In March this year, Essex-based yoga teacher Jodie Merrick travelled to Bali for the glittering yoga and dance event, Balispirit Festival. She left feeling inspired, energised and looking forward to the 2011 event.
What better setting than Bali to hold a festival that celebrates yoga, dance and music? This magical island is so full of life, energy, fun and spirit.
The spirit o
f the Balinese is infectious. Already based in the inland town of Ubud is an expressive, multicultural community of yogis, dancers, musicians and artists.
Then throw in a handful of the world's most renowned yoga, dance, movement, music and spiritual teachers, and you will start to get a feel for what it was like to experience the Bali Spirit Festival.
Spectacular island venues
One of the two spectacular venues, Purnati Centre for the Arts, hosted over 30 workshops each day, with a schedule that began daily at 7.30am.
Each workshop lasted around 1.5 hours and took place in spectacular spaces with vistas of the lush tropical surroundings.
The toughest part of the whole festival was deciding which workshops to attend!
The evening's entertainment was a creative extravaganza of world music and dance hosted by Arung Rai Museum of Art (ARMA).
This equally magical venue is rich with Balinese culture and was a perfect setting for the musical element of the festival. We danced, sang and were dazzled by a beautifully eclectic mix of international music from Australia's Ganga Giri to Ghana's Afro Moses.
Masterclasses, workshops, fun
Daily workshops ranged from master classes in Ashtanga to Hoola Hooping! With yoga gurus from far and wide including Shiva Rea, Katy Appleton, Duncan Wong, Bridget Woods Kramer, Mark Whitwell, Twee Merrigan and Eion Finn presenting at and partaking.
I was blessed to experience energising ‘Fluid Power' with Twee Merrigan, opening ‘Apple Heart Flow' with Katy Appleton, Vinyasa Earth Puja' with Eion Finn, ‘Prana Shakti' with Shiva Rea; plus a liberating, enlivening ‘Yoga Meets Dance' class with Cloe Jackson, an inspiring teacher from England.
The Bali Spirit Festival offers a unique opportunity for people from all walks of life to share their diverse talents and learn from one another. 
Community spirit is strong in Bali and this spirit thrives at the festival. All three co-founders (Kadek Gunarta, Robert Weber and Meghan Pappenheim) believe that outreach and education programs funded and fuelled by the festival - providing free music, dance and yoga to local youth - will have a powerful impact on communities in Bali and beyond.
This year the festival also held the Bali Spirit Yoga Mala for charities Yoga Aid, Global Mala Project and Yogathon.
This incredible two-hour practice involved around 250 yogis coming together to flow through 108 sun salutations. In the Balinese tropical heat this was quite a challenging experience but one I shall cherish forever for the energising love, and powerful sense of giving.
The Bali Spirit Festival is truly inspiring, deeply energising and so full of unity and love that when it was all over I could think of nothing more than ‘roll on next year'!
The next Bali Spirit Festival will run over March 23-17, 2011. For more information, see www.balispiritfestival.com
_0.jpg "Dancer Pose: Nataraja")
