NEPA Yoga Fest

🧘‍♀️ Opening Mediation : Ground & Elevate with Chelsea Manganaro & Mara Morell
NEPA Yoga Festival 2026 | Kickoff Session
Join festival founder Chelsea Manganaro for a powerful opening class that sets the tone for the entire weekend. This all-levels flow is designed to help you ground your energy, open your heart, and elevate your intention for the festival ahead.
Through gentle movement, breathwork, and intention-setting, Chelsea & Mara will guide you in reconnecting with your body, your purpose, and the collective energy of our vibrant yoga community.
🌞 Expect:

• Centering breathwork & gentle warm-up
• Guided intention-setting to start your festival journey
• A soulful soundtrack & grounded energy

Let this be your anchor — the class that welcomes you home to your mat and to yourself.

Opening Meditation: “May All Beings Be Happy”with Mara Morell of Mrida Seva Yoga
As the sun stretches over Montage Mountain Waterpark and the festival begins to hum, Mara Morell will guide us into our first shared breath of the weekend.
“May All Beings Be Happy” is a heart-centered opening meditation rooted in loving-kindness, or metta, an ancient practice that gently widens the circle of compassion from self… to community… to the entire world.
Through guided meditation, mantra, and intentional silence, Mara will lead us in:
• Softening into presence
• Cultivating compassion for ourselves
• Extending blessings outward to all beings
• Setting a unified intention for the weekend ahead
This is not just a meditation.
It is the energetic cornerstone of the festival.
Together, hundreds of voices will anchor one simple yet profound prayer:
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings live with ease.
Whether you are brand new to meditation or deeply rooted in your practice, this opening gathering invites you to arrive fully, open your heart, and remember that yoga begins in how we hold the world.
Come early. Bring your mat. Bring your quiet courage.
We begin as one. 🕊️✨

Many people feel overwhelmed or exhausted after being around certain environments or individuals without understanding why. In this guided meditation class, Medium Tara Grossi teaches simple and effective techniques to help you ground, protect, and clear your energy. Participants will learn how sensitive and intuitive people absorb energy, how to create strong energetic boundaries, and how to release what does not belong to them. The class will include discussion, breathing techniques, and a guided meditation focused on grounding, protection, and restoring your own energy so you can feel more balanced in everyday life.

Sacred Sound Waves with Kailin of Earth is an immersive sonic journey, weaving ancient and modern instruments into a seamless flow of healing vibrations. Ethereal hand pans, native flutes, rain discs, gongs, and singing bowls create deep, resonant waves that expand awareness and dissolve tension, while chimes and bells awaken clarity and intuition. Grounding drum rhythms reconnect you to the Earth, while a gentle guided meditation quiets the mind and opens the heart. Layered with angelic vocal toning, this experience invites you to surrender, heal, and realign with the natural rhythms within and around you.

This Mindfulness Meditation offering is rooted in the understanding of breath and presence in the Plum Village tradition, founded by Thich Nhat Hahn, and the spirit of engaged Buddhism creating a grounded, compassionate, and accessible space for practitioners of all levels.

Sangha building in the Plum Village tradition is the intentional cultivation of a mindful community that practices together in compassion, deep listening, and collective awakening, grounded in the spirit of engaged Buddhism.

Vibrational massage provides deep relaxation while assisting energetic flow.  Join us to learn about, give, and receive sound massage with Himalayan bowls and weighted tuning forks and leave refreshed and energized

Japa Mantra MeditationLearning the Sacred Practice of Mala Beads
This class offers a grounded and accessible introduction to Japa Mantra Meditation, an ancient devotional practice rooted in the yogic tradition and referenced in texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
The word japa means “to repeat softly,” and mantra means “instrument of the mind.” Together, Japa is the rhythmic repetition of a sacred sound, word, or phrase to steady the mind and awaken deeper awareness.
In this workshop-style class, students will learn:
• The history and spiritual significance of Japa meditation
• The structure and symbolism of the 108-bead mala
• How to hold and move through the beads properly
• The purpose of the guru bead
• Breath coordination with mantra repetition
• How to choose or connect with a mantra
Traditionally, a mala contains 108 beads, representing spiritual wholeness and the cyclical nature of existence. Each bead becomes an anchor for attention. With every repetition of the mantra, the practitioner gently moves to the next bead, creating a tactile rhythm that keeps the mind from wandering.
This practice activates the parasympathetic nervous system through repetition and breath regulation, while also cultivating focus, devotion, and inner stillness. The vibration of mantra is said to refine consciousness and purify mental fluctuations.
Students may work with a universal mantra such as “Om,” “So Hum,” or a loving-kindness phrase, depending on the intention of the practice.
Expect:
• Gentle guidance into seated meditation
• Instruction on mala use and etiquette
• Group mantra repetition
• Silent personal japa
• Reflection and integration
This practice can be devotional or secular. It can be done for five minutes or an hour. What matters most is sincerity and consistency.
Japa is meditation with movement.
With rhythm.
With intention.
One bead.
One breath.
One mantra at a time.

Alchemy is a heart-opening sound immersion designed to guide participants into deep meditative presence and nervous system restoration. Rooted in ancient sound techniques and anchored by traditional Tibetan singing bowls, this journey weaves earth-rooted tones and harmonic resonance into a vibrational field that supports both energetic and somatic healing.
Participants are invited to soften into a receptive state where the body can recalibrate, the mind can quiet, and the subtle energy systems can realign.
Alchemy is the art of transmutation. Within this container of resonance and rest, we transform density into openness, intention into embodiment, and dreams into grounded reality.
This is an invitation to surrender, to receive, and to remember the innate wisdom that lives within vibration.

This meditation is rooted in the ancient Buddhist practice of Loving-Kindness, known in Pali as Metta Bhavana, meaning “the cultivation of boundless goodwill.” For centuries, practitioners have used this simple yet profound method to soften the heart, dissolve resentment, and awaken compassion as a lived experience rather than an idea.
At its core, this meditation uses five intentional phrases that are repeated gently, like planting seeds in the soil of the mind. The practice traditionally moves in widening circles:

1. Ourselves
2. Someone we love or feel gratitude toward
3. Someone neutral
4. Someone difficult
5. All beings everywhere

We begin with ourselves because compassion cannot authentically extend outward if it does not first take root within. From there, the heart expands gradually, including those who are easy to love and eventually those who challenge us. The practice culminates in extending loving-kindness to all beings without exception, dissolving the illusion of separation.
The classic phrases often sound like:
• May I be safe.
• May I be healthy.
• May I be peaceful.
• May I live with ease.
• May I be free.
These phrases are then adapted as the focus shifts:
“May you be safe…”
“May you be peaceful…”
“May all beings be free…”
The wording is flexible. What matters most is the sincerity behind it. The phrases can be tailored to reflect what feels authentic and aligned, as long as they arise from a genuine place of care and goodwill.
This practice can be:
• A focused five-minute daily reset
• A full hour of deep heart cultivation
• Practiced in one complete arc
• Or explored one category at a time depending on what the heart needs
It is traditionally practiced seated in meditation, but it can also be done lying down, walking slowly, or even integrated into yoga asana or daily life. The beauty of Metta is its accessibility.
For seasoned meditators, it refines and deepens compassion.
For beginners, it offers structure and simplicity.
Over time, loving-kindness meditation has been shown to gently shift inner dialogue, reduce reactivity, and increase feelings of connection and well-being. Spiritually, it is said to purify the heart. Practically, it changes how we show up in the world.
This is not about forcing positive emotion. It is about cultivating the intention of goodwill, even if the feeling follows later.
One phrase.
One breath.
One widening circle at a time.