Ashtanga, vinyasa, iyengar and yin sound like storybook characters, but they are actually yoga styles. A lesser-known type, in South Florida at least, is kundalini. Mia Glick is hoping to bring that style to the forefront with the inaugural Miami Beach Kundalini Yoga Festival this Saturday and Sunday, May 28-29.

Rather than focus on props or specific flows, kundalini emphasizes music and mantras, or repeated chants.

“I think what sets kundalini yoga apart,” says Glick, festival founder and producer, “is it uses the sound current to uplift. … You know when you have a ZIP code on a letter it gets to a certain address? Mantras are like ZIP codes to connect you to your source, whatever your belief.”

Glick was taught kundalini by the late Yogi Bhajan, who brought the practice from India to the United States. Glick says Bhajan believed his students should be even better than he was, so the Miami Beach Kundalini Yoga Festival wants to honor him while enlightening South Florida.

The two-day festival will be held in the North Beach Miami Bandshell, which recently installed new Meyer Sound MINA speakers. There will be musical performances, sacred chants and gong healing by sound artists such as Nevada City’s DJ Sharu and Nirinjan Kaur, who was raised in a family of kundalini aficionados and spent three years in an Indian boarding school to deepen her spirituality.

In addition to yoga and musical performances, there will be workshops on relationships, overcoming fears, spiritual entrepreneurship and unlocking creativity. Kundalini sessions in Spanish and Portuguese will also be offered, as will classes for kids.

Om’echaye in Hallandale Beach, Yoga Source Davie and Corpo Yoga in Miami are among the local studios sharing their practices at the festival.

“It’s time for Miami to have more of this yoga here,” Glick says. “It is a practical, everyday tool that people can use in their life to bring more awareness to their mind about daily decisions they make.”

Glick says kundalini can be especially beneficial for those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or depression. One kundalini expert wrote a doctoral thesis on the impact kundalini has on helping people regain memory. Researchers from the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation will be present at the festival to study these claims.

“Kundalini is a comprehensive, scientific technology,” Glick says, that when done properly “leads to devotion, self-love, kindness and compassion … born out of the experience of yourself and knowing yourself better.”

Kundalini yoga can allow a practicer to confidently become the hero of his or her own storybook. Protagonists of all ages can attend the Miami Beach Kundalini Yoga Festival this weekend and begin to craft their own narrative.

The Miami Beach Kundalini Yoga Festival will start 8 a.m. Saturday, May 28, and Sunday, May 29, at the North Beach Bandshell, 7275 Collins Ave., in Miami Beach. Tickets cost $25-$108, and can be purchased at MiamiBeachKundaliniYogaFestival.com. Kids 12 or younger are free.

/ @MedinasMedia