Three India-Inspired Retreat Centers in the Hudson Valley

The drive to Peace Village Learning and Retreat Center, perched atop the Catskills just above Kaaterskill Falls, seems to wind up into the stratosphere. Although the weather is clear below, you might find yourself steering through clouds into the guest parking lot, as I did one May afternoon, and then walking along an entry path that vanishes into mist. On days like this, the door to the reception hall appears out of nowhere, as if rolled in by stage hands. Inside, a few people move about quietly, dressed in flowing white clothes. Shrouded in a celestial microclimate and dedicated to the inner life, the place has an otherworldliness and calm that envelops you right away. And well it should: Peace Village is the Catskills outpost of the Brahma Kumaris—the largest spiritual organization in the world led by women. With a home base in Rajasthan, India, the Brahma Kumaris have satellite hubs around the globe—some 8,500 community centers and about 15 retreat centers offering an immersive experience like this one.

Maybe it’s the lofty highlands or the labyrinth of waterways, but something about the Hudson Valley makes the terrain ideal for spiritual centers, many of them outposts of sister communities in India. There are places like Shanti Mandir—the 300-acre ashram in Walden that is the residence of Swami Nityananda (aka Gurudev) when he is in the US—which invites people to disconnect from their busy lives and immerse in chanting, meditation, vegetarian food, nature walks, hatha yoga, and philosophy talks, either through residential options or community sessions every Sunday. There is the Vivekananda Retreat Ridgely in Stone Ridge, a center for meditation and pilgrimage dedicated to Vedanta spiritual philosophy. From seekers’ destinations like Matagiri Sri Aurobindo Center to luxe, food-centered havens such as newcomer Yoga Vida Farms, there is something for everyone. It’s as if, just north of the hectic swirl of New York City, we’ve cooked up a laboratory for the higher consciousness, and a chance to be nurtured by Indian spiritual traditions.

Discovering Soul Consciousness

At Peace Village, the focus is on experiencing your highest possible self. “It’s a knowledge-based path, based on spiritual learning,” says Judy Rodgers, a resident of Peace Village who works on international projects for the Brahma Kumaris. “We start every day in class, coming together to read and listen and talk. Then we try to live according to the class.” Although the Brahma Kumaris organization is women-led, it’s not women-only: About 40 percent of its practitioners are men, and the group’s founder, Dada Lekraj (or Brahma Baba), was a man. “He felt that for a long time, feminine energy had been underplayed,” says Kala Iyengar, director at Peace Village. “He had a strong vision that it was time to reverse that balance, and passed the organization on to women”—a revolutionary idea at the time in 1930s India. Today, the Brahma Kumaris’ spiritual leader is 103-year-old Dadi Janki, who is still very active. (When I visited, the community was happily anticipating her arrival at Peace Village in late May.)

“A big part of what we do is meditation,” explains Iyengar. “We do Raja Yoga meditation to practice something called Soul Consciousness, which is consciousness of the self as spirit or soul. We believe that each one of us has an individual connection with the supreme source of spiritual energy. It’s very important to reignite that connection at this time, when so much about the world is upside down.” Raja Yoga meditation is practiced with the eyes open, so that you can apply its benefits toward daily life, including the people and situations you need to face with clear sight and a calm presence. You’re instructed to gently rest the eyes on a point in front of you, ideally on a point of light so that you can remember that you, too, are light.

Although the Brahma Kumaris don’t focus strongly on the feminine aspect of the organization, there is a certain emphasis on the power and strength of mothers, as well as on the importance of the kitchen. “We consider the making of food to be a sacred process,” says Rodgers. Wandering about the center, you’ll periodically hear soft music begin to play, called “traffic control,” which signals a time to take a break. “This helps us to avoid haphazard ways of thinking or acting,” says Iyengar. Weekend retreatants soak up an atmosphere that is nurturing and grounding. Retreats are by-donation so people only pay what they can afford. Some are geared toward beginner or experienced practitioners, while others are designed for certain groups like healthcare workers or members of the media.

“There are so many influences of fear, anxiety, and sorrow in the world, and people are becoming heavy as a result of that,” says Rodgers. “When they come here, they realize they can disconnect from the anxiety and fear and reconnect the soul to the supreme source—and to love, kindness, mercy, and peace, which strengthens the soul so that you can be in the world.” You don’t have to live on top of a mountain to do it. Visitors return home with a practice they can continue in daily life, even if it’s just a few minutes a day upon waking. “When we fill ourselves with spiritual energy, it makes a big difference,” says Iyengar. “There is a stark contrast in doing nothing and doing life, and in doing this and doing life. It’s beautiful to live that way.”

A Seeker’s Destination: Matagiri

Sometimes the Hudson Valley’s artistic and creative side merges with its love for Indian spiritual traditions. This is the case at Matagiri Sri Aurobindo Center, a community haven in Mount Tremper dedicated to 20th-century gurus Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, the founders of Integral Yoga. The artist and actor Sam Spanier cofounded Matagiri with his life partner Eric Hughes after years of seeking and study—which led him to Pondicherry, India, and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The vision for Matagiri came from The Mother herself, who told Spanier that he would be a bridge between East and West.

“[Spanier] took that very deeply within him,” says Julian Lines, who took over stewardship of Matagiri with his wife, Wendy, after Spanier died in 2008. “He came up to the Woodstock area in the late 1960s with the intention of fulfilling that destiny.” Once he found and purchased the property, Matagiri developed as a kind of miniature outpost of Auroville, the experimental community in India created by The Mother to realize the ideals of peace and human unity. Matagiri became the largest distributor of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother’s books in the US, and they distributed handmade paper, stationery, and incense from the ashram as a way to support the community. “About nine or more people at a time were living there collectively,” says Lines. “Some flowed through on their way to live in India. Or they wanted to have relationships, so they partnered and left. It was a celibate community. It didn’t match the lifestyle of young people in the 1960s. Yet it was a place of artists and seekers and visionaries, people who had a rich inner life and were expressing it one way or another.”

Today, Matagiri continues to expand the concepts of human unity and evolution of consciousness out into the world. Recently, the organization unveiled the new construction of a straw-bale eco-house, and it is here that the center offers programs open to the community, including a reading and meditation session every Sunday at 3:00 and gentle hatha yoga classes taught by Wendy Lines on Sunday and Monday mornings. This summer, Matagiri will begin offering Awareness Through the Body movement classes and trainings, focused on giving children a chance to become spiritually self-aware. Matagiri also hosts Indian music concerts, including one by slide guitar player Barun Kumar Pal to be held on August 15, Sri Aurobindo’s birthday and the 50-year anniversary of the Woodstock festival—a cosmic date for both the center and its environs.

Luxury Ashram: Yoga Vida Farms

Recently, a farm-focused retreat center sprung to life in Wawarsing—starting from the seed of an idea planted at an ashram in the Indian holy town of Vrindavan. The man with the idea was Michael Patton, a former Wall Street broker who cofounded Yoga Vida studios in Manhattan with Hillaria Baldwin (the yogini married to Alec Baldwin). “The ashram has a beautiful, open garden that feeds the majority of produce to the guests—and coming from a place with every convenience at your fingertips like New York City, it was shocking to see a lot of vegetables in the ground,” says Patton. “We were sitting there looking at the garden after a philosophy discussion on the Bhagavad Gita, when I had the idea of doing a small friends-and-family CSA back home.” The idea soon grew into a public-facing retreat center where wellness-oriented New Yorkers could go to learn more about their food and where it comes from, while ingesting a tidbit of yoga philosophy along the way.

Set on 62 acres adjacent to a 30,000-acre state forest, Yoga Vida Farms opened its doors on Memorial Day Weekend. The site includes a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse and four-acre farm studded with vegetables that are about to pop. “We’re excited to show people more about the process of what local, sustainable, smaller-scale agriculture can look like and what types of opportunities it can create with the varieties you can offer,” says Patton, who notes that the organic farming movement actually started in India. Yet far from a traditional ashram where accommodations are simple and the living is monastic, Yoga Vida Farms is a luxury destination—offering a curated, artisan experience catered to upscale urban folk. The interior finishes in the guesthouse are super high-end, with ABC Carpet & Home furniture, custom reclaimed wood touches, and luxe bed linens. The food is haute vegetarian, masterminded by chef-farmer Davis Lindsey, who trained at Blue Hill in Greenwich Village.

It’s an exclusive experience far removed from the pilgrim-friendly simplicity of Indian ashram life, but with New York City nearby, there’s a market for it. “Not everybody wants dorm-style housing and cafeteria food,” says Patton. “There’s nothing else like this in the Hudson Valley.” Yet little touches bring yoga philosophy to guests almost through the backdoor—such as putting a Bhagavad Gita in the night stand next to every bed. The Gita’s message of non-attachment—or performing work without attachment to results—is eye-opening for results-oriented New Yorkers. And rather than just pumping out more “yoga factories” in the city, Patton says the farm retreat center lets him touch people’s lives in a more meaningful way. “We do that through food, nature, philosophy, and just time and space, which are luxuries that many New Yorkers don’t really have these days.”

This article appears in June 2019.