Kripalu Center For Yoga & Health

Kripalu’s vision is to build a new kind of educational institution, one dedicated to the inquiry of what creates a fulfilled human life. From our point of view, human fulfillment is the critical challenge of our time and the answer to many of our societal problems. The only way we can address the complexity of our personal lives and society as a whole is for more of us to explore, understand, and experience what it means to live an integrated life in which we feel fully alive, connected to others, and committed to fostering the welfare of the whole. We call this exploring the yoga of life.

Kripalu’s mission remains teaching the art and science of yoga, an approach consistently proven to uplift individuals and benefit society. The techniques of yoga integrate body, mind, and spirit, helping both individuals and groups flourish and perform at peak levels. The only way in which this new kind of institution can be built is for its leaders, members, and patrons to embody the discipline of yoga by acting skillfully, being authentic, and confronting our biases and fears as we work together in pursuit of truth.

While grounded in yoga, it is important to understand that Kripalu does not espouse a narrow or sectarian mindset. According to the Kripalu tradition, yoga is an honest and unfettered inquiry into all practices, philosophies, techniques, and approaches that produce thriving for individuals, families, communities, societies, and the planet. This “non-denominational yoga” includes perennial wisdom gleaned from all the world’s religions and spiritual traditions, together with the amazing knowledge gained from science, psychology, and contemporary researchers. It also includes healing techniques drawn from traditional, allopathic, and complementary/ alternative medicine that help individuals heal and return to high levels of functioning.

As an institution, Kripalu is dedicated to yoga as a rigorous, non-dogmatic, and non-sectarian inquiry into the core issues of life. This kind of truth-based inquiry inevitably frees us from fears, fantasies, and distortions and produces positive ways of being that generate beneficial results.

To support rigorous inquiry and dialogue, Kripalu operates in accord with a set of core
values that includes: a commitment to authenticity, radical self-trust, the courage to fully express one’s self, and unconditional positive regard for others.

Embracing these and other values is a proven way to move toward the state of integrated functioning where what you think, feel, say, and do are aligned and in synch.