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DA N IEL S ÉG U IN , A M Y A L LC O CK B ack in 2019, a visit to an ashram wasn't that high on my travel wish list. I mean, I've read Eat, Pray, Love, so I get the appeal. But I've always thought that my mind is too busy, too distracted for me to manage an extended time in a space that's all about self-reflection. But sometimes you don't know how much you need a space like Yasodhara Ashram until you're in the middle of it. After a (much too short) long-weekend retreat, I came away from the experience feeling like I'd gained a better sense of self—and some stress management skills, too. (Even as I write this, I've remembered a meditation I picked up at Yasodhara that could be the perfect antidote for my present-day ball-of-stress self— and just now I stopped to do it.) I had been lucky enough to be invited up to the retreat some time ago for non-traditional reasons: they'd just built an architecturally significant temple with legendary Canadian architects John and Patricia Patkau, and I had come to profile the new building for Western Living. By all accounts, their new Temple of Light is stunning: a lotus-like design in the middle of the woods. (And, boy, is it ever in the middle of the woods.) And now, after the past couple of years of uncertainty and anxiety, I can't imagine a more ideal place to escape to. Perched on a rocky outcrop of Kootenay Bay, Yasodhara Ashram takes a while to reach: from Nelson, B.C. (itself a 90-minute flight or eight-hour drive from Vancouver), you drive a half hour, then you take another half-hour ferry to arrive at the 85-acre property. The ashram itself—which hosts both full-time residents and yoga students whose retreat times range Two of Canada's most acclaimed architects have crafted something magical just outside of Nelson. by Anicka Quin from a few days to many months— was the brainchild of a German woman, Swami Radha, who studied under a guru in India in the late 1950s. That guru's encouragement to bring yoga to the West evolved into the current women-led retreat and study centre that practices the spiritual tradition of the Divine Feminine, with a kind of we- produce-our-own-honey Kootenays Architecture and Asanas in the Kootenays OHM MG (clockwise from top) the Temple of Light; the temple's stunning interior, designed with eight curved "petals"; a solo hatha yoga session above Kootenay Lake. KOOTENAY ROCKIES 62 BCBUSINESS MAY/JUNE 2022