Newtown Yoga Festival!

The Newtown Yoga Festival, now in its 5th year, has partnered with The Avielle Foundation, a local, Newtown, CT non-profit, started by the parents of Avielle Richman who was one of the twenty first graders killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School Shootings.  The Avielle Foundation works to prevent violence and build compassion through brain science research, community engagement and education. 

Why is a violence prevention organization having a yoga fest?  “Yoga helps regulate emotional and physiological states.  It allows the body to regain its natural movement and teaches the use of breath for self-regulation.  Yoga teaches us that there are things we can do to change our brainstem arousal system, our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and to quiet the brain.” ~ Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Author of The Body Keeps the Score and Board member at The Avielle Foundation.

We will be holding our event on Saturday, August 26th from 9am to 4pm at NYA Sports & Fitness in Newtown.  Featured headliners this year are Hala Khouri, Kathryn Templeton, Todd Norian and Tao Porchon-Lynch.

The Newtown Yoga Festival team was formed as a holistic solution for anyone and everyone to join together through the transformative wisdom and practice of yoga.  It is how we choose to honor lives lost, celebrate the strength and resilience that is human nature, and release the tensions and anxieties that accumulate in our bodies as a result of trauma. The festival itself offers a day of community, yoga movement, music, mindfulness and local wellness vendors.

Through our annual event, we have been able to make a positive impact on our community by providing the tools that have been proven effective in reducing stress and depression and a valuable mechanism for coping with physical and emotional trauma.