WHO Matthew Remski, 37, yoga teacher, certified Ayurvedic Health Educator and co-founder — along with wife Dennison Smith and Scott Petrie — of Yoga Festival Toronto (YFT), an alternative to the yoga-themed trade shows that make the convention-centre rounds through North America. A former novelist and poet who published with Insomniac Press and was the founding artistic director of the Scream Literary Festival, Remski became serious about Buddhist meditation 12 years ago. “If you spend five years in sitting meditation, you eventually find your way to the asanas,” he says, referring to traditional yoga postures. He adds that after another five years of regular yogic practise, studying Ayurvedic medicine was the logical next step. Remski and Smith also run the studio Renaissance Yoga and Ayurveda (391 Ontario, www.renaissanceyoga.ca) in Cabbagetown.

HOME SCHOOL Remski stresses that it was important to YFT organizers to avoid the carbon-dumping many well-intentioned yoga festivals ring up by flying “rock star instructors” to town from great distances. The majority of the teachers who will be participating at YFT are based in or around Toronto, a factor motivated not only by their commitment to try to reduce the environmental impact of the festival to zero, but also by a desire to nurture a sense of local community.

Remski says this is not a simple thing, because yoga is by nature an inward-focused discipline and different studios follow disparate lineages, but the festival has already been successful in bringing like-minded individuals together.

“People kept telling me I would never get these people in the same room with each other, but we had four or five luncheons where we discussed what kind of group event we’d like to see, with 20 or 30 people showing up each time,” he says. As to the secret of finding common ground, he jokes that “no one had offered them food before.”

BUY RIGHT Remski says it was important to foster a de-­commercialized environment in keeping with “the economic scale at which most yoga teachers live.” That doesn’t mean there won’t be things to buy, it just means that the organizers were selective when it came to exhibiting vendors. “They are all people making stuff we use that supports a spiritual practice,” he says. “It’s all local, handmade, ecologically sound stuff sold by independent businesses. There’s no off-shore production!”

MEDITATE, MOVE OR JUST LISTEN There are three main components to the festival’s program: morning meditations from 7-8am, followed by yoga classes, followed by afternoon lectures and evening roundtables. Since many people who practise yoga are less familiar with the philosophies behind the tradition, Remski is pleased to highlight the opportunities for learning and discussion at the festival. Lecture topics range from “The Psychology of Patanjali” to “The Enlightened Diet” to “Ayurveda and Sexual Wholeness” and roundtables will focus on both “Yoga’s Past” and “Yoga’s Future.” If you can’t wake up to sit and stretch in the morning, half-day tickets to the afternoon courses are available.

Remski feels passionately that we don’t need to fly off to exotic locales in order to experience yoga’s benefits. “[The festival] will be three quiet, contemplative days studying with exemplary teachers,” he says. “It will be an urban retreat rather than a spectacle.”