Yogis gather under the midnight sun
More than 50 people attend yoga event
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Saturday, July 4, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Musicians and special instructors journeyed into the city the last weekend of June to celebrate yoga for the Midnight Sun Yoga Festival.
Mark Haruman put city yoga-enthusiasts through their paces during the Midnight Sun Yoga Festival, held June 26-28 at the Champagne Room, downtown. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo
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"With the people I really love, and this is what is happening so I am in heaven," said yoga teacher and organizer Sylvie Boisclair, while waiting for a final musical performance June 28.
Yoga has been a tough sell for the instructor who said she's been living in the city for 15 years. She said the festival was the first of its kind but with help from others - she's moving out of the city - it won't be the last.
"I think now people are really enthusiastic and they're going to help out because this really was a solo endeavour," she said.
Sylvie met instructor Mark Hanuman - an American who lives in Mexico - during a yoga event several years ago.
"I really appreciate the way he teaches so I thought if I'm going to invite people to teach in Yellowknife I'm going to invite him," she said, adding the pair taught yoga together in the Bahamas. "We're used to working together and we have the same brand of yoga."
The other teacher brought in for the festival was Sabu Chaitanya, she said, who is from India but lives in the Yukon.
"I met him about 12 years ago," she said.
Beth Sandholm, Boisclair's assistant, said the festival was attended by more people than she had expected.
"We had a really good response," she said. "I was very pleasantly surprised."
Sandholm said she got into yoga as a means of staying in shape.
"I was like 'Wow, any kind of exercise when you can take a nap at the end sounds good to me,'" she said. "You realize as you start practising all these other benefits that happen with it. My pulse rate dropped, you're so much healthier . it helps to put your mind into alignment. It combines everything between body and mind."
Boisclair said the idea was to give locals some exposure to some very experienced teachers.
"There's a lot of teachers but very, very experienced teachers, there's not that many," she said. "I wanted people to be in the hands of people that are really, really experienced."
