Omega's Mission and Values
MISSION
Through innovative educational experiences that awaken the best in the human spirit, Omega provides hope and healing for individuals and society.VALUES
Accountability – We expect each of us to do what we say we will do, to meet commitments, and be dependable and responsible.Holism – We honor the mind, body, heart, and spirit in each individual, knowing the need to balance and blend all these elements. In our programming, we encourage authenticity as a means to build trust, and as essential to the growth and development of the whole.
Integrity – In business and in relationships we conduct ourselves with honesty, fairness, truth, candor, and respect. We treat others, as we ourselves would want to be treated. We focus on the collective good.
Service – We value the practice of service and what it teaches us about ourselves, and our relation to others. Our participants are here to experience the world in new ways. We are attuned to and care about their experience, needs, and expectations. We treat each other with similar grace.
Simplicity – We strive for clear, direct, and unambiguous communication. We seek true, underlying meaning, and employ spiritual guidance in that quest. In this way, we work to make sense of the complexities of modern life.
Sustainability – We consider the impact of our actions. We advocate for fairness in the treatment of all species, make decisions for the common good, and encourage activism as a means to social justice. Our facilities are grounded in the awareness of our relationship to the environment. We endeavor to have our work in the world be self-sustaining.
Teamwork – We work together, inclusively, collaboratively, with energy, intention, and commitment. We keep each other informed, share what we are thinking and doing, and expect the same in return.
Welcoming – We invite people to find space here, to feel safe, to create community, to feel at home, and find nourishment. Our environment is nurturing, relaxing, stimulating, and inspiring.
Body, Mind & Spirit
Everyone wants to lead a healthy, satisfying, meaningful life. But how do you do it? At Omega, we believe it has to do with integrating your body, mind, and spirit. This means paying attention to all three aspects in your life, listening to their needs and desires, and acting in ways that give you a sense of wholeness and balance. This journey of personal growth and self exploration is as rewarding as it is important. To the degree that you respect and care for your own life-in its totality-you will respect and care for the lives of those around you, as well as the earth we all share. At Omega, we like to say we are changing the world one person at a time.
We create a healthy environment where you feel nurtured, supported, and safe as you discover new truths about yourself and the world around you, and work to integrate your body, mind, and spirit. Omega's Body, Mind & Spirit programs are experiential, transformational, and healing-for individuals and ultimately for the world.
Body-Centered Personal Growth Approaches
Your body is as sacred and miraculous as any part of creation. And, like the mysteries of creation, your body can reveal a great deal of hidden wisdom about who you are. Working with your body on your path of personal growth and self exploration can help you bring this wisdom to consciousness. Omega workshops in yoga, tai chi, qigong, massage, reflexology, and sports focus on your body as a means to understand and transform your life.
Self Exploration of Your Mind
Your mind can be your biggest critic, but it can also be your most powerful ally. With workshops in Western psychology, meditation, psychic intuition, past-life regression, or the latest developments in energy medicine, you can explore the nature of your consciousness and learn how to put the power of your mind to work for you.
Connecting With Spirit
A journey of personal growth and self exploration leads you to explore your spiritual life. Seeking answers to the questions quietly but steadily humming in your depths is your spiritual path. And because there are as many paths as there are people, Omega offers programs based on many of the world's spiritual traditions-including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Sufism, Christianity, Native American traditions, and more-to explore the breadth and depth of human existence and the sublime and divine mysteries within and all around us.
Health & Healing
"What follows six is more than seven." This Yoruba proverb—another way of saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—is how we at Omega understand holistic health and healing. Holistic health acknowledges that our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual lives cannot be teased apart. As we address one of these parts of ourself, whether through a wellness vacation, a massage, a spiritual retreat, or with an energy medicine session, we affect the whole. As we begin to heal our own life, we then affect those around us, bringing health and healing to our families, communities, and the planet. Omega has been at the cutting edge of health and healing for more than 30 years. Our wellness vacations and holistic health opportunities provide a variety of ways for you to explore your own path of health and healing. We offer workshops, conferences, and retreats representing wisdom traditions from around the world as well as yoga, fitness, nutrition, arts, personal growth, and energy medicine retreats. We host many of the world's great healers, doctors, bodyworkers, researchers, and medical philosophers, and each presents different methods and insights into holistic health and healing. Many of our courses offer continuing education credits and we have a number of professional trainings for health-care and other professionals.
From Wellness Vacations to Energy Medicine TrainingsOmega remains open to a variety of healing techniques and philosophies, offering options from East and West, past and present, technological and natural. From wellness vacations to energy medicine trainings, each of our events represents as a piece of the whole picture of holistic health and healing.
Please take some time to explore the wide range of Omega Health and Healing workshops and events and then join us as we celebrate the many ways in which healing occurs.
Creativity & Play
We all have a story to tell that is uniquely ours and a way to tell it like no one else could. Creativity is part of who we are at our deepest level, and when we access it we reveal a piece of ourself to the world. To access our creativity takes an open and often lighthearted attitude; we need to look at life as if we've never seen it before. Creativity is a kind of play, and play, as Albert Einstein once noted, is "the highest form of research." Through play and its creative qualities, we learn to express our most authentic self and discover who we really are. We make contact with the places in us that we usually avoid, and open ourself to the myriad experiences of life.
As adults, many of us have lost touch with our creative and playful side, bowing to the perceived gravity of families, careers, and daily life. But the desire to create remains in us, calling to us from our innermost depths. Maybe you want to write, paint, build, draw, make music, sing, or dance but don't remember how to do it or even where to start.
A program at Omega provides a safe environment where you can feel free to reconnect with your creative self. Whether you are interested in art workshops, dance workshops, a writing retreat, or something that will help you feel the joy and exhilaration of childhood again, there is no shortage of ways for you to express yourself at Omega. Omega art workshops, dance workshops, a writing retreat and other creativity workshops go beyond merely teaching techniques of a particular craft; they show you how to create from your very essence.
Art Workshops at Omega
Omega's art workshops show you how you can access the right, or creative, side of your brain while increasing your technical skills and learning to enjoy the creative process.
Dance Workshops at Omega
Omega's dance workshops connect you to your body so you can express yourself in new ways, release tension and stress, and move more gracefully through life.
Writing Retreats at Omega
A writing retreat at Omega can motivate you to begin or complete a memoir, short story, or novel while showing you new ways to access the humor, love, and passion buried deep inside you.
You can be sure that an Omega Creativity & Play workshop provides you inspiration to experiment, plenty of support and guidance, and a whole lot of fun!
Relationships & Family
In the broad sense of the word, a family is a group of people, of any age, from inside and outside the home, who are supportive and integral parts of each other's lives. As the makeup of what we call our nuclear family has shifted and changed over time, there have been a variety of liberating changes; but many of us are also left searching for a sense of belonging, of needing to find others to be our family, and of needing how to teach and learn from each other.
Omega's relationship and family programs draw people together who want meaningful and lasting connections with others in their lives. Omega's couples retreats and intimacy workshops can help you rekindle the love in a relationship that's in difficult phase. Our annual Family Week can help you make a deeper connection with kin while having the time of your life. Omega's wildly popular Teen Camp brings young people together to meet like-minded friends.
Omega's couples retreats and intimacy workshops are among Omega's most popular programs for couples at any stage of their relationship, as well as for singles looking for ways to meet and connect with others who share their views about life. If you are a psychotherapist, marriage counselor, or social worker, Omega also offers couples retreats and intimacy workshops for purposes of professional training.
You can be sure that Omega's relationship and family programs will provide you with the environment, support, and guidance you need to help you connect with others-and yourself-in new, healthy, and understanding ways.
Leadership & Community
Leadership and community are inextricably linked to each other. A leader cannot be effective without the support of the community, and the health of a community is directly related to the quality of leadership. But where does this chicken-and-egg scenario begin? It begins with personal transformation. Mahatma Gandhi wisely advised us when he said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." Since 1977, it has been Omega's mission to awaken the best in the human spirit to help us all bring the world into balance and to learn how to be responsible stewards of the interconnected web of life that sustains us.
As the world moves into the 21st century, Omega will continue to offer programs for individual healing while expanding the scope of our service initiatives with programs like Omega In Service and offering more leadership training programs and activities that encourage spiritual activism and empowerment.
Leadership Training
Although change begins with each one of us, we often need support and guidance to take our vision of transformation into our community. Whether we want to learn how to bring peace to divided groups, open a socially conscious business, or communicate more clearly, Omega's leadership training opportunities provide a framework for the challenges of working to bring positive change into the world.
Spiritual Activism
Spiritual activism recognizes that our individual journey is inextricably tied to our relationships with others and with the Earth itself. This awareness spurs us to use our gifts and talents in ways that honor ourself and our individual and global communities. Omega's spiritual activism programs help us integrate our personal journey with our role as a global citizen, promoting harmony, cooperation, and understanding.
Empowerment
Omega understands power as an unlimited resource that stems from inside each of us. With awareness, practice, and commitment we can tap into that power whenever we need it. As we become more empowered, we learn how to move from fear to love, war to peace, and alienation to connection. Empowerment programs at Omega focus on personal growth, leadership, and community and explore how we can lift each other up while healing each other and our world.
Sustainable Living
Omega holds sustainability as one of its core values. We consider the impact of our actions, advocate for fairness in the treatment of all living things, and make decisions for the common good. Our facilities are managed with an acute awareness of our relationship to the environment, and we endeavor to do our best to serve as stewards of our unique and irreplaceable Earth and everyone who inhabits it. We take to heart what renowned writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry once wrote: "The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope." Through our own actions that model green living, and through workshops and conferences on sustainability, we share our experiences and provide support for those working to tend our planet.
Green Living Initiatives for the Environment
Omega recognizes the importance of green living and tending to our environment by focusing on a number of conservation and sustainability efforts on our campus, including: buying wind-generated electricity; generating solar power; using green cleaning products and methods; recycling whatever we can (from paper to printers); replacing many of the toilets and light bulbs on campus with green living in mind; and using our buying power to support local and organic farms and producers.
Omega Center for Sustainable Living
For more than 30 years, Omega has worked to bring holistic ideas and programs into the mainstream in order to help individuals and society heal, grow, and thrive. The Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OCSL), which opened in July 2009, continues this tradition. A state-of-the art education center and water reclamation facility, the OCSL is a model of sustainable architecture. It has indoor and outdoor classrooms, a living machine called the Eco Machine™, and is one of the first buildings to participate in the Living Building Challenge.
