If you’ve been to one of my yoga classes, you know that I’m a big fan of setting an intention at the beginning of class. I always say that when you direct your mind and heart in a new direction, it can be a very powerful thing. Setting an intention before you start a yoga practice can help ground you and guide you throughout your practice.

I’m also a big believer in sending your dreams out into the universe, as I’ve been the recipient of many dreams coming true. I even have gone so far as putting together a vision board. My fellow yoga teacher and friend Juli Hicks turned me on to the vision boarding concept, and I have to say that the one I created is pretty damn cool. It captures all of my dreams and wishes and where I want to take my career and spiritual life over the coming years. I won’t tell you everything I pasted on my board – but some central themes are continuing yoga education, travel, writing, and meditation.

One of the dreams I set out for myself in 2012 was to continue my yoga journey by attending one of the “yoga festivals” like Wanderlust, and/or attend one of the Yoga Journal conferences. To me, traveling to a destination to study with well-known yoga luminaries, hear awesome yoga music, and hang out and do downward dogs with hundreds of other yogis all in one place is my idea of going to Disneyland. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make this happen, but I figured if I saved my money and believed in the dream, I’d make it come to fruition.

I entered a couple of contests to try and win free tickets to these festivals, one of which was on the lovely Roseanne’s It’s All Yoga, Baby blog. She held a contest to giveaway passes to the Tadasana Festival, an international festival of yoga and music held Earth Day weekend (April 20-22) in Santa Monica, California. I entered the contest, and then rather than be quiet about the contest in hopes of increasing my chances to win, I did the exact opposite and started tweeting and telling all my yogi buds about it so they could enter too. If you’ve never visited Roseanne’s blog, please go over and check out the yoga information, interviews, and conversations (and if you need some help with your blog or writing, check out her freelance services).

I found out on Friday, March 9 that I WON the tickets! Woo Hoo!!!* I feel like the poster child of setting intentions.

If Intent.com needs a spokesmodel, I’m available. You put something out there in the universe – it may just come true! Just saying.

So, check out some of the people I have the opportunity to practice with at Tadasana Festival: Seane Corn, Shiva Rea, Amy Ippolito, Kia Miller, Elana Brower, Guru Singh, Bryan Kest, Baron Baptiste, and Jennifer Pastiloff, to name a few. And, I’ll get to hear MC Yogi play and attend some classes where Wah! is going to provide the music live. I’m like a kid in a candy store trying to pick out which classes to go to. The festival is three days and there are 50 master teachers offering 70+ workshops with live, in-class musical performances by artists from around the world, lectures, cool yoga stuff to purchase, organic food, and to top it all 0ff, the location is right at the edge of the beach facing the Pacific Ocean. Somebody pinch me!

Thank you, Roseanne. Thank you Tadasana Festival. Thank you, intentions. Thank you, vision board. Thank you, universe…I’m feeling some groovy gratitude today.

If you are going to Tadasana Festival, please leave a comment to let me know. I’d love to meet up with some of my fellow yogis and yoginis and would also appreciate any recommendations on which classes to attend.

I also purchased my tickets today to attend the Yoga Journal conference in New York. It is going to be a busy and yogalicious month of April, and I can’t wait to share all of it with you! Stay tuned.

* I originally used six exclamation points, but my editor noted that six might be excessive, so I cut it down to three. 😉