Transcription of Justine Carlise, Dana Gunnerson Woodbury, and Regan Johnson for the show Maine YogaFest, #91
Dr. Lisa Here to talk about the Maine Yoga Fest are Justine Carlisle, Dana Woodbury and Regan Johnson. What is the Maine Yoga Fest and why would you want to bring something called the Maine Yoga Fest to our State?
Dana: Well the idea started last Spring. We decided to go to Wanderlust which is our large nationally yoga fest and the three of us were making our plans and the whole time we’re thinking why are we driving five hours to go to a festival that should be in our backyard. There should be one here in Maine.
We went to the festival and researched it and after we spent time there we thought if we’re going to do something like this we want to do it and have it be community based. Have it be about Maine yoga teachers, Maine studios and really try and create an event that would bring our community together.
Dr. Lisa: Why yoga. The three of you obviously feel very passionately about yoga and you’re all doing teacher training together.
Justine: I’m the one.
Dr. Lisa: Two of you are doing teacher training but you also feel very passionately about yoga. Why, is there something that really calls to you?
Justine: I think we’ve all had different benefits that’s we’ve really noticed from yoga. Personally I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. I was suffering from insomnia anxiety and I had practiced yoga before sporadically but really when I started a regular practice I noticed some incredible benefits.
I became very passionate and wanted to share that. That’s when I decided to take the teacher training program and this seemed like a better way to share our passion in the community and hopefully get more people on board to practice.
Dana: I think what’s really important to all of us. It’s something that almost appeals and can benefit anyone no matter what age and what you have going on in your life. Whether you are into sports or you’re not into sports or you’re not into sports and whether you’ve had an injury or recovering from an injury. It can benefit anyone, kids, adults, college students.
We felt that this is the way that we could bring the community together in a very enjoyable, non-competitive community based event. It was really easy to get music, artists, businesses and other people involved not just yoga and make it this all encompassing event that people could learn more about yoga if they’ve never done it before or if they’ve really advanced and want to take a couple of classes from people that they don’t have exposure to because they’re two hours away that we could bring them all to our central location.
Dr. Lisa: Regan, why did you specifically get into yoga?
Regan: I guess my first experience was in college. I played tennis and our coach made us take yoga. That was my first experience and I liked it but it wasn’t something that I had in my every day life. Then I moved to Maine about three years ago, I had two small children and I was always running, biking, or playing tennis and then I started going to yoga.
I just felt it was very calming. While I loved those other sports they didn’t bring me the same sense of calm and it’s kind of a joke in our family now. If the kids are not having a good day, or we’re having a moment, I’m like take a yoga breathe. Both my kids are three and five, and they’ll take deep breathes and everyone laughs at mommy but I think it can translate to your home life too not just in the studio.
That’s what I get out of it. A little bit more balancing and that makes me a little bit more calm. For me it’s also stress relief personally.
I walk out of there and I feel great and I feel even kilt where if I go for a run it’s also as a stress relief but it’s a different kind when I walk out of a yoga studio.
Dr. Lisa: Justine, you’ve been a runner in your life and I think you came to yoga through this?
Justine: I did. Yeah, I started doing yoga because I had an injury on my hip from running and I tried a number of different therapies but yoga was really the only thing that seemed to heal the injury and at the same time my practice starts to be a very physical thing. I would go to it for a work out and also for the injury but my husband and I pursued an adoption.
Our daughter is adopted from Ethiopia about five years ago, which was a very tumultuous experience and you’re constantly thinking about the future and it’s very hard to be in the present.
I begun to go the yoga studio because I knew when I was in there for that hour and a half I couldn’t check my phone, I wasn’t going to be able to look at my email and I really had just to focus on my breathe and be present in that moment.
For me at that point my practice really transformed. It went from being something that was very physical to something that benefited me mentally and emotionally. That’s something I think that we really want to spread about Maine Yoga Fest just to show the benefits of yoga. They’re not just physical. It’s not just about getting a workout but there are so many mental and emotional benefits you can get from it as well that we really hope that the more people are exposed to this it has a great impact on our society and also in our community.
Dr. Lisa: It seems to me that I’m hearing more and more about people who are taking advanced classes and yoga teacher training is one example. My sister in Seattle is taking teacher training. I think there’s at least 200 hours or some classes are even more. That seems like a big commitment. Why would you go to that next level?
Dana: We wanted to deepen our practice and our knowledge but we wanted to share the benefits that we were finding and we wanted to make sure that that was something that was accessible to other people.
We want to volunteer in the community. We are scheduled to teach at the public teens Center. Aside from just teaching in a studio, we really want to make sure that we can teach other people who might not be able to have access to yoga and hopefully make sure that they can have some of these benefits that we’ve found. Justine just taught at an elementary school, was it a fundraiser?
Justine: Yeah. It was their activity day, which I think is great because usually kids aren’t exposed to it. I think the earlier we expose them to it the more benefits that they can potentially get from it.
Dr. Lisa: From what I understand you’re going to have people who practice all different types of yoga because for our listeners who haven’t done any yoga before. There are lots of different approaches to yoga but this is the beauty of the Maine Yoga Fest is you’re going to pull together different practitioners and build this community.
Regan: Absolutely. I think what happens is a friend will go to this yoga studio and they’ll say come with me and whatever yoga you happen to fall into, you start practicing that type of yoga. I know that was my experience at least and there are so many talented yoga teachers and wonderful types of practices with different historical backgrounds too.
In teacher training we’re learning a lot about different styles of yoga and we thought we want to make sure that people again, who again might not have exposure to different types of studios or be aware of other teachers have access to them.
I think at the festival right we have right now over 30 teachers, so we’ll have over 30 classes. We made a concerted effort to represent all the different types of yoga and also making sure we include the teachers from all over Maine not just Portland. We have teachers coming from a couple of hours away to teach at the festival which is wonderful because you don’t have to drive three hours to actually go to their studio.
They’re coming to you. They’re coming to the festival so you can actually go on Saturday or Sunday and take one of their classes. Whatever your interest is you can hopefully find it at the festival.
We also have the novelty classes. The aerial yoga, the hoop yoga, slack line yoga, stand up paddle board yoga on the eastern beach. A lot of the fun classes that you might not normally get in your normal yoga practice you can do it at the festival.
Dr. Lisa: Where is this being held?
Dana: It’s at the East End Community School which is on North Street and that overlooks the Eastern Promenade. We’ve rented the entire facility so we’ll have classes inside, in the cafeteria, in the gymnasium, in the art room. Then we’ll also have a large tent outside on the field and in the parking lot area we’re transforming that into what’s called vendor village, where we’ll have a number of local vendors.
They will have booths there and they’ll have products for sampling or for sale. You can really spend your whole day there exploring and taking classes.
Justine: We really wanted to create like a campus feel so that even when you’re not taking class you can either meet other yogis, meet people from the community, meet local business and create nice atmosphere. We can just come and hang out for the day or come for one hour on Saturday, come for three hours on Sunday and get an experience.
One of the big things why we picked this school is its LEED certified, so we really wanted to be mindful of making our festival green as possible. That was something that was important to us when we were going through a list of venues potential options that we could have.
Regan: We have Garbage to Garden, who’s a local company here and they’re partnering with us and they’ll be handling the composting and recycling throughout the weekend. People will be mindful about the waste that they have.
We’re also encouraging people to bike or to take the local transportation to come to the festival or walk. We’re really trying to make it a green festival.
Dr. Lisa: It seems to me that having lived in Maine a long time and been a physician in Maine not quite as long but there’s been explosion of interest in yoga not only in Maine but actually nationally. Why do you think that is? Why is yoga really something that people are embracing?
Dana: I think there are so many benefits to yoga that it’s both physical benefits and mental benefits. When you look at the physical benefits it reduces your stresses levels. It decreases the amount of cortisol which that stress hormone in your body. It lowers your blood pressure. It increases flexibility. It strengthens your body.
There are so many reasons just to try yoga even just for physical elements and as Regan mentioned earlier the baby boomer which is this aging population in our society, they can practice it as well as an 18 year old who wants a vigorous workout.
It appeals to such a broad range of people. As well I think people are living really stressful lives right now. Our lives are very busy. There’s so much going on. There’s the media that comes at us from every angle, and to have something in your life that teaches you to create space. To calm down, to focus before you respond and really teaches you to quiet your mind is such a valuable tool. I think it appeals to every walk of life whether you’re a mom or the CEO of a company, it’s something that you can benefit from.
Regan: I think it’s becoming more and more mainstream which is interesting. Before many years ago I would think of yoga as maybe like a niche thing to do and now I feel like there’s so many studios especially in Maine and larger metropolitan areas that obviously is appealing to a lot of people and popular if we keep seeing these new business pop up.
My mom came to visit and I took her to yoga with me and I don’t know if we would have done that when I was in college but she was like sure I’ll try it. I think more and more people are doing that. I think that’s why it has such a large appeal.
Dana: What I like about the Maine Yoga Fest is that yoga it seems as though it could be a very individual pursuit and a very inward facing activity. You’re bringing everybody together so everybody can have their inner space but they can also have the chance to connect with people around them, which despite our being very connected in this social media driven world, I think sometimes we don’t feel that human connection.
Justine: I think one of the things that all three of us have talked about is you can go … you become very loyal to a studio. You may try other studios but then you go to a Tuesday class and you start to see some of the same faces, so we thought how cool it’d be that if all these different people that practice can actually go to the same place and see somebody from a studio that’s 30 miles away, they have the common interest, things in common, they do similar activities but they’ve never met before because they just go to these different studios.
I think that’s one thing that was important to us to bring the yoga community together no matter where you practice, no matter what style you do, you all have something in common. Then when you bring those people together I think it would be a great thing for not only the yoga community but just the local Maine community in general.
Dr. Lisa: When is the Maine Yoga Fest taking place?
Justine: It’s July 13th and 14th the summer of 2013.
Dr. Lisa: Is there a cost associated with this?
Dana: There is. We have two passes that are available. You can get a three workshop pass or a five workshop pass. Three workshop pass will allow you take three classes as well as attend the friends and family party or you can take the classes at any point over the weekends. If you want to come Saturday morning then you have something to do during the day, if you come Sunday and take the other two classes.
The cost for the three workshop pass is $90 and for the five it’s $125. We also have a number of discounts and specials that will be coming up in the next couple of months. We have over 20 studio partners that are working with us to help promote the event and each of them has special promotional codes to get discounts to the event.
$5 goes to Preble Street. From every ticket sold we’ve committed to donate $5 to Preble Street and we are actually teaching a class. Justine actually is doing it on Thursday at the Teen Center. We’ve started a program where there’ll be a weekly class at the Preble Street Teen Center year round. We’re excited to create this lasting program within the community and also make a financial contribution.
Dr. Lisa: From what I understand, businesses have also come behind you to support you I think Maine Magazine has become a sponsor and that you have other major sponsors.
Regan: We have a couple. We met with a bunch of sponsors probably in the last six months, it was amazing to see that they actually knew that there was value in yoga and what we were doing wasn’t something out of the ordinary.
Everyone is really excited to see that we’re bringing the festival to Maine. We have a very diverse group of sponsors which I think shows the appeal that everyone knows that. Someone that’s practicing yoga obviously has invested in the community and wants to see it do well. We have a car dealership, Lee Auto, which is wonderful. They were great to come onboard in the first year event.
There’s a lot of people that have a lot of questions and a lot of people didn’t hesitate because I think that they see the value in the event. Bangor Savings Bank, to have a bank onboard, they’re actually sponsoring the friends and family party. Grandy Oats, which is a Granola company, you can see them around town. UNUM Healthcare company, Jade Integrated Health Wellness, BroSmart. We definitely have food, health and wellness, bank. I think we’re very fortunate that we have such great community support.
Justine: We’re also very mindful to connect with local Maine businesses, it was important to us that this is a community event. We want the local businesses involved and we looked for companies that had like-minded missions. It’s what we wanted to show at Maine Yoga Fest.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out about the Maine Yoga Fest?
Regan: We have a Facebook page, Maine Yoga Fest. We also have a website, www.maineyogafest.com.
Dr. Lisa: If people want to get in touch with you by email or phone they can find that information by Facebook or on your website?
Dana: Absolutely. There’s contact information for Justine, Regan and myself.
Dr. Lisa: I am very excited to see what happens here in July with the Maine Yoga Fest. It’s yet another wonderful thing having to do with health and wellness that we’re bringing to the State of Maine and that’s all thanks to the work that you’re doing. I know it’s going to be a huge success. I appreciate you spending time with me. We’ve been talking with Justine Carlisle, Dana Woodbury and Regan Johnson who are working on the Maine Yoga Fest coming up here in July.
Dana: Thanks for having us Dr. Lisa.
Regan: Thank you so much.