Telluride Yoga Festival & My Thoughts on Yoga Retreats
05 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in Colorado, Travel, Yoga Tags: Environment, Mountains, Sean Johnson & Wild Lotus Band, Summer, Telluride, Telluride Yoga Festival, Tias Little, Wah!, yoga retreats
This weekend commences the 3rd Annual Telluride Yoga Festival. From July 8th-11th, participants will experience yoga amongst the amazingly breathtaking scenery of Telluride, Colorado. Nestled in the Mountains of Southwestern Colorado, this event is a culmination of my two current obsessions: yoga and Colorado. Unfortunately I will be unable to attend this event, but it is a goal for next year when I’m not committed to working every weekend at the hospital!
The TYF should be amazing this year, as there are going to be world-class yoga instructors (including my teacher’s beloved teacher, Tias Little), great music (including Wah! and Sean Johnson & the Wild Lotus Band – 2 favorites), and amazing people from all over the world. Admission starts at $150 for Single-Day passes, but can include more expensive packages for the weekend. If you’re a local or near Telluride this weekend, why not drop by? For only $150 you could experience some of the best yoga of the summer!
Telluride is a beautiful town any time of year; known for its awesome (yet expensive) snowboarding & skiing, Telluride has great activities year round. This summer, Telluride also hosted their 37th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival (June 17th-20th), which would have been amazing to attend as well. Upcoming events include the Telluride Film Fesitval (Sept 3rd-6th), and Blues n Brews Festival (Setp 17th-19th). The Blues n Brews fest is every local’s favorite, because it combines great music, great beer, and amazing fall colors and scenery that help launch the beginning of ski (um, snowboard) season! I am actually considering a road trip out to see this!! Acts this year include BB King and the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band, among many others. I love SW Colorado (and Mick Fleetwood!!) and could also hang out in Durango for a few days (not to far away!!)… which would be a heavenly Autumn vacation!
Anyway, the TYF got me thinking again about my inner conflict with yoga retreats. Yoga retreats to exotic locations had always been difficult for me to understand. I’ve always wanted to attend one but have found it difficult to spend money and resources on something that I could practice at home. During this time of environmental corruption, how could one support using gas and energy to travel somewhere distant to meditate and do yoga? Shouldn’t we celebrate and respect our environment by practicing closer to home? Yoga, to me, has always been about minimalism and a retreat from excess, and I have always found yoga retreats – with their expensive price tags and far-away locales – to complicate this.
But as an avid snowboarder bored by the midwest and lack of mountains, I understand the necessity to travel to a place that accommodates a need. Snowboarders need snow-covered mountains. Surfers need ocean currents. Mountain bikers need rough terrain. While I maintain that you can practice yoga anywhere and everywhere, I can also understand the allure of going to Telluride (or Indonesia, or India, or Costa Rica) and practicing yoga among the backdrop of beauty, of nature, of peace. Yoga is not the same in a humid gym at your healthclub, or at the expensive yoga studio downtown, or in your living room while your dog is trying to run underneath you while in bridge pose. I’m not quite sure how necessary it is do yoga in one of these exotic places, but I will admit that it is probably very inspiring and can bring your practice to a whole other level. I’m hoping that when you embark on these long journeys across our Earth that you respect the place you are and the place you came from, just as during any vacation.
The issue for me isn’t traveling, it’s the issue of traveling for yoga, which had always inspired me to be more conscientious of the Earth around me. There are many yogis that boycott excessive “yoga travel” for the fact that one is wasting resources and harming the environment in the process. But as long as we respect the Earth in our daily lives, why not take a yoga adventure? We all need a vacation, right?
What do you think about destination workshops? Does it conflict with your environmental concerns or ethics? Have you ever attended an exotic yoga retreat? If so, please share your experiences. And maybe I’ll see you next summer (or this winter!) in Telluride 
Namaste
My name is Christine and I am passionate about nutrition, exercise and wellness! Read more about me in the "About" section of this blog and check out my other pages!
