So: my question is, what the hell are you doing working so hard all the time? Why don’t you just flounce about in your scarves and fedoras and TOMS?

What inspired you to create Tadasana Festival?

Tommy Rosen: Yes, well. I came to Tadasana kicking and screaming. My heart wanted it, but my past experience as a producer informed that decision. I knew what I was getting myself into. It’s amazingly difficult to produce anything of value and to produce a large-scale event with potentially global implications is harder still. I tell my friends, “I was once a simple teacher. What happened?”

The inspiration came from the ridiculous abundance of amazingly well-trained teachers in my mist all of whom I consider to be my friends. LA needed a unifying event.

Waylon Lewis: Yes. I met you first through Eco Gift, the big green conference/conscious consumerism holiday you put on in LA. I was disappointed when you killed that, but I knew how much work it was.

So I was surprised to see you building up another huge event.

Tommy Rosen: It would not be fair to say that I “killed it.”

Waylon Lewis: Well, I’m talking slang. You built it up, and then decided to let it go. I’m not talking approved LA speak.

Tommy Rosen: {hahah} My wife took a look at me after year two and was like, “Uhh, you could do something else, you know.”

Waylon Lewis: Yes—so that’s the question.

On a personal level, how does yoga and your spiritual path help you keep balance with your life and wife and…what I love you for, your ambition to create great big meaningful events for the benefit of others?

Tommy Rosen: The important thing to remember here, and I think folks miss this point, is that if we are fully alive we will not have balance all of the time. With Tadasana Festival, I have knowingly entered a time of great stress and imbalance in my life. My yoga is to be aware of that fact, to find peace with that fact and to navigate through these choices with as much grace as possible.

I come unglued sometimes, lose my temper, then I look at that and learn what I can through it.

Waylon Lewis: I looooved that quote you sent me yesterday via Khyentse Rinpoche I love him.

Tommy Rosen: Dude, My Trey Anastasio article is getting some serious play.

Cool. How much money should I donate to Elephant Journal? I’m being prompted to pay once again? What’s good?

Waylon Lewis: Did you sign up? If you did you just enter your password and stuff.

If you signed up for one year and it expired you can just pay $1 a month.

Tommy Rosen: I’m becoming an Elephant Ambassador.

Waylon Lewis: Oh!

Tommy Rosen: F*ck that. I’m going for Patron Status.

Waylon Lewis: Damn. You’ll be in bold type on left of every page. But Tommy Rosen & Kia if you like, or Tadasana Festival

Tommy Rosen: Coolio. Here’s a thought…

“Trying to live up to what we would like to be, rather than trying to live what we are is known in the Buddhist tradition as spiritual materialism, which is any approach that provides us with techniques to try to associate with the good, the better, the best—or the ultimately good, the divine. We pretend to be good, and happy, and as free already.

Our confusion becomes a further basis for investigation until we reach a point where there is no answer and not even a question; they both die simultaneously at some point. At that point we tend to give up hope of an answer or of anything whatsoever. We transcend hope. This hopeless is the essence of crazy wisdom.”

~ Trungpa

Waylon Lewis: That’s the heart of elephant. Instead of theistically trying to be some external good, we can relax because our fundamental nature is good stuff.

I’m with my mom right now, she was one of his close students. I’m teaching her Facebook, skype, email, basic Apple stuff so we can be in touch better and more.

Tommy Rosen:  Hi Mom.

Waylon Lewis: Tell me what you want to offer, we’ll offer it. If it’s truly exclusive we can trumpet that. Either way we can offer whatever you want.

Tommy Rosen:  Offer is: $199 3-Day Pass for Tadasana. Good only through elephant Journal and good only until Midnight on Friday 13th or as supplies run out.

Waylon Lewis: This is the lowest deal we’ve offered. I’ll feature it on our home page and twitter etc.

So what was your concrete inspiration to start Tadasana, this huge effort and project?

Tommy Rosen:  There was such a large number of extraordinary teachers in LA and people getting high off of yoga (in a good way) that it seemed like there should be an annual destination event here to celebrate that.

The music part of it honors the longstanding relationship between Yoga and Music.

Waylon Lewis: Yes, it’s nuts there’s no real conference or event, gathering in LA centered around yoga and eco-responsible living, in a fun way.

So what was the moment when you thought of doing it? Or the moment when you thought of the name?

Tommy Rosen: I was sitting with my biz partner, Fabian Alsultany. We’d been talking about it for 7 years in one form or another. He had finally moved to LA after beating colon cancer. He was like, “We really ought to do an event here.” I said, “Yeah, well if there’s anything we have here in LA it’s yoga and music.”

Bam!

That was it.

The name is a funny story.

Waylon Lewis: Tadasana means mountain pose, yes? I would think you’d have picked navasana, or something ocean-y.

Tommy Rosen: There was a moment there where Jeff Krasno from Wanderlust was considering going into business with us. They were doing due diligence on our festival concept, which at that point was called Convergence Festival. We get this email one morning from Jeff who said that there was a fundamental problem that will get in the way of us partnering with your festival. We said, “What’s that?’ It turned out that our name had been trademarked by another event company and we had not caught it, but Jeff had. It was really embarrassing. We quickly reviewed the name list we’d been going over. Even though it had been considered before, Tadasana jumped out at us. We ran a thorough search and the next morning we announced to Jeff that we were now called Tadasana Festival.

Waylon Lewis: What was the original inspiration behind Tadasana as a name, though?

Tommy Rosen: The concept of Tadasana is all about the quality of one’s relationship with gravity, literally, how do you stand in relation to gravity on the Earth. The meta-concept has to do with what you stand for. Also, the fact that Tadasana is the first posture in yoga, the blueprint for all other poses, and one that we return to again and again is meaningful for us.

From a business standpoint, we wanted a name like Bonarroo or Coachella which really means nothing to most people except for the fact that these are now iconic events.

To this day, most people do not know how to pronounce the name of our festival. In time they will.

Waylon Lewis: Love that. It’s beautiful. I chose elephant similarly: easy, short name, visual, memorable, with meaningful connections to Western, Buddhist, and Yoga traditions.

So if I’m recommending Tadasana Festival to friends—there’s so many great yoga conferences and parties, now—why should folks go to Tadasana? What can my friend expect? Is it affordable? Where do they stay? How long is it? Paint a picture? (you’re charming)

Tommy Rosen: There is a magic here in Santa Monica, the Westside of LA, and that magic has expressed itself through the yoga culture here. There is a powerful community of people practicing, supporting one another in what seems to be a modern-day sangha. We are not monastic by any means. This is LA for God’s Sakes. But we are bound together by a love of music, yoga, health, wellness and global consciousness. This exists in every city and many, many places throughout the world. Tadasana Festival is an expression of this community. There will be outstanding yoga with live concerts in the yoga classes. In the daytime at our beachfront yoga village, a temple by the sea really, there is no separation between yoga and music. Sure, some classes will not have musical accompaniment, but most of them will. And the musicians, like the yoga teachers, are simply extraordinary. They come from all over the world and will improvise in the moment with the teachers and the attendees. Three days of lectures including your Walk The Talk Show, which will be off the hook. Amazing Food, Eco-Marketplace all right here in Santa Monica. Holy crap it’s going to be so much fun!

And it’s all on Earth Day Weekend!

Waylon Lewis: Sounds super fun. Who are some of the main attractions? How much is it to come? I hear I get to offer elephant readers a special deal, since elephant and Walk the Talk Show are honored to be partners.

Tommy Rosen: Main Attractions are too many to name. Seriously. Look at the schedule. The hardest thing will be what to choose minute to minute. There’s so much to do and experience. If I had to name one class, I think to see Elena Brower, Amy Ippoliti teach together as Karsh Kale performs with them would be amazing! Also, The Positively Positive Panel in our Lecture Series is going to crack people’s hearts and minds wide open. You can see our whole program on our web site: http://tadasanafestival.com. Normal price to come is $295. We are offering Elephant Readers a $199 3-Day Pass until Friday 13th or until supplies run out, whichever comes first.

Waylon Lewis: Okay man I’ll post it up when at airport.