Kripalu Center For Yoga & Health — Local services in Stockbridge

I had a great experience at Kripalu as an R&R guest for two days: from Monday 5/13 afternoon to Wednesday 5/15 noon. Thank you so much Kripalu team for creating this wonderful experience for people like me.

Room: I stayed in a Classic room with private bathroom. Room is simple and comfy. Don’t expect it to be luxurious resort, it’s not, but it’s clean and comfy. I like to open the window and feel the air.

Food: Dinning hall can be busy right after a class. The main buffet station is mostly vegetarian/meat items, with a few salad/soup options. Vegan food is in a separate section in the corner. I wish it was made more clearly. The vegan food options usually have two kinds of rice, two kinds of proteins (lentil, tempeh, tofu, etc.) and a few hot veggies and soups. It’s delicious, flavorful and unique. I wish I could learn some of the recipes. Food mostly is on the bland side compared to regular restaurants, but it’s healthy and natural, and there’s always seasonings on the table. There’s a silent dinning room which I used a lot. I think whoever came up with the idea of the silent dining room deserves a gold medal.

Yoga classes: as someone who has been practicing yoga with Youtube videos at home for many yers, I was definitely nervous about in-person classes. I took the gentle yoga on my first day, thinking I should ease into it. It was indeed gentle. The instructor Tracy is professional, funny and sweet, and I immediately loved the environment of the Main Hall. I love doing yoga with a full room of people, sharing the special moment. 90 minutes felt short! There are usually a gentle yoga and a moderate yoga class going at the same time. I took the moderate yoga with Lena on the 2nd day, it will give you some exercise! The yoga dance class was super fun and therapeutic, and I got emotional and cried during the class.

Other classes: my favorite class is the posture class taught by Kari. It’s scientific, and answers a lot of questions I had (and I think other people had too) in yoga posing. She used easy-to-understand terms, demonstrated herself, asked us to do different things in the class to implement her methods, and it all just made sense. The breath work class taught by Jon is transformative and imformative. The chair yoga taught by Lakshmi is educational, relaxing and fun. The RISE program sampling class is inspiring. All teachers are super professional, nice, patient, and resourceful.

The hike: I registered for the guided hiking on my third day. It was raining (drizzling), our guide Susan brought ponchos for us, which is very thoughtful. Kripalu is located among tons of beautiful trails, the one we went on was to the lake. We focused on our sensations, and meditated a few times along the way. The first half of the hiking is silence. I love the smell of fresh leaves/flowers, the sound of the rain falling on the leaves/lake, and the soft ground.

General environment: I like that there’s no push for guests to join/not join any activities, it’s completely self-paced. There are lots of indoor/outdoor shared space to sit down and enjoy the view/a book/writing. There are people chatting in the public areas, but you can also go about a whole day without talking to any human if you like.

Criticisms: when I checked in, the front desk employee gave me a wrong room (Standard). They corrected it immediately after I told them, and was apologetic, but still it seems like an avoidable mistake. The EV charging station in the back wasn’t working when I used it. The menu says there would be a vegan lasagna, but it’s actually vegetarian as it contains milk.

Overall: I came in with an open mind, and left with a few skills, a more calm self, and fun and beautiful memories. Thanks again to the Kripalu team, and also to other guests that shared the time/space with me during the past three days. They might not know it but I enjoyed being...

Staff: A+ Warm, helpful, kindhearted people I can't say enough good things about the staff here :)

Food: B+ Excellent quality and very healthy though sometimes the flavors weren't the best (but some of the dishes were truely excellent). I often found it very difficult to get enough protein. Im fine with vegetarian, which the meals often are but im not fine with every dish consisting of only carbs. For example one night was eggplant parm, pasta and asparagus. Theres always egg salad at the sandwhich bar which i found myself having to eat quite often. The bread is amazing!

Room: C coming to a yoga retreat center my expectation was a very simple, small room with a comfortable mattress. Room was small and simple, and the mattress was VERY lopsided, soft on one side hard on the other giving it a noticeable slant, so even though i had a queen bed i had to curl up against the edge. For how much money i paid i felt cheated. When i arrived i had to make my own bed too.

Grounds: B+ The view from the building and lawn is lovely with a lake and hills in the background. Great for watching sunrise and sunsets, eating outside, or just hanging out. The hiking trails are very short and dont really go anywhere. The medidation garden is underwhelming. The building itsself has several rooms for reading and meditating all of which have a comfortable, cozy atmosphere.

Workout Facilities: C The exercise room and weight room are very small. No more than two people fit comfortably in the weight room at any given time. The equipment is old and sparse. There's one bench, like 3 weight machines which does not include any cable machines for pushing or pulling exercises. The sauna was broken on my first day but fixed by the second.

Yoga classes: A- as im not much of a yogi i dont feel qualified to say much on the subject but i went to about 5 classes during my stay and enjoyed all of them. Great equipment and great teachers

Workshops: B- hit or miss here. Some were very enjoyable some were boring and kind of remedial. If attend more than one or two you start to hear the same things over and over

Massage Services: C- i had one massage that was okay and one that was so bad i wanted to end it halfway through but i didnt want to hurt my therapist's feelings. Perhaps i was unlucky because after talking to other guests my experience didnt seem to be the norm.

Summary: when you break it down my review can seem negative but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts at Kripalu. There also intangibles such as the awesome types of people it tends to attract. I would recommend it, especially if you live on the east coast and dont have to fly to get there. I recommend staying at a hotel nearby instead of rooming on campus.

What did the hippie chick say when asked to leave the...

I recently spent 4 days doing the R&R retreat. I found that if you are an experienced/serious yoga practitioner, you probably aren’t going to learn anything new about yoga practices here, doing the R&R. And if you are a dabbler in yoga, your learning may not go very deep anyway. In the “intermediate” yoga class, no adjustments were given, verbally or physically, and some people were very out of alignment. The class itself was basic asana. There aren’t many different types of yoga taught here, not enough yoga class options, or classes that touch upon other aspects of yoga in any deep way. There was a Yin class that I enjoyed and it was led well, but only very beginner/basic information was conveyed, essentially for people doing yin yoga for the first time. In an hour long Ayurveda class, really it boiled down to “drink sleepytime tea before bed and don’t look at your phone so much”. I don’t need an hour long class to get that information. The guided meditations also seemed pretty surface level, and I had a better experience meditating in their peaceful, small meditation room.

All in all you aren’t going to get very in depth instruction in any particular topic, probably unless you are taking a specific course there.

The food was definitely fine. If you don’t like the main course there are many alternative options like the sandwich bar, other stuff on the side etc. I heard lots of people complaining about the food but I found it was flavorful enough, fresh, and varied. Unfortunately there were some people staying there who seemed to loudly complain about many things and disrespect the very reasonable rules of the place.

The room was totally fine as well. I was not expecting luxury. Everything is very clean including the bathrooms and showers.

There is a “library” there which has a small selection of donated books. I really wish there was a more curated book selection. But it was a quiet place to read.

I had a very good massage there and I recommend the healing arts therapies.

For me, I didn’t learn anything new about yoga, but it was a good place to relax, turn off my phone, meditate, do a little gentle movement, go on a hike. The kayaking and the archery were very nice. In fact the archery experience involved more detailed instruction than anything else there.

It is what it is. I would probably only go back if I ever sign up for a...