The organisers Khirad and Shantidharm tell us all about their spiritual festival in France.
Festi’Spirit in June 2012, the first big spiritual festival in France, was a great success! It has been a 2-year preparation work for us, but the ‘3-day festival’ turned out really great. Many people came, more than 600 people every day. That’s very good for a first time festival! People came from all parts of France, some from Switzerland, Quebec, and there was a surprising good mix of young and old.
From day one, everything happened beautifully: people visited the many workshops, conferences and meditations which were on the programme. The conferences and workshops were lead by 40 people from different fields: meditation, tantra, yoga, qi gong, therapy, shamanism, Gurdjieff movements, etc. and we had also a small international touch with Margot Anand, Ma Sarita, Maha Vajra, etc.
Many sannyasins facilitated Osho Active Meditations and we gave a large space (the biggest) to the Osho meditations. There must have been around 200 sannyasins attending the festival.
We also had outdoor concerts in a beautiful field surrounded by trees. Every day we had a different band: Satyaa & Pari on Friday, Prem Joshua on Saturday and Marc Vella (a French pianist) on Sunday afternoon. We all enjoyed the different flavours of these concerts. We had invested a good amout of money for stage, sound technician and music equipment, because we wanted to give the best we could to the music bands – and we think it was worth it.
The venue of the festival was a seminar center located in Cogolin, south of France, called ‘Trimurti’, in the middle of nature and with a view over the bay of Saint Tropez. ‘Trimurti’ is spacious and the landscape around it gorgeous. For everybody there was a holiday feeling. The weather was amazing and very hot, no wonder the swimming pool was so much loved, in particular in the evening.
The ‘Trimurti’ team was well organised and merged well with our team. They took good care of all practical matters: welcome center, parking, security, food, accommodation, etc. We enjoyed working with them because we felt they were grounded, very sweet and “yes” oriented!
250 people could sleep on the site, another 350 people lived a few kilometers away on camping sites, hotels or guest houses. We were astonished how well this worked, even for the 7am events: the Osho Dynamic Meditation and the morning Yoga classes were always full!
We also had a Zen market where our sponsors who had supported the festival could sell their products: aura soma, meditative music, books, Almasta for Osho books, Tantra Skydancing, a travel agency specializing in spiritual travels, etc. The entrance ticket for Festi’Spirit 2012 was only 70 € for the 3 days. It happened that it was just enough to cover all expenses.
We got a lot of good feed-back, but we liked best what some sannyasins said: “We felt we were in Pune for 3 days….”
If you happen to be in France next year, come to meditate and celebrate with us at Festi’Spirit 2013. We are now preparing the next one that will take place on June 21, 22 and 23, 2013, again at ‘Trimurti’. Check the website where all details will be put online as soon as the 2013 programme is confirmed. We plan to make it an annual event in France!
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