Wanderlust Yoga Virginia

Photo by ALI KAUKAS for Wanderlust Festival

Introductory courses to AiReal yoga was offered to attendees of the Wanderlust festival recently at Snowshoe Mountain Resort.

Photo by ALI KAUKAS for Wanderlust Festival

The SUP yoga classes were extremely popular with almost all of the classes at full capacity during the festival. The classes were held at Shavers Lake as participants learned how to practice yoga on stand-up paddle boards.

Using a large open space at Snowshoe, festival attendees fine-tune their hula-hoop skills.

DJ Drez provided the tunes during a yoga class.

ANNA PATRICK | Sunday Gazette-Mail

Partners could be found across Snowshoe Village working on their acroyoga skills, which combines yoga and acrobatics. In the background, festivalgoers dance to the sounds of Magic Giant, a band from Los Angeles.

SNOWSHOE, W.Va. — There’s a look that often comes over a yogi’s face after he or she has completed an intense yoga practice.

It’s relatively easy to spot. As people roll up their yoga mats and exit a studio, try to find the person displaying an overwhelming look of ease. He might be exhausted and dripping sweat, but smiling broadly. His shoulders look less tense as he walks with an overall lightness. You might even hear him humming to himself.

The feeling of peace that often accompanies this post-yoga state — easily compared to a runner’s high — has many names. Some call it “yoga drunk.” Others have created the verb “blissed” to explain the euphoric state that is induced after experiencing a long, continuous physical yoga practice.

“I saw so many smiling faces. Nobody seemed really unhappy, ” said Valerie Slone, a relatively new yogi and one of thousands of enthusiasts who made the journey to Snowshoe Mountain Resort to participate in Wanderlust.

From June 5 to 7, Snowshoe hosted the yoga and music festival for the first time. An estimated 3, 000 to 5, 000 people attended, most of them wearing stretchy yoga pants and carrying colorful mats between yoga and meditation classes.

The festival began at Squaw Valley, California, in 2009 and has grown to a series of festivals held at various mountain towns throughout the United States and Canada.

Snowshoe joins other well-known mountain towns on the festival lineup including: Stratton, Vermont; Aspen-Snowmass, Colorado; Squaw Valley, California; Whistler, British Columbia, Canada; and Tremblant, Quebec, Canada.

“It really begins with the wonderful relationship that we have with the resorts welcoming us to their area, ” said Jess Roach, community director of Wanderlust.

“We knew that we wanted to expand more to the East Coast. Vermont is hard to get to from here. Snowshoe is the perfect fit. We are just so excited to be here.”

The Snowshoe festival kicked off Wanderlust’s 2015 summer festival season and organizers have already announced that Wanderlust will return to Snowshoe in early June of 2016.

“The Snowshoe team has been incredible with helping us, ” Roach added.

She admitted that the organizers didn’t realize how remote the location was until they arrived.