Kripalu Yoga Method Teacher Training

J. William Hedrick, M.D. shares his experience with Discovery Yoga, it's teacher training program, residency, and Deva Parnell, the founder and director of Discovery Yoga Center in St. Augustine, Florida, (Spring 08 Intensive Teacher Training) www.discoveryyoga.com

Discovery Yoga Kripalu at St. Augustine, Florida

Kripalu Yoga Video with Esana

A short video detailing the yoga technique taught at Balanced Body Studio.

Video - Yoga Teacher Training Kripalu

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Relax, Open, EnergizeRelease

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Relax, Open, Energize here. or Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Relax, Open, Energize here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Relax, Open, EnergizeRelease

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Relax, Open, Energize here.
or
Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Relax, Open, Energize here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Neck and Shoulder Release

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Neck and Shoulder Release here.
or
Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Neck and Shoulder Release here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Stand and Get Invigorated

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Stand and Get Invigorated here.
or
Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Stand and Get Invigorated here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Breathing and Relaxation

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Breathing and Relaxation here.

or

Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Breathing and Relaxation here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Stretch and Twist

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Stretch and Twist here.

or

Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Stretch and Twist here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Long and Strong

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Long and Strong here.

or

Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Long and Strong here.

Kripalu Yoga Break Download - Guided Relaxation

Listen to Kripalu Yoga Break - Guided Relaxation here.

or

Download a copy of Kripalu Yoga Break - Guided Relaxation here.

Kripalu School of Ayurveda Professional certification programs

New format beginning in September 2009!

Start this September and choose from two levels of training-as well as an exciting new track for yoga teachers. Within a year, you can graduate with professional certification as an Ayurvedic Lifestyle Consultant or Ayurvedic Yoga Specialist.

All trainings begin with Foundations of Ayurveda, offered in two 12-day sessions (September 13-25 and November 29-December 11, 2009). These immersion sessions take place at Kripalu Center and are complemented by at-home study.

Ayurvedic Lifestyle Consultant training: Foundations of Ayurveda plus four additional 9-day sessions (January, February, April, and June 2010).

Ayurvedic Yoga Specialist training: Foundations of Ayurveda plus one 9-day session (March 2010).

Why study at Kripalu?

The Kripalu School of Ayurveda offers many benefits for those interested in learning more about Ayurveda, whether to start a new career or enhance a current one.

* You’ll study with expert faculty, the leading Ayurvedic teachers and practitioners in the West, including Vasant Lad, John Douillard, and Cynthia Welch.
* You’ll stay at Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for six immersion sessions, immersed in Kripalu’s lifestyle curriculum, including daily yoga classes, deliciously nourishing all-natural meals, the company of people with similar interests, the beauty of the Berkshires, and much more.
* You’ll participate in an integrated curriculum designed to support and challenge you, with a teaching methodology that provides a unique mix of didactic education and experiential sessions.
* You’ll learn from your own experience, practicing in your own life what you are learning at Kripalu through at-home study assignments in between sessions to discover your own natural rhythms and sources of wisdom.
* You’ll get trained in pulse diagnosis, client care, and other important skills and consider current research studies on Ayurveda.
* You’ll be inspired by ancient texts and discover the inspirational philosophy and 5,000-year-old history of Ayurveda.
* You’ll graduate with professional certification, whether you are launching a new career, supplementing an old one, or sharing your knowledge with friends and family.

Interested? All certification programs all begin with Foundations of Ayurveda, a great beginning for anyone interested in pursuing Ayurveda professionally or personally.

Article taken here.

Massage Training at the Kripalu School of Massage

Study with exceptional faculty who draw from more than 30 years of experience creating extraordinary learning environments

Why do your massage training at Kripalu?

The Kripalu approach takes the technical skills and strokes and transforms them into a sacred experience of intuitive healing touch. Kripalu therapists attune to the essential within themselves and their clients to offer an experience infused with life force. The tools of the Kripalu approach include intention, intuitive awareness, attentiveness to energy, and yogic stances and breathing and can be used with any bodywork modality.

Through this comprehensive residential massage training, you will learn the principles and practices of massage therapy, develop an authentic healing presence, and experience bodywork as a vehicle for personal and spiritual transformation for both you and your clients.

The massage training program at the Kripalu School of Massage offers the following two levels of certification:

* Essentials of Kripalu Massage (170 hours)
Learn to provide compassionate, intuitive touch with technical expertise in our 170-hour foundational massage training.
* 500-Hour Kripalu Bodywork and Massage Training (340 hours)
Increase your repertoire of bodywork techniques and deepen the skills and experience acquired in Essentials of Kripalu Massage. This course provides an additional 340 hours of bodywork and massage training and together with Essentials of Kripalu Massage gives you the 500 hours of coursework necessary to apply for licensing as a massage therapist in most states in the United States and abroad.

The Kripalu School of Massage is licensed as a private occupational school by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education.

Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health is approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) as a continuing education provider.

Article taken here.

Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training 200- and 500-Hour Certification Programs

Kripalu offers the most comprehensive, inspired, and transformational yoga teacher training in the country. In our training, you will gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence you need to become an exceptional—and successful—teacher, able to work in any environment you choose.
200-Hour Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training
500-Hour Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training

The integrated curriculum we offer is not based on theories or prescribed methods but derived from rigorous practice and experimentation, and is led by expert teachers with decades of experience. Students report that the Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training faculty deeply impact their development as yoga teachers because they embody what they teach.

Come live, learn, and transform here, while immersing yourself in a residential, yogic lifestyle that encourages inquiry and knowledge. We construct the Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training in ways that cultivates your ability to thrive in your personal and professional life and graduate with a well-developed connection to a deep source of inspiration—and the ability to guide others into theirs.

Scholarships and educational financing available.

The Kripalu School of Yoga is licensed as a Private Occupational School by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Proprietary Schools.

Visit them here.

What is YOGA and how does it relate to Kripalu?

Yoga is the keystone term of a profound worldview and grasping its meaning is essential to understanding Kripalu’s mission and activities as a cohesive whole. Because it is such an important term, yoga has several meanings, each of which adds a critical element to a comprehensive understanding.

Basic Definitions of Yoga

In a historical sense, yoga refers to the enormous body of spiritual teachings and techniques developed by the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent over the last five thousand years. While Westerners often assume that yoga is a homogeneous tradition, there are hundreds if not thousands of sects and schools of yoga, each with its distinctive doctrines and practices. This fact has led noted yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein to begin his classic work The Yoga Tradition with the words: “Yoga is a spectacularly multifaceted phenomenon and as such it is very difficult to define.”

From the perspective of a beginning practitioner, the term yoga describes the goal sought through practice, as well as the means to realize it. Yoga means union, a reference to the state of body–mind–spirit harmony sought through various disciplines, which are also called yoga. Under this definition, one practices postures and meditation—two common disciplines of yoga—to harmonize his or her body and mind and access a state of unity—the goal of yoga.

Seen in this light, yoga is described as a spiritual path, often broken down into the following eight stages as delineated by the sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra:

1. Yama/Restraint: Actions best avoided
2. Niyama/Observance: Positive actions to cultivate
3. Asana/Posture: Releasing gross tensions from the body
4. Pranayama/Breath Regulation: Harmonizing body, mind, and breath
5. Pratyahara/Introversion: Withdrawing attention from external distractions
6. Dharana/Concentration: Focusing the mind on a single point
7. Dhyana/Meditation: Accessing a state of flow
8. Samadhi/Oneness: Effortless, integrated being

Neither impractical nor otherworldly, the path of yoga results in a capacity for integrated functioning and powerful action that is evident in anyone whose thoughts, feelings, statements and actions line up. The inner coherence gained from practice inevitably shows up externally in enhanced creativity and peak performance.

Delving Deeper

From the perspective of an adept practitioner, viewing yoga as a spiritual path is less than accurate. The analogy of a path implies a means/end relationship that does not hold up under the strict scrutiny of practice. Instead of a linear path of becoming, yoga is better described as a way of being accessible in each and every moment. In this light, the disciplines of yoga are techniques that clear obstacles that prevent us from being who and what we naturally are. As the fruit is already present in the seed, yoga is not the result of any action to attain a goal. It is simply a return to our natural state.

Out of this understanding, Kripalu uses four definitions of yoga that describe the qualities of a person acting from a state of yoga. Each is drawn from an ancient and authoritative yoga text:

1. Yoga is skillfulness in action, a reference to a yogi’s capacity to act dynamically in ways that reliably produce positive results across all dimensions of life. (Bhagavad Gita)
2. Yoga is equanimity and equilibrium, a reference to a yogi’s capacity to sustain evenness of mind while confronting inner limitations and outer challenges, i.e., the capacity to tolerate the consequences of being one’s self. (Bhagavad Gita)
3. Yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind, a reference to a yogi’s capacity to see life and reality as it is without the filters of fears, fantasies, or other distortions. (Yoga Sutra)
4. Yoga is freedom, a reference to the bliss of wellbeing experienced whenever one steps into one’s natural rhythm of being, one’s appropriate purpose in life, and one’s natural place in the universe. (Yoga Bhashya)


The Multidimensional Self of Yoga

At this point in your reading, the above definitions of yoga may seem abstract or esoteric. One way to understand their relevance is to look deeply at what it means to be human through the lens of what yoga calls the multidimensional self.

Yoga teaches that there are six layers to our being and that each giving rise to a specific sense of self and play an essential role in our lives. The first and most obvious is the physical body, beneath which lies the second and less apparent energetic circuitry of the nervous system. Together these constitute what is sometimes called the sensorimotor self. One layer deeper is the thinking mind and protective emotions, which comprise the egocentric self needed to function well in a competitive world. Beneath that is the intuitive mind and expressive emotions that make up the authentic, creative, and artistic self. Beyond even that is a layer of subtle energy called prana that flows unceasingly from the deepest layer, the pure spiritual presence that yoga calls the Self. (The less complete but more common phrase used to describe these levels of being is body, mind, emotions, and spirit.)

Yoga views health and wellness as the harmonious resonance of all six layers of the self. The yogic process of regaining and enhancing this whole person health is a profound journey in which each layer of self is accessed, revitalized, and reclaimed to full awareness. Often referred to as the transformative process in Kripalu Yoga terminology, it includes many aspects of what would be commonly considered healing and health enhancement, therapeutic and growth psychology, and spirituality.

So Much More Than Postures

Most people have a limited view of yoga, seeing it as synonymous with yoga postures, breathing exercises, and meditation. While popular and powerful, these disciplines are only a few of the tools employed to heal, harmonize, and awaken the whole person. Outlining the major branches of yoga will give you a feel for the breadth and depth of the ancient tradition.

* Karma Yoga: the yoga of dynamic action and service to humanity
* Jnana Yoga: the yoga of discriminative wisdom
* Bhakti Yoga: the yoga of devotion
* Hatha Yoga: the yoga of postures and breathing exercises
* Raja Yoga: the yoga of concentration and meditation
* Tantra Yoga: the yoga of integrating the polarities

Kripalu Yoga, like many other contemporary schools, integrates tools and techniques from all of the above classical schools, promoting yoga as an integrated lifestyle versus any stand-alone practice.

All Kripalu’s Activities Reflect Some Facet of Yoga

Kripalu Center offers an immersion experience of a yoga lifestyle. What do early morning posture and meditation practice, wholesome eating, study and learning in the program room, volunteer service, and deep tissue massage have in common? In the context of the Kripalu lifestyle, each is a facet of “yoga.” Each is a means adopted to exert a salutary impact on one or more levels of the multidimensional self, returning us to the vibrancy that is our birthright. As a person becomes steeped in the practices and lifestyle, their innate skillfulness, equanimity, clarity, and joy naturally come forth. This should come as no surprise, as they are just exhibiting the qualities of a yogi.

Nondogmatic and Nondenominational

Swami Kripalu was a kundalini yoga master renowned in India for the intensity of his spiritual practice and the depth of his compassion. In 1977, he came to the United States and spent four years in residence at the original Kripalu Center prior to his death in 1981. Maintaining his schedule of ten hours of yoga and meditation per day, Swami Kripalu also taught a small number of close disciples and made weekly public appearances that catalyzed the growth of the Kripalu community. In these ways, Swami Kripalu played an essential role in the transmission of a spiritually potent yoga tradition to a large community of Western practitioners. His teachings on yoga practice and holistic lifestyle continue to inspire Kripalu Center’s work in the world.

The Kripalu tradition is founded on what Swami Kripalu called Sanatana Dharma and in the West is called the Perennial Wisdom. This is the recognition that yoga and all the world’s wisdom traditions stem from a single universal truth that human beings can experience directly through a variety of disciplines, techniques, and practices. The following quotes from Swami Kripalu will give you a feel for this:

The spiritual path that I teach is called Sanatana Dharma, which means the way of eternal truth. Sanatana Dharma is not a sectarian creed or point of view. It is the performance of skillful actions that lead one to the direct realization of truth. Truth cannot belong to any one race, sect or nation. It does not recognize such narrow distinctions and makes itself available to the whole world.

It is worth remembering there is only one yoga. True, aspirants are of different natures and resort to various doctrines and practices to progress along the path. But one who completes the process of yoga understands its different paths and sees that the systematic practice of various disciplines leads to the same place. In the end, all yogas lead to one great Yoga.

While based in yoga, the Kripalu tradition is decidedly not a fundamentalist mindset. It is a nondogmatic and nonsectarian approach to life that celebrates diversity and recognizes that all approaches are valuable and venerable, all practitioners worthy of respect, and that truth is freely available to members of every nationality, race, and religion.

As an institution, Kripalu is dedicated to an honest and unfettered inquiry into all practices, philosophies, techniques, and approaches that produce thriving in the individual, family, community, society, and the planet. In accordance with the Kripalu tradition, this non-denominational “yoga” includes the teachings of all the world’s religions and spiritual traditions, together with the amazing knowledge gained from science, psychology, and other endeavors.

That’s why the Kripalu catalog includes such a phenomenal breadth of programming. Any reputable and reliable technique of healing and growth, drawn from any of the world’s great religious or spiritual traditions, or any methods resulting from the work of contemporary researchers and students, are part and parcel of this nondenominational yoga to the extent that they produce positive results.

Article taken here.

Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health Vision and Core Values

Vision and Core Values

Here is the statement of vision and core values approved by Kripalu’s Board of Trustees in May 2005.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—William Butler Yeats
vision

As trustees of the Kripalu Institution, we find ourselves with a unique opportunity to make a lasting and important contribution to our world. It’s obvious to us all that the rate of societal change and unpredictability are on the rise, and that existing institutions are unable to provide a center that can hold when things seem like they are falling apart. In times of such insecurity, the mass of humanity cleaves to certainties and fundamental absolutes as a way of keeping touch with themselves and each other, often losing sight of actions that can truly resolve conflicts and uplift society. Polarization increases and connection and healing decrease.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
—Albert Einstein

Most institutions aimed at doing good work are focused on solving symptomatic problems such as saving the environment, feeding the poor, and bringing justice where injustice prevails. Just as medicine’s focus on presenting symptoms misses the root cause of disease, few institutions are focused on the root cause of society’s problems; the consciousness with which we live our lives. The fragmentation we see around us is a reflection of the inner disconnects that live within each of us. While there is no doubt that traditional medicine, along with educational and charitable institutions, are pillars of a healthy society, the trustees of Kripalu have a unique opportunity to help remedy the root cause of society’s ills. Kripalu has as its heritage and core competency the oldest and most comprehensive system of personal integration known to man: The art and science of yoga.

The challenge for us as trustees is to take this legacy as a foundation and use it to build not just a new institution, but an entirely new kind of institution: one that aims at solving problems, as Einstein points out, with a new consciousness. For example, how do we help awaken the best of the human spirit: the ability to love, to connect, to integrate, to heal, and to bring forth new life in all dimensions of human activity? How do we foster a center that can hold during tumultuous times? How do we actually make a difference in people’s consciousness? And once touched, how do we inspire them to actively make a difference in the world?

Meta: from the Greek meaning “beyond, more comprehensive, more highly developed.”

Kripalu has spent the last thirty years creating a foundation for a new kind of institution, the meta-university: A meta-university takes the existing concept of the academic university and moves it beyond to another more comprehensive, more highly developed aim: raising the consciousness of those involved with it. The original aim of universities could be characterized as a place where you go to find your place in the universe. Over time this aim has been diminished to the point where universities are a place where you go to find your place in the job market. Our aim is to go farther, be bolder, and make a fundamental difference in the way humans live.

Thriving: to grow vigorous or flourish, to prosper, to progress toward a goal despite or because of circumstances.

The Kripalu meta-university’s aim will be helping the world community experience the aim of yoga: a state of integration, vitality, wholeness and fulfillment. We will steer our collective efforts by what produces thriving in individuals, the family, the community, society, the planet—all at the same time—and also by the opportunities, threats, and management realities we face day by day. We will devote our energy to fostering this change of consciousness for those people and populations that become interested in such an opportunity by offering developmental programming to the young, the mature, the aging, the healthy, and the sick. We will promulgate ancient wisdom and traditional practices, as well as modern approaches and new scientific inquiry.
core principles

The spiritual path I teach is not a sectarian creed or point of view. It is the performance of skillful actions that lead one to the direct realization of truth. Truth cannot belong to any one race, sect or nation. It does not recognize such narrow distinctions and makes itself available to the whole world. True, aspirants are of different natures and resort to various doctrines and practices to progress along the path. But one who completes the process of yoga sees that the systematic practice of various disciplines leads to the same place. In the end, all yogas lead to one great yoga.
—Swami Kripalu

Institutions are guarantors of values and often assume a sectarian and dogmatic stance that undermines their intention to create greater harmony within society. This can be seen most clearly in organized religions that espouse the highest values of unity and togetherness but act to divide the world into hostile factions.

Currently there is no non-sectarian yoga institution whose stated purpose is the promotion of all approaches that make us more alive, powerful, and fulfilled as humans. We understand yoga to be inherently non-sectarian in that it recognizes any philosophy or practices that reliably produce vitality, power, and fulfillment for self and other. Rather than being guided by belief or dogma, yoga is scientific and empirical, validating each approach based on its actual results.

While scientific, yoga also recognizes the profound role that individual differences play in life, and that anyone’s search for truth must be a highly personal inquiry. External results can only be assessed in the context of an individual’s life and may change as they grow and mature. Thus the path to self-mastery may look different from person to person and evolve over the various stages of a person’s life. It is only in the context of a non-sectarian approach that we can further a Kripalu approach to yoga, avoid the pitfalls of grandiosity and insularity, and produce the integration of self and society that we seek. History shows that narrow sects never make a significant inroad in society without broadening out to include the whole.

A whole person is someone who has both walked with God and wrestled with the devil.
—Carl Jung

One of the key insights of yoga is that consciousness cannot be changed without corresponding changes in the entire gestalt of who we are: body, mind, emotions and spirit. In yoga this developmental process is referred to as “embodiment”, i.e. change that is wholly integrated on all levels. Our meta-university aims at this whole-person development; mining both our divinity and our demons to fuel the alchemy of energetic growth and success in life.

As trustees we cannot bring this meta-university into reality without practicing its core values in our lives and especially in our dialogue with one another. As top leaders of the organization, our example sets the tone. Our relationships must be authentic and our dialogue rigorous so that our work together creates the same experience for us that we hope to offer our students, customers, and staff. This commitment is what makes our undertaking both radical and exciting. In yoga, it is a truism that the end goal must be present in the beginning, as the fruit is present in the seed.

Yoga’s three foundational descriptions can help inform not only our vision but also our practice. In the ancient texts, yoga is defined as

1. Skillfulness in action: the ability to act dynamically in ways that reliably produce more life force or thriving
2. Equilibrium: the capacity to sustain mental focus, confront unconscious habits, and tolerate the consequences of being ourselves
3. The cessation of the modifications of the mind, which allows us to see life as it is without fear, fantasy, or distortion.

Our bedrock principle—the idea upon which the meta-university can be built—is that we embody the discipline of yoga by acting skillfully, being our authentic selves, and confronting our biases and fears as we work together in pursuit of truth. All of these practices combine to generate more life for all concerned: trustees, patrons, staff, students, volunteers, vendors, the local community and the environment. Swami Kripalu called this Sanatana Dharma, the perennial wisdom. This is the noble experiment we are heirs to, and the great opportunity we have to make a difference with the lives we have been given.
mission

Don’t worry about what the world wants from you, worry about what makes you come more alive. Because what the world really needs are people who are more alive. Your real job is to increase the color and zest of your life.
—Lawrence Leshan

The primary goal of this meta-university is to promote yoga as a basis for a revitalized society. We do that by enabling people to experience and practice the integrated functioning of their whole being. When this happens, people access greater power, skillfulness, and leadership in their individual lives and thus society and all its members are enriched.

We must pay particular attention to developing core structures, personnel, work norms, and relationships that facilitate and produce thriving and integrated functioning now and into the future.
strategies

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
—Henry David Thoreau

The easiest empirical marker by which to steer our unfolding mission is to assess thriving in the lives we live and the lives we touch. We can steer our actions to produce thriving, but even if successful not all things will appear to thrive all the time. Sometimes in order to produce more vitality in a tree, the gardener prunes some of its branches as well as feeding its roots. As we bring the meta-university into being, our challenge will be to build on the strong foundations of our roots, while at the same time taking decisive and courageous action where change is called for and new opportunities present themselves.

There are three primary strategies for realizing the mission and vision:

* Strengthen the core
* Build the institution
* Make a difference in the world.

These strategies are, in one sense, sequential (or at least hierarchical). However they are more appropriately viewed as developmental or organic capacities. Organic development proceeds with sudden jumps and plateaus; we’re often surprised when a child suddenly develops new skills or shoots up seemingly overnight. Organizations grow in the same way. While the strategies as laid imply predictable direction and growth, the reality is that our journey will be filled with surprises and serendipity.
tactical implications

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
—Carlyle
strengthen the core

1. Develop enlivened leadership in both staff and board capable of producing extraordinary results in life.
2. Develop a sustainable business model.
3. Develop a board and staff culture that is inherently developmental. This implies fierce and unyielding dedication to authentic relationships and rigorous dialogue. Revamping the hiring and recruitment processes is a key dimension of this effort.
4. Develop a Kripalu approach to hatha yoga (traditional postures and breathing) that integrates its past, honors its future, and thrives in the marketplace.
5. Invest in and develop the KYTA network, YTT graduates, and overall professional training curriculum.
6. Re-design all information systems so that the right information is collected, disseminated, and acted upon.
7. Re-design the Kripalu volunteer program so the results produced match up with our bedrock principles, vision, and mission. Continuously invent new ways for master teachers of yoga to thrive in connection with the institution.
8. Create a future vision and master plan for the main building and property that reflects our bedrock principles, vision, and mission, and allows us to deal skillfully with the current short-term facility challenges.

build the institution

1. Develop a broader, deeper program of philanthropy to realize our vision of a new institution, a vision that cannot be met by operating income alone.
2. Develop a wellness center with a therapeutic component to promote the healing power of yoga and integrative medicine.
3. Create college-level immersion programs in service of developing the integrated leaders of tomorrow and ensuring that the wisdom of our elders is successfully passed on to the next generation.
4. Be continuously on the lookout for new ways for people outside the institution to do their work in the world in a virtuous cycle with the institution.
5. Aim our programmatic initiatives to increase national profile and enhance institutional prestige.
6. Fulfill the vision for the main facility outlined in the master plan.
7. Increase the secular profile and decrease the sectarian profile of the institution in order to create greater access to the institution for more people.
8. Develop a network of relationships with other institutions and individuals (universities, hospitals, political leaders, entrepreneurs, etc.) that can enhance the institutional profile in mainstream culture.

make a difference in the world

1. Develop programs, meetings, and symposia aimed at changing paradigms with large application in the worlds of yoga, medicine, mental health, the arts, and society at large.
2. Develop programs that reach underserved populations (e.g., the Teaching for Diversity program).
3. Aim our programming at long-term developmental engagements with people so that our impact is lasting and deep (e.g., develop a thousand-hour yoga teachers’ curriculum and a long-term advanced Ayurveda practitioner certificate).
4. Find ways to support our professional graduates so they thrive in the world.
5. Design our web relationships with our customers, our graduates, the yoga world, and society at large to leverage technology as a means of manifesting our mission in the world.
6. Create a product development and publishing effort that skillfully advances our bedrock principles and mission to a mass audience.
7. Carry out research activities that validate the effects of yoga and expand the applications of yoga to all of the aims of life.

Each of these tactical efforts also contains numerous sub-tactics that further break down into discreet departmental objectives and cross-departmental projects.
conclusion

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
—Mohandas K.Gandhi

Because we strive to demonstrate and transmit yoga, the future we are pursuing is not a goal but a process whose outcome remains, in a fundamental way, invisible. On one hand, we are very definitely steering by principles and vision and like any conventional organization we have clear and explicit tactical thinking about how to realize this shared vision. But, on the other hand, we are attempting to embody yoga and the discipline we employ is based on allowing life to interact with us to create new futures as yet hidden.

We are therefore more focused on getting the DNA of the organization right, than working to manifest a particular future. In other words who we are is more important than what we accomplish. The true measure of our success is not the size of our endowment, or the square footage of our buildings, but the effect we have on those who work with us, and ultimately our impact on society.

As trustees, the task before us is more complex and demanding than those faced by our peers at other institutions. The radical nature of this perspective makes a narrow conventional interaction around the institution’s future problematic. If we follow such a conventional model we will miss the central point: our endeavor is itself yoga. The only way for all parties to truly participate in the institution’s future is to embody the discipline of yoga together, authentically bringing all that God has given us— meaning our full authentic selves—into a rigorous, intentional, creative, intimate, and developmental effort to bring the gift of yoga to more people.

Most important, the only way to bring yoga to more people is to bring more yoga to ourselves.

To be a warrior is to learn how to be genuine in every moment of our life.
—Chogyam Trungpa

The Kripalu Approach: Yoga for Everybody

It is worth remembering that there is only one yoga and can only be one yoga. True, aspirants are of different natures and resort to various doctrines and practices to progress along the path. But one who completes the process of yoga understands its different paths and sees that the systematic practice of various disciplines leads to the same place. In the end, all yogas lead to one great Yoga. —Swami Kripalu (1913–1981)

Kripalu Yoga developed from one of the American ashram experiments of the 1960s, when Eastern spirituality was spreading to the West and the enticing promise of enlightenment drew young idealists and seekers to Indian gurus and masters. More than 40 years later, while the Kripalu ashram and the guru no longer exist, Kripalu Yoga continues to thrive as a practical, accessible, and contemporary approach to yoga—with more than 5,000 trained teachers worldwide and nearly 40 affiliated studios. The former ashram is now a nonprofit educational retreat center that welcomes more than 25,000 people a year for workshops, trainings, and retreats at its idyllic setting in western Massachusetts.

Like most yoga styles and traditions, Kripalu Yoga uses classic asanas (though not a particular set or routine), pranayama (breathwork), development of a quiet mind, and the practice of relaxation. What defines Kripalu Yoga is its emphasis: following the flow of prana (life-force energy), practicing compassionate self-acceptance, developing witness consciousness (observing the activity of the mind without judgment), and taking what is learned “off the mat” and into daily life.

One reason Kripalu Yoga has been embraced by so many people is that it is designed to adapt to all body types, ages, fitness levels, and interests.

“Kripalu Yoga classes take into account people’s individuality and personal expression,” says Devarshi Steven Hartman, Director of Kripalu’s Professional Training programs, who found Kripalu Yoga in the early 1980s. “Kripalu Yoga teachers are trained to recognize that we are multidimensional beings, not just physical, and that creativity and spirituality are intricately linked.”

And like with other styles of yoga, students notice the effects of practice from the first time they step onto their mats.

“Kripalu Yoga begins to bear fruit from the very beginning,” says Stephen Cope, Director of the Kripalu Institute for Extraordinary Living and author of The Wisdom of Yoga. “You don’t have to master asanas to feel the peaceful connection to your inner self.”

Swami Kripalu
Kripalu Yoga originally developed through the teachings of Amrit Desai, who was a student of Swami Kripalvanandaji (Swami Kripalu). Swami Kripalu was a highly respected kundalini yoga master from the Gujarat province of India who had experienced spontaneous pranic (energetic) movement as a result of prolonged deep meditation. He later discovered that the spontaneous physical movements he experienced were actually classical hatha yoga postures.

Through his studies and personal experience, Swami Kripalu came to believe that asana, pranayama, and mudras (hand gestures) must be done in the context of classical raja yoga (as presented in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras), in order to still the mind. In 1977, Swami Kripalu came to visit the Kripalu ashram and stayed for nearly four years, during which time he broke his commitment to silence to deliver a series of rare lectures, which were attended by some of today’s senior Kripalu teachers. He returned to India in 1981 and passed away shortly thereafter.

Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training
When Amrit started the Kripalu ashram in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania, he asked Don Stapleton, an ashram member and professor of art education with a strong interest in the sources of creativity, to develop a Kripalu Yoga teacher training. Under Stapleton’s direction, with input from other ashram members, Kripalu Yoga shifted from an authoritative teaching model and developed as an experiential learning process.

“We developed a teaching model that helps people find a way back to their own knowing and access creativity through personal experience,” says Stapleton, who now serves as Dean of Yoga Education for Kripalu. “And because Kripalu Yoga helps each person get in touch with their own inner knowing, everyone’s yoga is going to look different.” This is why each Kripalu Yoga teacher’s classes are unique; each teacher brings his or her own passion, focus, and interest and may draw from a variety of yoga styles.

“The tools and techniques of Kripalu Yoga, designed to draw the mind inward and awaken energy, can be used with any yoga style or tradition,” says Hartman. “We often say that the Kripalu approach provides a tool bag from which to draw on in classes or for personal practice.”

The Three Stages of Kripalu Yoga
Kripalu Yoga offers a framework of three stages of practice. The first stage emphasizes postural alignment and coordination of breath and movement, bringing the mind fully present to the body and to sensations through classical hatha yoga asanas. During this stage, postures are held only for a short time, which stretches and strengthens the body, releases chronic muscle tension, and encourages relaxation. The goal is to allow a strong flow of prana throughout the body and to develop mental concentration.

In the second stage, the inner experience is systematically deepened through meditation and the holding of postures for prolonged periods. In addition to strengthening muscles, this prolonged holding helps develop concentration and an ability to recognize and release deep-seated emotional and mental tensions. Over time, unconscious material comes to the surface, where it can be felt, seen, and let go of to restore emotional balance and mental clarity. The heart opens, creating an increased capacity for learning and growth.

During the third stage, also known as “meditation in motion,” both the body and the mind are deeply relaxed, and the body is invited to move spontaneously from one posture to another in direct response to the inner urges and prompting of prana.

A Typical Class
Beginning Kripalu Yoga classes focus on stage one, while more advanced classes may include all three stages. Classes are often defined as gentle, moderate, or vigorous, referring to the intensity of practice; however, because our needs vary from day to day and over time, students in Kripalu Yoga classes are encouraged to tune in to their bodies and practice at an intensity that feels right in the present moment. Each class includes centering, pranayama, postures, and meditation, and ends with a period of deep relaxation to revitalize the respiratory, nervous, endocrine, digestive, and other major systems of the body.

Taking Yoga off the Mat
Regular yoga practice is designed to increase sensitivity to the body’s needs, which naturally leads to healthier choices about diet, exercise, and other lifestyle habits. Observation of the mind’s activity—without judgment—helps to deepen the ability to express oneself, to truly listen to others, and to be authentic in relationships. Since its inception, the Kripalu approach has been an integrated one and has included focus on a healthy diet and body care, authentic communication and relationships, and right livelihood and service.

In other words, this is yoga as a way of life, often described in the Kripalu approach as taking yoga “off the mat.” With Kripalu Yoga, students are invited to bring the fruits of practice-concentration, focus, awareness, compassion, intention, clarity, and inner peace-into all aspects of everyday life. Consistent practice creates thriving and the opportunity for extraordinary living.

As Cope describes it, “We practice on the mat as a laboratory for being present and fulfilled in life and then bring this capacity-to quiet the mind, relax, and stay focused-to other tasks, whether it’s making widgets or collecting stamps. As we begin to practice, we become tuned in to hunches or intuitive guidance. These subtle aspects of the mind guide us to right behavior and highest dharma (life purpose). And the by-product of a highly focused mind is an experience of happiness and equanimity.”

Kripalu’s Future
Thousands of years ago, when yoga was first developed, practices were passed down from guru to disciple. These ancient yogis could never have conceived of today’s global consciousness. As society continues to change and evolve, people’s needs on and off the yoga mat will continue to change as well.

“Because Kripalu Yoga is a living, spontaneous style of yoga, its expression is always evolving to express people’s current needs,” says Hartman.

At present, more than 300 people a year are trained as Kripalu Yoga teachers through 200- and 500-hour teacher certification programs. Many graduates engage in the vital task of bringing yoga to the general population; some go on to specialize in using yoga to treat depression, eating disorders, chronic illness, and other physical, emotional, and social challenges. Through Kripalu’s Teaching for Diversity program, teachers can receive grants to work with special populations who might not otherwise have access to yoga, including the elderly and at-risk youth.

The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health is itself undergoing a renaissance, seen in an expansion of the facilities, the development of specialized institutes, and growth in the number of Kripalu Yoga teachers and studios throughout the world.
Recommended Reading

Cope, Stephen. The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extraordinary Living (Bantam, 2006) and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam, 2000)

Faulds, Richard, and Senior Teachers at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. Kripalu Yoga: A Guide to Practice On and Off the Mat (Bantam, 2005)

Stapleton, Don. Self-Awakening Yoga: The Expansion of Consciousness Through the Body’s Own Wisdom (Healing Arts Press, 2004)
About the Authors

Lori J. Batcheller, MA, MPT, is a certified Kripalu Yoga teacher, journal writing instructor, and freelance writer whose work focuses on healing mind, body, and spirit.

Grace Welker, MEd, is a yogini, writer, and lifelong learner who currently serves as Kripalu’s senior editor.

Article taken here.

History of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health

History of Kripalu Center

Kripalu’s history parallels the evolution of yoga in America, which progresses from

* An exclusive reliance on Eastern tradition, teachers, and cultural forms
* To the development of Western teachers steeped in the tradition and able to transmit its authentic depths in formats appropriate to our time and place
* To the integration of yoga with contemporary discoveries in medicine, psychology, and science.

The Yoga Society of Pennsylvania

Indian-born Amrit Desai came to the United States in 1960 to attend the Philadelphia College of Art. A close disciple of a renowned Indian yoga master named Swami Kripalu, Desai taught yoga classes to a growing number of yoga enthusiasts in the Philadelphia area. In 1966, Desai and nine others formed the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit organization organized to advance the science and philosophy of yoga. Within a few years, Desai had trained numerous Americans as teachers and the Yoga Society was offering 150 yoga classes a week. Along with classes, the yoga Society made yoga books and other educational resources available to students, an activity that continues today in the Kripalu Shop.

The First Kripalu Centers

In 1972, Desai left the Philadelphia area with a handful of dedicated students to establish a small, residential yoga retreat in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania. This was the first “Kripalu Center” and reflected a desire on Desai’s part to move beyond the limits of what can be offered in a yoga class. In 1974, the name of the nonprofit organization was changed to “Kripalu Yoga Fellowship” to reflect an increasing emphasis on propagating the teachings of Swami Kripalu, as interpreted by Desai, through residential retreats, depth programs, and the training of Kripalu Yoga teachers. Desai’s wife, Urmila, also played an important role in the establishment of the community.

In 1975, Kripalu purchased a second and significantly larger facility in Summit Station, Pennsylvania. Summit Station was the first full expression of the Kripalu vision for a residential yoga, health, and program center. Desai believed that a residential center could provide students with an immersion experience in the yoga lifestyle powerful enough to inspire them to explore and adopt new ways of being. The Summit Station facility had space for student housing, group yoga instruction, meal preparation, and a fully-staffed holistic health center that offered massage and a variety of other health services in concert with two physicians. This health center was the genesis of “healing arts,” which remains an important aspect of the Kripalu curriculum and mission.

The Rise of the Ashram

Both the Sumneytown retreat and Summit Station center were staffed by an inspired group of volunteers and yoga enthusiasts who formed the nucleus of an intentional community or ashram. Desai was the ashram’s spiritual leader and guru, and under his guidance the ashram staff was soon offering a modest curriculum of yoga, holistic health, and self-discovery programs to the public. Developed and taught by ashram residents, these programs were the outgrowth of practices taught by Desai and carried on within the community.

In 1977, Amrit Desai’s teacher, Swami Kripalu, came to the United States and spent the last four years of his life in residence at Sumneytown and Summit Station. Although continuing a lifestyle of intensive yoga practice that entailed limited public contact, Swami Kripalu’s presence galvanized the growth of the ashram community. Delivering periodic talks and teachings, his example and writings inspired thousands to begin regular yoga practice. Swami Kripalu returned to India in 1981, where he died shortly thereafter. His teachings, especially those delivered in America, still form the basis of the Kripalu approach.

Kripalu Finds Its Permanent Home in Stockbridge

Back in America, Kripalu Center continued to grow at a rapid rate, and the ashram community was soon overflowing the Sumneytown and Summit Station facilities. In early 1983, Kripalu purchased its current Stockbridge, Massachusetts, location, a former Jesuit seminary on a property called Shadowbrook, that had been vacant for 13 years. After a flurry of renovation work, the doors of Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health were opened in December. Drawing on their experience at Sumneytown and Summit Station, the resident staff was able to offer a varied and cutting-edge curriculum of programs on yoga, health, massage and bodywork, personal growth, and spirituality.

Read a brief history of the Shadowbrook property, once the residence of Andrew Carnegie.

Amrit Desai grew into a potent spiritual teacher in his own right during the 1970s. During the 1980s, he became an international figure in yoga, delivering talks, performing yoga demonstrations, and leading seminars worldwide. As the Summit Station and later the Sumneytown properties were sold, the Stockbridge community continued to grow in both size and sophistication until it contained more than 350 residents, necessitating the 1990 purchase of Foxhollow, another sizeable facility nearby to house senior members.

While Desai was engaged in traveling and teaching, a cadre of senior ashram residents developed into competent leaders, teachers, healers, and depth practitioners. It was during the late 1980s that efforts began to integrate the teachings of yoga with psychology, science, and Western approaches to healing and self-development. Instead of relying on ancient doctrines and Sanskrit terminology, the teachings of Kripalu Yoga were increasingly voiced by Western teachers in language that meshed with a contemporary worldview. It was during this time that Kripalu developed the Health for Life program, which combined a yoga lifestyle with aerobic exercise, alternative healing modalities, and growth psychology, foreshadowing the work now underway with the Institute for Integrated Healing.

During the late 1980s, the legal structure of the community was formalized as a church and religious order. While they had always lived simply and worked as volunteers, ashram residents now took formal vows of celibacy, obedience, and simplicity to declare their status as yoga monks and nuns. It was at this time that the ashram grew to include a sizeable congregation of lay members, individuals, and families living locally who took part in community activities on a part-time basis.

By 1990, the ashram’s network had expanded to include a significant number of Kripalu Yoga teachers living throughout North America and the world, leading local groups practicing the Kripalu teachings. In 1991, the Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association (KYTA) was formed to coordinate the training and professional development of Kripalu-certified teachers. The 2,200 members of KYTA and the thousands of students they touch each week remain a vital part of the Kripalu mission.

The Fall of the Guru

Kripalu Center continued to expand in size and influence until late 1994. It was at this time that revelations surfaced of sexual relationships between Desai and several female ashram residents. When these and other alleged abuses of power were confirmed, Kripalu’s Board of Trustees called for Desai’s resignation. This ushered in a profoundly painful chapter in Kripalu’s history.

During 1995 and 1996, it grew increasingly evident that the bloom of the resident community was fading. The ashram gradually disbanded, with the majority of residents leaving the area to pursue new lives. In retrospect, it is easy to see that shattering the myth of the omniscient guru was forcing the entire Kripalu community to a higher level of maturity and individuation. At the time, a profound disillusionment gripped everyone who had dedicated themselves to birthing and sustaining the Kripalu work.

In the darkest of days, a collective of more than one hundred former residents formed a “claims group” to assert a class action lawsuit against Kripalu. Facing challenges on all sides, Kripalu did its best to make amends with all its long-term residents. A comprehensive settlement was negotiated and over $2.5 million dollars was paid to help senior residents pursue healing, education, and job training, or to meet other needs. After review by the Massachusetts Attorney General, the settlement was funded in part through the sale of the Foxhollow property. As a result, no claims ever went to court. Kripalu has the distinction of being the first, and possibly the only, yoga center in North America to survive the transition from a traditional guru-disciple structure to a secular, all-inclusive center for health, wellness, and lifestyle change.

Phoenix From the Ashes

Although divested of virtually all its assets except the building, Kripalu was once again free to pursue its mission. In the midst of the travail, a group of residents remained committed to the operation of Kripalu Center, whose doors never closed during this period. Eventually these residents were hired as paid employees and moved into the local area while continuing to work for Kripalu.

Between 1998 and 2004, the efforts of Kripalu’s leadership and staff were focused on establishing itself as a nationally-recognized yoga retreat and experiential program center. While continuing to teach Kripalu Yoga, it reached out to a broad mix of teachers from other traditions and disciplines to expand its curriculum and appeal to the growing number of Americans interested in yoga, health, wellness, and personal growth. This nonsectarian willingness to embrace all schools of yoga as venerable, along with other traditional and contemporary approaches to personal transformation, is an important part of the Kripalu approach.

During these years, Kripalu was restructured into a standard nonprofit organization offering a broad curriculum of educational programs and spiritual retreats. This new structure was formalized in 1999, when Kripalu officially ceased being a religious order.

From Surviving to Thriving

In 2004, Kripalu’s Board of Trustees hired its current executive leaders, Garrett and Ila Sarley. Both had distinguished themselves as long-term residents and leaders of the ashram community. In 1996, they left Kripalu to accept executive positions at Omega Institute, another well-known program center, and developed a second career as authors, teachers, and consultants. When the Sarleys returned to Kripalu, they brought with them a mature and tested understanding of what comprises yoga in the world and what this practice looks like in a secular, educational organization. They returned to Kripalu with the intention of reinvigorating the founding vision and mission of the organization while at the same time making it vitally relevant to society at large. Kripalu under their leadership is essentially an experiment in applying the art and science of yoga as a basis for organizational development and contribution to culture. All of the steps they have taken are informed by this experiment.

In their first two years, Garret and Ila’s focus has been strengthening the management team and staff, revitalizing the program curriculum and outreach efforts, upgrading the services of the center to meet guest expectations and current standards in the retreat industry, and accomplishing much-needed deferred maintenance and upgrades to the facility. Underpinning all these efforts to make Kripalu a professionally run, high-performing organization is their more fundamental work of transforming the culture at the institution. This organizational development work is the core of the experiment in using the practice of yoga as a basis for all of the center’s activity.

All these efforts of the Sarleys have been supported by Kripalu’s Board of Trustees.

Under the combined leadership of the Sarleys and the Board of Trustees, Kripalu is growing beyond its identity as a retreat and program center. Their shared vision is to create a whole new kind of educational organization, a place where you can go to explore what it means to be fully alive and fulfilled. The vision includes not only the continuation of Kripalu’s extensive yoga and program curriculum, but also the development of several schools and institutes, including the

* Kripalu School of Yoga
* Kripalu School of Ayurveda
* Kripalu School of Massage
* Institute for Integrated Leadership, focused on serving the needs of college-age individuals
* Institute for Extraordinary Living, pioneering the interface of yoga and other approaches to creativity and peak performance
* Institute for Integrated Healing, combining the best of traditional, allopathic, and leading-edge medicine

Plans are in place to build a new residential annex, creating a more spacious and inviting facility able to house the above schools and institutes.

Article taken here.

Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health

Kripalu Center is a relatively well-known tax exempt charity with 2007 revenue of $25.6 million, operating as a health and yoga retreat center attended primarily by affluent tourists in Stockbridge, Massachusetts near Tanglewood Music Center. It occupies a sprawling, 160,000 square-foot former Jesuit seminary built in 1957 in a spare and inexpensive architectural style in an otherwise rural area of the Berkshires, and can accommodate more than 400 nightly guests. SELF magazine named Kripalu "Best Yoga Spa" of 2000.

History
Kripalu had its beginnings in 1965 when Amrit Desai founded the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania, later called Kripalu, to provide yoga classes and training for yoga teachers. Desai, aka "Gurudev", ("beloved teacher"), is a native of Halol, India, where he met guru Swami Kripalvananda for whom Kripalu is named, and who followers believe was the 28th incarnation of Shiva, the supreme god of Hinduism. During the 1970s, Desai established ashrams run by mostly unpaid followers in Sumneytown, Pa., and nearby Summit Station.

Kripalu acquired its Stockbridge property in 1983, and soon after, Kripalu legally became a religious order. Residents took vows of celibacy and obedience to Desai, who resigned in 1994, following improper sexual conduct. After issuing a denial, Desai admitted, in an apology, to sexual relations regarding three female residents.[5] Kripalu later paid $2.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to Desai's administration of Kripalu. The suit represented more than 100 former residents, and Kripalu made the court-approved payment partly by selling its adjacent Foxhollow property. Kripalu had purchased Foxhollow to provide housing for its most senior members.

Kripalu switched its legal status to a non-profit charity, from a religion order in 1999, and as of March 2009, was headed by a president, Patton Garrett Sarley (aka Dinabandhu), and his wife, its vice-president Mary Sarley (aka Ila), who both became followers of Amrit Desai during the 1980s. Together in their charitable endeavor, the Sarley couple earn nearly a half million dollars annually (see below for references).

By the time of Desai's resignation, Patton Sarley had risen to the rank of chief operating officer. With Desai's departure, Sarley temporarily left Kripalu, and for a time headed the similar Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in nearby Rhinebeck, New York. Kripalu was able to locate and re-hire Sarley in 2004 "with the help of a nationally recognized non-profit executive search firm," retained when Kripalu was experiencing "negative trends in mission viability and financial viability."

Several other "key employees" of Kripalu as of 2009 were also previous followers of Desai.

Kripalu Yoga
Kripalu Yoga is a registered trademark of Kripalu Yoga Fellowship, and a form of Hatha Yoga that defines itself as therapeutic, and spiritually focused. It uses yoga concepts of inner focus and meditation along with standard yoga poses and "breathwork," as well as "development of a quiet mind" and relaxation. Kripalu emphasizes "following the flow" of prana, or life-force energy, compassionate self-acceptance, observing the activity of the mind without judgment, and taking what is learned into daily life.

As of 2008, Kripalu said it offered more than 750 programs and spiritual retreats attended by about 25,000 people annually. [7] It also offered training and marketing support to teachers of its trademarked yoga, along with a semester-long program for young adults, projects in music, weight loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. A further program in health offered various folk remedies for disease.

Facility
The building that currently houses Kripalu stands near the site of the former "Shadowbrook Cottage," reputedly the largest private residence in the U.S. at the time of its completion in 1894 and later destroyed by fire. It was named for Shadow Brook, a minor stream to the west of the site referred to by Nathaniel Hawthorne in Wonderbook. [6] [7] Jesuits moved away in 1970 due to a dwindling number of seminarians. Thirteen years later, Kripalu acquired the 160,000 square-foot building with which the Jesuits had replaced Shadowbrook Cottage.

Conservation easements for 225 acres of the 300-acre property were sold by Kripalu in 1997, under the U.S. Forest Legacy Program for the Yokun Ridge Reserve area.

Center Offers Guests 'High Risk' Drinking Water
Kripalu owns and maintains its own water supply system, deemed at "high risk" of contamination with heating oil, gasoline, pesticides and other hazardous materials by a 2003 report from the state Department of Environmental Protection [10] which for these reasons, cited Kripalu for water supply violations in December 2006. [11] The following year, Kripalu's state-imposed deadline for replacing a hazardous well used to supply its guests with drinking water was extended to Aug. 1, 2009.

Unfinished Sewage Project Tax Exempt
In 2008 Kripalu began construction of a 34,000 square-foot housing annex on the Stockbridge property, as well as improvements to its sewage treatment plant and parking lot. Construction was to be financed with proceeds of a $20 million tax-exempt bond issued through Mass Development, a quasi-governmental economic development agency, with Berkshire Bank as lead lender. [8] Kripalu's sewage flows into the Stockbridge Bowl and from there via a small stream, to the Housatonic River.

Executive Compensation and Tax-Free Status
In January 2009, Kripalu eliminated 15% of its staff and forecast up to a 30% drop in 2009 revenue, while managers agreed to forgo their "bonuses" as well as to pay reductions ranging from 5% to 15%.[9] Patton Garrett Sarley Jr., and his wife Mary, as president and vice president, obtained combined 2007 executive compensation of $425,000.

Kripalu is tax exempt because it qualifies as a non-profit company and a charity under rules governing 501(c)(3) organizations, although its nightly rates range up to $462 per person. Its revenue in 2007 totaled $25.6 million and sources included "holistic therapies" which produced $2.44 million; seminars, $18.65 million, and "direct public support" of $1.4 million, according to its 2007 IRS document Form 990,[11]. Expenses of $24.03 million included $11.11 million in payroll and benefits for a staff of 436, plus $1.075 million related to executive compensation for seven "key employees" in 2007.

Kripalu compensation was highlighted in widely distributed media reports in the 1990s concerning Amrit Desai's estimated annual compensation of $350,000 to $450,000 including housing and other benefits, when Kripalu residents serving as unpaid staff received weekly cash stipends of $70.

Board of Trustees (2009)
Richard Faulds, Chairman and Chief Counsel, President of Kripalu from 1998-2001
Marcy Balter, holistic health educator
Maya Breuer, Director of Santosha School of Yoga (Providence, R.I.)
Jerry Colonna[13], investor
Lisette Cooper, Chief Executive of Athena Capital Advisors
Steve Dinkelaker, President of American Lease Insurance
Marcia Feuer, Director for Public Policy, Mental Health Asso. (Nassau County, N.Y.)
Sharon Ginsburg, President, Ginsburg Family Foundation
Maxine Grad, member of the Vermont House of Representatives
Sarah Hancock, philanthropist
Timothy Henry, business consultant
Joan Kopperl, community activist
Justin Morreale, Managing Partner, Bingham McCutchen (Boston)
Michael Potts, Chief Executive, Rocky Mountain Institute
George White, Asst. Director, Center for Communications and Community, UCLA