This part of our vacation was the longest in duration since it lasted a week, but time at Kripalu is weird and I’m not sure how long it felt like it lasted, a few days or a month. Kripalu is a yoga retreat center where you can go to relax, get in touch with yourself, or whatever it is you want to do. Kim and I signed up for the seva volunteer program, because otherwise it’s expensive. The deal is that we work 35 hours during the week and in exchange get room and board and access to whatever programs are going on during our off hours.
I know as a generalization most guys probably don’t have any desire to go to a yoga retreat center, but they also probably don’t know that the ratio of girls to guys is probably close to 6:1. It’s just that most of the women are middle aged and as a few women there described themselves to me “crazy”. Seriously though, everyone I met there was incredibly nice and supportive. It’s an amazing atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re removed from the ‘real world’. You come out wondering why people in the outside world can’t be as accepting and peaceful. Perhaps one day the rest of the world can, but that’s a whole different topic.
Sunday evening when we arrived we found our rooms and attended a seva orientation. I got a top bunk in a room with two other guys named Noah and Jim. Kim was in a sleeping porch style bunk area with about 30 other women. At the orientation we met the other sevas and got our work assignments. I got maintenance crew and Kim got kitchen. Both my room mates were on maintenance so we got to spend a lot of time together and I liked them both a lot. Noah and I got along really well and hung out outside of work and seva stuff. Jim was a bit older than us and did his own thing on his off hours, but was a great guy to work with.
The days at Kripalu can be as full as you want them to be, and usually a little fuller. The first yoga session was at 5:45 AM and I’m proud to say that I went more than a couple times. After yoga came breakfast, which was eaten in complete silence. It’s a surreal experience, but I highly recommend it after a week of doing so. Kim says she likes it because nobody talks to her in the morning so she doesn’t have to pretend that she’s not grumpy and tired. After breakfast is work from 8 until lunch at noon then back to work at 1 and out by 4 if not earlier. You could do workshops at lunch hour, but it was hard to fit in with eating. The work schedule was pretty lax which was awesome. Then there was afternoon yoga at 4:15. Then every evening there was something different to do: dances, bands, lectures, meditations, drumming circles, etc. Lights out was at 9:30, but my room mates didn’t care so we didn’t enforce that.
I mostly worked helping Carl remodel the women’s sauna area. I had some tool experience so I got to use the power tools and help frame quite a bit. We also moved a lot of furniture. Kim mostly washed dishes and cleaned the floors. I think she may have thought she was signing up for food prep, but I think she had a good experience anyway since she got to be good friends with a few of the people she worked with.
The best part of it all was just meeting and hanging out with the really cool people that came from all over. We did extreme yoga in the hall one night. We went down to the lake to go swimming all the time, and Noah and I accidentally ‘stole’ some kayaks we thought belonged to kripalu but were actually someone else’s. They were really nice and said it was okay that we took them out on the lake though. We almost always ate the food outside with groups of people at picnic tables with a gorgeous view of the lake. We played soccer, listened to lots of music, danced, sang at a kirtan, went into town for ice cream one night, and talked a lot.
I didn’t check my cell phone or email until the end of the time I was there and it was wonderful. Our mail server went down at work so poor Dennis had a terrible week while I was gone getting it back up. It was a great relaxing vacation and the work I had to do didn’t even feel like work. I was more than happy to do some physical labor for a week since it’s a wonderful change of pace from working a computer desk job.
Sunday came and we said our goodbyes and Roslyn picked us up to look at wedding sites in the Berkshires.