Rene Quenell writes for YOGI TIMES about the yoga events and retreat spots that have shaped her own practice.
Remembering the Ojai Yoga Crib
Her piece on the now-closed Ojai Yoga Crib is a firsthand account of the annual gathering, drawn from her own visit: nine teachers leading 2.5-hour classes around the town of Ojai, California, over the last weekend of October, and her stay at Meditation Mount, a retreat center on a hill overlooking the valley, during the event. She writes about watching the normally quiet town transform for the weekend as hundreds of yogis, mats in hand, moved between venues organized around a headquarters run by Lulu Bandhas, the now-closed studio owned by event host Kira Ryder.
A record of something that no longer exists
Because both the Yoga Crib and Lulu Bandhas have since closed, Rene’s account functions as one of the few detailed, first-person records of what the event actually felt like to attend, from the lighthearted, welcoming tone Kira brought to hosting it to the sense of community that formed among strangers over a single long weekend. It’s the kind of piece that matters more with time, preserving a real memory of a gathering that newer readers would otherwise have no way to picture.
