By Diana Condolo
I have wanted to do yoga at the ROM for a couple of years now. I love doing yoga and some of my best experiences have been yoga in High Park and yoga on a beach in Costa Rica. Yes, I know that is awesome and I consider myself lucky. But I haven’t done yoga in the museum yet.
Good fortune granted me my wish three times over…Torontonicity received a media invitation to attend the Lolë White Tour on June 12, 2014 at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum and I was asked if I wanted to attend.
I was head over heels…or heels over head (doing an imaginary head stand because I can’t really do one) with joy.
Then it hit me. I don’t have white leggings! My old black yoga pants are looking their age, so replacing them with white ones seemed like a good option. But white yoga pants aren’t the easiest things to find, especially while on a budget and in a time crunch. I even tried some youth exercise clothes – and it almost worked for me. Since the shopping plan didn’t work out, I had to attend the tour with my heather grey pants. Hopefully my white t-shirt, white headband and white purse made up for this deviation of the white tour colour scheme.
I loved the smiles, the goodies and the complimentary yellow mat. The refreshment centre offered so many varieties of flavoured water: strawberry, mint, cucumber, watermelon etc. We need this pampered lifestyle everyday!
The 2014 Lolë White Tour has traveled to:
National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Canada
Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA
Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada
The doors opened at 7 p.m. Everyone was snapping photos and chatting until yoga began at 8.
In a sea of tidy yellow mats, yoga lovers flowed through poses under the guidance of Grace Dubery while dressed in (mostly) white – a colour symbolic of peace. The tour’s mission is to promote peace and unity.
“Peace is the quiet space we create in our hearts through our breath and that we hold in stillness with our smile,” says Grace Dubery. She encourages us to open our hearts and find softness. As she guides us through deep and generous breathes, we feel the build up of stress beginning to release, creating a softening of the emotions and a feeling of openness and love. She encouraged us to hold on to our neighbours to find connectivity. You could feel the energy and joy of the over 700 attendees escalate! My darling neighbour was full of smiles and laughter – we are strangers no more.
The string orchestra was fantastic; just sitting and listening to the heavenly music all evening would be pure bliss.
I have never practiced yoga with classical music as an accompaniment, but, after moving to the haunting and mystical Gymnopédies by Erik Satie, I think it will take my yoga practice to a whole new level. The music makes it feel as if every nerve, muscle, tissue in my body is gently unfurling, responding to the music’s inducements to move gently.
All the people dressed in white looked so pure and angelic. Serenity flowed through the rooms of the ROM.
Some people felt very mellow after the yoga practice while it inspired playfulness in others.
Thinking of getting some white yoga clothes? Check out Lolë white collection.
Last year Lole held the White Tour at Fort York. I wonder where it will be in 2015? Looking forward to it!
