The idea of a “university for life,” might sound fuzzy and hark to eternal unemployment, but in the 33 years since its founders used that phrase as their organizing principle, the nonprofit Omega Institute for Holistic Studies has achieved a $17 million annual operating budget serving some 23,000 “participants” each year, including service veterans, at its Rhinebeck campus: those seeking wellness of body, mind and spirit.

“We offer people a lot of opportunity for people to delve deeply into their healing journey,” said Chrissa J. Pullicino, Omega”™s media relations manager, providing a tour of the campus as it was preparing to open for its annual season from April to October in Rhinebeck and longer at its facilities in Costa Rica and California.

Omega offers workshops, retreats, conferences and vacations in a natural but comfortable setting  The roster of instructors includes Al Gore, Alan Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Mia Farrow, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Jackson, Michael Moore and dozens of others.
Omega owns a rural 195-acre campus with accommodations that can house about 700 people at a time, serving three meals a day, offering yoga and tai chi classes, with available tennis, swimming and hiking to all visitors, as well as workshops individuals may choose to attend. It has a library, a gift shop and a café with free wi-fi access. Cell phones are discouraged and there are no televisions.

“We really like people to take the opportunity to unplug and unwind and connect with other people and with nature,” said Pullicino.

The facility seeks to create a holistic and sustainable operation that includes one of only two “living buildings” in the nation, a $4.2 million Omega Center for Sustainable Living, an art education and natural wastewater treatment facility that uses plants to treat the campus”™ wastewater. (See below.)

Omega is a name that was a carefully chosen, said Pullicino. In 1977, founders Stephan Rechtschaffen, an M.D., and Elizabeth Lesser were inspired by Pir Vilayat Inaayat Khan, a scholar of eastern studies and yoga teacher. Inyat Khan expanded on teachings from Teilhard de Chardin, a 20th Century French philosopher who used the term “omega point” to describe the unity and integration he saw all life evolving toward.

For 2010, the range of some 350 workshops gives credence to the phrase university for life, with courses in 21 areas from arts and crafts to career and leadership to cooking and nutrition, family and kids, fitness, music, mindfulness, writing and yoga.

Under the career and leadership workshops is a perhaps timely course called Creating Opportunity in Career Transition. The personal growth workshops include the Joy of Play and Firewalking. The workshops under psychology and soul work include a special retreat for veterans dealing with issues related to their military services that is open to their friends and family.

But the impact of Omega in the Hudson Valley goes beyond the learning on its campus and into the local economy. With 65 full time employees and an additional 200 seasonal employees earning a $5.2 million payroll and nearly $3 million in goods and services purchased in the community, including fresh produce from a dozen local farms.

 

 

The living building

Its called the Living Building Challenge and it is a challenge Omega has met with the help of the Eco Machine, a wastewater treatment facility combining biology and engineering to create an ecosystem of plants, algae fungi, bacteria, snails and fish to purify water and return it to the aquifer.

“This is a completely unique building, no question about that,” said Robert “Skip” Backus, Omega”™s CEO, discussing the building with a tour group on the Rhinebeck campus where it opened in 2009. He said it was built to be shared with others interested in incorporating carbon-neutral, energy-efficient and natural-material construction, built with  recycled supplies and fixtures or materials made in sustainable fashion, as certified by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council that certifies living buildings.

The Living Building Challenge requires buildings to be designed to accord with their eco-region’s characteristics; generate all of their own energy with renewable resources; capture and treat all of their water; operate with energy efficient systems and be attractive.

“It”™s an example, a way of pulling the culture forward,” said Backus of the $4 million building that is officially called the Omega Center for Sustainable Living. It is  6,250 square feet on 4.5 acres on Omega”™s campus. Besides treating wastewater, it has a small classroom to facilitate instruction in green building.

It is equipped with solar panels tied to the Central Hudson grid via net metering  agreements; lights have motion sensors; the bathrooms have a two-button flush system on the toilets, depending on how much water volume is needed to send the waste on its way. Doors within the building are salvaged from buildings being demolished and Backus said their sturdy quality is of the “you can”™t find this today” variety.

But the star of the sustainable building is the Eco Machine that can process 5 million gallons of wastewater annually, without any toxic chemicals. The system has tanks, constructed wetlands and above-ground lagoons in the atrium greenhouse where bacteria, snails and plants clean the water naturally as part of an ecosystem whose plant life towers above visitors with vivid flowers while the cleansed water is sent to sand filters and finally dispersal fields.  

 

A Costa Rican connection

Rhinebeck is not the only location where the Omega runs wellness workshops and retreats.

Aside from the valley campus, Omega  last month hosted a retreat weekend in New York City and has facilities in Costa Rica and California. It has run workshops in Florida and the Virgin Islands.

The Big Apple hosted two programs with thirteen teachers at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers the weekend of April 16, featuring workshops in energy healing, spiritual liberation and ways for couples to strengthen their relationship.

Even more exotic for the spiritual and health adventurer would be Omega”™s workshops held at the Blue Spirit Retreat at Nosara on the northwest coast of Costa Rica. It is a beach resort offering classes and  workshops in keeping with the Omega ethos

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For more information call (977) 944-2002.