This past weekend, I attended the Wanderlust Festival up in VT. (Full disclosure: I had already purchased a one-day pass to the event but, after getting the opportunity to blog about the festival for their website, I was given a free, three-day pass.)

I want to recap my Wanderlust experience for you here but, if I told you everything, it would be the longest post ever in the world. And Tumblr is not exactly the right platform for longform writing. ;) So I'm going to restrain myself, split my experience up into various categories, and keep myself to one post a day.

Today: Meditation

So after practicing asana for awhile, and educating myself about the eight limbs of yoga, I decided I wanted to make meditation a part of my life. The problem: it was hard as hell. 

I tried Deepak Chopra's 21-day meditation challenge and made it one and a half weeks. I went to a one-hour meditation class at a studio near me and had a panic attack. After awhile, I came to the conclusion that the only meditation I'd ever be able to manage was guided meditation. I was a huge fan of yoga nidra in particular. (In fact, if my yoga nidra teacher could just yoga nidra me to sleep every night, I would be eternally grateful.)

Anyway. When I saw the wealth of meditation classes on the Wanderlust schedule, I decided to give things another go. 

The first class I took was taught by Steven Leonard, a total hottie who usually teaches at Kripalu. A mix of seated and walking meditation (see photo above), it was the perfect way to ease into my festival experience after the drive up from NJ, and the frantic, sweaty search for the press tent. In fact, as we slow motion walked around our tent, I found myself focusing on the experience in a way I'd never been able to before. When the class ended after an hour and a half, I felt an incredible sense of calm.

The second meditation class I took was my last class at the festival (and only now do I realize how smart it was to bookend my trip with those two, centering practices). It was a sound healing class led by Jeannine Dietz, who had us lie back on our mats before she walked us through our chakras, utilizing crystal singing bowls and gongs. I'm a huge fan of singing bowls (I have a music background, and love the tone that can be wrung out of those bowls) and, as I lay there, I felt as if I was being gently rocked to sleep.

Now that I'm no longer at Wanderlust, it's hard to hold on to what I felt there. That peace. That calm. But I try to remind myself of what Steven Leonard said at the beginning of his class. That switching off our brains isn't the point. That it's all about awareness. That all of life can be a meditation.

If you're interested in reading more about my eternal quest to quiet my mind, you should totally check out the post I wrote for the Wanderlust Journal. It goes into my meditation class experiences in even greater detail.