Stratton hosts big multi-day yoga festival - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-

Stratton hosts big multi-day yoga festival

It may be summer, but the rooms at Stratton Mountain were fully booked this weekend.   And, the event comes at the perfect time.
 It's the largest multi-day yoga festival in the world.  And people come from all different walks of life to see what it's all about like Erin Haskell who travelled from upstate New York.
  "It's amazing, it's beautiful it's really cool it's very very nice people," said Erin Haskell of Buffalo New York.
   The event is called Wanderlust, and organizers are taking it on what they call a pilgrimage across the country.  
  "We bring together sort of a really awesome community of people that are into mindful living, conscious consumers and ethical folks that are also looking to have fun and rock out to Ziggy Marley at night but take a yoga class or a hike in the morning," said Wanderlust co-founder Jeff Krasno.
    The four day festival kicked off at Stratton Mountain, with over 2,000 participants.  But, its stop in Colorado is expected to bring in over 17,000 Zen seekers.  Kasno says the event was founded to meet a growing demand of mindful living.
  "Doing yoga and going to farmers markets these things when my mom did it were like hippy weirdo lefty things, but now a lot of these things are just a part of mainstream culture."
    While you can take a class in yoga, or sit in on a lecture on healthy lifestyles, you could also try some of the newer trends like hula hooping, or slacklining
     While Kasno says the event fills a niche for yoga lovers near and far, it also fills a void for Stratton, which, like most every other Vermont ski resort, experienced a less than ideal ski season.
   "It's not even so much about the lack of snow or that we had a hard winter, it's just a great experience and a great way to bring lots of people in and make the mountain sort of come alive again," said Meryl Robinson of Stratton Mountain.
     Robinson says all of Stratton's hotel rooms were booked up for the four day event, and over three thousand people flocked to the mountain each day.
   "It's a great way to get a new crowd of people here to Vermont," she said.
     And, to hope they decide to come again during the winter.
     A mindful living event, that is also breathing new life into the mountain.