Shantidharm reports from another successful festival. The next Festi’Spirit will be 27-28-29 June 2025
As we had announced in April with the article: Festi’Spirit: three days to meditate and celebrate!, this year’s festival was held from 23rd to 25th of June 2023.
It was again a great success. It was booked out! About 230 people attended the various meditations and workshops.
A few years ago we decided to give a main topic to each festival. In 2017 it was Tantra, in 2019 Shamanism, and for this year we chose: Dance.
Among the workshops there were: Chakradance, Tantric Dance, Dance of Being, Body Dance, and more. Besides dance we had various other workshops like Yoga, Vipassana, Who is in?, Creativity, Tai-chi, and Guided Meditation, to name a few.
As we organizers are sannyasins, we always, almost ‘stealthily’, include Osho’s meditations in the daily programme. This year we had Dynamic, Nataraj, No Dimension and Kundalini. The turnout for these active meditations is always great!
The programme at Festi’Spirit is “a’ la carte,” which means that every person can choose what they want to do during those 3 days. The place we stay, the Hameau de l’Étoile, is 5 km from the nearest village, and completely surrounded by nature. It’s inviting to go for strolls in the woods and countryside.
The venue also has a large swimming pool which is well attended during the day or evening. It can get quite hot by the end of June in southern France! Of course the spacious activity rooms also have a good strong a/c system.
We always tell the participants to have a good time; to enjoy the workshops but to also enjoy some free time in between.
Here are a few photos we took this year:
This year we also invited a cameraman who filmed and interviewed a few workshop leaders; which vids we are going to publish slowly slowly on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@Meditationfrance
We will also soon publish a film about this year’s Festi’Spirit. When it is ready… As you might know, film editing hours always pile up.
This was our 6th Festival. The first ones (in 2012, 2013, 2014) were held at the Trimurti Centre, also in southern France.
When Trimurti Centre closed in 2014, we had to look for another venue. After searching and contacting various places, we came to an agreement with the Hameau de l’Étoile near Montpellier that we would organize a festival every second year.
It might sound as if Festi’Spirit is for French-speakers only, but in fact, also this year we had a few people from other countries. They managed very well to get through the whole programme. Also, many French-speaking people today speak English.
Khirad and I always put a lot of care into the organization; we meet a few times beforehand with the centre’s team to make sure everything happens smoothly. Together we also plan the start dates for online bookings.
We have a team of 6 people who help us during the festival itself. We always meet the day before to prepare and review everything that has to be done.
And during the festival, Khirad and I are there to meet the participants in person and to respond to any unexpected situations and, of course, to welcome the workshop leaders we have invited.
Mostly everything goes well, and it is always a great reward to see at the end the beaming faces of the participants as they leave with so much happiness.
And also to see that many express their desire to come back for the next Festi’Spirit (27-28-29 June 2025)! All information will shortly be available on the website: www.festispirit.com
Comments are closed.