Kundalini Yoga and Road Tripping in France

Following an all night bus ride to Barcelona, we received a warm welcome from Julia (our yoga friend who used to live in Edwardsville, IL). Since we accidentally left our camera at Sunseed, we don't have many pictures to share. We made the best of our one night stay by sightseeing and wandering the colorful busy streets. Thanks Julia!

An arduous overnight train ride left us at the gates of the European 3HO Yoga Festival in the Loire Valley of France. We arrived a day early to train as volunteers in the kitchen and registration desk. It was fun to pitch our tent in an open field, then watch it fill up with hundreds of tents as the days progressed.

Around 1800 people from all over Europe attended the yoga festival. Yogi Bhajan brought Kundalini Yoga (the Yoga of awareness) to the West in 1968. He founded 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) to help spread the teachings of Kundalini yoga. Kundalini yoga combines asanas (physical postures), meditation, mantra (chanting), pranayama (breath techniques) and music. Together these techniques help build and maintain a Healthy body, Happy mind, and Holy spirit. Read a great article about Kundalini Yoga on the 3HO website (What is it all about?).

According to Yogi Bhajan's teachings, sadhana (or daily spiritual practice) is the base, or foundation of all spiritual endeavors. Sadhana is whatever you do on a regular basis to clear your consciousness in order to relate to the infinite spirit within you. Every day we encounter new stress and every day we would benefit from some sort of spiritual practice. Include physical exercise, meditation, and prayer to cover all your bases and attune to your highest spirit.

In keeping with his teachings, each day of the 10 day yoga festival started with morning sadhana from 4:30 to 7am. The highlight of the festival was 3 days of White Tantric Yoga. White Tantric Yoga is done in pairs as a group meditation. It is designed to quickly break through mental and subconscious blocks. Practitioners sit facing their partner and do 6 to 8 kriyas lasting 31 or 62 minutes. A kriya is a meditation including a yoga posture (asana), a hand position (mudra), a breathing technique (pranayama), a mental focus, and/or a mantra. The kriyas were intense. Sometimes we meditated for 62 minutes holding our arms above our heads, or linked arms with our partner, chanted a mantra, stared into each other's eyes and did a breathing technique for 31 minutes. That is a long time to be doing something over and over but it makes for a very nice meditation. After a while you just let go and flow. At times we would lose focus and coordination, but often the mantra we were chanting allowed us to recenter and refocus. At times the chanting and breathing techniques took us beyond time as we felt we could continue the kriya forever if we had to.

This year, the White Tantric Yoga was milder than years past We practiced for about five hours a day, as opposed to years past where it was up to ten hours a day. One of our last krias was a 62 minute blind walk. We went in groups of 11 with hands held in a long chain chanting "wahe guru". It was quite a powerful three days of yoga.

When we weren't practicing, we were working with the awesome kitchen group pictured above. We were from about eight different countries, and by the end of the festival we had all become great friends.

We didn't cook meals at Sunseed because we weren't sure how to prepare food for 45 people. Well, we learned how to cook for 1800 during the festival. The above recipe made one day's worth of hot sauce for the festival. We both worked in the kitchen preparing dinner for several hours a day.

Josh was one of four strong men working in the kitchen, so he was called upon several times a day to pour food and tea from the pots to the serving buckets.

Our dish washing operation was massive. During meal preparation, 16 people each stirred a pot to make kicharee. If the pot was not stirred properly, it would stick to the bottom. This made the washing up quite challenging, some pots taking up to a half hour to clean. But we were working with friends, chanting and chatting so the work was never mundane.

The last day of the festival was called Peace Prayer Day, and a large feast was prepared. Za helped all day making the special meal of eggplant, potato and tomato. Twelve batches from the above cooker were eaten! Everyone was so excited to eat garlic bread and butter, it was a nice change of pace after eating kicharee and vegetable soup for a week.

On the last night, there was a huge dance party under the big top. The DJ played lots of Indian dance music and everyone celebrated a great week coming to a close.

Happy Yogis!

We knew we wanted to go to Amsterdam after the festival, but we weren't sure how we were going to get there. We solicited a ride from a supremely nice man from Hamburg, Germany. He said he wanted to take a few days to camp in France, then would drop us off in Amsterdam. We were excited to load into his Mercedes station wagon for a good old fashioned road trip. Volker was a great travel buddy, he liked to stop by the side of roads to make coffee on his camp stove and take back roads because they have better scenery.

We camped for free on the northern coast of France and had crepes before driving through Belgium.

The three days and nights were filled with great conversation, lots of laughter and general camaraderie. We were grateful to have met such an awesome person through yoga. Thanks Volker! We hope to visit you in Hamburg someday!

As our new friend drove away, we were back on our own with a new city to explore. We were looking forward to having some free time after our month of yoga and volunteering.