Love Your Life! Awakening to the Beauty of Being Alive

Love Your Life, subtitled Awakening to the Beauty of Being Alive, is a weekend healing retreat at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is for anyone carrying grief, facing change or loss, or wanting to feel more alive and grateful, and it asks for no background in yoga, meditation or the study of mortality. Emmy award-winning composer Gary Malkin and spiritual intuitive Hope Fitzgerald lead it together.

The weekend is the workshop for Graceful Passages: A Companion for Living and Dying, the globally acclaimed listening resource. It draws on healing music, contemplative practices, channeled transmissions, joyful play and heart-centered conversation within a loving community.

What to Expect

The work follows a four-step "Chrysalis Process." Over the weekend you address and metabolize unresolved grief from the past, cultivate self-love through acceptance and forgiveness, face the unknown and the reality of your mortality, and awaken gratitude and joy at the miracle of life. The aim is to build your capacity to move through change, growth, life and loss, and to find a new path toward what the program calls your "one, wild, and precious life."

The retreat begins on Friday, with check-in from 2:00 pm, a Kripalu Yoga class, dinner, and a first program session from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. Saturday and Sunday follow one rhythm:

- 6:30 to 7:45 am: Kripalu Yoga class
- 7:30 to 9:00 am: silent breakfast
- 9:00 to 11:30 am: program session
- 11:30 am to 1:30 pm: lunch
- 1:30 to 4:00 pm: program session
- 4:45 to 6:00 pm: Kripalu Yoga class
- 5:30 to 7:30 pm: dinner
- 7:30 to 9:00 pm: optional evening program session

Monday opens with yoga and a silent breakfast, followed by a final program session from 9:00 to 11:00 am, then lunch and departure. Times may shift, and the schedule given at check-in has the final details and room locations.

About Gary Malkin

Gary Malkin is an Emmy award-winning composer. He brings his immersive music to the weekend along with an empathic temperament shaped by experience as a performer, speaker and facilitator.

About Hope Fitzgerald

Hope Fitzgerald is a spiritual guide, intuitive dowser and founder of the Infinity Wave, a 10th-dimensional energetic of love, compassion and flow. Through meditations, workshops and teachings, she gently supports others in awakening their inner wisdom and embracing spiritual evolution with grace and authenticity. In this retreat she contributes her work as a transmissive spiritual intuitive, guide and group facilitator.

The Setting

Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, offers accommodations that are intentionally simple, meant to help you unplug and feel grounded. You can choose a private room for solitude or a shared, dormitory-style room if you want community connection. Rooms are ready by 4:00 pm, and a luggage room holds your bags until then. On the last day, check-out is at 10:00 am, and you may stay on campus and take part in workshops until 2:00 pm.

Before You Go

The retreat is open to all levels and offered in English. Your stay includes three nutritious meals a day, more than ten daily yoga and movement classes, the program sessions with Gary Malkin and Hope Fitzgerald, access to the Kripalu grounds and amenities, and your accommodation, with the room type chosen separately. Healing Arts sessions and items from the Kripalu Shop and Café are available for purchase, and transportation to and from the venue is not included.