Wanderlust, the multi-city festival that hits cities across the country and around the world, is my girlfriend’s happy place. Yoga, music, dance, great food, and epic natural scenery makes for an amazing weekend whatever the location. I’ve been blessed to experience both Wanderlust Oahu (Hawaii) and Wanderlust Squaw Valley (Tahoe, California) over the past few years. The yoga is great and the music is even better, but what makes Wanderlust truly magical is the humans that attend from around the world.
One would assume that it’s all in-shape yogis that attend Wanderlust, and while there are plenty of those, there are also moms and dads with kids, teachers, retired folks, people that don’t do yoga, and a ton of cool attendees from the local communities and on the Wanderlust sponsors group, which means great people representing cool companies from around the country.
You don’t have a to be a seasoned yogi to attend Wanderlust, which is a common misconception. Maybe you’re a beginner yogi, or maybe meditation is your jam. Whether you want to mantra your heart out or learn to touch your toes for the first time, there are events just for you at each festival. The Wanderlust family of events has branched out and is now offering mindful marathons known as Wanderlust 108, to be held in 2016 in cities across the US.
There are so many people that attend a Wanderlust festival, especially a large one like Squaw Valley, that it’s hard to meet them all. But when you do take the time to meet them– over a cup of tea, on a walk to class, or after a particularly positive dance session, there are millions of stories just waiting to be told.
We met acroyogis from the city, a festival organizer from Mexico who wanted to check out Wanderlust and potentially bring it to Mexico, a dad on a weekend adventure without his wife or kids, two ladies in their 60s attending for the first time together (and who both got their very first tattoos!), a young man that had had such a bad snowboarding accident that he wasn’t sure he would walk again (he did, and yoga was his solution)….the list went on, inspiring people, fun people, down-to-earth people. All of these people help break down the image of what a yogi really is, and help us open the world of yoga to an ever-diverse group of people.
Find your True North at Wanderlust Oahu (February 25-28, 2016) and all the other summer festivals across North America.
Check out what Wanderlust has to offer yogis, friends, and otherwise amazing humans this February:
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Images by Ali Kaukas for Wanderlust Festival