By: Melina Paris Music Columnist
Novices and yogis took over Bixby Park this past month, during Long Beach’s first Mantra Mela, a Yoga and Kirtan Festival.
The name Mantra Mela essentially means a chanting festival and kirtan is the music. However, much more was included in this festival for the rapidly growing community of yoga devotees in town.
Mantra Mela included yoga classes at three different stations throughout the day, an assortment of vegan, vegetarian and raw foods. There was a healing village with practitioners from Long Beach’s Sacred Roots Holistic Spa offering in part, massage, cupping and reiki and Tibetan sound healing. A variety of vendors were on hand, including Natural Holistic Baby, The Peace Corps and book booths. Workshops happened throughout the day on ayurveda, “Art of Happiness.” There was also a Krsna Lounge with music from a mix of traditional kirtan instruments like drums, sitar, karatalas, small Indian hand cymbals and harmonium, a pump powered reed organ.
Dharma Shakti, the owner of Yogalution Movement and Ayurveda, produced the festival. A dedicated community servant and up and coming spiritual leader, Dharma initiated Long Beach’s Yoga on the Bluff. She has a large following of yoga practitioners who attend her free classes on the bluff.Up to 250 people gather on weekends for her classes. Dharma’s mission is to help Long Beach recognize what it has in its own community andput yoga on the map in a big way.
“Yoga on the Bluff has always been my main vehicle and I think it will always remain my main vehicle somehow to promote that,” Dharma says. “For the longest time, people have always had to drive into Los Angeles when they want to take advanced yoga classes or see great instructors.”
She envisions people from Los Angeles coming out here for yoga too. Or, put another way, she is creating a yoga revolution in Long Beach.
“It brings communities together,” Dharma said. “There are so many common circles of interest that we have. We need to allow those circles overlap each other and not just be in our own circle. It’s about bridging communities together. This festival is to do something really good for Long Beach because we don’t really have many events that are family friendly, alcohol free and super conscious.”
The music was a big part of this event.
“Kirtan is an ancient tradition of music in India,” Dharma said. “In the last five to six hundred years some pivotal figures in the vedic movement have made it more popular. (Vedas are spiritual laws.) It’sanother method through the philosophy of yoga to make connection with the divine or a higher kind of vibration.”
Kirtan is a call and response style of devotional music.
Singing devotional music can be very reverent but kirtan is meant to be extremely ecstatic, Dharma said.
“People dance and become really free,” she said. “Sanskrit provides the language, so when you’re chanting and playing kirtan, that vibration is not only moving through you because you’re singing but you have the whole energy of the group. Things can become elevated and pranic (Sanskrit for life force) very quickly.”
The monthly kirtan events Dharma hosts at her studio are powerful and people from all different religious backgrounds come. Even though people do not often know what they are singing, by the time it’s done they are in a state of joy and love from chanting all different names of divinity. On kirtan music nights, the studio is packed.
“There is a new movement happening now within yoga and kirtan.” Dharma said “The musical and spiritual side of yoga is bursting. The music accompanies the lifestyle. It’s really nice now that we can access so much modern day kirtan. That’s really what we are trying to do with the festival, is bring in a lot of the modern day stuff but also still encapsulate the traditional stuff.”
A lot of the artists who performed at Mantra Mela like the headliners, the Kirtaniyas, have music available that you can download and donate toward.
Dharma and her partners plan to make this festival an annual event at the same location. They want to provide it at a low cost to keep it affordable. All the organizers of Mantra Mela are affiliated with the free yoga on the bluff. Everyone teaches there and at the donation based studio, Yogalution.
Somethingimportant to Dharma is that the festival was entirely organized by women, strong, independent, entrepreneurial, ambitious women. Some of have children and are self-employed with so much going on. They came together and shared in co-creating this vision and are all friends.
Coming together to plan an event, set an example and to inspire other women is important to Dharma. Her belief is, as women we are also creators: we can create and manifest things. We can also be go getters and accomplish things and contribute. She is proud of the idea of women all working together to put this event on.
“I’m trying to expand this city’s definition. Long Beach has everything from rap artists to teachers and builders and creators and yogi’s. I want people to know, when you mention Long Beach that’s where they have that massive free yoga on the beach every day.”
She has friends looking to buy houses who have told her descriptions of the area include the selling point, “Located conveniently, blocks from free Yoga on the Bluff.”
“I think it’s becoming a pivotal thing for Long Beach,” she said. “It adds to the attraction, the nice perception and all the cool things happening here.
Between Yoga on the Bluff and the Mantra Mela Festival, a Kundalini yoga instructor at Yogalution, Chrissy Cox said, “A lot of good intentions are coming into reality in Long Beach.”
Check Dharma’s Yogalution website for events. There are always events planned and the studio is accessible seven days a week for yoga and other conscious activities.
Details: www.yogalutionmovement.com
Venue: Yougulation Movement
Location: 1240 E. Broadway, Long Beach