The Festival is three days. The work continues all year.
WOCA isn't just a festival. It's a year-round center for practice, dialogue, and action. These programs are the connective tissue—the ways we stay awake together between Augusts.
All events are free or by donation. Nobody turned away.
Monthly gatherings for practice, dialogue, and shared exploration of what awakening means in daily life. No prerequisites. No special knowledge required. Just show up.
Some months we sit. Some months we talk. Some months we do both and something else entirely.
Check back for upcoming date
Woodstock Community Center
Tables of 5–6 people. A carefully crafted prompt. Connection through the simple act of breaking bread together. Reweaving our common humanity one gathering at a time.
This is where strangers become friends. Where the town talks to itself.
Created by BreakBread World (Martha Williams & John Scilipote), hosted by WOCA.
Cross-tradition dialogues exploring the deepest questions. Robert Thurman (Buddhist) and Ira Schepetin (Hindu Vedanta) go back and forth. Intellectual rigor meets spiritual practice.
This isn't feel-good spirituality. This is philosophy with teeth.
Deep listening without fixing or advising. Building infrastructure for connection across the diverse aspects of our town—artists, longtime residents, weekenders, activists, healers, business owners.
Woodstock is many things to many people. These dialogues help us navigate that complexity together.
As opportunities arise, WOCA is committed to taking direct action in our community as it may relate to awakening in all its forms, including operations that address social justice, increase awareness of underserved populations and serve as vehicles for revelation and instigation. Our most significant action to date is our on-going collaboration with the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network through whom we distributed Thanksgiving meals to over a thousand families. No paperwork. No questions asked. Just showing up.
Awakening that doesn't include service to those most vulnerable isn't awakening—it's escapism. This is the ground-level work that keeps us honest.
We call on all body workers, social activists, mystics, yogis, savants, psychologists, alternative healers, poets, musicians, religious centers, sound bathers, community organizations, astrologers and artists—among other types of wake-ward work and groups—living within hailing distance of Woodstock.
We're building this collaboratively with the community. To fashion an arc of knowledge and community connection and access.
This isn't Yelp for spirituality. It's a genuine attempt to map the ecosystem of healing and awakening in our region.
Do not ask if it is spiritual or worldly, divine or mundane. The distinction is in you, not in the action.— Nisargadatta Maharaj