Here’s Why You Need To Go To Medicine Festival

Medicine Festival is an annual wellness festival centring on all things healing: for the mind, body, spirit and planet. Here’s what Alanna Ospina thought of the 2024 event.

Inside Medicine Festival

‘How can the electrons in your feet charge if you have shoes on’, I overheard a passersby say as I lay horizontally, deeply relaxed in one of the hourly 30-minute yoga nidra sessions in a tent at Medicine Festival. Held in the bucolic Wasing Estate in Berkshire, I soon realised that these sort of esoteric-yet-practical life ponderings are what make up much of the fabric of this festival. For four days, festival goers escape the modern trappings of everyday life and are immersed in a community of people that are here for what the festival promises to offer: a programme that is led by wisdom keepers, indigenous peoples and artists of all traditions. It harks back to a time when we humans did live as part of a collective, and supported each other in reverence to the land. Is it any wonder there has been a rise in interest in communal living since the pandemic? Is there a way we can weave lessons from the past, exemplified contemporarily by the world’s indigenous peoples, into the modern day?

One of eight co-founders of the festival, Remi Olajoyegbe (previously a city highflyer at an investment bank), was called to indigenous wisdom and the power of nature – both referred to as ‘medicine’ within these circles (hence the festival’s name) – after her own life was derailed by a personal tragedy that forced her to question what was important in life. After years of research and knowledge gathering, Remi met her like-minded co-founders whose collective vision was (and remains): a world where nature is cherished, peace is revered, and difference is celebrated. With that, the festival was born as a Community Interest Company with all profits going to organisations that support indigenous peoples such as Amazon Watch, BOA Foundation and Survival.

This year, the festival’s theme was ‘Carry Peace’, highlighted by the presence of Hiroki Okani, a Japanese Elder whose Peace Flame was honoured at the festival, lit from the atomic fires of the Hiroshima nuclear attack in 1946 and kept alight ever since. Once a symbol of anger and vengeance, it has transformed into a symbol of acceptance, forgiveness and a desire for peace.

While there is an evident spiritual aspect to the festival, for those that might be cynical, there are also talks from leading brains, including: physician Zach Bush who was on a panel discussing ‘The Future Landscape of Being Human’; adventurer and documentary maker, Bruce Parry, talking about ‘Transformative Experience’; and Country & Town House’s own guest editor, Arizona Muse, speaking with environmental activist and author Satish Kumar about ‘Finding the Spirit in Agriculture’.

The days are filled with workshops, talks, ecstatic dance sessions, soulful singing around campfires, lake swimming, deep conversation, delicious food (it’s a no alcohol and vegetarian festival) spread across 21 spaces across the grounds. Sat centrally is the Healing Village where treatments are curated by Mamma Wellbeing, a holistic concierge and booking platform that covers everything from facials and massages to womb healing and hand poke tattoos. We experienced a rejuvenating nature-focused facial by Star Seed Natural, and a shamanic healing session with Francesca Raffa, to balance the medicine you can touch with that you can feel.

Mostly, Medicine Festival embodies joy, hope and the beauty of being human in this world. Inspired by the conversation I overheard, I did walk around the festival barefoot, an act which quite simply allows the body to electrically charge from the earth through a transfer of electrons and encourage a release of stress and fatigue. I found myself smiling at everyone I walked past, proper wide teeth smiles, the exchange of which was contagious. It feels as if everyone is here because they believe in a greater good. Chatting to Arizona and other festival goers, someone said, ‘the only problem is this is an echo chamber’, to which she replied, ‘sometimes that’s a good thing’. When the collective vision is for a greater world respecting all its people and nature, how can you not agree?

BOOK IT

Medicine Festival is having a fallow year in 2025. Look out on medicinefestival.com for tickets to the next festival in 2026 and information on the Voices of Medicine events programme to experience the spirit of Medicine year-round.