GaiaYoga Gardens In Hawaii

Hi Permies,

If you are interested in living in an off-grid intentional community in Hawaii check us out.  We are GaiaYoga Gardens (www.gaiayoga.org).  Our mission is to heal, activate, and live our holistic hearts in multi-generational bonded community.  Our community is on a 20+ year old food forest that has mature producing trees of most every kind of tropical fruit/nut you can think of.  We also have a milking cow and abundant drinking coconuts.  The strength of what we are doing is on our culture and consciousness.

I looked it up and I'm surprised you guys are allowed to exist in the way you do. I've seen farms that had composting toilets get the health commission called on them after neighbors falsely accused them of spreading the composted human waste around fruit trees, the health commission does come investigate on those reports on Kauai. I was able to find online that is exactly what you guys do with the byproduct of your composting toilets? Also not really a fan of the "intuitive diet" where you have some people choosing to survive off of only fruit which is not a sustainable long term diet in terms of optimal health, it can be a timed challenge but should not be used as a lifestyle. I think using yoga in your name is misleading since you guys don't practice yoga.

For anyone consider this I'd like to point out something. In Hawaii it's not very hard to find an outdoors labor job for $25+ per hour so do the math, 25x16=400 per week,400x4weeks=1600 per month. In comparison to working a similar outdoors labor job for hourly pay you are paying $1600 per month for a tarp and tent campsite that you set up yourself. You can go on Wolfers and find plenty of work trade farms across the Islands with similar deals, some farms understand though and require a lot less commitment in exchange for camping off grid. Either way these places are more useful for people wanting to visit for a while or for people looking to move over and need time to get their roots set in locally, +the people that don't really fit in in society usually are the long term stays.

Hi George,

I'm not sure how you have decided you know what we do with our humamanure.  And you also don't understand Instinctive Eating (it is not "intuitive eating." It is not at all about eating "only fruit."

Also, no one in the world values work-trade at $25/hr.  And there is not just oodles of work for people to do for $25/hr cash all over Hawaii, as you say.  And that also requires having a car.

If you read on our website what GaiaYoga is, you would understand that we are very much practicing "Yoga" here.  Albiet, our focus is not Hatha Yoga.  But that is just one type of Yoga.

And our place is actually not designed for people to "camp".  And while I agree long term people who would stay here "don't really fit in society" you make it sound like it's because there's something "wrong" with said people, not that they see through the fundamental design errors of the dominant culture and want to invest their life in creating something different.

So I respectfully ask you to reconsider much of the content of your post.

I would suggest you do more research before you condemn our place.

Aloha, Ano

I read it from one of your past internships report. I can go on craigslist right now and post multiple farm positions and landscape positions for $25 including ones with possibilities of onsite living, can't really speak for Big Island but if people are coming to Hawaii it's not too hard to choose a different Island. On my property is one of the hardest workers I've ever met in my life who has lived here for the past 10 years, he doesn't fit into society as he refuses to drive cars, doesn't believe goats exist, and chuckles to himself as he works. Is what it is, he works hard and I don't have to give him much directions. I just gave an example that the intern gave in terms of intuition diet, she also mentioned that others ate differently such as raw meats and fruits and some people only ate fruit, it was all up to their intuition which is not a great way to full fill all of the bodies nutrient requirements for optimal health which you may not understand? She also specifically mentioned that there was no yoga being practiced until her and some other workers got together on their own to start yoga before work in the morning. Anyways your only post on this site is an ad for your property and book that you wrote (that cover pic is kinda icky to me), moving someones life over to Hawaii is somewhat of a big deal to people and I'm here to give at least one other thought approach to give people more info for their decisions.

George,

Big Island, Puna is a whole different economic world than where you are.

I don't teach or practice eating by "intuition," I teach eating by instinct.  There is not a lot of "hatha yoga" being practiced here.  We make it very clear the difference between GaiaYoga and Hatha Yoga.

I don't mind you giving information, but the way you are doing it lands as undermining of what I'm sharing.  We are an intentional community, where people are not welcome to be in a perennial work-trade situation (where they we are essentially "the boss" and they are "the employee," indefinitely.  After the "dating" phase, people are invited to become members here and actually become equal in terms of power, decision making, security, and equity.  The property is owned by a religious non-profit.  It is not privately owned.  

This alone makes staying here a very different possibility than most farms and homesteads, where there isn't a system to support real shared power, decision making, security, family, etc.  

Of course, most folks don't pursue that path, but some do.

Aloha, Ano