Amidst the musical mayhem and overwhelming spectacle found across Glastonbury Festival’s sprawling site, The Green Fields stands out as sanctuaries for serenity, ethical ideals, and self-care. Located just west of the Pyramid Stage, this verdant oasis offers the perfect antidote to the intensity of the crowds, partying, and rampant consumerism prevalent elsewhere at Worthy Farm.
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What Exactly Are The Green Fields?
The Green Fields serve as an umbrella name for a collection of areas at Glastonbury Festival focused on environmentalism, holistic healing, and spiritual wellness. The patchwork of districts here embraces the organic farming origins and visionary ideals upon which Michael Eavis founded this legendary festival back in 1970 before it evolved into the grand spectacle it is today.
The exact zones under The Green Fields banner transform each year, but typically include:
- Healing Field: Offering sound baths, meditation spaces, yoga classes, reiki energy healing, massage, and other soothing mind-body therapies.
- Green Futures: Showcasing the latest eco-innovations in renewable energy, sustainability, and social justice activism with talks and hands-on demos.
- Kidz Field: Tailored entertainment, arts, education, and wellness activities for families and little ones.
- Sacred Space: With stone circles, labyrinth meditative walks, and talks on metaphysics, psychedelia, and transcendental philosophy.
Beyond the scheduled activities in these specialized areas, The Green Fields exude a communal, new age sensibility fostering back-to-nature connection and collective consciousness in contrast to rampant commercialism now prevalent across Glastonbury’s landscape. They offer refuge for idealists who still cherish the utopian dreams seeded here long ago.
A Brief History of The Green Fields
The origins of The Green Fields hark back to the free-spirited traveller culture and counterculture collectives who gathered at summer solstice fairs, Green Gatherings, and new age events around Britain in the 1980s. These groups lived closely aligned to nature, embraced festivals as spiritual pilgrimages, and created their own self-sustaining communities on the fringes of society.
Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis appreciated the cheerful, psychedelic atmosphere these modern nomads cultured around their handmade yurts and tipis. So when hordes of New Age Travellers began spontaneously setting up camps near the site entrance or in neglected corners of Worthy Farm in the mid-1980s, Eavis designated areas where they could legally settle each June.
Here the travellers peddled their handmade crafts, clothing, and works imbued with Celtic or cosmic symbolism aligned with their earthy, anarchist ideals. Shamanic drums beat while children played naked in the long grasses. This annual gathering of artisans, therapists, and mystics fostered the first communal, holistic havens that coalesced into The Green Fields identity by the 1990s. The culture here provided balance against mounting corporate sponsorship and intensifying party atmospheres emerging in other realms of Glastonbury as attendance swelled dramatically into six digits.
For Michael Eavis, even as demands grew ever-larger to book expensive stadium rock headliners to satisfy the masses, keeping The Green Fields nurtured meant maintaining Glastonbury Festival’s core soul. Yet conflict occasionally flared up, like in 1985 when Eavis’s new 15-foot perimeter fence halted the free flow of Travellers previously treated more fluidly. Over the decades the relationship healed into one of mutual respect rather than rebellion. But The Green Fields remain guardians of the original vision: proving sustainable, conscious community can harmonize on a grand scale each year.
An Insider’s Guide to Navigating The Green Fields
Many Glastonbury pilgrims flock only to the main stage music arena seeking sensory spectacle and star celebrity. Yet The Green Fields scattered across the valley offer endless gems to uncover for those willing to wander beyond the beaten tracks trampled by Pyramid Stage pilgrims every June.
Venture off the noisy thoroughfares and high streets which now mirror a pop-up city to discover this parallel reality thriving by different laws aligned to Imagination, Self-Reliance, and Nature’s rhythms. From sound healing to goddesses workshops, eco-innovations to ethical retail therapy, here is an insider’s primer of key attractions:
Healing Field
The Healing Field forms the medicinal heart of The Green Fields offering an oasis for serenity with massage, sound healing journeys, gong baths, and meditation spaces restoring mind-body balance strained from navigating festival intensity. You can float sensory-deprived inside a muffled isolation tank, consult an herbalist midwife deep inside the Medicine Cabinet tent, or unwind stretched out atop the stone circle absorbing Telluric currents purifying direct from Glastonbury Tor.
Don’t miss mindfulness sessions held in the famous Unicorn Field nestled within lush flower gardens seemingly snipped from a medieval illumination manuscript. Try Laughter Yoga chasing endorphins or partake in intuitive healing rituals calling directions from all compass points. As the medicinal cannabis legalization movement sweeps more mainstream, the Healing Field now also offers guidance around sacred plant teacher preparation, dosages, consumption methods, and integration coaching so psychedelic journeys here unfold safely.
Green Futures
At Green Futures, we glimpse the leading edges of the sustainability movement with solar-powered stages and exhibit tents educating about permaculture farming techniques, biophilic architecture, regenerative communities, and other visions for harmonizing civilization with Earth’s cycles. Talks tackle urgent environmental issues and inequality crises while hands-on workshops teach core skills for this great green transition – from urban gardening and seed harvesting to hydropower DIY.
Don’t miss the Arcadia Blaster – a retired London doubledecker bus converted to run on waste vegetable oil biofuel powering crazy onboard molecular mixology cocktails. Windmill stages and kinetic sculptures also dot the landscape generating electricity for sound systems and charging mobiles in a post-grid future. Trend spotters take note Green Futures provides early access to the next generation of green tech companies, craft brewers, eco fashion houses, and media collectives to partner with early while this cultural hub is still below the mass radar.
Kidz Field
The next generation enjoys dedicated playgrounds at Kidz Field where activities galore await beyond circus skill workshops at the Crow’s Nest climbing zone hive. Dance yourself joyously alongside roaming jazz bands weaving cheerfully through the fields or paint giant mandala artworks channeling cosmic unity consciousness. Encounter roving performers like stilt-walking jesters, hula-hooping fairies, and clowns on rollerskates – then watch your own little ones embody magical characters interacting with these mystics.
For comfort-seeking toddlers, the Little Folks area provides baby-changing facilities, securely fenced playpens amidst shady oak trees, and mini ball pits mimicking Muse’s glittering Saturday Night Pyramid spectacle on a child’s scale. Peak inside towering geodesic domes running immersive animation workshops using digital game engines. Then replenish at the fresh juice bar with ingredients plucked straight from the bountiful Seed Café vegetable garden just beyond. Here children play protected yet imagination still runs wild as nature intended before screens stole away collective dreaming.
Sacred Space
Finally, make an inward passage to the tranquil stone circle sanctuary in Sacred Space offering de-stressing soundscape meditations and passionate philosophy talks from radical thinkers like Charles Eisenstein or Starhawk examining our cosmic destiny. Study the Tarot cards to unfold your hero’s journey or sample flower essences distilled alchemically by the visiting Medicine Wheel herbalists sharing plant spirit wisdom transmitted while meditating in their Cornish greenhouse.
This quiet realm tunes down intensity levels elsewhere facilitating inner peace. Labyrinth walking paths release anxieties plaguing the modern mind so we remember our tiny place amidst infinite Galaxies. The Goddess Temple provides womb blessing rituals reconnecting femininity to cycles once celebrated. No dogma preaches answers here, only compassion. In Sacred Space, human meets planet and we realign.
Wandering Without An Agenda
Yet the best way to unlock The Green Fields is meandering aimlessly rather than rushing between scheduled activities. Surrender to following what attracts – pause improvising riotous percussion with hand drums or trampolining into new friendships or strumming tunes barefoot sitting circles with acoustic guitars circulating freely. Detour down unlabeled side paths to discover who knows what spontaneous happenings unfurling like Matryoshka nesting dolls. Allow magic to find you.
Some may write off The Green Fields zones as hippie heterotopias barricaded against harsh realism. But shifting global paradigms now demand radical revisions beyond broken systems that reward greed over life itself. As sacred activism scholar Andrew Harvey attests, these autonomous sites model, in microcosm, creative resilience strategies our whole planetary culture must adapt or perish. So plunge in.
Essential Info for Visiting The Green Fields
While much of The Green Fields’ programming runs continuously from morning until midnight across Glastonbury Festival’s five-day marathon, it’s easy to lose track of time once immersed in these peaceful realms. Days bleed into nights as the sun dips below the horizon. So some key notes regarding tickets and accessibility include:
- No special tickets or premium prices are needed – all Green Fields areas are included with the general festival pass. Donations are welcomed to support operational costs.
- Family-friendly across all districts; under 13s enter free when accompanied by an adult.
- Accessibility options like wheelchairs, walkers, or hearing assistance are available; enquire at information booths for the latest provisions. * Sustainability key; please use recycling points and leave no trace onsite.
As the healing heart connecting Glastonbury’s disparate zones from dance temple thunder to acoustic campfire jams, The Green Fields pop up organically each year thanks to an army of unpaid volunteers driven by passion, not profit. Teams work for months assembling structures like the Skydome stage or Gecko sauna from reclaimed materials just days before the gates open. Without this dedication, the festival’s more commercial corners could not flourish. So respect the community keeping Michael Eavis’ original vision for elevating consciousness intact and tread lightly across these peaceable realms.
Why The Green Fields Matter at Glastonbury
Amongst the blinking strobes, glowing lasers, and towering flaming spectacles now dominating many corners of 21st century Glastonbury Festival, the humble havens gathered under The Green Fields banner stand as sanctuaries shielding the senses and soul. These fertile spaces offer refuge from crushing crowds and rampant consumerism which increasingly defines many zones of the contemporary mega-festival in stark contrast to its idealistic origins.
Here shining counterculture ideals hold fast to the visionary intentions and community values that compelled dairy farmer Michael Eavis to first open his gates over 50 years ago back in 1970. And even while the event now courts criticism for privileging expensive stadium rock elites over upstart creative voices, places like The Green Fields nourish heart and mind through healing arts, social activism, and creative community still freely available to all.
So next time the bass thunders oppressively from Arcadia’s fire-breathing, interdimensional spider stage or you feel faintly squashed amidst the 100,000-strong human swarm before the Pyramid’s amplified altar, step away. Delve instead into The Green Fields to rediscover why so many music pilgrims and culture seekers have faithfully trekked to Pilton Worthy Farm each summer solstice for over half a century now…not chasing spectacle, but kindling utopian dreams seeded here long ago that still could blossom for the world beyond too.
The Epic Healing Field: Soothing Body, Mind & Soul
As crowds and sensory intensity swell to peaks across Glastonbury Festival’s thumping main arena, The Healing Field forms a medicinal sanctuary teaching attendees tools for self-care while expert therapists treat everything from physical injuries to emotional release work. This circular mini-village emerged organically in the 1990s when roving masseuses practicing under makeshift marquees saw demand spike dramatically as word spread. Michael Eavis granted them dedicated grounds realizing many pilgrims required healing arts to stay balanced navigating such a marathon event both euphoric and exhausting.
Today The Healing Field fills an entire valley zone offering panoramic views down the rows of multi-colored therapy tents beckoning as visual acupuncture needles amidst rolling grasses. Wind chimes dance delivering Telluric currents conducive to harmony. From seated massage to sound bath journeys or yoga at sunset, morning till midnight myriad treatment modalities nourish body and spirit depleted by intense stimulation elsewhere.
Wander freely sampling complimentary taster sessions like gong meditations to assess which therapies resonate before committing longer. Costs run modest with most bodywork sessions between £20-£40, so this sanctuary stays accessible to all income levels. Therapists often offer sliding scales or trade work upholding communal values so finances pose no barriers to receiving care. Signup sheets outside tents allow booking slots in advance for popular modalities. Now let’s explore key zones ideal for restoring balance across long festival days.
Unwinding In The Sound Temple
Inside the centrally located Sound Temple healing hub, sonic alchemists immerse visitors into resonant chambers transmitting frequencies stimulating vibrational realignment. Participants recline on zero gravity waterbeds or nestle below quartz crystal pyramids while guided on journeys harnessing visualization, chanting, and instrumentation creating bespoke harmonizing soundscapes.
Tibetan singing bowls chime tuning Chakra energy flows. Didgeridoos played ceremonially by Aboriginal elders mimic the Earth’s own electromagnetic hum. Sound system innovators pipe transcendental dub plates directly into playlists calculated recalibrating brainwaves and nervous systems frazzled by empathic overstimulation. Focus journeys inward then bathe newly attuned exiting transformed. Sound alters consciousness gently yet profoundly.
Restorative Massage
For muscle tissues knotted and lower backs aching from hauling hefty backpacks across uneven fields, world-class massage therapists set up clinical tents providing expert physical rehabilitation. Modalities span precision deep tissue work realigning shoulder joints to lymphatic drainage reducing toxic buildup and inflammations to traditional Thai treatments incorporating gentle yoga stretching between rhythmic compressions along energy lines.
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