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In the past year, there has been a 30 percent to 50 percent increase in the number of guests at the yoga farm, a rise that reflects the growing national appeal of yoga-oriented retreats. More than 16.5 million people practice yoga in America, according to Yoga Journal’s most recent market study from 2004, and Americans spend more than $300 million a year on yoga retreats and vacations.  

“A lot of major Fortune 500 companies have actually brought yoga in-house,” says Dayna Macy, communications director for Yoga Journal. “Yoga is an efficient way to do both a physical exercise and decrease stress.”

Vidya Chaitanya, 60, who manages the yoga farm, can attest to that. She had been a psychiatrist in England more than 20 years ago when three discs in her lower back fell out of place. She decided to give up her high-pressure job and turn to yoga. At the yoga farm, job titles hardly matter. In such a scenic setting, she says, the goal is to get away from professional stress. “They want relief,” she says. “They want to come to a place where they’re not the CEO.”

5:30 A.M. WAKE-UP BELL

Each day at the yoga farm begins at 5:30 when the wake-up bell rings. The sun has barely climbed over the hills as guests walk to the meditation room for satsang. Twice a day, guests are required to attend this two-hour session of meditation, chanting and listening as Sitaramananda (Sita, for short) lectures about the power of positive thinking and how life is a journey.

Ordained as a Hindu monk in 1985, Sita, 53, studied under Vishnu-devananda and has worked at the farm for 12 years, living in a modest two-story home overlooking the landscape. Her life’s journey began in Vietnam during the 1960s behind sandbag bomb shelters in her childhood bedroom. After growing up with the war outside her window, she started on a personal path to find peace. She came west for school and became a social worker in the 1980s after graduating from the University of Montreal. Then came her “aha” moment.

“I learned that Americans actually have a lot of problems,” she says. “You try to patch things, but you don’t understand why people suffer. Society is negative, and it won’t change. Yoga is a tool to help you change from within.”

During satsang, nearly two dozen guests sit on pillows facing an altar adorned with figures and pictures of Jesus, Buddha and the Hindu deity Krishna. After 30 minutes of silent group meditation, 5-foot 3-inch Sita enters the room in her traditional orange garb (“the color of light and fire which burns impurities”). She moves to the front of the room and kneels before the altar, then takes her seat, facing the group. After a moment of silence, she hums the sacred mantra which is said to be the sound of the universe:

“Oooooommmm.”

The guests harmonize with her and she repeats it two more times. In her lecture, Sita asks questions like “Who are you?” and “What is self-realization?” And when it ends, the Hindu monk exits the meditation room and heads home, driving up a rough and narrow dirt road in a Nissan Pathfinder.

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