Asheville Yoga Festival 2019

The principles of fire in the universe are called "agni" in Sanskrit, meaning “the transforming force.” In this class, we'll focus on the transitions between the poses in sun salutations and creative sequences designed to build heat. We'll use the breath, body, and concentration to illuminate where we've been holding on and accumulating old undigested experiences in body and mind, then we'll stoke the fire to cleanse and clear out.

Join Sierra and Luna for a powerful yoga session with live music to manifest your invincible radiance, your most powerful vitality and the beauty of your soul. Get your festival on!

This workshop is designed for yoga teachers and trainees who are seeking to infuse fresh energy and inspiration into their teaching. Learn helpful tips and tools for cultivating more depth, imagination, and inspiration in your teaching through the arts of bhakti yoga - song, music, language, poetry, creative movement, and ritual. Sean will share some of his insights cultivated over 20 years of merging Hatha and Bhakti yoga in his teaching and practice, and facilitate exercises to support teachers in opening their voice and creativity in a playful, safe and supportive atmosphere. We'll explore how to bring more energy, emotion, dynamics, and musicality to our classes, including advice on how to make potent playlists that support your class flow, and tips for making singing more accessible for you and your students.

Be inspired, uplifted and fully activated in this fun, joy filled yoga and music experience with renowned artist, teacher and Spiritual Graffiti author MC YOGI. Set to an awesome soundtrack of hip-hop, electronic and dance music, this is the one you’ve been waiting for! Be ready to move, breath, fly and leap into this super powered awesome yoga activation!

Buti Yoga is a powerful blend of tribal dance and primal movements, plyometrics, and vinyasa-style yoga. This unique style of yoga incorporates movements that our bodies crave, and that our body’s systems flourish from. This practice helps balance hormones, chakras, and we nourish the health of our endocrine system. In short, Buti Yoga packs a BIG punch. Buti unlocks your full potential; it activates the spark that dwells deep within you waiting to be let out. It celebrates your feminine energy. It celebrates everyone’s feminine energy. Because you don’t have to be female to have feminine energy. Everyone has shades of masculine and feminine, light and dark, yin and yang. From the music and infectious group energy, Buti won’t be like a typical yoga class either! Buti is all about moving to the beat, so the songs are all about the beat, too. Buti is all levels friendly and entirely approachable. You begin where you are, with what you have. And through this journey, you learn acceptance, compassion, and self-love. You will find a nice mix of tribal dance with hip-hop flair, woven throughout upbeat songs that keep the practice going strong from start to finish. “Buti” is a Marathi Indian term for “the cure to something that’s been hidden away or kept secret.” Buti is a practice of going within to discover your true power and full potential. It becomes the cure to any previous disillusionments of fear, lack, or weakness. Buti shows you what you’re truly capable of, and that is the secret that you unlock with this practice.

Inspired by Bob Marley's One Love Revolution, Janet will lead you through movement, chanting, dance, and prayer to dissolve hardened boundaries and create connection while DJ Drez provides a powerful Bob Marley exclusive playlist. By unwinding the tension in your muscle tissue and nervous system, you will liberate yourself from the small confines of self-based living and expand into a greater awareness with a broader sense of kindness toward all beings.

This workshop will be a deep dive into the joy and creativity of vinyasa flow yoga, writing and improvisational singing as an expression of our most authentic and powerful selves! Join Suzanne on this in-depth mind/body immersion into the heart of soulful self-expression. Through a juicy fusion of vigorous vinyasa flow yoga, devotional song, trance dance, ritual and prayer, attendees will ignite the fires of passion, free their voices and connect soul to spirit. Let yourself enjoy the bliss of being alive!!! The bliss of being who you are...an empowered, creative, embodied soul...shining from within!!!

Take a break from your asana practice and dive deep into the playful, mythic world of yoga. Loosen your mind, laugh, cry, and unpack some inner wisdom. Sean, who believes that yoga teachers can be modern day bards who help us remember who we are through storytelling, puts a fun, deep, contemporary spin on inspirational tales from the lore of yoga to  bring the stories to life in your own heart.  Each story will be accompanied by the enchanting sounds of The Wild Lotus Band. You'll have the option to journal and explore what the stories mean to you through intuitive art with paper and crayons provided.  

Tara (Becky) will take you on a journey of the senses. While drinking in the sacred sounds of heartbeat and breath, we take that the ability to listen and to feel even deeper within. We tap into that intuitive sense of knowing; how and when to move and when to be still. Allow yourself to reconnect to that sacred animal within, ultimately reminding us how to simply be free both on and off of the yoga mat.

It is time for our voices to be used in the service of healing and change. But so many of us are terrified of our authentic voice that we bury it, silence it or cover it up. What if we trusted our vessel and courageously gave ourselves permission to speak our truth? What if the world was calling us to become voices of change? What if our voice was necessary for the healing of our world? In this workshop, designed specifically for teachers and students who feel blocked in their expression, we will discover the authentic voice within and enhance the potency and power of our self expression as facilitators and change makers. The practice will focus on specific sequences designed to release long held traumas in the 5th chakra. We will learn the ancient art of bridging sound and asana as we move through powerful standing postures, liberating balance postures and voice activating backbends. As you release, listen and find your voice, you will then be supported in taking steps to become an effective agent of change - using self expression to support social justice and creative evolution. Voice of Change invites our embodied truth to become our message, our medicine and our direct action. Dive into this ecstatic immersion into the heart of soulful self-expression and discover your ability to live, express and embody your truth. Become a Voice of Change!

Join Yogi J Miles and DJ Mikemetic for a cosmic mash-up of deep grooves and deeper flow! Follow the sound of the drums syncopating with the rhythm of breath and movement, and let the music help you find freedom to be funky! As Yogi J leads the Hatha practice, Mikemetic will provide the soulful sounds of house music, arranging beats and heavy rhythms from around the world and across the entire diaspora. Remember that everyone is free in the House of Yoga! 

Dive below the surface of the asana to unearth the healing aspect of the forgiveness practice. In this practice we look to move through that which is stuck and binds us old habitual loops, patterns, and addictive behaviors—in other words to forgive is the free ourselves from some of our samskaras. The asana will focus on twists, hip and side body opening, along with the power of heating the body to detoxify.

Drumming was the earliest form of tribal communication and has been used to celebrate significant ceremonial gatherings in many primitive cultures. Our daily lives are infused with rhythm; elements of nature, change in seasons, and life cycles. We connect with the elements: earth, our roots… where we’re from sustains us. Water nourishes our souls while reminding us to go with the flow. Air feels wild, free and full of possibility. Fire ignites the passion within to bring those possibilities to life! Navigating through this life, we are one with the elements. Feel the vibrations of the drums as you connect breath, heartbeat, and mind with the animal of your body.  Join Becky “Tara” Eschenroeder of Great Abiding Yoga and percussionist Brad Ellsworth of Druminyasa as tune into your primal nature while getting in touch with your creative spirit.

What could be better than a deeply soul satisfying and re-energizing final class to complete the festival? Join MC YOGI and the tribe for one last gathering to connect with friends, stretching it out to chill music, decompressing and de-stressing before we all hit the road! Let’s Bliss out together in this mellow flow class, and ride a light filled wave of good energy and good feels all the way home!

A legendary tale from India sparks the inspiration for you to move from your heart in this bhakti-infused vinyasa practice guided by Sean and supported by the live grooves of the band.

Learn how yoga combined with a clear understanding of Polyvagal Theory can help you reduce anxiety, live longer, increase resilience and experience deeper intimacy in your relationships. The vinyāsa sequence will move with live music by Alvin Young for steady ujjāyī breathing (6 breaths a minute) to increase Polyvagal tone, strength, balance and flexibility.