, but the idea of being here, in my body and the world, right now, observing the vicissitudes of life but not becoming overwhelmed by them, is one that appeals and I can see has huge benefits. But I think it’s worth considering the danger of putting ourselves in the position of ill people who must become well, and who are failing if we are not zenned out, lithe and glowing individuals.
Perhaps it is about getting back to the root – we’re all human, and mindfulness, true mindfulness, lets us accept that.