Open Air Meditation Sanctuary

The sanctuary began as a plan for a school and was redrawn by horses. In 2002 a group of friends and a baby daughter moved from Prescott, Arizona, to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, after a search of 25 locations. They bought 22 acres meant to hold a meditation school built around Gaia, Mother Earth.

For the first years the land belonged in part to a neighbor's small herd of horses. By the founder's account, the horses mowed it and cut trails north to south. They found the one flat spot, under a huge cedar, and ate their way back to a seasonal creek, a spring-fed pond, unusual rock formations and an old cemetery, all buried under briars, vines and poison oak. An arborist, Tim Riley, was hired to help shape what the horses had uncovered. In spring 2005, a series of conversations with the spirit of the land changed the plan from a school building to meditation sites and walking trails.

Today the Open Air Meditation Sanctuary is a 10-acre wilderness park with 14 meditation sites joined by a one-mile trail. It is a project of the Center for Soulful Living, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It is open dusk to dawn year-round and charges no fees; donations pay for upkeep. A second set of 14 unmapped sites, tied to Rites 15 to 28, is being built along a narrower, rougher trail.

Visitors walk, sit, picnic, bring children and dogs, or practice yoga on the platform at Site 4. The park hosts weddings, ceremonies and guided tours, as well as Heart to Heart walks. Tents can be pitched on site, and an attached one-bedroom retreat apartment has a full kitchen, a patio firepit and an outdoor hot tub. Classes run through the Aldebaran School of Planetary Tantra.