I sat on a sticky mat, legs stretched in front of me, smiling contentedly while I gazed out a window to see bees zipping around a grove of pine trees. It was the last week in July, the first minute of a weeklong yoga workshop with Advanced Iyengar teacher Kofi Busia at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, a New Age retreat in a bucolic stretch of New York’s Hudson Valley. I had arrived just hours ago at Omega’s rustic-but-tidy campus, which was abuzz with wizened, guitar-toting Joni Mitchell look-alikes; fresh-faced, Prana-clad Manhattanites; a handful of bedraggled international travelers; and dozens of college kids growing out their dreads. Sixty seconds into my first class, I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

Busia, a compact, mustached Ghanaian native with an Oxford accent and wide-legged pants, walked rhythmically around the sun-dappled outbuilding, telling stories while my classmates and I — maybe 50 in all — sat on the floor, our bodies bent like uppercase L’s in a position called dandasana. I inhaled deeply, tightened my knees, flexed my feet, straightened my back, and placed my hands on the floor. If the next six days of class are this pleasant, I thought, I’ll attain nirvana by Thursday — Friday, latest.

Nirvana, enlightenment, spiritual awakening, inner peace, whatever you call it, is why I — and everyone else at Omega — was there, having left behind jobs in the city, families in the ’burbs, vacation homes at the Shore, and all manner of cell phones. (They’re prohibited in workshops and classrooms, and there’s virtually no reception anyhow.) The retreat was built in 1982, when a small group of hippie-types came to this patch of land (formerly home to a 1920s Yiddish sleep-away camp) to spend time meditating, chanting, loving one another and, perhaps most importantly, organizing like-minded luminaries willing to teach folks to do the same. It took. Today, more than 23,000 enlightenment-seekers visit Omega (and its programs around the world) every year. True, the place’s brochure doesn’t exactly guarantee total spiritual transformation. But I had faith.

I joined about 400 guests during the hottest week of the year to begin my quest. When they’re not in workshops, people scatter about the hilly grounds, reading in Adirondack chairs by the vegetable garden or walking with their significant others around the lake. They browse the gift shop for handmade jewelry and organic cotton tunics, or silently climb the steep stone path to meditate at the lotus pond. They read in the octagonal Ram Dass lending library, sip yerba matte and soy lattes at the cafe, and dine on tofu scramble, vegetable curry, just-picked salads and farm-fresh raspberry squares at big round tables on the porch of the sprawling dining cabin. They — okay, I — book hour-long $85 aromatherapy massages at the holistic day spa. Some even venture into the coed, clothing-optional sauna, and a (very) few wear name tags that read IN SILENCE — meaning they choose not to talk for the duration of the day, or their stay. Most venture off-campus to explore the quaint and collegiate town of Rhinebeck. In other words: Not everyone goes to Omega exclusively for the yoga.