NEPA Yoga Festival returns to Montage Mountain with wellness weekend

Montage Mountain Waterpark became a temporary yoga village in Scranton as NEPA Yoga Festival returned for a two-day run at Montage Mountain Resorts, 1000 Montage Mountain Road. The weekend brought yoga, meditation, breathwork, Ayurveda, sacred movement, vendors, speakers and a holistic expo into one mountain setting, with optional camping giving attendees a full retreat-style stay.

Presented by Nearme Yoga, the festival said it curated more than 150 offerings for 2026, a scale that set it apart from a typical class series. Organizers framed the event around the spirituality of yoga, with this year’s intention, “Connection through Abundance,” said to have come to founder Chelsea Manganaro in a dream. That focus gave the gathering a clear identity: not just fitness on a mat, but a weekend built around philosophy, lineage, devotion and shared practice.

Manganaro founded Nearme Yoga in 2014 after moving back from San Diego and not finding the yoga community she wanted. That studio, along with InfinitYOGA Teacher Training, Nearme Cafe and the festival itself, grew into a local wellness brand with multiple locations, hundreds of events a year and a gathering that organizers describe as the largest yoga event in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Her background includes 500-hour yoga instruction, reiki, wellness coaching, shamanic training, culinary work and children’s yoga.

The festival has also carried a longer community thread for more than a decade. Archival materials point to an 11th annual festival in 2025, and the event donates a portion of proceeds to PCF in memory of Thomas Gilmore, described by organizers as a beloved friend and yogi who never missed teaching at the festival. That memorial note, paired with the packed schedule, gave the weekend a sense of continuity that reached beyond one season.

For attendees, the appeal was the range: serious practitioners could spend the day moving through philosophy and advanced teaching, while newcomers had an easy entry point through music, vendors, meditation and the broader festival atmosphere. By the time the weekend wrapped at Montage Mountain, the resort had done more than host an event. It had functioned as a shared wellness campus, with yoga at the center and a mountain backdrop turning Scranton into a destination.