While many festivals out there serve as a way to temporarily escape the binds and grind of daily life, there are other festivals that strive to offer something more than just a weekend of distractions. Lucidity , held this past weekend in Santa Barbara, California, is one of the latter kind.

Befitting its name, the festival offers its attendees a chance to connect with themselves and those around them on a deeper level – in addition to plenty of opportunities to dance and experience amazing art and music. The three-day festival, which is now in its fifth year, can chalk its progressive reputation on thoughtful programming that includes workshops, panels, villages, wisdom keepers, healers, and other ways guests can collectively envision a brighter future and, individually, live more solution-oriented lives. This year was entitled Crossroads, which is a meta-narrative building on a series of interconnected themes derived from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. For the occasion, Lucidity took its consciousness-expanding offerings further by establishing the Lucid University , which takes learning and growing at festivals to a whole new level via intimate classes from professionally successful intellectual marvels, taking place before the festival itself.

Lucidity is an amazing example of why we get so passionate about festivals; they can be a wild time but also a deeply meaningful chance to grow. Photographer Juliana Bernstein captured Lucidity's festies in all states of revelry and reflection over the weekend, which you can enjoy below.