“Meditation is really discovering the love and the bliss that can be inside, and dancing is such a natural expression of that. Just connecting to the pulse, to the music, it allows that energy that’s inside to explode outside.” Shephali Agrawal, a lawyer and a volunteer director at the Art of Living center in New York, gushes on getting freaky in the club and the bursting yoga party scene.
The New York Times has a story about this recent explosion, as it were, of yoga raves. Yes, there are glow sticks. No there are no drugs. Well, not in the physical sense.
Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, speaks from experience:
“They’re acting the same as they would if they’d taken a bunch of pills,” he said of the crowd.
Mr. Silverman saw potential.
“I could see this being 10,000 to 20,000 people in Madison Square Garden,” he said. “There is no alternative like this where you can go and not drink, and still be in bed by midnight.”
The Art of Living Foundation seems to be leading the way in such rocking raveness. Starting with house parties, Rodo Bustos and Nico Pucci of the So What Project!, began hosting raves fives years ago with the idea of offering their new agey hipster pals a party atmosphere free of drugs and alcohol. They’ve since moved onto bigger venues, like nightlcubs in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
They’re not the only ones in on ‘yoga clubbing’ though. Jivamukti hosts live shows by groups like Bhakti Band, Laughing Lotus holds late Friday night classes with live music of a D.J. and GYDO (Get Your Dance On) has been throwing yoga dance parties for a couple of years now (ask Elena Brower and Dana Flynn who often teach the pre-rave yoga section), not to mention Wanderlust Fest’s ever growing hoopy yoga disco scene (though alcohol is certainly available and there’s no explicit policy on drugs, ahem).
You might enjoy such a yoga hoedown if you don’t mind the neon, glitter and a little extra, modern new age touchy feelyness like that you might experience at the Body Actualized Center in Brooklyn.
…it would be hard to capture as much of the spirit of a New Age revival as the Body Actualized Center did at its opening party. The actual yoga portion came late, around 11 p.m., by which time the main room was too crowded for anyone to do more than a very cramped downward dog. The instructor, Amy Jenkins, 24, dressed in flowing white pants and a white tank top, with glitter on her cheeks, instructed the participants, who stood in mountain pose, to run their hands over their bodies.
“We never touch ourselves in public; we never breathe,” she said, wiggling as she moved her hands over her torso. Then she instructed everyone to rise up into tree pose and lift their arms above their heads.
As people raised their arms in the tight space, she told the group, “If you touch someone … touch them again!”
The Yoga Rave: a place where you can totally trip out drug free, get friendly with your fellow man/woman and wake up in your own bed the next morning (if you so choose).
——
Earlier…
- Sadie Nardini’s ‘Rock Your Yoga’ (A Poetic Review)
- When the Honeymoon is Over (A Yoga Love Story)
- Yoga Gets Easier from Comfort of Your Home, on Demand
- Yoga in Top 10 Growing Industries Alongside Hot Sauce, Self-Tanning and Green Stuff
- Wanderlust LIVE Becomes the Magic Kingdom Anusaraland Could Have Been
… was just waiting for the other shoe to drop …
how soon before we see stoner yoga, Ecstasy Edition ?
or Jack Daniels yoga, beer yoga, belly-flop-butt-naked-in-someones-pool yoga.
More yoga bleaching, methinks.
Stoner yoga is already a thing in LA.
Get Your Dance On is really something to be experienced. Whenever you organize around something powerful it can come off ridiculous, commercial, overblown.
But when you’re going to dance, and you really dance, nothing can get in the way or take away from that trip into total synchronicity and life force.
Dance at home!
Nailed it!
This is why I will dance at a 5 Rhythms class.
As with yoga, I can afford to practice 5 Rhythms dance, mostly at home.
A couple of parties and suddenly Yoga Dork calls it an “explosion.”
Like most everything in Neon Yoga, it’s a press release in search of buzz, a buzz in search of an audience, and an audience on search of relevance.
I do like the name “So What Project.” It suggests an appropriate degree of self-mocking irony?
“So What Project”. Just another distraction. If Brower is involved, it is to make a buck, “$o What”. If alcohol and drugs are involved, just more distractions, “$o Want”.
Yoga raves are to yoga what Haight Ashbury was after all the hippies left, just another city block full of burnouts. Try getting down and dirty in silence, then talk to me about yoga. Namas friggin Day
Well said Father of Two!
A great alternative! lululemon is doing something similar.. but at diffrent locations once a month for the rest of the year, on the 12th of each month, they are very secrative about it Ive noticed.. check it out!
onthe12th.com
Lulu is secretive? Who’d have thunk! By the way, I hear that Lulu’s Glow Stick has mystical healing powers. The company’s trademarked the item as “Vita-Beam.” Shove it up your butt, and it works just like an enema. It also improves your posture, eliminates lower back pain, stimulates your sex drive, tones your butt, and induces weight loss. And best of all, you don’t even have to practice any yoga.
It means that you get total discounts at the time of subscription. Dream
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I love the idea of having a place to release my energies and socialize with fellow yogis in a safe space. There are so many opportunities to party under the influence, and I often feel out of sync in those scenarios. Yoga raves combine two of my favorite things in life (yoga & dancing) in a wonderful setting!
This is amazing, I’m just getting into yoga but I feel like I wanna find one of these and partake! I’m pretty straight edge, so the idea of tripping out drug-free is good for me!
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