Sandy Hook Promise will host the debut Newtown Yoga Festival on Saturday, August 24. The goal of the festival is to promote a positive sense of community and healing in Newtown.

World-renowned yoga teachers Seane Corn and Beryl Bender Birch will lead participants in practice and meaningful conversation. There will be local health and wellness vendors, live music and kids activities featuring a children’s yoga class with Newtown resident Karen Pierce.

All proceeds from the day’s event will support Sandy Hook Promise, the community organization created to honor and support family members of the 20 children, four teachers and two administrators killed, the two teachers wounded, 12 surviving children, as well as the first responders, teachers, staff and children at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

The festival will be held between 10 am and 4 pm at Newtown Youth Academy, 4 Primrose Street.

Suggested donation amount is $25 for participants. For more information visit newtownyogafestival.com or find the Event page on Facebook.

Sandy Hook Promise is devoted to the well-being and healing of the community of Newtown in the wake of 12/14. Festival organizers believe yoga is a wonderful tool that can heal the spirit, body and mind and has been proven effective in reducing stress and depression. It is a healing system that creates strength and harmony in both the mind and the body, and an excellent mechanism for coping with physical and emotional stress. Yoga promotes positive, spiritual well-being.

Encouraging a mindful yoga practice helps fulfill the mission of Sandy Hook Promise to find holistic approaches to reducing violence.

Seane Corn and Beryl Bender Birch are two extremely respected and influential members of the worldwide yoga community who have graciously donated their time to help the community of Newtown in its healing process.

Ms Corn is an internationally renowned vinyasa flow yoga teacher and spiritual activist. Her teachings incorporate vinyasa flow yoga as a means for self-empowerment. She has been featured in magazines, on Oprah.com and was named the National Yoga Ambassador for YouthAIDS in 2005.

Ms Corn utilizes her national platform to bring awareness to global humanitarian issues. Since 2007, she has been training activist leaders through her co-founded organization Off the Mat, Into the World.

She has visited India, Cambodia, Haiti and Africa working with developing communities, teaching yoga, and educating people about HIV/AIDS Prevention. She is also co-founder of the Seva Challenge Humanitarian Tours, which has raised more than $3.5 million since 2007.

Ms Birch is a best-selling author of several books about yoga, including Power Yoga and Finding Peace and Building Resilience: A Yoga Therapy Guide for Veterans and Military Service Members. She been an avid student of classical yoga since 1971.

In 1974, she traveled to India to further her studies and has been training yoga students and teachers through her school, The Hard and Soft Yoga Institute, for almost 40 years. She is also the co-founder of the Give Back Yoga Foundation, which supports yoga teachers globally in developing give-back projects in their communities.

Local health and wellness vendors will also be participating in the daylong event, which will also include an auction of products and services.

The Newtown Yoga Festival is sponsored, in part, by Move Into Healing, a group of local yoga teachers, tai chi and qi gong instructors, and reiki practitioners who are devoted to giving back to their community. 

For additional information call 203-304-9780.