Dan Nevins’ story of losing both legs in combat and returning to life through yoga is one of the most powerful in the wellness world. This keynote brings his hard-won wisdom about resilience, identity, and transformation to the full Summit community.

Abigail Atkinson shares her journey of recovering from stroke through yoga practice—and what that experience revealed about the body’s intelligence, the nature of healing, and what yoga can offer when the stakes are highest.

A facilitated panel conversation exploring how yoga teachers and practitioners hold space for themselves and others during collective and personal crisis. What does the practice ask of us when the world is hard?

A keynote talk exploring how yoga supports preventative health, self-regulation, and whole-person care. This offering bridges traditional yogic principles with modern wellness perspectives.

In yoga, we move beyond the physical pose into a space of deep inquiry, practicing the awareness required to ask: What is true? This session invites you to bring that same presence to your relationship with money, identity, and power.

Led by AJ Bishop-Andrews, Whole Woman Wealth is a transformative workshop that bridges the gap between spiritual alignment and financial clarity. We will explore how to define wealth as a state of wholeness—rather than just a number—and learn to make financial decisions rooted in self-trust rather than external pressure. Through a blend of meditative inquiry and practical reflection, you will identify where your financial habits may be out of alignment with your core values. Step off the mat and into a new narrative of abundance, where financial wellness is treated as a vital part of your overall yogic path.

Workshop Highlights:

The Yoga of Money: Apply the principles of Satya (truthfulness) and Svadhyaya (self-study) to your finances.

Defining Wholeness: Move beyond scarcity mindsets to reclaim a sense of personal power and identity.

Aligned Action: Develop a framework for making clear, value-driven financial choices.

Do you feel like you’ve got it all together—until life throws you a curveball?

Suddenly, a part of you takes over in a work challenge, a tough conversation, or even getting cut off in traffic, and before you know it, you’ve said or done something you regret.

Brittany Hopkins Switlick offers a transformative roadmap to self-awareness and intentional living. Audiences learn to break free from self-sabotaging patterns and align with their highest selves.

A surprisingly funny and practical guide to surviving your first hot yoga class.

Yoga spaces often borrow from Indigenous cultures without fully understanding the histories, harms, and responsibilities that come with those practices. This workshop invites participants into a grounded, human conversation about cultural reverence—how to move, speak, and teach in ways that honor Indigenous peoples while reducing harm and increasing safety in shared healing spaces.

Hindu gods and goddesses are symbolic expressions of forces that move through our everyday lives, protection, courage, discernment, devotion, creativity, destruction, and renewal.

In this workshop, Vedic astrologer and spiritual practitioner Sarita Shrestha offers a grounded, culturally rooted introduction to working with these archetypal energies in a practical, embodied way. Rather than approaching deities as abstract mythology or something to be worshipped; Sarita will share how they function as living intelligences that can support clarity, resilience, and alignment in real life.

You’ll learn:

What many Hindu gods and goddesses actually represent beneath their imagery.

How different deities correspond to psychological, emotional, and karmic patterns.

How to work with specific forms (such as Ganesh, Lakshmi, Durga, Shiva, and Saraswati) for common life challenges.

Simple, respectful ways to invite these energies into daily practice, decision-making, and self-reflection.

This session is designed for yoga practitioners, teachers, and seekers who are curious about Eastern spiritual traditions but want to move beyond surface-level symbolism into something meaningful and usable. Sarita brings decades of lived experience, cultural lineage, and spiritual study to a conversation that is often misunderstood, oversimplified, or romanticized.

AJ Bishop-Andrews

The structures we move within — on and off the mat — are not hierarchical, they are interconnected?

This keynote experience begins by exploring the patterns we have inherited in our practice, our communities, and within ourselves — and how those patterns shape the way we relate to power, lineage, and belonging. Using the Flower of Life as a symbolic and experiential map of wholeness, Vinita invites participants to see each point in the pattern as equally essential. Not above. Not below. Simply part of the whole.

Through storytelling and subtle philosophy, the session moves from concept into lived experience. Midway through, participants are guided into an authentic relating practice — presence, eye contact, and shared awareness — that shifts the room in real time. The session closes with a guided meditation leading participants into the body as living geometry, a felt sense of connection that belongs to no hierarchy and excludes no one.

Participants leave not just having heard an idea, but having experienced it.

A contemplative exploration of the third chapter (pada) of the Yoga Sutras, which invites us to understand meditation not as something we do, but as a way we live. Guided by Nischala Joy Devi’s decades of scholarship and practice, this session weaves philosophy with lived reflection, offering insight into how meditative awareness can shape our actions, relationships, and daily life.

In this entertaining talk, Dr. Manoj Chalam illuminates Hanuman’s journey in the Ramayana and will relate it to the archetypical Hanuman energy within you. Like Hanuman we can access super human powers of wisdom, strength and service alongside deep humility and “move big Boulders”. Learn how awakening this energy leads to explosive transformation, both within and in the outside world, be it spiritual, personal or professional.

In parallel, Manoj will guide us with stories and symbolisms of the Ramayana through the lens of Advaita Vedanta philosophy; where Lord Ram is an avatar of Consciousness (Higher Self of formless), Sita is us (lower self in form) and Hanuman is the uniter of us to Consciousness.

An accessible introduction to the Bhagavad Gita as a living text for navigating life, choice, and action with clarity and compassion. Drawing from decades of study and practice, Nischala Joy Devi offers insight into the Gita’s core teachings and their relevance for modern life, with time for reflection and questions.

This session offers an embodied exploration of the Yoga Sutras through chanting, sound, and resonance. Chanting becomes a meditative practice—quieting the mind, opening the heart, and allowing the wisdom of the sutras to be felt rather than simply understood intellectually. Suitable for both new and experienced practitioners, this offering invites participants into a direct, experiential relationship with the teachings through voice, vibration, and presence.

What is the true aim of yoga beyond the physical pose? In this foundational workshop, we explore the core purpose of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as illustrated by the first five verses (1.1–1.5). By examining the nature of the mind and why we suffer, we uncover how these ancient texts provide a direct roadmap for liberation and higher understanding—moving from avidya (ignorance) to clarity.

Through a blend of philosophical inquiry and embodiment practices, we will bridge the gap between sutra study and your daily life on and off the mat. Participants will experience a guided kriya to "still mental fluctuations," followed by meditation designed to integrate these concepts into their existing practice. Whether you are a student or a teacher, this session will clarify the role of the mind in yoga, providing deeper context and a renewed sense of purpose for your personal journey.

Workshop Highlights:

The Greater Aim: Understand yoga as a holistic system for navigating the mind.

Embodied Philosophy: Move from intellectual theory into a direct experience of "stilling the mind."

Practical Reflection: Learn to apply sutra 1.1–1.5 to modern asana and daily self-reflection.

This class is suitable for men and women. Manoj will bring statues of yogic Goddesses and relate them to your personal archetypes.  The pinnacle of the Goddess archetype is the Wisdom Goddess with side archetypes of the Mother and the luminous Devi. Discover the archetypes of the slumbering Goddesses or Shakti within us as Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kali, Durga, Tara and Kwan Yin. Unleash this Shakti, within you as the creative power of the One. This Shakti archetype guides us through all aspects of life transitions such as adulthood, relationships, marriage, parenting, profession, mentoring and finally enlightenment. With Shakti's guidance, we are able to fully express the heroine’s journey to Self Actualization.Manoj will help you find your personal deity Goddess archetype

Exploring the Divine Mirror in Every Connection

Join symbolic mythologist and teacher Manoj Chalam for a transformative talk on the Yoga of Relationships—a journey into how our human connections serve as sacred mirrors for awakening and growth.Manoj will bring in statues of Hindu and Buddhist deities to illustrate the ancient wisdom for modern times.  Drawing from Vedantic philosophy, Hindu mythology, and practical wisdom, Manoj weaves humor, storytelling, and insight to reveal how every relationship—whether romantic, familial, or communal—is an opportunity to deepen our self-awareness and align with higher consciousness.

In this engaging and accessible session, participants will explore:

• How relationships reflect the unresolved or enlightened aspects of the self

• Archetypes of divine love and union through the lens of deities and symbolism

• Tools for turning friction into fuel for evolution

• The path of devotion (bhakti) in human connection

With warmth and wit, Manoj invites us to see love not just as emotion, but as a spiritual practice—a yoga. Come ready to laugh, reflect, and leave with your heart a little more open and your relationships a little more sacred. 

Manoj will help you find your personal deity Goddess archetype

(This workshop is 80% lecture, 10% meditation, 5% Mantras and 5% light spiritual stretches.)

Beyond Inhale & Exhale: The Breath Map Yoga Forgot

The Hidden Curriculum of Breath

Somewhere along the way, the yoga world reduced breath to cueing inhale, exhale, and perhaps adding ujjayi.

But breath is not a technique.

It is the single most intelligent anchor inside asana. It shapes nervous system tone, pranic direction, muscular effort, mental steadiness, and subtle awareness — all before we ever touch formal pranayama.

In this deeply layered and practical session, Arundhati B invites you into the hidden curriculum of breath. You will explore:

• The six distinct qualities of breath and how each alters a student’s internal experience

• The three-layered nature of breathing — physical, energetic, and perceptual

• How breath organizes effort, stability, and expansion inside postures

• Why reducing breath to ujjayi limits both teacher and student

• How to deepen breath literacy without turning your class into a pranayama workshop

This is not about adding more technique. It is about refining perception.

If you are a teacher, you will leave with sharper tools and a radically more intelligent way to cue. If you are a practitioner, you will experience how breath alone can transform the depth of your practice.

Join Arundhati B — global yoga educator and voice behind a new movement in breath literacy — as she reshapes how we understand and teach yoga through the breath.

A teacher-focused exploration of sequencing through the lens of the gunas—tamas, rajas, and sattva. Learn how to move beyond pose-based planning and skillfully shape the energetic arc of a class.

Go beyond mechanical cueing and discover how language can shape the "energetic architecture" of your classes. Drawing on decades of hosting YTTs, this workshop presents four distinct types of verbal communication designed to invoke specific mood and awareness states in real time. Just as an artist creates a bounty of color from basic pigments, you will learn to color your teaching with greater insight, precision, and levity.

Teaching is an intentional craft, not a haphazard act. While most 200-hour trainings provide the basics, this session offers the refinement needed to make your instructions feel "held" in the moment rather than rote. Through self-evaluation and collective wisdom sharing with fellow educators, you will transform your verbal approach into a powerful tool for student transformation.

Key Learning Objectives:

Self-Audit: Evaluate your dominant verbal style and identify areas for expansion.

Atmospheric Mastery: Understand how to invoke specific grades of attention through four core language types.

Peer Exchange: Participate in a collaborative forum to share and receive insights from the teaching community.

Energy Medicine Yoga doesn’t have to feel abstract, esoteric, or separate from the way you already teach. This practical, teacher-focused workshop offers clear, accessible ways to integrate Energy Medicine Yoga techniques into any style of yoga class—without changing your lineage, class structure, or teaching voice. Designed to meet teachers where they are, this session bridges the gap between curiosity about energy work and confident, grounded application. Teachers will explore simple techniques and language they can use immediately, helping students feel the benefits of energy awareness without confusion or overwhelm.

What if a few small shifts in how you teach could make a big difference for your students? This Teacher Track workshop invites you to explore how teaching from a trauma-informed lens isn't an overhaul of what you already do, but refines how you show up for your students and their nervous systems. Bring your curiosity — and expect to leave with a few things worth sitting with.

Juliana Larochelle is a certified yoga teacher and mentor with 12+ years of experience. She is the creator of the Steal My Flow movement, where she started sharing her sequences for other yoga teachers to use. She is known for making yoga sequencing easy, sharing creative flows, and showing the real side of teaching yoga.

If you’ve ever felt stuck teaching the same flows on repeat, this workshop is for you.

Join Juliana Larochelle for a 90-minute Creative Sequencing Workshop for Yoga Teachers. In this continuing education workshop, you’ll learn 4 simple methods for adding creativity to your yoga flows.

This is not about teaching advanced asanas or tricky transitions. It’s about learning how to make your classes fresh while still accessible.

This is a hands-on, interactive workshop where Juliana will lead a mini lesson on creative sequencing, then you’ll work in small groups with your peers to apply the lesson and build your own creative flows.

You’ll leave with a repeatable formula you can return to, so you don’t have to wait for inspiration to hit.

The Devi Mahatmya is one of the most profound mythological transmissions within the yogic tradition. It is an unfolding of the Divine Feminine as creator, sustainer, and destroyer. In this teaching, the Goddess is not a distant deity, but an intelligent, living force that arises whenever balance is disrupted meeting illusion, limitation, and fragmentation with radical clarity and grace. This workshop is an immersion into the myth as a living map of consciousness. Rather than studying it as symbolism alone, we enter its field, allowing the narrative to mirror the inner process of transformation. Through story, meditation, practice, and inquiry, you will be invited to experience the myth as a mirror of inner transformation, the Goddess as living intelligence, and the cyclical nature of creation, preservation, and dissolution. You will also receive an initiation into three Kriya techniques that you can integrate into your own classes, offering practical tools to guide students into embodied states of awareness, energetic clarity, and inner stillness through lived experience rather than concept.

Many alignment corrections land negatively with our students. Even if the words "you're doing it wrong," are never even said. The result is a student who feels self-conscious, a class that loses momentum, and a teacher who stops offering opportunities for growth altogether.

This session teaches a repeatable, seven-step formula for delivering alignment insights mid-class in under two minutes. Students feel seen and empowered. The flow stays intact. And teachers walk away with a tool they can use in their very next class.

Developed through Brittany's 300-hour Advanced Leadership Teacher Training, this formula guides teachers to spot one alignment opportunity, name what’s possible, demonstrate the shift in real time, and connect it to why it matters, whether that's safety, strength, breath, or how the same principle shows up across multiple poses. The whole thing takes two minutes. It works at every level. And it changes how students experience their own bodies on the mat.

Session Outline

1. Why alignment cues so often backfire, and what to do instead

2. Introduction to the seven-step formula

3. Live demonstration: the formula in action across three common poses

4. Small group practice: participants run the formula with a partner

5. Debrief and refinement

6. How to create this habit into your regular teaching rhythm

Learning Outcomes

Participants will leave able to:

1. Deliver a complete alignment insight mid-class in two minutes or less without stopping class momentum.

2. Frame alignment opportunities so students experience possibility, not criticism.

3. Connect a single alignment point to safety, strength, breath, or cross-pose application.

A practical, approachable introduction to meditation that demystifies common myths and challenges. You’ll explore simple techniques for working with breath, attention, and distraction—no prior experience required.

Sound has always been one of yoga's most direct pathways inward. This session uses it intentionally.

Resonance & Radiance is a meditative experience built around harmonium, mantra, mudra, and breath. Jackie DeConti guides participants through a practice designed to quiet the nervous system, align the body's energetic centers, and create the conditions for genuine stillness — the kind that is hard to find in ordinary life.

The session opens with a grounding breath and body scan, giving everyone time to arrive fully before anything else begins. From there, participants are introduced to mudras paired with breathwork for relaxation and energetic balance. The heart of the practice moves into call-and-response chanting with live harmonium — no prior experience required, no wrong way to participate. Humming is welcome. Silence is welcome. Whatever arises is welcome.

A guided meditation follows, drawing the resonance of the chanting deeper into the body and mind. The session closes with a final tone and a moment of shared quiet.

Participants leave with practical tools they can take home — specific mudras, breath practices, and simple mantras they can use to regulate their nervous system and reconnect to themselves in daily life. No yoga experience is needed. Just a willingness to listen.

Guided yoga nidra practices designed to support deep rest, nervous-system regulation, and integration. Practiced lying down or comfortably seated, this session invites a state of conscious rest where the body softens and the mind settles, allowing for restoration without effort.

Mudras are more than symbolic hand shapes—they are precise, subtle tools for directing and regulating the flow of energy (prana) throughout the body and mind. In this accessible and experiential session, you will explore how specific hand gestures can support meditation, breathwork, mantra, and asana to deepen presence and expand awareness.

Focusing on felt experience over complex theory, we will outline foundational principles of the subtle body and practical ways to integrate mudras into your everyday life. Through guided kriya sequences combining breath and sound, you will learn how to use these "energetic seals" to influence internal tone and attention. Whether you are a curious beginner or a seasoned practitioner, this workshop offers tangible tools to enrich your practice and bring the power of yoga off the mat.

Key Takeaways:

Energetic Anatomy: Learn the relationship between the hands and the subtle body.

Practical Tools: Master a sequence of mudras to enhance focus and emotional regulation.

Daily Integration: Discover simple gestures to support your nervous system in everyday living.

Most of us have heard the word mantra. Few of us have felt what happens when it moves through you.

Japa is the practice of sacred repetition. A mantra, offered again and again, until the mind quiets and something deeper begins to speak.

In this 45-minute session, Catherine Wetenkamp guides you into one of yoga's oldest and most accessible meditation practices. You don't need experience. You don't need to know Sanskrit. You need only to show up and be willing to listen.

Cat draws from a living Himalayan Tantric lineage, rooted in her advanced study at Sattva Yoga Academy in Rishikesh under the guidance of Anand Mehrotra. She carries these teachings with precision and care. What she offers here is not a technique. It is a transmission.

You will leave this session with something you can use tomorrow morning, at your desk, in your car, in the quiet moments you didn't know you had.

Japa doesn't require stillness. It creates it.

Activate Breathwork is a heart-opening ceremonial breathwork experience designed to reconnect people to themselves, their intuition, and something greater than the noise of everyday life. Through intentional breath, music, and guided facilitation, participants are invited into expanded states of awareness where clarity, emotional release, creativity, and deep remembrance can emerge.

This experience often becomes a portal into deeper connection with inner wisdom, spirit guides, ancestors, purpose, and the truth beneath the conditioning. Activate Breathwork softens the walls people have built around their hearts and creates space to feel fully alive, connected, and profoundly present again.

In the Art of Dreaming + Living Journey, Suzanne Toro guides participants through education with lucid dreaming, sound and electromagnetic therapy, storytelling through song, pranayama, and light asana, rooted in ancient dreaming yoga traditions. These practices unlock the subconscious mind and biofield, harnessing the Botanical Gardens’s sacred energy to liberate karma and refine objective awareness across waking, dreaming, and sleeping states. Reflective journaling and mindful observation techniques empower attendees to integrate dream insights, fostering lasting spiritual growth.

Style Education + Experiential

◦ Modalities Used: Lucid Dreaming, Sound + Electromagnetic Therapy, Storytelling with Song, Pranayama

◦ Length 2 hours

Participant Level All levels

◦ Bring a notebook, pen, mat, hand towel/eye cover, blanket, water and dress in layers.

It’s not just about strength or flexibility — the alignment of your shoulders in yoga postures has everything to with scapular strategy.

In this workshop, we’ll demystify scapular biomechanics and anatomy to have the full picture so you’re not just following cues - you’re understanding the whole system. We’ll break down the how and why of the shoulders in weight-bearing postures so you can stop “muscling through”and build your foundation with intention. You’ll learn how your shoulder blades move with the arms overhead in postures like chair pose or even downward dog (hint: it’s not back and down!).

When you see how all the pieces fit together, subtle shifts in awareness will transform shaky transitions into grounded confidence. Expect anatomy made practical, drills you can feel immediately, and a whole new relationship

Many yoga practitioners..and teachers—unknowingly overemphasize external rotation, creating chronic instability in the SI joint and low back. This workshop unpacks the biomechanics of hip health and teaches corrective drills, yoga/Pilates-based activations, and accessible sequences to restore balance. Participants will leave with a new understanding of internal rotation, pelvic stability, and how to integrate these lessons into their teaching or practice.

A practical session focused on accessible alignment principles that work across bodies and practices. Learn how to adapt poses intelligently rather than chasing idealized shapes.

Breath is one of the most powerful—and underutilized—tools we have for regulating the nervous system, sharpening awareness, and changing how we respond to life.

In this experiential workshop, we’ll explore several foundational pranayama practices and how they directly influence energy, mood, focus, and emotional regulation. Rather than treating breathwork as an abstract concept, we’ll look at when and why to use specific techniques—whether you’re feeling anxious, depleted, overwhelmed, stuck, or disconnected.

Simple, Intelligent Breath Practices That Actually Work

Prāṇāyāma does not need to be intimidating, esoteric, or reserved for seated workshops.

And yet, many yoga teachers either skip it entirely in asana classes or overcomplicate it to the point where students feel confused or disconnected.

This session is about practicality and discernment.

In this applied workshop, Arundhati B shares the exact prāṇāyāma practices she weaves into her movement-based classes — intelligently, safely, and with clear purpose.

You will learn:

• Which breath practices integrate naturally into asana sequences

• How to layer prāṇāyāma without disrupting class flow

• When to stimulate, when to settle, and how to read the room

• How to cue simply without diluting depth

• The difference between teaching technique and cultivating experience

This is not about adding complexity. It is about adding clarity.

Whether you are a newer teacher or seasoned educator, you will leave with practical tools you can use immediately — and a deeper confidence in guiding breath within dynamic classes.

Many yoga classes chase depth — longer holds, deeper stretches, bigger shapes. But joints

don’t become more stable from hanging out at end range — they become more resilient when

the muscles that support them are actively engaged and intelligently loaded.

In this workshop designed specifically for yoga instructors, we’ll explore how dynamic,

muscle-driven movement builds joint stability more effectively than static holds or passive

stretching alone. We’ll break down the different ways muscles support joint motion —

concentrically, eccentrically, and isometrically — and why each plays a critical role in creating

strength that actually translates off the mat.

You’ll learn how to harness the stabilizing system of the body to create practices that feel strong, adaptable, and sustainable. These tools are especially powerful for students with hypermobility,

arthritis, or a history of injury — but they elevate every class you teach.

You’ll leave with practical drills, refined cueing language, and a more nuanced understanding of joint mechanics — so you can build strength inside mobility and teach in a way that develops true resilience for your students.

At the sacred crossroads of Ayurveda and the chakra system lies a map of your elemental nature and deeper gifts. These sister sciences illuminate the subtle and physical dimensions of who we are — revealing the intelligence woven through body, energy, and spirit.

Rooted in the wisdom of the five elements, Ayurveda expresses itself through the doshas — Vata, Pitta, and Kapha — the energetic blueprint through which we live our embodied lives. Each dosha holds profound strengths: Vata’s visionary creativity and intuition, Pitta’s radiant courage and transformative clarity, Kapha’s steady devotion and deep compassion.

When these elemental forces are explored alongside the chakras — the energetic centers of consciousness within the subtle body — we awaken a powerful understanding of ourselves. We begin to experience our constitution as a pathway toward healing, integration, and the ignition of our most radiant self.

Our time together will begin with a gentle, accessible overview of both systems, then unfold into slow, intentional movement, meditation, and reflection to embody your innate strengths. Open to all levels, bodies, and beings. Come ready to move slowly, listen deeply, and reconnect with your inner brilliance.

This class is an exploration of the subtle body—your energetic anatomy and the channels through which energy moves.

Blending teaching with direct experience, we’ll work with the chakra system, energetic pathways, and the felt sense of energy in the body. Through movement, breath, and sound, you’ll begin to perceive and interact with what is often unseen.

This is both a learning space and an embodied journey—where understanding meets experience. You won’t just learn the map, you’ll feel it.

The result is a deeper connection to your body, your intuition, and the intelligence that lives within you—opening the door to move beyond the physical and into a more expanded awareness.

This workshop is about how to choose the style of yoga for your healing journey based on your dosha, because all practices are not the same, nor are they appropriate for everyone.

Prana Vayus

A hands-on workshop guiding participants through the creation of a mala as a personal support for meditation, intention, or ritual practice. This session blends simple instruction with reflective space, inviting you to craft a meaningful tool that carries purpose beyond the weekend.

An open creative practice using color, pattern, and presence

A discussion-based session exploring how specific essential oils can support nervous-system regulation and a sense of grounding. Through lecture, sensory experience, and Q&A, this session offers practical insights into using aromatics as a supportive yoga-adjacent tool.

An interactive lecture examining essential oils traditionally associated with alertness, circulation, and vitality. Learn how aromatics can support energy and engagement without overstimulation, with time for questions and practical application.

A reflective, discussion-based session focused on essential oils that support relaxation and downshifting. This offering explores how aromatics can complement restorative practices and daily rhythms, followed by open Q&A.

The Soft Reset - A live ambient frequency set blending 432 Hz and Solfeggio-inspired tones with electronic textures, live instrumentation, decks, processed vocals, and guided moments of stillness. The Soft Reset is a cinematic listening experience created to help guests land in the body, soften the nervous system, and reconnect to themselves through sound.

This guided Drum Journey offers participants a grounding, non-psychedelic sound meditation designed to support presence, rest, and inner clarity. Led by Sequoia Garza-Keith, this experience invites participants to settle into their bodies through rhythm, visualization, and attentive listening.

Rather than aiming for a particular outcome, this session is simply an experience to be had. For some, rhythmic drumming may create a deeply meditative or altered internal state; for others, it may offer calm, regulation, or quiet rest. Participants are encouraged to listen to their bodies, remain choice-oriented, and engage in whatever way feels supportive.

This session pairs naturally with Sequoia’s workshop on Cultural Reverence in Yoga Spaces, offering an embodied experience grounded in respect, consent, and care.

Why This Matters

Sound and rhythm have long been used across cultures as tools for grounding, reflection, and connection. This offering emphasizes presence and consent, honoring the meditative aspects of rhythm without claiming universality or spiritual authority.

A participatory exploration of bhakti yoga through call-and-response chanting. No singing experience necessary—just a willingness to engage voice, breath, and collective rhythm.

Somatics and Sound Healing

The body holds more than we realize. Stress, transition, unexpressed emotion — it accumulates in the tissue, the breath, the nervous system. This sound bath creates the conditions to let it go.

The session opens with grounding breathwork, guiding participants to slow down and arrive fully in the body before any sound begins. From there, crystal singing bowls are introduced gradually and with intention — layered tones moving through the body's centers of awareness, creating a felt sense of internal clearing rather than simply ambient sound.

The heart of the session builds in resonance and depth. This portion is intuitive by design. Mariel follows the sound as it unfolds and responds to the energy of the room in real time, while maintaining a steady, trauma-informed container throughout. Participants are never pushed — only invited to release what they are ready to release.

The session tapers gently into softer tones and spaciousness, followed by a period of silence for integration. Participants are guided back slowly. Most leave feeling lighter, more grounded, and more connected to themselves than when they walked in.

This is sound healing as ceremony. Therapeutic in its roots, accessible in its delivery, and timed to the season — an offering for anyone ready to clear what they have been carrying and restore what has been depleted.

All weekend in the Yurt. Take a moment to step away and get grounded in your body.

Some experiences are hard to explain until you are inside them. Kirtan is one of them.

Jordan Loder is an international kirtan artist whose devotional chanting has carried audiences from yoga studios to festival stages to retreat centers around the world. His practice is rooted in the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and expressed through ancient Hindu and Buddhist mantras centered on forgiveness, gratitude, and compassion. What he creates in a room is not a performance. It is a shared return — to presence, to openness, to something that feels older and quieter than the noise of daily life.

This evening session is created around call-and-response chanting, the oldest form of communal music making there is. Jordan leads. The room responds. No experience is required and no voice is wrong.

Participation is entirely optional and entirely welcome. What tends to happen is that people who arrived uncertain find themselves singing — and that the singing does something to them they did not expect.

Jordan travels with just a harmonium and an open heart, occasionally joined by a local vocalist. The simplicity is the point. In a weekend full of movement and learning and becoming, this is the invitation to simply be — together, in sound, at the end of a day that asked a lot of you.