J.D. Potié
THORNE Aug. 16-18, 2019
Over the course of the weekend, hundreds of people from the Pontiac and beyond convened at Santainaii earth-based healing centre . . .
in Thorne for the seventh annual Bhakti in the Woods Yoga and Music Festival.
With numerous tents scattered across the grounds and vendors offering varieties of goods as well as forms of meditation on site, attendees did as they pleased, roaming the property freely with the purpose of connecting their third eye with the elements of the earth.
According to the event’s main organizer Bermalva Porter, the event provides a much more relaxing atmosphere than most music festivals, which are quite often very noisy and overcrowded.
From group yoga sessions, to plant-based temporary tattoos or the soothing sounds of kirtan music, the event offered a wide variety of avenues to help folks breathe deeply and reduce undesired stress.
“Sometimes you go to festivals and there’s just so much stimulation,” she said.
“Here, there’s places you can go and just relax, hang out, have a nap or tap into any one of these programs that uplift.” Boasting ten musical acts over three days with some of the best kirtan players in the world, as well as a number of healing, dancing and musical workshops on hand, there was no shortage of opportunities for creative expression throughout the festival.
Hundreds of tents were set up in the open field. But some followed a trail going deeper into the forest, settling their camps in the woods to give themselves a little extra peace and privacy.
When Porter first started the festival seven years ago, some of her yoga students were quite skeptical about the prospect of putting on such an event in the Pontiac.
“A festival in Ladysmith, are you crazy?,” she said. “Like, who’s going to come to that?”
But thanks to its consistent growth from one edition to the next, the festival is expected to be a mainstay in the region for years to come.
A full-time yoga teacher in both Shawville and Ladysmith, organizing the event has proven to be a rewarding experience for Porter. As it draws so many yogis and kirtan enthusiasts from far and near to the Pontiac every year, it’s always a memorable gathering.
By making little tweaks to the event here and there, the festival seems to only get easier to run, Porter said.
“It’s been smoother every year,” she said. “We work out more and more of the kinks and it’s evolved every year and everyone is just even more chill. The ones that are returning know what to expect and the ones that are here for the first time they’re like “‘whoa, ok. This is what I was looking for.’”
