Get Away with Dre: Krishna Village Yoga Retreat

Much more than a retreat.

Tucked away in the Northern Rivers, Eungella is a small green town in the Tweed Shire, 10 minutes inland from Murwillumbah by car. This is the home of Krishna Village, a community-run self sustainable yoga farm, and my interesting home for a 4-day yoga retreat.

Krishna Village is on a 1,000-acre farmland purchased by a group of Hare Krishna devotees in the 1970s for a mere $70,000. With all this land, they aimed to open a farm for people to practice yoga and the Bhakti Yoga life –  simple, Krishna-conscious living and yoga for anyone with a open mind and heart. Since the 70s, they continue to maintain, build and grow the farm to what it is today.

What is Bhakti Yoga you ask? It’s a spiritual path within Hinduism that focuses on “Yoga of devotion”. A spiritual path through simple living, heartfelt practices, connection to the earth, and connection with people that leads to inner peace, self-realisation and universal love.

Krishna Village brings people from everywhere around the world. I met people from around Australia attending the yoga retreat, and people from around the world that either signed up to be volunteers, or follow the Bhakti yoga way of life. Krishna Village also offers multi-day to 6 week courses on a variety of yogic and therapeutic topics, so I met a large group of people partaking the Massage Certifiate, Reiki Certificate, and Yoga Teacher Training courses. A wide variety of people from all walks of life, at all stages of life, coming together and searching for the same thing.

Retreat on the farm

Krishna Village has multiple accommodation options avilable at different price ranges. From camping/ caravan sites, to guests houses; cottages, to variety of room stays and cabins. A Private Cabin was my home for my 4-day stay. The Private Cabin is a raised, sizable wooden cabin with kitchen ammentities, bathroom, queen sized bed and quaint patio that overlooks a lake and the cows grazing. Located up the hill, in between the farm hub and the Krishna Temple, the Private Cabin is silent and serene, pure bliss to wake up to every morning.

You get a program of classes and workshops available for the week (changes weekly) and 3 meals included in your stay. All meals are vegetarian, and you will not be disappointed. A principle most Eastern philosophies have in common is ‘non-violence towards all living entities’, therefore no meat is consumed and you are politely asked not to bring any meat into the farm from outside.

• Breakfast 8:30am – 9am
• Lunch 12:15pm – 12:45pm
• Dinner 6:15pm – 7pm

The talented Head Chef Radha, works with a team of volunteers to cook delicious vegetarian meals for everyone staying at the village. Each meal takes hours to prepare. Lunch is the most popular meal of the day and when you see the selection and try the food you know why, it’s so delicious – it makes me want to be vegetarian. 

 

Yoga

Krishna Village offers 3 classes a day in the Yoga Hall. A long hall with one side made up of large windows that looks out onto one of their fields. The instructor sits along the window side, giving you a lush green outlook behind them visually connecting you with nature during your practice.

• 5am Slow Flow Yoga to start the day
• 6:30am Gentle Hatha
• 4:15pm changes between Intermediate Yoga/ Advanced Yoga/ Gentle Restorative/ Gentle Hatha/ Gentle Yin/ Gentle Vinyasa

Krishna Village is designed to target all levels of yoga. It’s a great way to get into yoga by building your experience and confidence through 2 to 3 gentle yoga classes a day, before progressing into an Intermediate class.

Intermediate and advanced yogis will get a lot out of Laxmivan‘s classes. Laxmivan is one of the lead yoga instructors, helping build the Yoga Teacher Training Course. Regular yogis will known Laxmivan as the Power Yoga legend who helped pioneer, develop and facilitate many power yoga teacher training programs all over Australia. I was completely humbled and grateful to have the chance to attended his class at Krishna Village. If you love yoga, his classes should be on your list.

KV Wellness

Like peanut butter and jelly, spa and wellness go hand-in-hand with yoga so KV Wellness is a must-do while you’re here.  The KV Wellness centre and their services has kept expanding over the years. It’s already physically grown bigger than their space will allow, opening another two rooms for a whole LED light bed and a councelling room. I forsee it growing bigger, another building on the farm perhaps? 

KV Wellness offers a wide selection of services to relax, detoxify and relieve muscle/ inner/ emotional pains. Here’s a few I tried:

Ayurveda massage with Martin

A Holistic Indian healing practice dating back 3000 years. The practitioner uses warm, herbalised oils in a massage for deep relaxation, improving circulation and detoxification. They use rhythmic movements, focusing on pressure points and muscle knots. Bliss on the body.

Reiki & Sound Healing with Veida 

Reiki is a Japanese energy healing technique that uses your hand to channel “energy” (ki in Japanese or Qi in Chinese). It’s an energy healing treatment for your chakra, promoting deep relaxation, reducing stress, balancing your energy and emotional well-being. This was teamed up with an immersive sound bath using Tibetan bowls and tuning forks on the body. A holistic wellness treatment that uses deep, resonant sound and vibrations. Because we are made up of frequencies, this balances your energy and relaxes you, reducing stress and puts the body in a meditative state. A deeper bliss.

The whole experience can affect everyone differently. Some see colours, have visions, while others see nothing at the time but get visions when they meditate after treatment. The effects after treatment can last for a few days to years.

Neo LED Light Therapy

KV Wellness’ new installement and service is a 360 degree whole body LED light bed. It’s a self-setting clinical-looking tanning bed where you set the timer, choice of light, pop your glasses on and hop in. It uses targeted wavelengths to reduce inflammation, boost energy, and promote natural healing. It improves circulation, promotes faster healing, reduces oxidative stress and improves sleep. It also helps boosts immunity and enhances collagen production.

Sunlight therapy has been used for thousands of years. In 1896 it was used to successfully treat infections. In the 1960s, they experimented with red lasers for healing and hair growth. It was then used by NASA to support astronaut recovery, and today there are over 6,000 studies on photobiomodulation.

• Red: supports pain relief, anti-flammatory effects
• Pink: treats acne and supports detoxification
• Green: assisting in reducing anxiety, migraines and improves sleep
• All: stimulate collagen production, improve skin tone, speed recovery and boost wellness overtime 

 

Workshops

Their weekly timetable is packed with workshops for you learn more about yourself and how to connect with your loved ones and people around you. Some include meditation and sound baths, an intro to Vedic Astrology, self-healing and gratitude workshops, and partner yoga and laughing yoga. You can also learn about chakras, mental health psychology and yoga psychology as well.

 

Cow feeding (goshala tour)

If you speak to anyone at Krishna Village, the consensus is that the cow feeding tour and visiting the cows are a favourite. Krishna Village is home to 100 cows and their main purpose is to live their best life. Graze-life is a great life…. you can hashtag that.

Krishna Village have been using cow grazing for the last 4-years putting regenerative grazing agri-forestry to practice hoping to achieve a productive forest. The cows graze in an area for a few hours or days, before getting moved to another patch of field. The grazed paddock gets a long rest to recover and regrow before being grazed again, allowing roots to deepen and plant diversity to flourish. Constantly moving the cows prevents them from repeatedly eating the same plants down to the root, ensuring plants can capture enough sunlight, grow more roots, and feed soil microbes to create a positive feedback loop for land regeneration. Regenerative grazing helps biodiversity, supporting greater plant, insect and bird species richness as well has increasing land resilience.

You find a mix of cow breeds on the farm and majority of them live to about 20 years old. Cattle kept and bred for their milk and meat live to 4-6 years old, so the cows at Krishna Village are living life to the fullest and it’s beautiful to see. Because they live for so long they have to be comfortable with humans, so Krishna Village retreat goers and vollunteers are taught safe ways to handle the cows and bulls. How to feed them, and how to pat and hug them… they love their rubs and hugs.

Northern Rivers Area

Eungella is a beautiful farmland area of the Northern Rivers with lush green fields in every direction. It’s 10-minutes inland from the main town of Murwillumbah and 14-minutes north from the smaller township of Uki, which is worth a visit as well. Visit the Uki Post Office, which is a hip post office, art gallery and cafe all rolled into one. The cafe Bastion Lane is a destination in itself, winning the 2025 award for Best Latte in Australia. It’s no joke – the coffee here is good.

Mount Warning (Wollumbin) is a main landmark which towers over the area. It’s a sacred volcanic peak and what remains of it is the central vent of a much larger ancient shield volcano 20 million years ago, the Tweed Volcano, which was over 4,000 kilometres in size. This explains the sub-tropical and temperate zone of the area. It’s lush greenery and rainforest surrounds are similar to the conditions in Indonesia. 

We also stayed at a dog friendly and eco-friendly secluded cabin in Mount Warning, waking up to the mist of the rainforest every morning. It’s definately worth the visit.

 

Get Away with Dre was a guest at Krishna Village.

Dre wears Pinky & Kamal.