I was impressed with the first Wanderlust Festival last weekend–the Squaw Valley venue was spacious and scenic, the yoga classes were well planned, and the concerts ran like clockwork (I can’t think of the last time I thought that about a show with artists the caliber of Sharon Jones and Girl Talk).

Co-founders and couple Jeff Krasno and Schuyler Grant said that last year they started looking into ways to combine holistic programming with performers they’d actually like to hear (“It’s not just chanting like lots of yoga festivals, but it’s not Slayer either,” Grant explained). In this brief overview about the motivation behind the festival, entertainment exec Krasno describes the yoga retreats he used to attend with Grant, the founder of New York’s Kula Yoga Project, and what he wanted to do to round them out:

After a snowmobile trip to explore potential stage locations the top of the mountain in February, the couple sought out instructor partners from John Friend to Shiva Rae and put a decent amount of their own money into the festival. The turnout didn’t seem to be what it could have been given the current economy, but the fact that local food and yoga are both growing in spite of the recession should be promising for the regional and European-based festivals that Krasno and Grant said they’d like to host. And the fact that nearly half of the 1,500 yoga pass participants donated money to the purchase of carbon offsets when purchasing their tickets demonstrates that there’s a passionate (and pocketbook-ready) audience for their idea.

Krasno described it as “wanting to show that yoga is appreciated by young people living active lives and trying cultivate some sense of spirituality between emails.” Reason enough for me.

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