This year’s Newtown Yoga Festival will take place on August 26, from 9am to 4pm, at NYA Sports & Fitness, in Newtown. Featured headliners for Yoga Fest 2017 are prominent personalities Kathryn Templeton, Todd Norian, Hala Khouri and Tao Porchon Lynch. 

The Newtown Yoga Festival, now in its fifth year, has partnered this year with The Avielle Foundation, a Newtown-based nonprofit started by the parents of Avielle Richman, one of the 20 first graders killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. The foundation works to prevent violence and build compassion through brain science research, community engagement and education. The Spark Program focuses on The Avielle Foundation’s local Newtown efforts. 

Why is a violence prevention organization having a yoga fest? “Yoga helps regulate emotional and physiological states. It allows the body to regain its natural movement and teaches the use of breath for self-regulation. Yoga teaches us that there are things we can do to change our brainstem arousal system, our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and to quiet the brain,” says Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score.

A number of renowned yoga personalities have headlined previous Newtown Yoga Festivals, including Seane Corn, Beryl Bender Birch, Elena Brower, Ray Crist and Jennifer Reis. Headliners teach the community class, which draws hundreds of attendees from the local community. 

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit NewtownYogaFestival.org. The suggested donation is $30. Location: NYA Sports & Fitness, 4 Primrose St, Newtown. See ad, page 9.