Yep, that's me in a fit of ecstasy.
I guess you're wondering how I got here.
This is my transformational journey,
which took me into the heart of the jungles of Costa Rica
and my inner self.
[My Weekend at a Transformational Festival...]
I've only ever been to one festival.
And my experience was mainly characterized by tepid lagers,
tents on fire, and piss missiles.
That's why I jumped at the chance
when I received a mysterious invite to attend
what was termed “a transformational festival”
in Costa Rica.
Not satisfied with a traditional festival M.O.
of getting off your nut,
this is a new brand of event, which claims to transform your body
and your soul through a rigorous schedule of lectures, yoga,
and fire poi.
It’s up to you to be.
That’s the key that will save you in all humanity.
[Day 1]
It’s day one of the festival,
and I’ve heard a lot of things about Envision
being a transformational festival, extremely spiritual.
Over the next few days,
I’m hoping to, in some way, transform myself, my body, and my mind.
It’s a bit hot, isn’t it?
-Hello. Hi. -Hi.
My first encounter on my journey was with some Silicon Valley bros,
who quickly became my spirit guides.
Is it your first time at Envision?
It’s a first, yes. First time for me at Envision.
Third, I believe,
-Third? -Yes.
Can you give me any tips?
Because I am probably the opposite of you guys.
Lose any idea of what you think life is, temporarily in your mind.
Just so you can experience what is here.
Some people are afraid to dance because they don't have confidence
to express themselves.
So, if you’re not used to dancing, just let loose and get wild.
-Like this? -Yeah.
Your persona, who you think you are when you came here,
just leave it, and just be someone else.
-Be yourself. -Be myself, but someone else.
Be myself, but someone else.
When you go to give me a hug,
do you see how you’re giving it on this side of your body?
The heart’s on this side. So, this is called a heart to heart hug.
And you’ve got to hold it for 10 to 20 seconds.
Close your eyes.
Take a deep inhale.
Huggle puddle.
OK.
That was great. Where are you going now?
So, we’re going to a talk on cryptos.
Can I come to the crypto talk?
-Yes, 100 percent. -Can I come with you now?
-Coconut? -Really? Thank you so much.
Salut.
Do you take anything away from that?
That I have to go with the flow... of my senses.
-Really get... in your moment. -Relax.
Do you want to smoke some weed about it?
Hmmm, no.
We are here, this is the superhero academy
that teaches you how to be a superhero.
Decentralized systems allow people to operate as nodes
and do what’s best.
We want the good energy, sit on the floor, not the chair.
The roads are in disrepair, we all need them to be fixed.
I’m not allowed to sit on chairs because they are bad for your energy
especially plastic chairs.
Can I ask you a question?
Why is everyone here into cryptocurrency?
I thought it was just criminals that use cryptocurrency?
Criminals use the US Dollar most of the time.
People don’t want a third party entrusted middle-man of the bank.
I’d rather if I want to give you a coconut,
I don’t have to pay the bank.
Cut out the middle man.
One self-actualized human being could change the world
that’s the answer here.
It's us.
It’s awakening everything that’s in every one of you.
So, that was a bit intense.
I feel like I had to deal with so much information.
I’m going to do some yoga.
I can hear the breathing already.
It’s very sexual.
So many people, and they’re chanting and they’re breathing
and they’re moving.
And you have to sort of maneuver your way through them all.
It's quite intimidating.
That yogi is pretty confident.
Why am I so awkward?
She’s coming. I think.
She has so many fans
to say hello to.
Literally, she keeps being stopped.
Wow.
What’s this?
It’s a Sage.
It’s so different to the kind of yoga that I’ve seen in London.
-Why is that? -It’s really tantric yoga,
so I called it The Dance of Tantra.
Moving through the resistance, and it’s a dance.
It can be a dance of opening and contracting
and remembering and then forgetting.
That’s part of life.
Also, a really powerful tool that I’ve been working with
is the yoni egg.
Yoni is a Sanskrit word for vagina.
OK.
And I work with a jade egg.
And you actually can use the jade egg to enter into your temple body.
-And use the-- -You put the egg in your vagina?
Inside, yeah.
So I’ll be leading a womb wisdom workshop tomorrow
and I’ll have them for sale.
Right, so. Bring my wallet, bring my wallet with me.
Thank you so much, great to meet you.
Namaste. The light within me recognizes the light within you.
Aww, thank you.
Annoyingly, I would have to wait 24 hours to insert the jade egg.
So for now, I followed the flow of people
heading towards the beach for sunset.
Everyone’s clapping at the sunset.
Is this meant to be spiritual?
The state of trance, you can acquire it with flow.
This is flow. Flow is movement, movement is energy.
Right.
-So, yes. -So, yes.
As I watched the orange circus toy rotate in the air,
I felt the first awkward cobwebs of my Britishness blow away
into the pure Uvita sunset.
Everybody just got to see the sunset.
But that’s an illusion, the sun never sets.
It’s the Earth spinning at a thousand miles an hour
that makes it look like it’s set.
So, don’t be an illusion delusion, but a consciousness awakening.
The love you give is the love you be, for all eternity.
Do you have a quest or a question?
Yes, I do have a question.
How do I make sure my experience at Envision is the best that it can be?
You live in the greatest nation on the face of this Earth.
It’s called the I-Magi-Nation.
That answers my question perfectly. Thank you.
Have a fun time.
Although the Goa Psytrance was definitely attractive,
I was physically and spiritually exhausted.
You can’t really walk around anywhere
without getting hit in the face with a poi.
It’s literally a battlefield.
With the sage words of the magi still echoing in my head,
It’s up to you to grow.
I went back to my hotel.
Because **** camping.
[Day 2]
As you can see, I’ve completely transformed my look.
Is this too much?
Feeling the soft, yet crisp, embrace of my harem pants
made me feel already like I was going to be more included in the tribe.
In fact, less than 30 seconds into stepping foot on site,
I was already a key member of a Buddhist drum circle.
I’m on my way to the Witch’s Healing Sanctuary to meet Sarah Wu,
who is a co-founder of the festival, and also a witch.
It was intimidating to meet the beating heart of Envision
Sarah Wu’s passion for a sustainable festival is central to the event.
When we leave this event, we want to be charged,
and we want to feel healthy and ready to move forward
and take all these things that we learn here.
And how do we take them out into the world?
Because the world is monocultured, it’s this default terrible world
that’s been taken over and just tries to be cookie cutter
to keep people in industrialized systems that are broken, frankly.
How are you implementing that here?
Yeah. So, in a few different ways.
So, we have the bar.
We do mocktails, herbal cocktails or elixirs.
I think I’m going to get a hydration martini.
Sure, great choice.
No other festival I’ve been to cares about what happens
after the night out.
It’s all about building up to the night and then it’s just--
Recovering the day after, yeah.
Yeah.
But we don’t want to wreck ourselves.
Enjoy your cocktail.
Thank you very much. Going to get hydrated.
Yeah, there you go. How is it?
Mmmmm.
So where are we going next?
Permaculture is a design philosophy and a lifestyle
and a methodology to creating human settlements.
Pick up every little thing you see.
Because if you don’t pick up that trash, how many times are you
going to walk by that piece of trash, and what if everybody did that?
Wait. Sorry, sorry. Excuse me. Excuse me.
Oh, ****. That’s a leaf.
Excuse me, is this your banana?
-No. -No? OK.
Water, lime, energy.
I actually wish this had alcohol in it.
So, Sofiah told me to come to the womb tent.
I can see Sofiah, she’s over there.
She says we can’t film inside because the ceremony is going to be
really, really intimate.
Embody womb.
So, they’re just going to put a stone up their...
vaginas.
That’s what it means.
All of the women who are queuing to get into the red tent
are going to be saged.
I’ve already been saged, so.
-How are you doing? -Oh my God. Hi.
So, do you like what I’m wearing?
Yes, you’ve completely leveled up from yesterday.
-I can see-- -Leveled up.
Come and meet my friends Jalen and Stephen, right?
Hi, I’m Amelia. Oh, wait. We have to do a hug.
Yeah, a hug, a heart hug, remember?
Heart hug.
-Heart hug. -I’m Stephen.
Oh, hello.
Oh, have you had cacao? This is roasted cacao.
-What is it? -Just try one.
-What’s going on here? -That’s like some women only--
Oh, cool. I’m so glad. Yeah, it’s great.
It’s, like, the womb tent. And they’re all going to sort of...
use their wombs.
-Something’s going to happen. -Cool.
OK, well, we're going to meet our friends and get some food.
-OK, wicked. -So, it’s good seeing you.
They are still here.
Same song.
-That was great. -Yeah.
-Did you enjoy that? -Oh, yeah.
-My name’s Amelia. -Amelia?
-Rochelle. -Rochelle. Nice to meet you.
Heart hug.
Oh, heart hug.
-Heart hug. -Oh, yeah. Sorry, wrong way.
I learned that this festival, the heart hug.
So, I’m from the city. I never really lived anywhere other than the city.
I live on six lanes of traffic.
It’s the most polluted road in Britain.
-Oh, my gosh. -Yes. It’s a tough life.
-You seem a little bit tense. -Yeah, tense.
Shake it off.
Shake it off. Be yourself, but not yourself.
It was so much to take in.
Don’t people come to festivals to relax?
Hello.
Would you like to become a mermaid?
Yes, I would love to become a mermaid.
We can go like this, like we’re underwater.
Wait, what’s going on?
I can’t do that, I really can’t.
I can’t.
Spin around.
Oh my God.
It’s really difficult being a mermaid.
I’m turning round.
You make such a beautiful mermaid.
Thank you, I feel really beautiful.
I was sad to leave the mermaid.
But it was fine because she’d invited me to join a beach drum circle
on the final day of the festival.
[Day 3]
People are more chilled. They’ve had a big night out.
A lot of poi, a lot of hula hooping, they’re probably really tired.
Now everyone is joining hands in unity, probably.
Looking around the circle I had somehow found myself in,
it occurred to me that moments of intimacy like this
were hugely therapeutic to people here,
a welcome escape from what Sarah Wu had termed the default world.
I was starting to feel the embers of change.
There was nothing left to do at Envision
than to join the mermaid-led drum circle.
-It’s actually pretty tricky. -Yeah, it is.
At that moment, I knew I was ready to employ my secret weapon.
You live in the greatest nation on the face of this Earth.
It’s called the I-Magi-Nation.
Really, I’d been missing the point the whole time.
Heart hugs aren’t embarrassing.
Growing up in six lanes of traffic
doesn’t mean you can’t be a majestic flautist.
We are all from one nation.
The I-Magi-Nation.