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“Hello! How’s your breath?”

It’s not exactly common for a conference event to start with that question. But when Sundar Balasubramanian, PhD, posed that query to attendees on the Sedona Yoga Festival last weekend, everyone understood exactly what was being asked of them. Long, slow exhalations followed.

Dr. Balasubramanian, a cell biology researcher and TEDx speaker, was one in every of dozens of presenters on the five-day festival, which was launched in 2013 and quickly became a respected and anticipated event where dozens of teachers share the tradition and science of yoga. The recent gathering drew greater than 700 attendees of all ages—including beginners with no yoga experience in addition to those that have been teaching for many years—who could access 160 workshops, panel discussions, immersions, classes, live shows, and trainings.

Sessions included discussions of neuroplasticity, Ayurveda, methods to teach chair yoga with the founding father of the Accessible Yoga Association, Jivana Heyman, in addition to a panel discussion of sacred activism with Reggie Hubbard, Saul David Raye, and Ana Camacho-Hansen. The event also offered a 20-hour trauma consciousness yoga training led by Lara Land.

“There’s a lot diversity—all backgrounds are here, all sizes and styles are here, every teacher here is offering adaptations,” explains Arundhati Baitmangalkar, yoga teacher trainer and founding father of the Let’s Talk Yoga podcast, who served on this system team for the festival. In one in every of her talks, she shared with teachers her first rule for making a supportive environment for college kids, which is a reminder that “Teachers, it’s not about you.”

It’s that understanding of scholars’ needs and expectations that prompted Baitmangalkar to rethink one aspect of the festival. “I feel students have an understanding of a yoga festival as this big party,” she explains. Although there’s nothing fallacious with that, she says, the term may limit one’s understanding of the education happening throughout the 4 days.

Heather Sherée Sanders, longtime producer of the Sedona Yoga Festival, feels the identical. “I feel you hear ‘yoga festival’ and you think that barefoot and spinning around on the bottom,” she says with amusing. “Nevertheless it’s really more of conference with a festival vibe. We’re all here studying, practicing together, honoring the traditions of yoga, and exploring it really deeply.”

Sanders considers the event more of a “conscious evolution conference,” which has been its tagline lately.  “I all the time said you might get a masters in yoga reading about all of the classes in your schedule,” she says.

The higher a part of a 12 months is spent working planning the theme and taking applications for speakers in addition to reaching out to teachers who aren’t drawing plenty of attention but are doing amazing things, explains Sanders. She coordinates speakers and the schedule along side her small programming team, including communications director Lisette Cheresson, who help make sure the content is diverse in all ways. The main points of the event are finalized along side a crew of talented volunteers.

Sanders emphasizes that it is feasible to attend the conference and still receive a really deep understanding of yoga without doing any asana, or physical poses. Roughly one third of attendees aren’t yoga teachers. They vary from beginners to regulars at studios who want to know more about yoga without becoming a teacher. “We’re all here with each other and adding to one another’s understanding,” she explains.

That understanding takes many shapes. “This conference is so special since there are such a lot of small workshops,” says Molly Nixon, director of the Yoga Mandala Project, which leads trauma-informed training for yoga teachers who support refugees.

Nevertheless, Nixon’s learning wasn’t limited to the sessions. After three days attending scheduled events, she spent her fourth day not attending any of the classes she’d intended. As an alternative, she found herself drawn into conversation after conversation with other teachers and panelists with similar and opposing viewpoints, which she considered to be just as educational. As Nixon explained, “It’s just magic.”

Next 12 months’s Sedona Yoga Festival will happen May 1-4, 2025. Discounted tickets can be found until March 31, 2024.

Photography by Ty Dobbs.