Kalani Oceanside Retreat Village - Kalapana Sea View Estates, HI
Kalapana Sea View Estates, HI
It has been a week since I arrived in Hawaii so I think it's time to describe the place where I’m staying. I’m staying at Kalani Oceanside Retreat Village which you can check out for yourself at www.Kalani.com. I found this place by Googling "Hawaii Yoga Retreat" several months ago. I was actually looking for a retreat I had read about in Yoga Journal magazine, but this place caught my eye because it has been around for over 30 years, and seemed well-established and “legit”. It is not specifically a yoga retreat although there are yoga classes offered every day.
Kalani is a retreat center where guests come for simply to vacation or to attend a workshop like a yoga teacher training, for example. At any one time there may be 50-100 guests but there are over 120 volunteers. Volunteers come for 1-3 month stints, but many volunteers extend their commitment to several more months, or leave and come back to Kalani, sometimes to live permanently.
Volunteers work in one of four departments – Kitchen, Housekeeping, Horticulture or Maintenance. I am working in the kitchen and Chris will be working in Horticulture. In exchange for working four 7-hour shifts per week, we receive three healthy and delicious meals per day, access to all the same classes and amenities as the guests, and basically the opportunity to live in Hawaii, (albeit in a tent) for an extended period.
Living in “community” is an important feature of Kalani. There is a community meeting every Monday morning where new volunteers are welcomed and we say goodbye to volunteers who are leaving. Meals are shared in the open-air dining “Lanai” at long tables where you meet new people from all over the world on a regular basis. Community living takes some getting used to; I felt a little shy and lonely at first but almost everyone is friendly and welcoming, and you get to know people quickly when you see them at meals three times per day and work together in your department. All ages are represented from early twenties to sixties; the common thread among the volunteers seems to be that everyone is in some sort of transition, be it starting a career or changing careers, recently retired, separated or divorced, or healing from a significant loss.
There is a jam-packed schedule of activities for guests and volunteers, and you can choose to be as active or passive as you like. Today, for example, I have already attended a 90-minute yoga class, a 90-minute guided meditation class, and am going to something else this afternoon. There are classes in Hula, Hawaiian culture, and arts and crafts, in addition to different styles of yoga and meditation, as well as volleyball, dances, guided nature walks, trips to the nearby towns of Pahoa and Hilo, and an upcoming Puna Culinary Festival, to offer a few more examples. I am trying to strike a balance between being social and experiencing new things, with time for myself to relax by the pool and indulge in free time to write and read books. I find that I need a lot of sleep here – I suppose because I’m still adjusting to all the “newness” of this environment, culture and lifestyle.
The weather is hot and sunny every day with rain at some point every night. The landscapes in this immediate area vary from lush, tropical jungle to desolate expanses of hardened lava rock. The sounds are foreign to me as well – I arrived at Kalani after dark last Wednesday and was greeted by a cacophony of “cokee” frogs (not sure of the spelling), which I still haven’t seen but are incredibly loud and sound like birds. Mixed with the sound of wind through the palm trees, the ocean crashing in the distance, and real birds in the early morning, the place is alive with the symphony of nature.
I wish I could take a picture of the night sky so you could see how amazing the stars are here.
Every now and then when I find myself irritated because I lost my RayBans or my razor went missing from the shower, I pinch myself and remember, “Oh yeah, but I’m in Hawaii, so it’s all good!” Kalani is a safe and nurturing place to get grounded, and I am really looking forward to exploring more of the Big Island in the weeks and months to come.