Passover! Full Moon Eclipse! Easter! What a blessings to experience all of these holidays from different traditions happening on one weekend. How extraordinary! How beautiful that we will be teaching at Sri Swami Satchidananda’s Yogaville Ashram since a major focus of his life’s work was to inspire fellowship and unification among all the religions of the world, and it continues to this day!
So we’re off to Yogaville in a couple of weeks to teach a “Chakra Frequencies & The Divine Name Workshop”. We haven’t been teaching and traveling too much lately, but being invited to return to Yogaville was just something we couldn’t resist.
For those of you who don’t know Yogaville, it’s an ashram located in Virginia, founded by Sri Swami Satchidananda. For those who don’t know Swami Satchidananda, he was the swami who basically led a half a million people in chanting together at Woodstock, back in 1969.
Jonathan was at that event and this mass chanting was one of those experiences at that particular festival that he will never forget. “At the time,” he says, “It went beyond awesome, and was a bit intimidating to be in this tremendous crowd of people doing a Hindu mantra together. It was one thing to be immersed in the music of extraordinary musicians from the stage. It was quite another to be resonating to the self-created sounds of all those people in the audience. At the time, I don’t think I was really aware of what was going on. However, I did think there was something quite incredible that was happening.”
After Woodstock, there were a number of other music festivals, but none ever reached the extraordinary notoriety of Woodstock, which advertised itself as “3 Days of Peace & Music” and fulfilled this statement with a city size crowd and no violence. This phenomenon was something that was never quite able to repeat itself and ultimately culminated in the Altamont Festival, which seemed to have the opposite effects in terms of violence. Jonathan always believed that the delivery of peace and music at Woodstock was in no small part due to the spiritual chanting of the mantras “Hari Om” and “Ram” led by Swami Satchidananda that opened the Festival.
“I have little doubt that subconsciously at least, the chanting that occurred at Woodstock influenced my awareness of the power of group sound. I’m sure this awareness helped to manifest World Sound Healing Day,” Jonathan continues. “I am grateful.”
Thus we are returning to Yogaville April 24 – 26 to share our teachings. If you’re around that part of the United States, we highly recommend that attend. Yogaville is extraordinary ashram. Within it is a building called LOTUS (Light of Truth Universal Shrine) that is dedicated to all the faiths and religious traditions. It reminds us of the Taj Mahal and is truly an awesome structure. It brings people from around the world to it’s door every year and is an incredible testament to universal truths of love and unity that Sri Swami Satchidananda stood for and taught throughout his life. Please join us at Yogaville if you can.
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about the Yogaville Workshop
Here’s a beautiful video of the dedication of the LOTUS at Yogaville from 1986. There were many world luminaries present at this event. It’s inspiring to see the spirit of Swami Satchidananda’s work being carried on to this day!
