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NOTHING, IT
TURNS out. Or rather, Schmidt and her friends are high on “New Age raves,”
an underground movement that blends the healthiest elements of
raves—electronic music and dance marathons—with yoga, meditation and other
spiritual rites. Drugs and alcohol are strictly forbidden. All the people
at this event, sponsored by a group called Body Temple, are looking for a
Saturday-night party where they can lose themselves without taking
anything more potent than a shot of blue-algae juice. Some are urban yoga
addicts looking for new ways to get a fix. Others, like Schmidt, are
refugees from the rave scene who have hit bottom and climbed back up. More
than a decade after raves started in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago,
club goers have had enough of overdoses and hangovers. “I was a club kid
who used to try to get the high with ecstasy,” says Schmidt, 27, her
ponytail bouncing. “Now, I get it naturally. I like being around people
who are celebrating in a healthy way. And I love to dance.”
Promoters are launching holistic raves all over the
country, from Oregon to Chicago to Los Angeles. In San Francisco, there’s
a New Age rave almost every weekend. Parties are held anywhere from yoga
centers to nightclubs, and people drive hundreds of miles to attend them.
Once there, they dance as if their lives depended on it, and that’s just
the point, says Lynn Schofield Clark. After years of grim news, from
Columbine to September 11 to the Iraq war, young people need new ways to
celebrate. “The idea of experiencing life and a sense of community in a
way that is not risking their lives is pretty appealing,” says Schofield
Clark, author of “From Angels to Aliens,” a book about spirituality and
youth. Dr. Dean Ornish, an expert on the health benefits of yoga and
meditation, would put it another way. “It’s a more healthful way [than
drugs] to open up into the altered states of awareness which dance and
music can bring you to.”
In Los Angeles, a
group called Ambient Groove Temple throws all-night parties —once a month:
deejays spin the hard-driving electronic music you would expect to find in
a nightclub. Evenings begin with yoga and meditation sessions that last up
to three hours. Then, participants listen to lectures on Eastern
philosophy and how to save the environment before roaming through three
rooms where they can sample a smorgasbord of raw food and herbal drinks.
Massage therapists offering Thai- and shiatsu-style rubs are on call to
loosen dancers’ muscles before they hit the floor.
The first party was in San Francisco about three years ago, but
elsewhere the trend has taken off only within the past year, and already
it has moved beyond the coasts. In Chicago a crew called TranceZenDance
Tribe throws similar events, also drug- and alcohol-free. After a guided
meditation focused on what organizer Travis Robb calls “linking
consciousness with everyone on the planet,” and a sound-healing session
(in which a musician on an Aboriginal instrument called a didgeridoo
circles the room, playing at everyone’s feet), TranceZenDance deejays
crank up the music. Images of the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids, and
geometric shapes flash on a wall-size screen.
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Yoga finds new
devotees
May 22, 2001 — One of
the hot new catch words in health care is in fact one of the oldest
forms of taking care of your body -- yoga. NBC’s Dr. Bob Arnot
reports yoga is a serious discipline with a wide range of benefits
-- and a rapidly growing circle of
devotees. |
Organizers range from small-time yoga-shop
owners to established nightclub impresarios. Later this year, Robert
Wootton, who managed the popular Irish band Hothouse Flowers for six
years, will launch a club called Spirit in New York City. Spirit will
occupy the same building that used to house Twilo, perhaps the world’s
most famous electronica and ecstasy warehouse until it was shuttered two
years ago after repeated drug busts. The new club will serve alcohol, but
the drug policy will be so tough that Wootton has already spent time with
New York police planning security modeled after the club he now runs in
Dublin. “If we catch you consuming or selling drugs, we don’t just eject
you, we call the police and arrest you on the spot.” |
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Fade to Black: What We Did With the Lights
Out
