nagdeo contributors
GaiaYoga culture is a thriving, holistically-designed culture that sustainably generates true human freedom.
Cultures are a combination of practices that emerge out of underlying cultural consciousness. We’ve spent over 25 years developing this cultural consciousness and refining our practices. Our prayer is that our community can serve as an inspirational and practical model for sane, sustainable and joyful human life.
GaiaYoga Culture is a vision and practice being pioneered at GaiaYoga Gardens that integrates many teachings into a cohesive consciousness and lifestyle or yoga that supports a person in living from their deepest humanity.
More than an individual practice, it includes developing bonded-human-social-structures (cultures, tribes, clans, and families) that express our true nature as human beings. GaiaYoga is in many ways the antidote to the predominant culture designed around unchecked capitalism, fantasy, car-and machine-based human settlements, dysfunctional family-systems, emotional illiteracy, fear and oppression of nature, chemical dependence, absence of integrity, and broken relationships.
One of the things we’ve learned from Permaculture is that most problems, especially recurring ones, can be traced to design errors. In other words, if you start out with a bad design, no matter how much energy you put into tweaking it, you’re still going to end up with problems. We think the same is true of lifestyles and cultures. We believe the reason that most of us are stuck in various ways in our lives is due to poor design, not an inherent problem in us as humans.
GaiaYoga goes much broader and deeper than most “yogas,” which primarily address an individuals’ body-mind — supporting inner peace and connection to Spirit. GaiaYoga is a dynamic and holistic “yoga” that addresses Spirit (realizing, integrating, and enjoying the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine), the Self (including the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental bodies), Community (including the intimate, personal, local, collective, and universal spheres of community), and Earth (developing strategies to sustainably live as an integrated “cell” of The Earth, individually and culturally).
GaiaYoga as a holistic practice is inspired by the cultural and spiritual wisdom of many indigenous cultures in which people lived sustainably for untold generations. Sadly, these indigenous cultures have mostly “lost their battles” (literally) with the current “beast” that is running the world. Most of us were raised by this beast and intentionally or not, we continue the pattern.
GaiaYoga® is the art and wisdom of living holistically, unifying Spirit, self, community, and Earth.
GaiaYoga
GYG Story
GaiaYoga began as the lifework of Ano Tarletz Hanamana.
He walked away from the culture he was born into in the early 1990s when he was in his early 20s. Since then, he’s been healing himself, learning, practicing and teachings skills that support GaiaYoga Culture, unlearning a whole lot and bringing this vision to life! In 2001, he co-created the GaiaYoga teaching and in 2003 he co-founded GaiaYoga Gardens (GYG). In 2009, he re-founded GYG with Melekai Matson. And in 2018, after the lava flow that covered Puna and a small part of GYG, the ownership of the land was transferred into a religious non-profit with 6 adult members, setting up the legal structure for a true community of equals to flourish and invite more members into.