About Us
ANO TARLETZ: Hi. I co-founded GaiaYoga Gardens seven
years ago with my ex-partner (who no longer lives here). I'm the only person
who's been involved with GaiaYoga Gardens since it's inception (though we
have one chicken who's been on the land longer than me!) I'm the default
leader of the community, though I'm very much wishing to attract other people
to share leadership with me. My new partner, Melekai, has joined me in this
and is growing in her leadership more and more every day. Her presence is a
great blessing, and I'd like more mature folks to join us in creating and
enjoying this dream.
Like any leader, I have my strengths and weaknesses, and my weaknesses set the limits of the community. Of course my strengths help create what's wonderful and precious here. My desire is to get beyond the stage where I am the defining presence here, but until that manifests I will continue in this function.
As of this writing, July 2010, there are 12 adults and 2 kids living here. Four of the adults have lived here 6 months or more (including me). Melekai has lived here for a little over a year, is my intimate partner, and bought the land, back from my ex-partner, with me, in October, 2009.
My life purpose can be expressed in this way: I create a world of Love,
Consciousness, and community, in nature through landancing, sharing my songs,
and husbanding my people. I am grateful that I am fully engaged in my life
purpose and to be creating a place where others can do the same.
I was born on Earth Day, 1969. A little over twenty years later, I co-founded
Pangaia, a now "deceased" raw-foods, permaculture homestead on the Big Island
of Hawaii. Since 1996, I've been devoted to teaching sustainable
homesteading, raw foods lifestyle, and the value of living in community. In
2000 I got turned on Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and have been teaching
NVC since 2002. I now manage our permaculture nursery, which specializes in
bamboo, fruit trees, bananas, and coconuts. I run our farmer's market booth,
free-climb 5 to 10 trees per week, run our initiation-internship program, and
manage, organize, and work on projects at GaiaYoga Gardens. I'm in a local
chapter of an international men's group, called The ManKind Project (MKP). In
my spare time I support the people living here in healing, learning, and
growth. I am also, finally launching my music career!!! (I even sleep
sometimes;-)
I co-authored the booklet An
Introduction To GaiaYoga: A Holistic Vision for Living Sustainably as
Spirit, Self, Community, and Earth. I've also written two other books:
Instinctive Eating:
The Lost Knowledge of Optimum Nutrition (authored under the name
"Zephyr") and Transplant-Shock Therapy: The
Poetic Pilgrimage of a Suburban Refugee. To see me playing a one of my
songs check out this YouTube video.
Now, having grown from my journeys in the realms of sustainable living, holistic spirituality, intentional community, NVC, Tantric relationship, shadow work, 12-step recovery work, participating in the MKP, and raw foods instinctive eating, I’m excited to be part of the seed energy that’s creating GaiaYoga Gardens, — a permaculture homestead and intentional community dedicated to living in harmony with the Earth, connecting with Spirit, engaging personal growth and healing, fostering cooperative living, and developing holistic & sustainable life-patterns.
MELEKAI
MATSON: My first yearnings for community, alternative health, and
Earth-based sustainable living began after living in Seattle in 1998.
After having a vision while in Mexico where I received the message to steward
the Earth, I began traveling around the West coast, studying organic farming,
Permaculture, community living, yoga, herbalism, and personal growth.
In 1999, I moved to Mount Madonna Center where I lived for two years. I
became a devotee of Baba Hari Dass, and through studying Ashtanga yoga under
his guidance, I learned a way of being in the world that was more
self-connected, whole, and compassionate. I was also called to be a
midwife at this time, and began my 10 year process in becoming a trained
midwife. I have been postponing my move to “the land” until
I finished my training so that I could fully sink into my life on the land,
and fully manifest my vision.
During the past 10 years, I have struggled to live my values in an urban
setting, while being 100% focused on becoming a midwife. I have studied
as a nurse, apprenticed for a home-birth midwife, been a doula for a birth
center and for women birthing at hospitals, worked as a labor and delivery
nurse, and finally became a nurse-midwife through UCSF in 2008. Also
during this time period, I taught yoga to teachers and pregnant teenagers,
started an organic garden at an elementary school, refined my diet, and did
lots of therapy and 12-step work. I studied medicinal plants, engaged
in various spiritual practices, traveled extensively to Peru and learned
conversational Spanish, while always seeking to become more knowledgeable,
more spiritually-refined, more attuned to ways to support the Earth and
learning to live gently on the Earth, and discovering intimacy through deep
friendships, heartbreaks, and personal growth work and therapy.
I traveled to GaiaYoga Gardens in 2008 to celebrate the end of my
nurse-midwife training. I didn’t exactly fall in love with it,
but I noticed that after I left, I felt a deep, abiding love for those that I
lived with here, and saw signs on a daily basis that I was supposed to be
here at GaiaYoga Gardens. I ignored these signs, trying to make a
mainland life work for almost 8 months, until I decided to return. I
gave up everything; my relationship, my job, my home, and close contact with
dear friends to move back to Hawaii to live at GaiaYoga Gardens! It was
very clear to me that this was my dream manifest of living off the land,
using alternative energy, living in community and taking care of children,
taking care of animals and growing our own food, tapping into Pele’s
deep healing energy to clear old traumas, growing into intimate relationship,
and living in an area where alternative community living is more
prevalent. I also felt a calling to be in intimate relationship with
Ano, co-founder of GaiaYoga Gardens, and began that journey when I arrived
here in May. My passion to live here supported me in struggling through
a difficult process of buying the land back from Ano’s ex-partner after
Ano defaulted on buying her out of the property at the end of 2008.
I am writing this bio about three months after the deed was signed, and
although there is much relief that the negotiation process is over and we
legally own the land outright, we have daily growing pains around growing
into our vision of community. Pele is initiating me into her ways, and
I see so much benefit and beauty in the healing that she offers. I wish
that we had more of this, and more of that, but I also have a deep trust that
this is my home, that what we are doing is beautiful and healing, that we are
meant to be here, that you are meant to be here if you are called, and that
we are in a divine dance of creation, and the future is unknown. I am
part of a home-birth practice midwifery practice, and enjoying the daily joys
and struggles of intimate relationship with Ano, and the rest of GYG
community, and appreciating the children for being in my life. And
there is so much more…
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We're forming a core group of residents and members to share this endeavor, and we’re looking for others to join us in pioneering GaiaYoga. If you resonate with the vision that’s presented in this website, please contact us. We want to connect with you. |
| Mountain turned into a trans-gender merperson. |
Our resident kitties, Samoa & Popo. They love to eat,
sleep & be cute!
