I am a nature-guide and scholar who tells stories and creates spaces. Together with Anna Vainu we do singing and conversation circles, workshops, lectures and concerts. We live a timeless life in our home forest on the edge of Soomaa – among bogs, swamps and rivers. We live at one with nature, knowing that everything we create and share is part of an infinite being. Our songs and stories carry this primal beauty of being and invite you to become part of the sacred space.
SINGING SAUNA – CLEANSING AND CONNECTION
Anna and Indrek Vainu invite you to participate in a singing sauna, where voice, runic song, hot steam and breathing come together, creating a space for deep opening and cleansing. We will sing to cleanse the body and spirit, brighten the soul, empower our being through consciously acknowledged power and ancestral wisdom.
The sauna as a magical space of transformation – a place where we cast hot steam not only on the body, but also on the soul. The hot steam of sauana symbolises the breath of life, it fills the space, enters us, and the sweat takes out what no longer serves us. Each steam is the beginning of a new creation, each breath dissolves old patterns. In the sauna there is genuine presence, peace, self-realisation, sincerity, surrender and nakedness; there are no masks, roles or shame. Men and women, young and old – we are all one. Singing builds connection, helps open hearts and allows us to experience ourselves as pure, free and loving.
For Estonians, the sauna is a sanctuary, a place to find peace, relaxation, healing and connection. People always go to the sauna in a good mood and with a kind heart, leaving their quarrels and worries at the door, where they’ve disappeared when folks come out of the sauna. In the sauna, there is no meaningless chatter or discussion of current affairs, and certainly no arguing or quarreling. The sauna is a place to relax, to let the breath of nature’s forces invigorate and heal. If there is talk, it is of deep stories of being, of sharing the wisdom of life, or of sharing worries and kind words. The sauna is a place to be together, a place where all are equal, and as they were created. In the past, we were born in the sauna, and today we can be reborn in the sauna. Sauna bathing gives us a new breath of life, brings us to presence, cleanses, invigorates body and soul. Sauna bless!
MEN’S SHARING CIRCLES: THE HOLY LOVER
Indrek Vainu is inviting men to sharing circles at the festival – in the sauna and outdoors. The circles are a space where men can safely look inside themselves and share their journey as committed lovers. It’s a space where we allow ourselves to be supported in strength and fragility, loose and rooted, wise and fallible – men in their authenticity.
In Tantra, man is a nurturer and a conqueror, a creative as well as a destructive force, but above all he is a lover.
Know that you can always, here and now, change your mind, make a new choice, be a committed lover. In circles we are together, honest and open. There is nothing to prove, no right answers, no stomach to pull in – allow yourself to be who you are, a man you yourself respect, open, brave and honest, with yourself and others.
Indrek Vainu is nature, a singer, a lover, a man in the woods. For years he has been engaged in indigenous wisdom, poetry singing, consciousness and self-development.
MEN’S SHARING-CIRCLE IN THE SAUNA
The morning men’s sauna is a wake-up call for the body and a refreshment for the mind. A place to wash away the sweat and toil of a lifetime’s past nights – to rise clean with the day. In the sauna room, we have a sharing circle where men can share their feelings and thoughts from the depths of their souls between the hot steams.
