I recently discovered the Lightning in a Bottle Festival which was originally designed to be a heart and mind expanding oasis. Think creative, spiritual and joyous cradling among other like-minded people amidst uplifting and inspiring music.
While I haven’t been to one of their events yet, from what I gather from a friend who is a speaker and their website, it’s a smaller version of Burning Man, but in a much smaller environment but without the art, the man and the fire. The Lucent Temple, in the center of the festival this year, where people can go to stretch and open their body core with yoga and movement. There are a variety of workshops and traditional and indigenous skills in The Village as well.
You will be able to learn from pioneers and experts teaching a variety of valuable skills and lessons. They will have workshops to allow you to explore a subject you’ve always been interested in, or pick up skills in your established field.
Past workshops and panels at LIB have featured everything from Solar Cooking to Composting, from African dance to Qi Gong, from Sensual Chocolate to Social Networking and Cyber Consciousness, from the Geometry of Spacetime to 2012!
You will find an open sharing of information often locked behind doors unavailable to us in the ‘regular world’. As evening falls, there’s an opportunity to dance to unique rhythms and music from around the world and there’s a Healing Sanctuary for massage and body work. You can bath in a Gong bath under the sun or get life changing advice from an Elder. Everything in the Temple is designed for body joy, mind broadening and heart opening.
Yoga classes will be happening from morning until evening throughout the weekend. All experience levels and Yoga styles will be on offer from high energy Vinyasa to relaxing classes integrating meditation. The west coast’s top Yoga teachers are joining LIB this year, and many will be accompanied by live musicians. How cool is that?
One of the coolest things about the event is something they call The Living Village, and what I’m most curious to explore. It is a cultural experiment born from the shared aspiration to explore what village life means and how to bring that into a contemporary context.
The project is an interactive, intergenerational, education based environment focused on earth based wisdom traditions and the skills necessary to be a sustainable, thriving, interdependent community. Restorative and social permaculture design systems are at the heart of the VIllage structure. The core to the village and the event itself is the essence behind this question: when we begin shifting our core life question from “What do I truly want?” to “What do I truly have to offer?” then, as a community, we begin to evaluate wealth based on the whole system rather than the individual parts.
For more information and to buy tickets, visit their site. I love their mission and hope to experience it this weekend so we can write about it in more depth.
Photo credit: http://lightninginabottle.org/ website.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
