By DANA DUGAN and SABINA DANA PLASSE
Express Staff Writers
While outside the rain fell intermittently, inside all was sunny. The 11th annual Sun Valley Wellness Festival, held in the Sun Valley Inn, attracted about 1,000 participants, 60 speakers and dozens of workshops.
"Everywhere I look there is a peaceful warrior in training," said Dan Millman during his keynote address Friday night. Millman opened the festival with an impressive handstand and said that at 62-years old and with a 12-year-old grandson, he's moved from New Age to middle age.
Millman's talk was inspiring, communal and meditative. A celebrated speaker, athlete and author of 13 books, he first came to be known for his 1980 book "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior," an early influence in the New Age realm of health and well being.
The attendees at Millman's keynote address participated in breathing exercises and stretching, while Millman touched upon the importance of living a daily balanced life, which included the need to breathe.
"To evolve as human beings, you don't really need to attend a seminar," Millman said. "The peaceful warrior way is to embrace the best of the East and the West and live with your feet on the ground."
Millman's advice was practical and easy to remember: Live a more balanced life with the goal being to learn rather than to win.
"Life is an experiment," Millman said. "Live the life you were born to live and turn what you know into what you actually do. Dream big and start small."
Millman said people need regular, moderate daily exercise, even if it is one jumping jack a day, a balanced diet regardless of one's food preferences and, above all, rest
"It's not the goal but the journey that matters most," he said.
Two of the overlying themes over the weekend were the Oneness Process and energy healing, whether through a healer or a shaman. Several practitioners offered workshops or lectures on both subjects. Tony Robbins stood in for spiritual healer Anamika for a large, free, three-hour Oneness Blessing on Friday. Sri Raniji, spiritual leader and founder of the Oneness Movement in North America, conducted two lectures.
"The energy here is better than I've seen in other places like L.A.," Sri Raniji said. "I've seen a lot of compassion and good energy here."
She asked the gathering not to consider what love is but instead what it is not.
"Attachment, possession of someone else and expectations are not love," she said. "If hearts are closed it is because people think only of themselves. Our sense of separation is only an illusion."
There were impressive turnouts for Alberto Villoldo's "Courageous Dreaming" talk, Konstantin Kajsarov's "Holy Whisper" talk and Lyle Prouse's discussion "The Long Journey Back," sponsored by the Sun Club.
Villoldo explained that the practice of shamanism is based on the notion of soul retrieval.
"We have to lose our minds to gain our senses," he said. "In the West we have a funky mythology. We're very biased towards the masculine and forget the feminine."
As with many of the practices discussed at the Wellness Festival, he discussed bringing balance to the body, soul and Earth, identifying and removing intrusive energy for greater peace of mind and breathing deeply for boosting energy, grounding oneself and cleansing one's lungs.
The Exhibit Hall was a sea of items such as healing crystals, meditation devices, health elixirs, bamboo clothing, detox programs and organic cremes along with Snake River Flaxseed, specialty teas from Shangri-La in Kuna and even accessories made by a young woman in Krzygstan.
One could also have his or her aura photographed, toxins flushed through a foot bath or a session on a Quantum Biofeedback machine.
Further exploration into wellness could be found at the Hands on Hall where festival goers had a choice of many healings and readings.
In addition, the Movement Studio featured some of the valley's experienced practitioners of yoga, Pilates, energetic gyrokinesis, chi gong, zumba and NIA.
During Dan Millman’s keynote address, he suggested that the hundreds of audience members practice gamesmanship rather than competition while playing patty-cake. In the foreground, Doug and Ann Christensen give it the old college try. Photo by Willy Cook
