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Yoga Healing Arts Camp was conceived in order to organize one central location within the Rainbow Gathering for people to teach classes of yoga and other healing arts. The Camp began in the year 2000 at the Montana Rainbow Gathering.

When the originators of Yoga Camp were first attending gatherings, some yoga teachers did post signs for classes at different camps throughout the gatherings. However, camps at the Gathering site can sometimes be hard to find and gathering attendees often live without clocks while in the forest, so it was hard to meet teachers at the proper place and time. The vision of creating one space where teachers of all traditions could schedule times throughout the day was manifested by a focalizer after inspiration from Ramana Maharisi while meditating in his ashram in India .

The first year of Yoga Healing Arts Camp saw two focalizers who were a couple create space with only a few tarps, some rope, an axe, a shovel, and volunteers. The demand for the camp was high, and that first year saw over 20 teachers during the peak of the gathering teaching all kinds of yoga as well as tai chi. Classical Indian musicians were drawn to the camp to play bhajans from the very beginning, and the hundreds of students that came through the camp spread the good word of Yoga Camp, creating a positive buzz.

The second year of Yoga Camp was the 2001 Gathering in Idaho . That year the camp exploded and the number of teachers grew to over 30, and the focalization was shared by two rainbow brothers. The tent technology was still below average, and there were a number of open field classes. The focalizers realized that year that the more tarps and teaching spaces that were set up, the more classes would be taught at the Camp. Capoeira and contact improv dance workshops joined the offerings, and bhajan sacred music continued. Simply Wonderful, a Hare Krishna community vegetarian kitchen, became Yoga Camp's neighbors, and their energies played well off of each other.

The third year of Yoga Camp was the 2002 Gathering in Michigan. The same two brothers and a sister who was partners with one of them worked together to focalize. The rainbow sister offered Reiki teaching for the first time at Yoga Camp, offering level I and level II workshops and attunements. As documented in the 2002 photo gallery (see link to “story”), the Michigan Gathering brought undo harassment from Forest Service that led to the Yoga Camp site being moved late in the game after much setup had already been done. As a result, the camp stayed about the same size, with about 30+ teachers once more, although the crew and the demand for classes was strong. Simply Wonderful and Sprout Garden merged and served food directly next door, and Dunun Village and Warriors of the Light kitchens set up nearby to help ensure that their kitchen volunteers would come back to work after walking down the path to study yoga.

The 2003 Utah Gathering was the 4 th year of Yoga Healing Arts Camp, bringing another explosion in size to 40+ teachers and over 1,000 students a day with classes in 7 spaces: 3 teaching tarps, 1 more secluded zendo meditation class space, a sacred music teepee, and healing spaces. Kabbalah and bellydancing joined the class offerings, and Reiki, contact improv, and capoeira continued. Simply Wonderful and Sprout Garden each moved in as neighbors, and Dunun Village and Warriors of the Light moved in closer that year to the same meadow. The close proximity of all of these camps created a high energy concentration in one specific area, and someone built four large campfires for loud drumcircles that went all night every night in the center of the meadow. While being in such a central location brought great numbers of people into the teachings of Yoga Camp, the teacher consensus was to try to be somewhat more secluded the following year so that the class teachers could be more easily heard in the day and the sacred music could be heard at night.

The California 2004 Gathering brought the biggest turnout for Yoga Healing Arts Camp ever, with 50 classes a day squeezed into just 5 teaching spaces: 2 main teaching tarps, 1 Reiki teaching tarp, 1 enclosed (bug-free) zendo meditation canopy, and 1 “Mystic Temple of Bliss” yurt offering a more intimate setting for conversational classes and sacred space for Bhajan sacred music in the evenings. This year brought the first ever Yogic Tea Kitchen focalized by a zazen meditation teacher serving a variety of quality tea round the clock and delicious organic light meals, as well as the first ever Freedom's Front Porch, a shaded area in front of focalizer tents that hosted sacred music, teacher meetings, and the occasional spillover class from the regularly scheduled tarps.

The focalization of setup was done by one of the original focalizers and one rainbow sister, with limited resources after the team received a blow when the second brother focalizer was not able to come for setup. He was prevented due to a court order that his visiting daughter could not come to the Rainbow Gathering, which was reversed when he was able to present information about all the good things that Yoga Camp is to a judge on appeal July 2nd , and all were thankful for his appearance and help on the 4th of July and during breakdown of camp.

The 2004 site had a large space of flat dry land only up high on a hill away from the main circle of the Gathering, and so the usual neighbors were all far away, but Jerusalem Camp and Niyabingi camp moved in as neighbors just uphill, and the Tea Kitchen served the needs of the teachers nicely. The class offerings this year included Butoh Dance: an improvisational Japanese dance, Tabla and Raga workshops that turned into huge Bhajan music sessions, as well as nonviolent communication workshops, permaculture workshops, and the always delicious variety of classes in btai chi, contact improv, bellydance, Reiki, Zen Meditation, ‘Yogic Secrets Revealed', and all kinds of yoga: static, flow, universal freestyle, anusara, kundalini, and more. Members of the camp also created space for traditional Indian ritual pujas, and for reading together from ancient texts on the practices and processes of yoga.

--by Xylem Larla Dey, 2004