Reflections on Pachamama by Neil Vazquez

May 01, 2013

“What is Pachamama?”, you ask.

Well, it’s not the new Lilith Fair, or an Incan ayahuasca-esque psychotropin. Pachamama is actually a new yoga filled festival extravaganza. So basically it’s like coachella but instead of jorts clad LA hipster, the scene is a mix of relaxed wholefoods workers, svelt yogis, and those that enjoy coconut water. The first annual Pachamama was held April 21st, 2013 at the Surfcomber Hotel in South Beach, Florida. The event was sponsored by YOGiiZA, an up-and-coming, sexy, natural yoga clothes company (check out their short-shorts, they’re pretty steamy). Apart from all the scantily clad, YOGiiZA wearing beautiful people, the event featured grub catered by Wholefoods, drinks by Rihanna’s favorite coconut water Vita Coco, and yoga demonstrations from Miami yogis with crazy open inner thighs and hips.

Top: Daylene Christensen in Vishvamitrasana. Bottom (L to R): Gabriel Axel, Ewa Josefsson, & Barbra Bennet in Handstand; Daylene Christensen in Yoganidrasana; Megan Johnson, & Rob Newman demonstrating AcroYoga.

For your $30 entrance fee, you not only got to gawk at Daylene Christensen putting her legs behind her head while you threw back a pineapple coconut water, but you also got to partake in a hour long yoga class. The class was tag-teamed taught by some of Miami’s best yogis, starting with Eugene Gant from Nam Yoga who led the group through several minutes of full body shaking. (By the way, for those of you who do NOT incorporate shaking as part of your daily routine, your lymphatic systems are probably in a state a disarray, so get to daily gyrating).

Whilst the assembled group violently shook away, I enjoyed walking up to various booths from local yoga-related business. I met several cool and interesting people. Yoga gangsters is not only a great name for my 90s gangsta rap inspired solo album (dropping next October) but it’s also an amazing organization that brings yoga to disadvantaged students. If giving back to your local community via yoga isn’t your bag, you could just join for the t-shirts (I told them to ad Tu-pac’s face in the background of next year’s shirt, we’ll see if they take my sage advice.) The people at Surfrider were very cool. They’re a non-profit organization dedicated to cleaning up local beaches, and saving local beach-front wildlife (no, I don’t mean German tourists). Their bag-man suit (which they didn’t make themselves, and is apparently very hot and uncomfortable) makes tangible the amount of plastic bags the average American uses in a year. Ugh, come on people bring your own bags to Publix already!

All in all Pachamama was the most pleasant way I could think off to spend a Sunday afternoon, besides watching January Jones in a fat suit. The second Pachamama will hopefully be held sometime next year, can’t wait to gawk at more drop-crotch yoga pants! Written By: Neil Vazquez Yogi at Miami Life Center