THE Beacon Yoga Centre will throw open its doors from July 27 to 31 for a free five-day festival celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Designed to showcase the centre’s five pathways of yoga, the program combines meditation, yoga, study, music, shared meals and periods of silence, with morning and evening sessions each day welcoming both long-time practitioners and newcomers.

Patron Shobha Day said the festival was intended not only to celebrate the ashram’s history and founder Swami Venkatesananda, but to give people a genuine experience of what the community has offered for five decades.

One of the festival’s defining features will be two hours of mowna — silence — each afternoon.

“For me, and this has been a tradition of our ashram to have strong programming and then a big period of silence,” she said.

“That silence is really the time when you get that chance to actually digest, to some degree, whatever it is that was there for you this morning in that intensity.”

A highlight will be Wednesday evening’s anniversary celebration, featuring reflections on the ashram’s history, teachers and community.

“It’s as fresh as anything, and as new and as alive,” Ms Day said.

“When you hear people’s stories about what this place has meant in this life, in this 50 years… they may not have gone on in yoga, but they went off better than it found them.”