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Formed: 2003 Established: 2003
GaiaYoga Gardens
Pahoa, Hawaii,
United States
(Big Island)
Front Entrance
 GaiaYoga Gardens is a permaculture homestead, holistic culture experiment, and fledgling intentional community on Hawaii’s Big Island. We’re dedicated to living in harmony with the Earth, connecting with Spirit, engaging personal growth and healing, fostering cooperative community, and developing holistic and sustainable life patterns. We practice and teach permaculture, nonviolent (compassionate) communication, natural diet (including raw foods and instinctive eating), connection parenting, hatha yoga, cooperative living, and spirituality.
Our lifestyle includes:
1) Living simply, sustainably, and close to nature through living rurally and off-grid in low-impact eco-dwellings; growing food; operating eco-businesses; and trading for goods and services.
2) Cultivating a healthy self through eating an organic diet; having an active work/service life; engaging personal growth work; balancing autonomy and interdependence; having a life-affirming orientation toward sexuality; and being clothing-optional.
3) Establishing a land-sharing community that's intimate, caring, and feels like family. This includes practicing cooperative decision making, nonviolent communication; cooperating relative to resources and land development; having community businesses; sharing childrearing; and having fun together!
4) Integrating spirituality into our communal life through morning circles, prayer, hatha yoga, rituals, shamanic journeying, rites of passage, and spiritual study.
Our dream is for GaiaYoga Gardens to be a beacon of light and love and a living example of the kind of world we want.
  Status: Growing
Website: http://www.gaiayoga.org
Contact:
GaiaYoga Gardens
RR 2 #3334
Pahoa, Hawaii 96778 United States

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Community location is placed at the center of the zip/postal code, city/state, or city/country (not based on street addresses)
Last Updated:5/27/2009
 
Visitors Accepted
 (The cocobar is open!)
Visitor Process: People can do a day-visit with us by doing a Landance-&-Lunch. For overnight stays, we offer eco-rentals. For those considering residency or wanting an in-depth learning experience, we offer our GaiaYoga 101 Internship Program. For more information, go to our website or email us.
Affiliations: Polestar Gardens Community
:: La'akea Community

Network Affiliations:
Fellowship for Intentional Community
Statement of Housing Non-discrimination:
No Answer Provided
Population
Members(adults and children):
10
Non-member Residents:
2
(Fluxuates)
Open to new members:
Yes
Government
Decision Making:
Other
(Decision making is based in Nonviolent Communication process of everyone's needs getting mattering. Some decisions are consensus, some are made by the current owner. Sociacracy is our overall goal/vision for decsion making.)
Identified Leader:
Yes
(Ano, the only person here from the beginning, is the de-facto leader.)
Leadership Core Group:
Yes
(The people who are commited to being here make most of the decisions.)
Labor and Money
Financial Style:
Partial income sharing
(By choice. We cooperate a lot with money, but at this time we don't share income. It could change.)
Open to Members with Pre-existing Debt:
Yes
Labor Contribution:
Expected
(Members participate 17.5 hours/week minimum or contribute financially to the community.)
Join Fee:
Yes
($40,000, this can be paid all at once, over time, or through sweat equity. You can stay here a year before considering joining.)
Regular Fees:
Yes
($200/month residency fee)
Land and Buildings
Rural
(Beautiful, agricultural/jungle/alternative lifestyle area on wet side of the Big Island of Hawaii.)
Area:
17.8 acres (7.2 hectares)
(All neighbors have large acreage too.)
Land Owned By:
An absentee landlord
(We intend the community to become the landowners in the future, but at this point we are renting the land from Ano's ex-partner (Ano and her co-owned the land from 2003-2007). This will change soon, but that's true as of May, 2009)
Number of Residences:
5
(Our structures are tropical breeze houses, where are sophisticated tarp-roofed structures. It's easy to make more living spaces.)
Cohousing:
No
Food, etc.
Percentage of Food Grown:
21-50%
(We intend to grow all of our food, but our trees won't be mature for several years. We also forage/trade for about 1/3 of our food, including coconuts. We have a milk cow at a neighbor's which provides lots of dairy products.)
Share Community Meals:
2-5 times/week
(People eat together here and there, but we don't have a lot of sit down meals because most of us eat a mono raw food diet and just eat when we're hungry. We have a shared kitchen and often 2 or 3 people eat at the same time. We share food freely with each other.)
Dietary Choice or Restrictions:
There are some dietary restrictions
(We want people to eat only organic foods and to maximize whole, fresh, local, unprocessed foods.)
Dietary Practice:
Other
(Dietary practices include raw foods diet or natural diet of raw & cooked, indigenous-style foods. We practice individual choice relative to being omnivorous, vegetarian, or vegan. Our focus is on natural, organic, local diets that are optimally supportive of health for each individual, and we emphasize practicing tolerance, respect, and support relative to individual dietary choices.)
Alcohol Use:
Seldom used
(Very seldom used. Most of us don't drink at all.)
Tobacco Use:
Prohibited
Social Factors
Common Spiritual Practices:
No Answer
(There's not one unified way we handle our spritiuality. We have a daily time of silence and prayer together during our morning circle.)
Which Spiritual Traditions(s):
Eclectic (integrates pieces from many religions)
(Drawing from Tantra, Eastern traditions, paganism, shamanism, Waking Down and Nonviolent Communication.)
Educational Style(s):
Private school off the property
(There's a sudbury-style school down the road operated by close friends of ours that the children attend.)
 
 
Front Entrance
Living the Good Life Hawaii-Style
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We happily link to the following organizations, all of whom share our strong commitment to promoting community and a more cooperative world:
Cohousing The Federation of Egalitarian Communities - Communes Coop Community Cooperative Sustainable Intentional North American Students of Cooperation