Gardens Take Center Stage At One Of The Largest Centers For Yoga In The Country

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Zinnias on their second wind, cantaloupes ripening in a divider in the parking lot, sweet corn, sheep, white gravel ... Kripalu’s grounds have as many flavors as its classes, and they can soothe as well as massage. The public is welcome to sample them. Grounds Manager Kevin Foran, “Moose,” has worked at Kripalu for 25 years. He may be the oldest employee at the center. He first saw the grounds at Kripalu after 12 years of neglect. This year, he has increased them by two wildflower meadows in full bloom and a seven-circuit labyrinth. “I have seen the grounds go from major disrepair to a place of beauty and alignment,” he said. Foran led a one-reporter-tour of the Kripalu grounds, with Cathy Husid, media relations director, and Carolyn Lundeen, whose spiritual name is Sudha. Sudha has been at Kripalu for 15 years. The labyrinth was her dream. She is a senior teacher, a former oncology nurse. She will lead a breast cancer survivor healing retreat over Labor Day weekend; she is a survivor herself. “Having lived here so many years, as much as I am and I know Kevin is connected to the grounds, I found it hard to leave the buildings ...” she said. When Kripalu bought this property, March 4 1993, the neighbors said they paid $1.25 million for the view and got the building thrown in, Foran said. He focuses on working with nature, not controlling it. “Mother nature is really my —” “—boss,” Sudha said. “—Partner,” Foran said. “I work with the outer landscape. Kripalu produces the inner landscape.” Volunteers primarily maintain the grounds — Foran calls it his Spiritual Landscape Program. “It is not a job. We work mutually with the earth. The volunteers’ love and dedication manifest themselves. ... Kripalu Center exists — was born from — selfless service. Because of that, have created a significant and sustained employee base.” At the main entrance, a volunteer was pruning hanging plants. Statues of mythological beings sat under them. Shouting, stomping, laughing, and cheering echoed through a side wall. Husid said a monthlong teacher training program was meeting there. These classes accept 60 to 70 people in each, and always fill up, she said. The students spend some time learning to let go of tension, sometimes through silliness. When Kripalu first bought the place, Foran said, it looked like someone who has not had a haircut in 13 years. In some areas, he could not see into the forest. He could not see the massive rock wall that buttressed the Stokes’ garden, but he heard water dripping. He crawled on his belly through the undergrowth until he found it. It now lies along the Kripalu driveway. He began clearing brush and replenishing soil. Sudha said more than 300 volunteers worked on that clearing operation: Foran needed massive volunteer labor for a project like that. In spring, she said, the whole wall turns yellow-and-orange with blossoming trailing plants. In 1893, Stokes bought what is now the Kripalu property. He built the Berkshire cottage Shadowbrook overlooking Stockbridge Bowl, and Ernest Bowditch designed its landscape. Foran said many people have the misconception that Frederick Olmstead, who designed Central Park, designed the Stokes’ grounds. Olmstead did draw up a design plan. Mrs. Stokes rejected it “for minimal reasons,” Foran said: she did not feel that her guests’ horses and carriages would have ample enough room to turn around in the driveway. Shadowbrook became the second largest summer home in the country. Andrew Carnegie bought it in 1917. He died there two years later. Jesuits ran a seminary in the mansion, and when it burned, they built a new one on the grounds. Some of the higher trees on the hill shade the Meditation Garden dedicated to Swammi Kripalu. Foran said he has just remodeled this garden. It began life as the Stokes’ old rose garden, with hemlocks lining it like a hedge. The hemlocks grew and shaded it during years of neglect. Foran squeezed his way into the center of the tangle, through brambles, and saw roses and peonies still blooming in a splatter of light. Over next two years, he took out brambles, dead wood, soil, and brought in fresh soil. A bust of Swammi Kripalu overlooks white gravel edged with flag stones, and Foran has left a rake for Zen work. The public is welcome to walk on the grounds, and to come here, he said. The Kripalu staff would appreciate it if people start at the front desk. By next spring, he said, he will have something more official on display about how to use different gardens. Sudha proposed a plaque telling people how to walk a meditation garden. Foran said Kripalu was disrupting a sense of isolation it has had for years. Husid said Kripalu has been Eagle employer of the month recently, had a booth at Apple Squeeze last year and a benefit concert for earthquake victims in India — there were many from the town Swammi Kripalu once lived in. Kripalu has worked with the Head Start program. People and organizations can have events here: The Berkshire Co-Op., a health food store in Great Barrington, had a board meeting this summer. Kevin praised the leadership at Kripalu. It has a traditional structure, but employees can always talk to anyone in administration. “In spirit, we are all potentially leaders,” he said. “We all take responsibility ... we speak to each other with reverence.” Foran led the way onto the Stokes’ croquet court. Husid said Kripalu cross country skiing classes practice on this small lawn. Stokes’ old walking paths lead to it, down stone stairs, past a frame of sticks — possibly an old horse tether. Foran cleared these paths, too. Besides daily maintenance and development, he budgets time for reclamation projects, uncovering the original design of the Stokes’ property. Further down, the path widens into an alcove around the pedestal from a Jesuit statue — a Virgin or saint. The Jesuits took their statues with them when they left. A clearing on the other side of the trail makes room for what Foran called “the reflectionless pond”: a reflecting pond emptied, cleaned and painted with a giant star. Foran said he hopes to restore it and put in a fountain soon. He had it running about 10 years ago, but it leaked too much water. The Kripalu development department allows people to contribute to specific jobs; someone could adopt the fountain project, and get it running again. Foran said he works on the philosophy that “the whole world is one altar.” On the lake side of Kripalu, lawns run down the hill to a behemoth Foran calls the umbrella tree. Once a day, he said, someone will ask him the name of it. It is a Camperdown Elm, most likely the largest in the northeast. It is not a native, and probably between 125 to 140 years old. People also call this elm the wishing-well tree, and often meditate underneath it. Foran said in 1983, Kripalu had about 65 acres of lawn to maintain. He has cut it down to 30 to 35 acres, and he plans to make the mansion lawn his next wildflower meadow. He will keep a path to the tree. Less mowing burns less gasoline, and is more ecologically sound all around. Kripalu sits on 300 acres. Stokes had 25 full-time gardeners. Kripalu has five, part time. When the mansion burnt down, builders bulldozed the remains into the basement foundation. When Foran and his volunteers dig in the old lawn, they still turn up everything from tubs to bedsprings. The Stokes’ stone walk leads down to three miles of hiking trails on the property. There is a story behind this walk. Irish and Italian stone masons built it. They apparently had hot tempers in close quarters. The feuding got so bad, Foran said, that Mrs. Stokes had to bring in a minister to keep the peace. Foran called the valley where walk led into the trails Sunnybrook, to complement Shadowbrook. “It’s all about balance,” he said. Down the trail, logs are laid out in a stone ring for campfires and evening singalongs. Foran said Kripalu volunteers created this bonfire for an earth day celebration one year, after they had planted 375 trees on the property. They had poems, music, inspirations. Classes and retreats often use it now. Past a swingset and a gaggle of Canada geese, and over a footbridge, Foran’s most recent endeavor has blossomed. He dreamed up two wildflower meadows this year. He planted them with a mix of seeds, 37 kinds of flowers: cosmos, bachelor’s buttons, two kinds of poppies, pale red and deep blue and pale yellow and dark yellow and scarlet and orange ... “If you sit in the field, quietly, you see all the insects that work with the flowers,” he said; he works to develop a symbiotic relationship with the land. The field has attracted hummingbirds and many kinds of butterflies. It has also attracted people passing on the road, who stop to walk through. Foran keeps a path clear through the flowers. Sudha said it was like a living Monet, a live bit of Impressionism, a companion piece to the Clark Art Institute’s exhibit. A sign marks the entrance to the path. It is signed: department of the exterior. A local farmer uses the land behind this meadow for sweet corn. He has committed to no pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers. He sells corn on roadside stands and Kripalu volunteers gather some. Kripalu Center invites local farmers to use the property. They have planted land behind the main building as an apple orchard; they lend it out to a neighbor that raises sheep, for pasture. Kripalu does not charge rent. The sheep keep the grass mowed. “Many people that come here have very little exposure to the environment,” Husid said. They have to come to know that it is safe to be in the meadow or next to the livestock. The cornfield yields to another of this year’s projects, this time Sudha’s dream. On Columbus day, Sudha will lead a three day yoga and Labyrinth walking weekend. She has long been fascinated by sacred geography, she said. In late 80s, her healer in Vermont introduced Sudha to the labyrinth in her backyard. Unlike mazes, labyrinths have only one path, Sudha explained. They date back 3,000 years and more, and appear in almost every basic religion. Up at Kripalu, they have built a classic seven circuit labyrinth or Cretan labyrinth. It runs in switch-backs; it is a scramble, she said. People walking the labyrinth should feel themselves thinking: “I give up. I don’t know where I am. Oh yeah, this is like my life.” The ground path takes small natural rises. Right in the middle, they have created a place to meditate. Sudha brought a dowser to help position the labyrinth. A dowser is traditionally someone who uses a forked rod to find water, and also places on land with an energy pattern, she said. Native Americans have come here and said these fields are very special land, that there was an old gathering of tribes held here. One Lakota said the land had a very potent quality. Sudha called a Foran a dowser in his own right. She also said he was always up for good ideas. Foran said he had had the labyrinth site place zoned for agriculture, but wanted to have an open area in the cornfield — a crop circle. “I wanted to create controversy,” he said. The Kripalu volunteers said prayers with local religious leaders, including a minister from a Richmond church. They asked permission to build, Sudha said. Local people can come to Sudha’s labyrinth walk as day people. Over the next year, Sudha and the labyrinth designer will add to its plantings. Grace Cathedral in San Francisco runs the worldwide Labyrinth Project; Sudha said she is trying to get Kripalu’s labyrinth registered. “Something’s afoot,” she said; the county has seen a sudden surge in labyrinths. They help at least to de-stress walkers, she said. It has to do with right and left brain hemispheres; Americans tend to use the left brain, she said: “go go.” The labyrinth forces people to slow down. Sea shells rest between some of the plants. A friend of Yudha’s brought the conch shell, she said. The plantings reach 92 feet in diameter in each circuit, 1,040 feet in all: about six football fields or half a mile in and back out. When a large crowd walks the labyrinth, she said, they create energy: like a marble game in which someone sends the marbles down a roller coaster shoot, trying to build up enough momentum to keep the marble moving through the whole course. Kripalu has been in Lenox over 25 years. They have a large crowd of regulars, and yoga has recently ballooned into popularity. People come from all over the world to study at Kripalu. Kripalu yoga is known as the yoga of compassion, meditation in motion. There are many kinds of yoga, Cathy Husid said. Hatha yoga, which gets attention in the media, is a stretch yoga, Husid said. Ashanta yoga is dance. And there is a yoga of service ... Kripalu has brought together many different kinds. Besides teacher training, Kripalu offers more than 600 programs in four categories: yoga & meditation, outdoor & fitness, health & healing, self & spirit, and unstructured days of retreat & renewal. “We create an environment that offers balance,” Husid said. For example, Kripalu guests eat breakfast in silence in the main dining hall — though in other rooms, people may talk. During later meals, diners can use the same rooms to eat in silence. People have said that just that silent meal made a tremendous difference to them. It starts the day very differently, Husid said, from a bagel and coffee in the car.
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McCann Recognizes Superintendent Award Recipient

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

Landon LeClair and Superintendent James Brosnan with Landon's parents Eric and Susan LeClair, who is a teacher at McCann. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Superintendent's Award has been presented to Landon LeClair, a senior in McCann Technical School's advanced manufacturing course. 
 
The presentation was made last Thursday by Superintendent Jame Brosnan after Principal Justin Kratz read from teachers' letters extolling LeClair's school work, leadership and dedication. 
 
"He's become somewhat legendary at the Fall State Leadership Conference for trying to be a leader at his dinner table, getting an entire plate of cookies for him and all his friends," read Kratz to chuckles from the School Committee. "Landon was always a dedicated student and a quiet leader who cared about mastering the content."
 
LeClair was also recognized for his participation on the school's golf team and for mentoring younger teammates. 
 
"Landon jumped in tutoring the student so thoroughly that the freshman was able to demonstrate proficiency on an assessment despite the missed class time for golf matches," read Kratz.
 
The principal noted that the school also received feedback from LeClair's co-op employer, who rated him with all fours.
 
"This week, we sent Landon to our other machine shop to help load and run parts in the CNC mill," his employer wrote to the school. LeClair was so competent the supervisor advised the central shop might not get him back. 
 
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