Kickstart Your April with Down Under Yoga’s Weekend-Long Yoga Festival

Down Under School of Yoga hosts their third annual Down Under Unites Yoga Festival April 6-7 / Photo provided

A new month is a clean slate to kickstart healthy habits, scope out new hobbies, and dive into the next 30-something days on a high note. What better way to spend your first April weekend than partaking in a two-day, all-access yoga festival?

Down Under School of Yoga, the no-frills and community-oriented multi-location yoga studio, is bringing back their annual Down Under Unites Yoga Festival for its third year. Hosted at their Cambridge studio, the weekend-long event will take place April 6-7, and include a variety of workshops and classes. For $30, you’ll receive a wristband granting you unlimited access to the weekend’s festivities.

Classes range from the classics, like heated Fundamentals of Vinyasa to Heart Opening Classic Rock Flow, which is a 50-minute class devoted to releasing the heart chakra through heart opening poses set to a playlist of classic rock jams.

Among the faculty leading the festival’s events are advanced Iyengar yoga practitioner Patricia Walden, senior Vinyasa instructor Natasha Rizopoulos, and Down Under’s owner and director Justine Wiltshire-Cohen, who is returning from retirement to teach a class Sunday morning. And for those who love to pair their yoga with a killer playlist, special guest Chris Capozzi—co-leader of the November Project’s free fitness meet-ups in Boston—will be DJ’ing select classes on Saturday.

In line with Down Under’s dedication to a practice rooted in inclusivity and diversity, the school is putting the proceeds from the weekend’s events towards their Teaching Training Scholarship for People of Color. The scholarship, which is open to anyone who self-identities as a person of color and is committed to their yoga practice, will provide recipients free tuition to the school’s 200 and 300 hour teacher trainings.

“This is exactly what makes Down Under celebrated in the American yoga world,” director Justine Wiltshire-Cohen said in a press release. “Lead teachers from all the major styles of yoga linked by a common love of practice, a mutual respect for each other’s craft, and a belief that what we teach flows off the mat and into the world.”

$30, April 6-7, Down Under School of Yoga, 2000 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-661-6565, downunderyoga.com.