Gaia Ashram
Gaia Ashram is an Ecovillage and vibrant community in Northeastern Thailand that teaches permaculture, deep ecology, yoga, and all things around living in harmony with nature.
Gaia Ashram is located between the city of Udon Thani and the border town of Thailand and Laos, Nong Khai. Udon Thani has a beautiful Red Lotus Lake where you can have a boat tour of a big lake full of lotuses and wildlife, and Udon Thani has great restaurants and a mall as well. Nong Khai is also very charming, with its riverfront having two giant Naga statues and fish sculptures lining the walking street where there are cool restaurants and a night market.
The Gaia land is absolutely gorgeous in and of itself. The sunset over the permaculture farm is beautiful and you’ll see plenty of wildlife passing through and overhead due to their healthy forest.
The accommodations vary; there is a mixed dorm above the center of the Ecovillage—an earth building called the Sala—where we have meditation, yoga, meals and gatherings. There are two additional earth buildings a bit further away, one called “The Fairy House” with single and double rooms, there is a private bungalow suitable for families, and the final option is camping anywhere on the land.
As a volunteer at Gaia, each morning has optional meditation and yoga practices in the early morning, followed by breakfast, a community check in, and a morning work session. After work, we convene once more for lunch, have a two hour break, then work for three more hours in the afternoon, followed by another break, then dinner, then free evenings.
There is a kitchen, cafe, a regenerative water system, compost toilets (two flushing, others dry), a permaculture food forest, two fire circles, a tool shed and a swimming pond. There are four dogs and two cats here as well as many chickens and ducks. Sometimes you can spot beautiful red lotuses in the ponds here as well as vibrant wildlife thanks to their conservation and reforestation efforts on their land.
The community consists of the two owners, Om and Tom whom are a married couple with kids, both well-educated in Ecovillage design, permaculture and deep ecology, Om being a local with deep connections to the town and Buddhism. There are many long-term volunteers and employees who help smooth processes, maintain the land and run educational courses as well as short-term volunteers and visitors who come to learn and enjoy.
I was lucky enough to volunteer during Gaia Ashram’s ten year anniversary where they celebrate with a great gathering. People from all over the world from Ecovillages, communities and organizations dedicated to finding and implementing ways for humans to live more harmoniously within, with each other and with nature. It was a beautiful event, giving me hope for the future and connections with inspiring people and organizations like the Global Ecovillage Network and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.
Gaia Ashram is the perfect place to be to become skilled and knowledgeable in building and facilitating communities and regenerative systems in which both nature and humans are benefitting equally. Taking care of the environment while taking care of humans is the greatest, most important task of the 21st century.
In Buddhist practice we relieve ourselves internally from suffering, but what is equally important is to not stop there but actually address the greater systems that cause suffering. Our current systems are destroying nature, and causing us to feel isolated, stressed, sick and unwhole, and we attempt to use entertainment, work, and material consumption to try to distract ourselves from our own lack of well-being within our destructive systems.
Systems can feel permanent and unchangeable and thus we may feel hopeless that life can be any different from the destructive and oppressive reality we have now, but systems were built by humans and they can be changed by humans, just like you and me. Ignoring or denying our suffering doesn’t make it go away; facing and making changes to make our systems better is what really reduces suffering.
The Ecovillage movement is about bringing new, regenerative systems into the world that harmonize nature and people for sustainable abundance and peace. All spiritual paths reach for heaven, but the real practice is creating heaven on Earth, within ourselves, with each other, and with nature.
I am very inspired and full hearted after my month long experience volunteering at Gaia Ashram. I very much recommend staying her and taking one of their educational courses, as well. There is so much to learn here, even just from their library of books available next to the Sala. For digital nomads, there is wifi here so you can work while you stay. It very much feels like a great big home and I’m sure I’ll feel at home next time I visit. All tasks are informative, from making eco bricks out of recycled plastic, building compost showers (heating water pipes with compost heat) tending the garden, making natural products and doing earth building, etc.
Right now they are working on building an eco-school for the local community. It’s a kindergarten made of earth bricks and recycled materials with a green roof (a roof that has plants growing on it) they are also always iterating on their permaculture farm and implementing regenerative systems on their land and could always use more hands and minds.
Learn more about Gaia Ashram and book a visit on their website or follow them on Instagram. I also made two Instagram Reels [1] [2] with videos and images from my experience at Gaia if you’d like more of a visual overview.
