There are some places that live in your bones.
For me, Arlington, Vermont is one of them.
It is my little hometown tucked into the Green Mountains, the kind of place where the air feels cleaner, the trees feel older, and your nervous system seems to exhale before your brain even catches up. It is where I grew up. It is where I learned the texture of seasons, the quiet power of nature, and the strange magic that exists in small towns where everybody somehow knows your grandmother, your dog, and what you did in third grade.
And now, it is also home to something truly special: The OM Festival.
The OM Festival is a four-day transformational yoga, wellness, music, and mindfulness festival held at The West Mountain Inn in Arlington, Vermont from July 30 through August 2, 2026. It brings together yoga, meditation, dance, flow arts, healing workshops, live music, kirtan, ecstatic dance, local food, artisans, vendors, nature, and community on 175 beautiful acres in the mountains.
But for me, this is not just another festival.
This one is personal.
The founder, Sam Grout, and I grew up together. We have known each other since we were four years old. Four. That means before adult identities, before businesses, before websites, before yoga mats and branding and all the strange glorious plot twists of life, we were just two little Vermont kids running around the same small-town orbit.
So watching Sam create this event in our hometown feels full circle in a way that is hard to explain. It is not just beautiful. It is sacred. It is the kind of thing that makes you look around and think, “Ah. So this is what happens when the seeds planted in childhood finally bloom.” She then looped me in to do the design and creative end. (and here we are!)
The OM Festival has the soul of Vermont all over it. Not the postcard version, although yes, the views are ridiculous. I mean the real Vermont. The rooted Vermont. The place where mountains hold memory, rivers carry stories, and community still means something.
The festival is set at The West Mountain Inn, surrounded by rolling green hills, open sky, and that unmistakable Vermont stillness that somehow feels both peaceful and alive. During the festival, guests can experience more than 100 sessions including yoga, meditation, dance, flow arts, healing workshops, guided hikes, cold plunges, tubing on the Battenkill River, SUP yoga, floating sound healing, tea lounge experiences, vendor village shopping, farm-to-table dinners, wood-fired pizza nights, wine, cheese, and chocolate tastings, and nightly music and movement.
Basically, it is a soul reset with better snacks.
And honestly? We need more of that.
So many people are walking around exhausted, overstimulated, disconnected, and quietly wondering why life feels so heavy. The OM Festival offers something different. It gives people permission to step out of the noise and into nature. To breathe. To move. To laugh. To dance barefoot. To meet people who actually want to talk about energy, healing, purpose, and transformation without looking at you like you just landed from Neptune.
Finally. Our people.
This is the kind of event where you can arrive as one version of yourself and leave with a little more light in your body. Maybe you come for the yoga. Maybe you come for the music. Maybe you come for the workshops, the mountains, the vendors, or the simple joy of being surrounded by open-hearted humans for a few days.
But what you really receive is connection.
Connection to yourself. Connection to nature. Connection to community. Connection to something bigger than the daily grind, the inbox, the bills, the doom-scrolling, and the thousand tiny ways modern life tries to pull us out of our own bodies.
The OM Festival is intimate by design, with a limited number of tickets available, which gives it a more curated, connected, and intentional feeling than a massive overcrowded festival. This matters. There is a difference between being in a crowd and being in community. OM is community.
And I love that it is happening in Arlington.
There is something profoundly meaningful about seeing a small Vermont town become a gathering place for healers, teachers, seekers, artists, musicians, lightworkers, wellness lovers, and people who are simply ready to feel more alive. It feels like the mountains called, and Sam answered.
If you have been craving a reset, this is your sign.
If you have been wanting to get away, but not just to escape, to actually return to yourself, this is your sign.
If your soul has been whispering, “I need trees, music, movement, good people, and a little magic,” this is definitely your sign.
Come to Vermont. Come breathe in the mountain air. Come move your body, open your heart, meet kindred spirits, and experience what happens when wellness, music, nature, and community come together in one wildly beautiful place.
And if you see me there, come say hi. 😉
I will be the one laughing with old friends, hugging people I just met, or standing somewhere on that land feeling deeply grateful that something this magical is happening in the town that helped raise me.
The OM Festival is more than an event.
It is a homecoming.
It is a remembering.
It is a four-day love letter to the soul.
And truly, you do not want to miss it.
Tickets and festival details are available through The OM Festival website.