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The last day of the BaliSpirit Festival turned out to be the best for me.

The village elders class at the BaliSpirit Festival By Sonja Bjelland

Watching more than 80 village elders and small children flow from pose to pose proved humbling and inspiring. They laughed, danced and smiled all morning.

A man who claimed to be 105 said, if you’re laughing, you’re living.

He was part of the group that now does yoga weekly after an American woman started showing them how to stretch arthritic hands years ago.

This captured the essence of the BaliSpirit Festival.

A coming together of all ways of practicing yoga and finding joy in the action.

Trying to sit still By Sonja Bjelland

A heart pumping, pop-music playing yoga class may be underway in one tent while meditation or pranayama happens in another.

This joint act is what brings the teachers back to. Some said like being able to take classes and not feel separated out as presenters.

Teacher Cat Kabira said teachers can get boxed in once they have a name and a style of yoga attached to them. But it’s really about respect all the different ways to be a human being.

This is further reflected in the international scope of the festival. I met fellow yogis from Brazil, Singapore, Kenya, Australia, Germany. The list goes on.

Yogeswari, a woman who does conflict resolution through yoga, said not having U.S. immigration policies standing

Partner acro-yoga By Sonja Bjelland

in the way allowed for a more diverse attendance.

The U.S. and European audience isn’t even the founders’ target market. Meghan Pappenheim, BaliSpirit.com founder and director, said she is trying to target the emerging Asian middle class to cultivate a sense of giving back.

Then there are the tons of ex-pats who make up the Ubud population. Also a potpourri of nationalities.

It’s this acceptance and joining that pervades everything about the festival. A woman with her yoga bag over one shoulder smoking a cigarette. A bar behind the audience when the performers are saying “pray it out.”

It embodies the spirit of non-judgment and the philosophy that nothing is right or wrong – it just is. A blend of east meets west. What yogis want. A cold beer and bacon-wrapped chilies after a day sweating on the mat.