Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health

Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health occupies a former Jesuit novitiate perched on a hilltop in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, its 160,000-square-foot building overlooking Lake Mahkeenac, formerly known as Shadowbrook, a Gilded Age estate once owned by Andrew Carnegie. The modern center opened its doors in December 1983, the culmination of a journey that began eleven years earlier in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania, where Indian-born Amrit Desai established a residential yoga ashram. Desai, a disciple of Swami Kripalvananda (1913-1981), named the center after his guru, whose name means "compassionate one" in Sanskrit. Swami Kripalu spent his final four years (1977-1981) teaching at the Pennsylvania ashram, delivering talks on meditation, pranayama, and the integration of yoga into everyday life, a legacy that continues to shape the center's philosophy.

The center's early decades were marked by intensive residential community life, more than 350 staff members by the mid-1980s, practicing celibacy, silent meditations beginning at 5 AM, and immersion in kundalini yoga. This ashram phase ended abruptly in 1994 when revelations of Desai's sexual and financial misconduct led to his resignation. In 1999, Kripalu reorganized as a secular educational nonprofit governed by a Board of Trustees, transforming from guru-centered ashram to what it is today: North America's largest yoga retreat center, serving tens of thousands of visitors annually.

Today, Kripalu sits on more than 100 acres of forests, lawns, gardens, and lakefront, with hiking trails, a labyrinth, and a private beach. The property straddles Stockbridge and Lenox, placing it minutes from Tanglewood and the cultural riches of the Berkshires. Inside, the building retains traces of its Jesuit origins, long, austere corridors, institutional bones, but the atmosphere has softened into something more inviting. A massive dining hall serves buffet meals three times daily; breakfast is silent. A sunroom overlooks the hills. A café dispenses organic coffee and vegan cookies. Yoga studios host classes from gentle restorative to vigorous vinyasa. The gift shop stocks self-improvement books, mala beads, and $100 yoga pants.

Kripalu's programming is organized through four Schools: Yoga, Ayurveda, Integrative Yoga Therapy, and Mindful Outdoor Leadership. The signature Retreat & Renewal (R&R) program allows guests to build their own schedule from daily yoga classes, workshops on topics like creative collaging or breathwork, guided hikes, kayaking on the lake, and evening events including the famous midday DansKinetics session, freestyle ecstatic dance to live drumming that Condé Nast Traveler called "surprisingly therapeutic." Alternately, guests can enroll in structured programs led by visiting presenters, well-known teachers from various yoga traditions, writers, relationship experts, and thought leaders. Teacher trainings range from 200-hour certifications to advanced 800-hour Professional Yoga Therapist programs.

The Institute for Extraordinary Living, founded by Stephen Cope, Kripalu's Scholar Emeritus, conducts yoga research in partnership with Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and other institutions, studying everything from PTSD in veterans to anxiety in musicians. The RISE program (Resilience, Inspiration, Self-care, Empowerment) brings stress-resilience trainings to educators, healthcare workers, and law enforcement, anchored in mindfulness, yoga, and positive psychology.

Kripalu's current identity is both more accessible and more diffuse than its ashram days. It welcomes everyone from yoga novices on weekend getaways to serious practitioners logging their tenth visit, from couples seeking reconnection to solo travelers walking the snowy labyrinth in January. The center employs roughly 400-600 staff (numbers fluctuate seasonally) and can accommodate more than 650 overnight guests. Revenue in 2019 was $37.24 million. The center closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, laying off 450 of its 489 staff, and reopened in 2021 with a streamlined onsite model and expanded online offerings. CEO Robert Mulhall leads a mission-driven nonprofit dedicated to "igniting personal and societal transformation", a phrase that captures both the center's spiritual inheritance and its contemporary educational reach.