Programme
VITAL festival
The Festival Journey – The Tree of Life
The festival follows the natural flow of a living tree.
Just as a tree grows from roots into trunk, branches, and fruit, the festival invites us into a journey of grounding, connection, insight, vitality, and integration.
Each day represents a stage in this unfolding.
Day 1
Grounding
Planting Our Roots
We begin by slowing down and arriving.
Through somatic practices, nervous system understanding, and grounding in nature, we allow the body to settle and orient. This is where the roots grow.
We take time to connect with the land and ask permission from the place that hosts us.
This day is about presence, regulation, and creating the foundation for the days to come.
Focus for this day:
Landing and grounding
Putting down roots
Tapping into our window of tolerance
Finding presence in the body, here and now
Day 2
Belonging
The Web of Relation
From the roots, we move into relationships.
Like the invisible network of mycelium beneath the forest floor, we explore connection, communication, and mutual support. We practise meeting each other with curiosity, playfulness, and presence.
The focus is not only on connection between individuals, but on remembering the living web that holds us all.
Focus for this day:
Honouring relationships
Authenticity
Play
Allowing yourself to be supported by the community
Day 3
Introspection
Travelling within the Tree
Once safety and connection are established, a deeper self-awareness becomes possible.
This day invites us inward. Through reflective practices, we meet our inner landscapes, patterns, and inherited stories, with care and curiosity.
Rather than pushing for catharsis, we work within our window of tolerance, allowing insight and transformation to unfold at a pace the body can integrate.
Focus for this day:
Self-reflection
Shadow aspects and unconscious material
Trauma patterns and collective narratives
Silence and witnessing
Day 4
: Creativity & Fluidity
Branches, Blooming, and Expression
From the depth of the roots and the strength of the trunk, life moves upwards.
This day celebrates creativity, sensuality, and expression. Through music, dance, voice, art, and ritual, we allow vitality to move freely through the branches of the Tree.
Workshops may include active yoga, singing and musical interplay, creative expression, tantra and sensual exploration, archetypes and play, dance, and embodied movement.
Joy becomes a form of regulation and celebrating a way of bringing our life force into the world. The day culminates in a co-created evening ceremony, where play, expression, and the gifts of the community are woven together into a shared flowering.
Focus for this day:
Creativity
Play and dance
Voice, movement, art, and music
Ceremonies, parties, and celebrations
Self- and collective expression
Day 5
Standing in Alignment
Standing in the Whole Tree
Integration and Harvesting the Fruits
This final day is about stepping into the whole Tree, our inner alignment.
We gather ourselves into a deeper sense of adult presence and alignment.
We stand with our feet on the earth, heaven above, and with a clearer connection to what wants to move through us.
From this place, we harvest the fruits of the journey, reflect, integrate, and listen for what we want to bring back into life beyond the festival.
This day focuses on listening to the elders about what it is to be a grown-up, and integrating our experience.
Integration includes:
Meaning-making
Physical grounding
Bringing insights into everyday life
To return home with aliveness
Prayer and gratitude
The festival lives on through the people!
Saturday's Co-Creation:
Celebration of the Sacred Expression!
This celebration is an invitation into radical play, vitality, and co-created expression.
Throughout the festival, you are invited to notice the parts of yourself you would love to express more fully in life.
This evening is an opportunity to give them form and allow them to be expressed.
You can embody beauty, mystery, sensuality, healing, devotion, shadow aspects, power, playfulness, madness, sacredness, or transformation. You can step forward as a healer, shaman, priestess, musician, lover, mystic, clown, god or goddess – or simply as a more authentic version of yourself.
Why a celebration like this?
One aspect of growing up as a human being is to heal our wounds, but another is to expand into someone we didn't yet know we could be.
Spaces like these invite us to take life a little less seriously, because it is often through play and foolishness that we discover something profoundly true about ourselves.
We may even dare to share a gift that later grows into an important part of how we move through the world.
The Evening
The evening begins with a co-created marketplace inspired by the spirit of Burning Man and its Ten Principles.
Dress up, share your gifts, and contribute to the collective experience.
You might offer hugs, cacao, tarot readings, mini healing sessions, music, dance, poetry, body art, tea, cakes, costumes, or any creative expression that brings joy and connection.
This is followed by a co-created performance and ceremony, where the sacred, the slow and the ecstatic meet before unfolding into a night of dance, music, celebration, and spontaneous co-creation.
You are welcome to prepare your offering beforehand, or simply let your inspiration emerge during the festival.
There will be a party team on site to support you!
Have you created an installation, performance, or experience at Borderland, Burning Man, or another festival
that you would like to bring to the VITAL? We offer a limited number of discounted tickets for co-creators.
Contact Rasmus via e-mail
A Day at VITAL
The day begins gently.
With the first rays of morning sunlight, the body is invited to move and connect with the senses through a practice that fosters mindfulness and a sense of grounding. This might be a revitalizing yoga session, a quiet meditation, dance, or time spent in nature. The morning practice is tailored to the day’s theme.
From here, the morning flows naturally into the outdoor dining area, where a nourishing vegetarian breakfast brings the participants together in a peaceful and informal setting.
After breakfast, we gather for the day’s intention circle.
This is an important moment when the group is guided into the day’s intention.
Each Elder has one day on which they set the tone.
Through guided exercises, voice, and physical presence, we create a shared and cohesive space before the day’s activities begin.
The morning and afternoon feature parallel workshops and activities based on the day’s theme. There is time for both group reflection and time alone, so that the nervous system has a chance to process the day’s experiences.
The evenings are filled with ceremonies, music, sound, dance, or quiet togetherness.
Some choose to retreat and rest, while others become part of the lively community gathered around the campfire, in the café, or under the stars.
Once a day, everyone gathers in small, regular family groups.
This creates a safe space for sharing, connection, and grounding.
The sharing circles help participants process the day’s experiences and strengthen their connection both to themselves and to the community.
The day comes to a close at a pace that feels natural.
As part of a living cycle that continues into the next day.
Inspiration for Breaks
Between the day's workshops and circle gatherings, the surroundings invite you to peace and contemplation. Explore the Medicinal Gardens, awaken your senses in the Sculpture Park, take a quiet forest bath – or find your way to the sea and dip your toes in the blue waves. Here, there is space to breathe deeply and let the impressions settle.
