Celebrating life and relishing in serendipity | #16

Allowing chance and serendipity to guide my festival experience led it to be the best five days of my life

Dear friends,

Walking back to my tent while admiring the stars above, another day of 10k steps around this little temporary village. Right up in front pushed against the DJ decks bopping to house music infused with slow rhythm layered beneath a faster rave-y rhythm. In a big dome tent meditating after having hapé, a type of shamanic snuff with psychotropic substances, I then begin to paint. These are some of the wonderful memories I bring back into normal life from my experience at Medicine -- a festival in the British countryside.

From the festivals’ website, their vision is about “interweaving communities and bridging cultures – wisdom keepers, indigenous communities visionaries, artists, and solutionaries of all traditions to inspire and ignite a deeper understanding of how we can tread lightly, and live harmoniously as we support each other in the creation of the world we want to see – an equitable and thriving world.”

Medicine Festival is a conscious and alcohol-free festival with a focus on traditional medicines, ceremonies, plants and getting to know and ground ourselves more deeply. They work closely with Indigenous communities across the world as well as a line up of world music from Sufi Qawwali to Indian Kirtan to medicine music. Artists with guitars, shamanic drums, African drums and so on were all invited to take stage and to share their medicines with us. There were 30 pages of programming for this festival.

If you are curious after checking out the programming, I’d say you should attend next year. It changed my life!

Celebrating Life

Being at this festival instilled in me the importance of sharing space and connection while celebrating the beauty of life. I always felt that retreats were meaningful and worthwhile but I used to not understand why people who trek with a big backpack into a muddy field to camp at a festival without showers. And some would even treat it as if it is a yearly pilgrimage. But now I fully understand the meaning behind it all. And I have drunk the kool aid myself!

I understand that we gather with others in an intense and immersive atmosphere to celebrate, learn, connect and share experiences. We do this to relish in the fact that we have this precious gift that is life and to be around like minded people who want to rejoice in the same way we do. 

At the festival, I woke up each day with carefree curiosity and no expectation of what the day would bring. I was armed with a loose schedule of things I really wanted to see and some additional ones. Aside from that, the festival was left to serendipity, joining people I’d gone with at times, being unafraid to leave them to explore alone at times, making new friends in workshops and having conversations while lining up. 

Each night of the festival, the dance tent, which goes on the latest, would end with a half hour sound ceremony to allow dancers and festival-goers who were partying all night long to ground back to earth and down-regulate so we could relax for bed. I got to experience this on the second night facilitated by a didgeridoo player from Brazil accompanied by a crystal bowl practitioner. The didgeridoo player played his instrument while guiding us through a meditation in a low voice.

He said “Breaaaatheeee, remember that life is beautiful and precious”. While this statement was truly simple, I knew that if my mood was low, I’d not have resonated with what he said. I knew that the ability to celebrate the beauty of life is about seeing the glass half full and sometimes we are not in the mindset to see that. It also made me realise that how we go about life is our choice and I can choose to see the beauty or I can home in on all the ugly and depressing parts of life.

Serendipity and learning to ornate my body to bask in my beauty

One of the things that is allowed at the Medicine Festival is to walk around naked. It had never appealed to me to walk around naked because I imagine I’d feel quite self-conscious. And it wasn’t even on my agenda to walk around naked until the opportunity presented itself. 

At the festival, I didn’t look at any social media and only used my phone to check the time, take some pictures and check the schedule. I didn’t even need to force myself to not look, I just did not feel the need for it. I realised that checking social media was a tic I’d developed in a highly anxious world of productively churning out output and a city of loneliness and a dire thirst for connection.

Here, I was in a magical environment with like-minded people who had big hearts, depth to their soul and a desire to get closer to awakening their consciousness. I was able to be fully present with each moment and I didn’t even try to find my friends when I was alone. I allowed myself to meander and let my heart and intuition take me to where I felt like going. Naturally I would run into people on the way somewhere or when I arrived where I wanted to go. I also met lots of new people along the way. It was allowing life to be serendipitous at its finest! 

One of the serendipitous moments was running into three people by their tents. I had met them the night before while on the way back to my tent from the portaloos. They were chatting and starting to get ready for the evening when one of them brought out this gorgeous sparkling backless halter top which was more like an elaborate necklace that vaguely covered the nipples. She handed it over to another and suggested she put it on. One of them tried it but felt it was too femme and so none of them decided to wear it. There was something in me that loved that top and I asked if it was ok for me to wear it. They all encouraged me and so I put it on and felt glorious. 

Courtesy of Minnow Park’s swift Photoshop skills of my nipples

Originally I wondered if I could find some tape and cover my nipples but then as soon as I put the top on, it felt right and I felt that I had nothing to hide. I also felt like I finally understood the meaning of knowing my enoughness and not only that but celebrating me and my life. Having self-confidence and self-love enough to ornate my body in a way that accentuated its beauty. I wore it with colourful festival bell bottom pants and a big glittering diamante headpiece. 

The group I had gone to Medicine with was from a Buddhist sangha that I meditate with in London. Some have a more strict view of ethical behaviour and so a part of me was a bit worried I’d be judged by them but as I wandered back to the tent and sat with them I felt that it didn’t matter if they judged me or not. With a little bit of insecurity around that group, they shrugged their shoulders when I sought ‘permission’ from a couple of the girls and that led me to feel even bolder in what I wore.

As I walked back into the festival grounds,I got a lot of compliments for how amazing I looked. I felt amazing too. I think this was actually the most powerful moment in the festival for me. It taught me so much about projection and how we treat ourselves and others through judgement. It taught me what it means to appreciate aesthetics and beauty, to slow down and make something nice like what I was wearing, and not just choose the functional option. 

Curious as to why aesthetics feels so important without being able to logically understand why, I decided to do a bit of research. As it turns out, philosophers and psychologists have looked at it and discovered that our aesthetic perceptions of the world around us affects our emotions, this is why beautiful and aesthetically pleasing spaces can give our wellbeing a positive boost. In that way, making ourselves beautiful isn’t actually just about how others perceive us, nor is it about filling the lack we have in ourselves, it is also a way to love ourselves as we deserve to be and celebrate our lives. I used to think that putting on makeup was for other people but after wearing this top that felt just right for me, I realised that it was also about us too. 

You are an NPC

It is normal that in our lives, we have main character energy. And that is normal because we are naturally the main character in our lives. But once we realise how insignificant we are to other people, it actually becomes so freeing what we do with our lives. You are an NPC means you are a non-playable character in an online game aka you are unimportant to other main characters.

I really embodied this understanding as I was wearing this gorgeous top. There was a part of me that wondered if people, especially the ones I know will judge me for wearing a top that occasionally revealed my nipples but as soon as I fully understood that people were busy thinking about themselves and what they need, and didn’t give two fucks about us, it felt so freeing to wear that. I knew that I had opened the portal to another world of expression I had not really explored yet. 

Growing up with a beautiful and fashionable mother, I have always been really good at buying and wearing nice things but I had never really explored self-expression through the lens of wearing something like this gorgeous top. It felt right, it felt good and it didn’t feel like I was doing it for others. I actually felt like I was doing it for me, I wanted people to see me in it, I wanted people to compliment me and my peacocking. I wanted to bask in the sun, in Leo's behaviour and not be apologetic for being who I was.

Love Caryn xx