It's a big time for celebration in the yoga community as this week marks the birthday of our favorite elephant-headed boy, Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. (If you feel like you're bumping into a lot of walls these days, it's a good time to have a private conversation with him.) But this week also marks the start of the new nationally recognized Yoga Month .

Yoga Month is a new initiative that has been deemed a National Health Observance by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion within the Department of Health and Human Services. Translation: It's totally legit. There are lots of ways to celebrate, including a San Francisco Yoga Health Festival at the Herbst International Exhibit Hall coming up on September 27. The festival includes a full day of classes and lectures by fabulous local yogis like Timothy McCall, Scott Blossom, and Katchie Ananda. The classes are very reasonable—at the moment, it's only $88 for a whole-day pass and $25 for individual classes. You should go if you can—I'll be there to blog about it, too.

The festival's not for a few more weeks, but there's another great way to celebrate this auspicious month: Do yoga at Power to the Peaceful. The music festival, which happens this weekend, features Michael Franti and Spearhead, Ziggy Marley, and a whole line-up of others. There are ample opps to do some yoga, too, from the free morning yoga sessions on Saturday to the all-day Yoga Jam that happens on Sunday. See the full yoga schedule here .

So, go and get your Ganesh on. And then report back and let us know it was!