Why are Festivals Good for Us ?

Some of my Thoughts After Being in a Field for 4 Nights in a Tent and Contemplating Why I Love it and Maybe Why Others do too.

I think festivals remind us of our humanity, remind us that we can all be together with our similarities and our differences. Be together with music, food and nature.

This was our tent in the morning after a rainy and windy first night! I have to admit we, My friend and I did Glamp this year, I have been to this festival three years in a row but this year I was presenting with my friend Dario Spagnoli. We were doing 2 workshops on Mindfulness and trees.

We called it " Practicing Mindfulness with Trees", because we walk a lot together and realised people are looking for ways to connect with nature in a more mindful way.

Dario has worked in Horticulture for 17 years, bulding his career after needing something to help with some challenging times in his life, getting into gardening and moving on, to working with the leading horticultural charity in the UK, he has been a part of shows, helping build some beautiful public gardens in the UK and now works in the area of plant science.

My journey in Mindfulness began many years ago,

growing up in Ibiza, I was introduced to meditation

pretty young, I became a seriouse Insight meditator in 2000 after doing my first Vipassana Retreat.

from then I began practicing meditation daily and

mindfulness became a part of my life. I introduced Mindfulness into my work once I became a therapist 15 years ago in many different ways and continued to study more therapeutic practices of mindfulness.

Plants came later for me when I returned to the UK in 2013 from Australia, I was looking to ballance my therapy work with something grounding and I began working at Clifton Nurseries in Maida Vale this is where I met Dario.

Our friendship led us to this Walking Mindfulness Journey and this workshop we just held at Into the Wild festival.

Whilst at the festival for my third year, I was thinking about the importance of Festival, There were many things that came to mind,what is a festival? Slowing down, camping, basic, not overly organised, community, kindness, being outside more than in, moving away from technology and moreemersed in nature, music, eating foods you may not normaly, cooking in a field, nature all around, time to just contemplate, seeing children and teenagers reconnecting with each other and nature, accepting you don't have all your comforts and becoming ok with that, suffering gross toilets but surviving! accepting the

changing weather because you have to and infact beginning to enjoy it, doing workshops you may never have imagined existed.

Theres so much that we take for granted in life and there's something about being closer to nature and an unspoken agreement that, your all doing pretty much the same thing for a few days, meeting people you may not normally meet, eating, sitting, watching music, dancing, playing, walking and sleeping for the duration and it seems to work well.

this festival is opened and closed with a ceremony and I think, is a profoundly important experience as it is like an unspoken contract to be kind and be together for the duration, the ceremony includes a buddhist monk who comes each year named ; Ahbay Tulku Rinpoche and he is there to bless the opening of the festival and at the end with others. The energy is set and all benefit from this at the festival. He continues to offer blessings throughout the festival. This festival is alcohol and drug free .

I was sitting one day on a bail of hay on my own, surrounded by others and I felt such a sense of commuinity, being inside our houses so much being seperate, it feels lonely where as there, although I was alone in that moment I felt such connection and felt I` could go up to anyone if I needed some thing.

There is something about us as people when we spend a good amount of time together doing the same thing following the same cause that we settle into a humaness that is connected and kinder, I have done many types of retreats in my time and have found this to be the case. When on silent retreats you really notice the mind and the judgments, fears and as time goes by you realise we are ultimatly all the same, we sleep, eat and shit! haha, it was a running joke for Dario and I about the toilets as some of the conversations you hear around the toilets are very funny, as if its something unique and yet we all do it just like we all get older, all these subjects seem to be hard for us to come to terms with.

I think festivals are good for us because they remind us we are all the same as I said above, I think festivals remind us to connect with each other and with nature, I think they remind us how much we all love music and to move, sing and dance.

So much mud! what is a festival with out mud!

Some kids had a lot of fun in the mud! when do you get to do that?!

I wanted to say a bit about nature and how being mindful during this weekend, it enhanced my ability to see the beauty all around us and to be so greatful for the way nature holds us in these spaces, the shelter from rain, the shade from the sun, the softness under our feet and places to sit and lay in the grass, the land marks of huge trees. The hay bails we sat on the logs we sat on, the fires that were made to keep us warm and represent life, the birds we listened to in our moments in the workshop, the breeze we felt,

the clean air the trees and plants produced, the rain that offered mud for people to slide and the kids to have great fun in, the fields that held our tents, the stars we all often stood and stared at and the half moon! so much we must never take that for granted, its good for us and we need nature as it needs us, beig in it more for a stretch of time, is good for our souls!