I’ll level with you here.
I am not a healthy person. I average nine or ten cups of coffee daily – and I’m not even talking good coffee. I’m talking that flavoured petrol that gets sold under the coffee moniker for a dollar a pop.
I also have a relationship with alcohol that my friends describe as “troubling”, my therapist describes as “outright dangerous” and that kind lady who walked me home the night I lost my front door keys (and pants) as “something to work on”.
So, safe to say, I am not exactly the kind of person that one would usually expect to attend an event like the Festival Of Dreams. But who said well-being was the domain of gurus and healthy-looking folks? Us gross degenerates can get into balanced eating and clean livin’ too. To that end, check out the following guide, one designed to help you get geed up for a celebration of healthy vibes when you have a health record worse than Keith Richards’.
1. Check Out The Music
The misnomer that good music has to be inherently unclean is an inherently untrue one. For every wild-livin’ Jim Morrison-type there’s an Ian MacKaye, a straight edge-r driven by forces entirely removed from drugs and alcohol*.
Festival Of Dreams is offering a bounty of musical performers, ranging from “tribal pop rock” band Blue Mary; Charles, a mononymous guided meditation performer; to folk star Lou Van Stone. Sure, none of them are playing Satan’s rock and it’s unlikely that any will go full Ozzy Osbourne and bite off a bat’s head, but that’s not to undermine any of the passion they display onstage.
2. Meditate
The Festival Of Dreams offers a bevy of opportunities to meditate, and trust us, you’ll want to take ‘em all up. Meditation is particularly en vogue at the moment (as is the word en vogue, for that matter), and for good reason too: lauded filmmaker David Lynch has written an entire book about the advantage meditating gives for those engaged in creative disciplines, and what kind of person is going to ignore advice given by David Lynch?
The man speaks nothing but truths.
3. Hit Up The Chill Out Igloo
I mean, it’s called the chill out igloo. What more could you possibly want?
Shout out to my main man Pingu.
4.Spend Some Time In The Psychic Arena
If you’re anything like me, the words “psychic arena” will conjure up images of a telepathic battleground in which mentats wage invisible wars. But although the psychic arena at the Festival of Dreams won’t feature any of that, it does boast something almost as exciting: a range of psychic practitioners reading your tarot, telling the future and spinning fortunes. Get excited.
So none of this then.
4. Open Your Mind
We live in the age of the echo chamber. The prevalence of social sites like Twitter and Facebook has increased our eagerness to seek out points of views that directly reinforce our own. We don’t challenge ourselves anymore: these days, when I look through my Facebook feed, I don’t see one person questioning the belief that Ren And Stimpyis the finest cultural contribution of the last three decades, and represents the closest television has come to perfection (To be fair, I don’t see anyone in my Facebook feed mentioning Ren And Stimpyfull stop, but that’s the website’s problem, not mine.)
Perfection.
To that end, The Festival of Dreams is a good chance to hear from a point of view that you wouldn’t usually consider. Though the celebration is spiritual, it is beholden to no particular one denomination, and the varied speakers include a CEO (Lisa Messenger), a psychic medium (Harry T), and a hollistic clinician (Therese Kerr).
If you’re the kind of person, like me, who has an extreme bodily reaction to any of those words – particularly “psychic” – then the Festival of Dreams is a real opportunity to embrace the difference, and throw yourself into something outside your comfort zone – to learn, essentially.
*Yes, I did just namedrop Ian MacKaye in a native content piece about a wellbeing festival. Yer welcome.
Festival Of Dreams runs from Friday October 7 – Sunday October 9. For more information, head to their website, here.
