Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode of the Awaken Together podcast.
I'm Kat.
I'm Jen.
And today we're really excited to chat with you about one of our favorite things.
And this is festivals.
But more importantly, the sense of community and connectedness that festivals bring us.
So we have some fun sharing fun stories to share with you.
Jen, if you could start us off with your most recent experience, that'd be awesome.
Yes.
So I am coming fresh off of a yoga festival known as Ploid Yoga Jam.
And Kat is fresh off of Burning Man.
So it's so cool to get to come together and share this all with you.
And yeah, it kind of all ends up zooming out to me and Kat's big dream of living on a
commune.
And I literally get like a little nugget and a little taste of what that can look like
at these kind of festival style, like community events.
And Ploid is so special.
It's so nice to be able to share.
So it's a very intimate and small festival, like a thousand people.
And it's in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the woods in Virginia.
And this is my fifth year going.
And I'm not new to yoga festivals.
I have gone to Wunderlust and several other different types of these things.
And what I love about it is the yoga component is obviously really cool, but it's been really
inspiring not only to see the different teaching styles kind of come together, but it's also
this like really big drop in on depth and connection.
So I've shared on this podcast before, like I've done like hundreds of different eye
gazing with strangers.
I do all these things at these festivals, like really intimate, like aesthetic dancing
and partner dancing with strangers that I don't even know.
And you know, it's crazy to think back to how many layers of healing like has happened.
And I can see my growth at these festivals more than anything, because I remember just
being at these festivals earlier.
Like my first Floyd, I was so scared of some of the stuff they were asking us to do.
Like, it was awful.
I was like, I walked away from some things just completely uncomfortable in my own skin
and like not wanting to be seen in that intimate of a way.
And now I'm like, give it to me.
Like, let's go.
But I'm still, you know, it's still nerve wracking, but it's just so cool to also see
how much more comfortable I've gotten in leaning into discomfort.
And yeah, we just we camped out.
We had a really cool tent site.
I had so many beautiful moments with different individuals at classes, lots of open sharing
circles.
We did like a goddess dance class, and it was really fun to just like play energetic
play with different people and look face to face with someone and just communicate without
words.
And it's raw and wild and kind of visceral.
And yeah, I had all these beautiful little connection moments and just to be under the
stars at night and feel plugged into nature in that way.
Like it's just really beautiful and healing.
And yeah, in all the different times I've gone to yoga festivals, I feel like layers
of myself have just been ripped that have blocked me from that ability to lean fully
into connection.
Dani proposed to me at a yoga festival back in the day.
Like they just are like so precious to me.
And Kat, I love that you kind of enter this like other other kind of worlds, but along
some similar principles.
But I know you have so much experience in music festivals, but we want to hear about
Burning Man.
Like we have an inside person to give us the stories.
And I told Kat, like while I was at my yoga festival, one of the musicians made an announcement
that Burning Man was like getting flooded.
So I had no cell phone service and I had had, you know, just this calm day.
Then I'm like, Kat, my cat, is she OK?
I wanted to reach out like right away.
And yeah, Kat can give the full story.
So let's go.
Oh, yeah, thanks.
I mean, festivals are such a beautiful coming together of so many things, like you said,
right?
I've been to one yoga festival.
It was like a day fest.
So on a smaller scale.
But yeah, just to have like all the personal development workshops happening in unison
with people who just share this this love of yoga and not just the physical practice,
but all elements of it.
Yeah, the unity.
So beautiful.
Yeah, the unity.
Yes.
So we were talking before this about like how Floyd on that one thousand person guest
count like that is a small scale, like super sweet spot to be.
And then the one festival that like you, Jen, that I've been to the most is Electric Forest.
I know I've talked about that here in the pod a bunch, too.
And they have a couple different spaces for workshops.
They have sound healings and just all those ways to plug in for people who are looking
to go that little bit deeper into themselves.
And I think that's a really important part of it all in combination with the music and
being in nature.
It's also healing together with with community all around at all times.
One of my favorite things about Electric Forest, too, is that everybody just wants to connect.
You know, you just go in there eager to compliment people and like authentically like we a greeting
that we say for Electric Forest is happy forest.
And this is something that it's like it's like a la oja.
It's like a hello.
It's a goodbye.
It's like a signing off.
Even if you see someone who was at the festival in a gas station like on your way home or
something, it's happy forest.
And you have that little you see their eyes light up like, oh, you're one of me.
I'm one of you.
Just that beautiful connection.
You drop your you drop your layers of who you are and then you go into this.
Yeah, this other kind of reality.
I love it.
That's right.
It's like there the ego dissolves like we are all here together.
We are all one that just true unity.
It's so magical.
And then Burning Man was new for me this year was my first year going.
Kyle and I went together with two of our best friends, Kirsten and Brandon.
And we had heard Kirsten had been before.
And so she told me about all the magic of it many times.
And she hadn't been since twenty nineteen.
So it's been a couple of years for her.
But earlier this year, I texted her because I saw someone else on Instagram get tickets
and I was just like, could you possibly be up for Burning Man this year?
Her response was I could always possibly be.
So then we convinced our guys, which kind of was an easy sell.
He actually wanted to go more than me for most of our relationship.
I was the harder sell because I was nervous about all the elements of it.
Just needing to bring everything that you have, your food, your water.
There's no showers there.
Like you're really roughing it.
Watching Kat get prepared for this festival, guys, was next level.
I just want to say.
Months and so much money.
So now it's like we have all the things.
So we're totally looking to go again next year.
But getting tickets is such a hard part, too.
Kirsten was really lucky to get theirs in the general on sale, but it's like a lottery.
We tried.
We were waiting in line for two hours and didn't get them before it sold out.
So we were really lucky that we were accepted into an incredible camp that one of my yoga
teacher friends here in Denver leads.
It's called Consensual Abduction and it's like kind of alien themed.
We have abductions.
It's like our main gift and offering as a camp where it's a whole sensory experience.
So you know that Jen and I love it.
It's like so present and it's just consent.
It's consensual.
So you fill out a form, you share what you're comfortable with, what you're not.
And then we honor that.
We respect it.
And then we role play and get really weird and blindfold you and tip you upside down
and then just kind of like harvest your limbs.
You know, no big deal.
Festival wife.
Seriously.
It's like so silly.
And Burning Man is an older crowd, kind of like Floyd is, right Jen?
Yeah, it's such a big age range.
It's crazy to see that and get the wisdom from the older wiser hippies.
I love that.
Yes.
I love, like at Electric Forest, there are older people but vast majority are like 18
to 25 I'd say.
And so we're kind of on the older side there.
But here the median age of Burning Man is 37.
I love that.
So I love that.
Like coming in at 32, like yeah, I'm in my prime here.
And then just seeing everybody else in their prime, you know, no matter what age they are.
It's very humbling.
And seeing people that have lived a life that honors like kind of the elements that come
out from festivals.
It's like very special.
They get to see people that have, you know, you get, I feel like it gets categorized so
much as being this like young kind of careless party thing.
It can get labeled as that so easily and then seeing these like intentional people that
have lived their life kind of embodying the things that you take away from these festivals
is a special little tap of it too.
Oh yeah, it's huge.
These have the potential to be extreme catalyst for just changing your life.
It really forces you to face the things that aren't working for you.
It just becomes all so clear.
And so my experience, as I'm sure you all heard Burning Man being on the news this year,
like crazy.
It's really funny to me having been there to see these news articles now because it
is just so far from what my experience was.
Like, yeah, people did try to drive off when there was a driving ban and leave when it
was raining.
But there was a driving ban.
Like didn't you know that was going to happen?
So we were all kind of like, oh yeah, these idiots got stuck because they tried to leave
when you weren't supposed to leave.
It's like just follow the rules.
And like if you don't have enough stuff, ask your neighbor.
We have so much more to go around.
And so that's a big part of the festival.
There's kind of like in yoga how we have the eight pathfold to enlightenment that we've
shared in past episodes.
We also have at Burning Man the 10 principles, which for this whole social experience, social
experiment Burning Man is not a festival.
Very clear on that.
I learned that this year.
It is way bigger, way more than that.
It's really hard to even explain.
It's a city that's put up and taken down with 80,000 people.
And it only exists for a week every single year in the middle of the Black Rock Desert
in Nevada where nothing else lives.
There's barely any bugs.
There's no animals.
It's so dry.
And so it's just kind of crazy, this whole crazy thing.
So yeah, we had more than enough food and water.
We had enough for three more days if we had gotten stranded.
But yeah, basically the whole sense is like our camp came together in a way that was so
freaking beautiful.
And we had a lot of veterans who'd been there for like five, six plus years and they shared
the sentiment that like this year brought everyone together like no other year had.
I think sharing something that was really hard when the rain came, it got muddy.
Our tent flooded.
We were lucky to have our bed on a platform.
So our bed was dry, but our best friends, they didn't have that and they had an air
mattress on the ground.
And so their sheets got wet.
And so they had to sleep in their car for like the rest of the time, which was, I think
three or four days after that too.
And so everybody just kind of came together that next day, asked like, do you need anything?
What can I give you?
What can I help with?
And we had the best party of the week as a camp that day.
We called it our end of the world party.
I know these two people in our camp, they were amazing.
They surprised everybody with brunch.
So we were, mind you, while the news was sharing about how crazy everything was at Burning
Man and how there was cannibals and Ebola and eels, like just nonsense, like none of
that was there.
We were having the best time eating eggs benedict with freaking caviar.
I kid you not, served a hundred people that day, had a six hour party with music bumping
from all of our camp DJs and it was just the best, like so special.
We strapped trash bags to our feet, secured them with duct tape.
It was the hottest fashion trend on the Playa.
And we were all just like, what's your method?
Is it sock bag sock?
Is it shoe sock bag?
And it was just so funny, you know?
And it just reminds you that everything is perspective and mindsets.
And sure, I mean, we could have just stayed in our tent the rest of the time and moped
and been sad, but you kind of realize what your options are when you only have a few
of them.
And we had no cell service.
We were with a bunch of other people who were also in the same boat.
So we made a conscious decision to practice joy and take care of each other and take care
of ourselves and make the best of it.
And I had the freaking time of my life.
Yeah.
So in thinking about the 10 principles, there were two that really stuck out to me the most
and really relate to our podcast here too.
So the first one is radical self-reliance.
And this is that whole notion that you better prepare.
You can't be over prepared, really.
Bring enough for you.
Bring enough for extra days.
You basically don't want to be caught burdening other people by your lack of preparedness
because they're going through the same stuff themselves.
And so you adding to that list, it's not the kindest thing that you can do.
So there's that one.
And then everything at Burning Man seems to be like a polarizing thing in some way.
So the other one, the polarizing principle for me with radical self-reliance is this
notion of being community minded.
And neither is more important than the other.
They're equal.
And that sense of being community minded, it's we care about each other so much.
We are in the middle of the desert.
People can die.
People do die every year.
It's not for people who are inexperienced.
Definitely go to festivals before you go to Burning Man and prepare and research.
I was on Reddit every single day.
But yeah, there's a real gifting culture.
There's no money when you're there.
There's no real laws.
There are some.
But it's like don't hurt people.
You can't do drugs in public.
There's rangers all around.
But yeah, that sense of just like we're here, I'm going to gift you this for no other reason
than to gift it to you.
It's not a trade.
It's not a barter.
I'm not expecting anything in return.
But we are here sharing this beautiful life changing experience together.
And through those things comes a resiliency, right?
And just that notion of being a part of a community and how we all fit into it as well.
Yeah, and when you leave these festivals and thank you, Kat, for telling us about Burning
Man.
I'm so glad it was this beautiful experience.
I freaking love to hear all the stories.
And yeah, but I think with these big events that are bringing a bunch of people together
where you kind of drop your own personal identity and lean into this kind of collective energy,
but then you also have to keep checking in on your own needs.
This balance of these festivals is like you can get so into the energy of all the events
happening, but then you have to remember, like, have I eaten?
Did I drink my water?
Did I take care of myself?
And it really teaches you these this balance between self and kind of connection and community.
And we wanted to talk about that a little bit because I feel like we've ranted about
this in so many podcast episode because it's a huge passion for us.
But like, you know, we're not meant to be living so individualistic.
And it really does kill me.
I think of this all the time that we are all sitting here having to own all the stuff to
take care of ourselves.
Every person has to have a pair of scissors and a blender and this and all these tools.
And it's just we don't have like I don't feel I feel like we've gotten into a place
of so much imbalance where there's so much you now need for yourself and there's so much
like lack of sharing resources that we've gotten like really far away from what our
true nature is.
And there is so much that can be found in connection.
But I do think like you said, Kat, with the principles, like there's a lot of layers you
have to go through in your own healing journey.
Why we promote so many of the stuff that we do on this podcast is because you got to know
the layers of yourself enough to kind of identify some of those emotional needs.
And I do think you learn a lot of your emotional needs through different relationships and
through different connections.
But there has to be this balance.
And so I learned this through I read the book Polysecure, which had this like really good
chunk of the book talking about attachment styles.
And they talked about on one end of the scale that anxious attachment, where you just lean
into connection so much, it kind of ends up turning into that enmeshment or codependency.
And it can feel so hard to know who you are in that connection.
That's one end of the extreme.
And that's that anxious avoidant attachment.
And the other are anxious attachment.
And then on the other ends, we have avoidant attachment, which can be so much reliance on
self autonomy, that like leaning into trusting someone else when you're experiencing something
feels nearly impossible.
And at both ends of the attachment disorders, we're trying to find this middle ground between
our own self autonomy and also that ability to lean into co-regulation and connection
with other people.
And I think just dependent on kind of your circumstances growing up, you might fall into
one of the two extremes.
And I think it's really easy to have all these attachment problems in the society we live
in as well, even not just looking at childhood experience.
We don't have a society that really reflects a good balance of that because it is so much
of every man for themselves, which ends up we have so many people dealing with mental
health struggles, homelessness, all these extremes of like outskirts of society because
there's just not good ways to plug in when you're needing help in the ways that there
should be.
And it's so much pressure sometimes all falling onto your own shoulders that it's a lot.
But within that, you also can drown the people around you when you don't do the work to figure
out your own stuff.
And then you're constantly looking to other people to tell you where to go, what to do,
what direction to take.
And yeah, I think there's constant lessons to help you find the blend in those two.
Totally, totally.
And as you were speaking, and also maybe think about how politics ties into this too.
And I truly believe that it's this hyper sense of individualization that has really shaped
the Republican Party and even more like the extreme right wing.
It's those people who are in very remote areas that don't have either a really strong community
or they only know their community and they haven't seen cities or people who are different
than them.
And so there's a real fear of people.
And so it just makes me think of that too.
And in that avoidance side, it's like there's the lone wolf stereotype that we've all heard.
And I feel like people kind of just accept that as a personality trait, but really it's
avoidant attachment.
And people who've been hurt along the way and are really afraid to be vulnerable and
connect with others.
And like you said, the other side of that co-dependence is like other people relying
on them so much for your joy, where true joy, true joy really comes from within.
And it's amplified by community, not the other way around.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And so in finding this blend of these two things, I really think it is important that
we plug into community spaces.
We've shared this on this podcast a lot, but going to these big events is incredible.
But finding even things in your local community, if you know that you fall into more of the
self isolating mode, how can you find some form of engagement to start practicing leaning
out of that?
And it all takes practice.
I think it's very easy if you fall into the extremes to then want to hop to the other
extreme too.
Like it's very easy to fall into these two.
And I think keeping the blend is tricky, but it gets better with practice on both sides.
But I do think it's beautiful to be able to find people to share resources with.
I think the internet's helping so much with us being able to find our people easier.
And then yeah, Kat was sharing a little bit before, if you want to talk about Boston growing
up there, you're looking at the people around you and seeing is that plugging me into that
highest good between the balance of stuff?
Because I think for some, we're not always born into the spot that's going to give us
that healthy dynamic.
And while you were sharing about the far right side, I feel like in a lot of these regions
that are more isolated, and I know with my southern side of my family, more upbringing,
it's such an attachment to the family unit that there's no venturing out, no breaking
into any sense of individuality.
They fear it.
They smother into that family dynamic so much because it's so scary to think of changing
beyond that imbalance.
A hundred percent.
Totally.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, if you are born into a place and you don't resonate with it, you
feel like the black sheep.
And I mean, that was surely me growing up in Boston.
I never really felt like I fit in.
And even if it looked like that on the outside, on the inside, I just felt like something's
not right or I always felt like I had to change myself to be like others.
When I visited Denver on vacation with Kyle in 2015, 2016, we were like, whoa, we were
just overcome by the culture.
And we were only here for a long weekend, but it was palpable.
We could feel it.
And it helped that bass music.
It's the bass music capital of America and we love that kind of music.
And there's climbing and there's a lot of yoga and nature.
So there are these key elements that we really loved and we're kind of not getting fulfilled
in Boston.
So we ultimately decided to move out here.
And that's kind of the thing is like, if you've tried to find all of those things, that sense
of belonging, like-minded beings, where you are and you can't, look somewhere else, right?
Look somewhere else rather than running away from something, try to run to something so
that you can feel really excited about it.
Although sometimes, you know, that running away does have to happen just to exit like
an unsafe kind of space.
But really, like we are not meant to go through life alone.
Like you said before, Jen, you know, like we all began in tribes and villages and that's
way more natural for us.
We can't get all of our needs met by one person.
We need trusted people.
And truly, I believe that nothing grows without love.
Absolutely.
And yeah, if you're around ourselves, yeah, surround yourself with love and do the work
to kind of sit and reflect on what your emotional needs are and like what that can look like
plugging in.
I know the periods where I was more by myself, like I deeply needed community for a long
time and couldn't find it.
But I also in retrospect look back to those times as me figuring out at least a couple
of the things of what I was wishing and hoping for in those moments when I didn't have people
to lean into.
So also knowing that there can be gold found in those periods, but you are not meant to
do it alone and that love is so important and it's that combination of self-love and
then also knowing how to balance the giving and receiving of love outside of yourself
too.
That's right.
That inner winter leads to an inner spring so that you can come out and feel good and
be ready to take it all on.
And hopefully that means a commune for us because we are so ready.
Awaken together a commune?
You guys ready for that?
Yes, please sign me up.
It's like everyone I talk to these days is like, yes, our generation, this is the new
American dream.
It's communal living.
So I just have this vision of like, you know, we all have our own like bed spaces, bedrooms
with our partners or whatever, offices, living space, maybe a small one, but everything else
is shared, right?
Shared kitchen, shared living space, shared garden.
I don't want to have a kid, but I will co-parent.
Shared childcare would revolutionize our lives.
Like I want a kid and I right now I'm like, oh, how?
I need help.
But that would solve a lot of things.
Like, we'll share it all, make a central space.
I think this is also like where we're gearing up to be able to save the planet in so many
ways too, because we get so wasteful when we look at things individualistically too
far.
And I think that's a huge movement that this generation is going to take is knowing how
to optimize our resources in a different way.
We've come a long way as a society in a lot of ways, but we've also fallen behind on some
of the things that have been mastered way before this current society's look.
And I think we need to kind of blend both the old ancient wisdom and then the new that
we've also been able to cultivate with inventiveness and yeah, combined it all for a much healthier
protection of this earth and the human species.
Yes, heck yes.
Only way is up and mark our words.
It's going to happen.
I can feel it.
I so agree.
And we so appreciate this community of listeners.
Our podcast this season is already doing so good.
You guys continue to grow us out.
We so appreciate you sharing the podcast, liking and reviewing on Spotify means a lot.
And we now have our podcast up on YouTube, which is amazing.
So we want to keep growing and sharing it all with you.
So thank you.
Thank you all so much.
We love you and we'll see you next week.
Bye.