The second annual Woodstock Community Festival of Awakening is from August 9 to 11 at various venues throughout the town. It’ll be a weekend of music, dancing and healing.
“I see it as a little bit of a different festival,” said co-organizer Michael Raphael. “The last festival was really community-centered right here in Woodstock. This time there’s a big opening, What we’re looking for this year is we’re going to have practitioners actually working with the audience, on Andy Lee Field. It’s all going to be very interactive and mobile.”
There will be musicians. There will be meditation. And much more.
“I would say the biggest change though this year is the insertion of the catalytic engine called Krishna Das,” said co-organizer Sam Truitt. “And that that has broadened our scope considerably. And also this year there’s the idea of awakening as more focused on kind of psycho-spiritual realization ‘…. Sort of more social-justice things. But that’s just the way it
evolved.”
Krishna Das, a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), has brought the practice of a form of meditation called Kirtan to the West.
The Krishna Das event is at Bearsville Center, where there will be dozens of vendors, Raphael said.
This year, the festival also features local Buddhist sage Robert Thurman, who will discuss the subject of awakening.
Woodstock photographer Elliott Landy will hold Sharing Stillness meditation sessions, which will use no visualizations or verbal guidance.
“It’s sort of like connecting to the Sixties, to the emergence of Woodstock in the popular imagination,” explained Truitt. “And let’s hope that this is just going to continue…. It’s about having the community engaged in creativity and taking their space and being creative with it.”
“Right now, it is what it is,” Raphael added. “Woodstock stores, shops, a regular Main Street, typical Catskills town. But I think that it would be nice if the town became more intentional, more transmitting those values that Woodstock came up around.”
It’s not just the festival. Truitt hopes the local Center for Awakening will be a model in other places.
“There should be Johannesburg Center for Awakening and Berlin Center for Awakening and Sandusky Center for Awakening — like a band of awakening centers all around the earth,” Truitt said.
The organizers think the festival should be more than an occasion to celebrate.
“Coming around and partying is great, and we’re all for it. But it’s nice when there’s some sort of intention for a higher reason, instead of just getting knocked off your feet,” Raphael said.
Shandaken poet Sparrow kicks things off on the Village Green August 9 from 4-5:15 p.m., followed by a walk to Andy Lee Field on Rock City Road for an opening ceremony of song and dance from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
At 7:30 p.m. on August 9 is the Awakening Community Meal at the Mescal Hornbeck Community Center, 56 Rock City Road. A $5 donation is suggested, $10 if you want to stay for ecstatic dance at 9 p.m.
At 10 p.m. will be a fireside jam with Paul McMahon at the Natural Experiences for Sustainable Transformation, or NEST, 41 Shotwell Road.
August 10 will begin with sunrise singing and chanting at Lenny Bee’s farm, 395 Wittenberg Road. There’ll be Qi Gong at Mothership Gallery, 6 Sgt. Richard Quinn Drive. Astronomer Bob Berman will present a quantum physics and universe exploration at the First Church of Christ, Scientist, 85 Tinker Street.
The festivities at Bearsville Center from noon to 6 p.m. on August 10 will include a full schedule of music, talks and various healing practitioners.
For more information, go to www.woodstockawakening.org/2024-festival-schedule
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