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Institute for Extraordinary Living

exploring the science of skillful action.


What does it mean to be a fully alive human being?

The Kripalu Institute for Extraordinary Living (IEL) has been created to investigate what it means to be a fully alive human being in the twenty-first century and concerns itself with the experience of aliveness for individuals, institutions, society, and the world. In particular, the IEL studies, promotes, and embodies states of thriving reflected by qualities such as resiliency, creativity, mastery, authenticity, compassion, and happiness. The IEL’s goal is to be a premier forum for researchers, practitioners, and lay people to develop and learn practical methods for cultivating these states based on knowledge gleaned from the contemplative traditions and from contemporary scientific inquiry.

In its initial phase, the IEL is particularly interested in the application of yogic strategies to the challenges of optimal performance in the arts, sports, and various forms of highly concentrated activity. Initially, the IEL will fulfill its mission through

  • The development of a knowledge-model of the field
  • Strategic collaboration with other institutions
  • Sponsorship of an annual conference
  • Highly targeted projects studying optimal performance
  • The development of a curriculum in skillful action at Kripalu Center.

Research The experience of human fulfillment is only now becoming the subject of serious scientific research. In recent years, neuroscience and sophisticated new psychological inquiry have begun to confirm the remarkable discoveries of the ancient yogis. Kripalu’s Institute for Extraordinary Living intends to be a world-class forum for cutting-edge researchers. The IEL currently has a research team of three scientists affiliated with Harvard Medical School working on a variety of projects in sports, performance, and health. Their early research shows that yoga postures, combined with sophisticated breathing practices and basic meditation techniques, improve performance in tasks that require focus, concentration, creativity, and rapid-fire decision-making skills.


The Institute for Extraordinary Living is currently undertaking projects in three areas:


In sports Athletes of all persuasions have known for some time that systematic training in yoga and yogic breathing enhances mental and physical speed, endurance, strength, balance, agility, and flexibility. Now, the IEL, in conjunction with a team of researchers, is studying the effects of yoga on athletic performance at both the college and professional levels.

In performance Professional musicians are now discovering that systematic training in yoga enhances the performance of complex tasks through the cultivation of highly refined states of attention, concentration, and focus—essential conditions for optimal performing states in music. New research confirms that yoga also attenuates performance anxiety and ameliorates its deleterious effects on both cognitive and physical functioning. The IEL is just beginning its third year of a study of elite musicians in conjunction with the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s academy for advanced musical study.

At work Most tasks at work require the development of skill sets that rely on concentration, focus, and the training of attention. Plans are underway for the IEL to study the ways in which the regular practice of yoga techniques enhances flow states in a variety of complex work settings—beginning with a study of 450 adults in a professional training program.

Yoga and fulfillment

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Human beings want to live fully. We feel an inner urge to create, to love, to express, to master the complexities of life—to feel fulfilled in and by our lives.

Yoga Yoga is an ancient science that concerns itself primarily with this inner urge for fulfillment. For thousands of years, yogis have investigated two questions, what is an optimal human life? and what inhibits optimal living? In their attempts to answer these questions, yogis have investigated the farthest reaches of human potential—mental, physical, and spiritual. The insights they give us are startling, paradoxical, and often counterintuitive, and can challenge conventional Western thinking about fulfillment.

Fulfillment Contemporary Western fantasies about fulfillment often center around dreams of wealth, power, fame, and leisure. In these fantasies, a fulfilling life is one in which we acquire so much freedom and leisure that we no longer have to work and strive. Contrary to this conventional thinking, however, studies show that people actually feel happiest and most fulfilled when meeting a challenge, when bringing highly concentrated effort to some compelling activity for which they have a real passion: a sport, an art form, a challenging work activity, a hobby. At the end of life, most of us will find that we have felt most "filled up" by the challenges and the successful struggles for mastery, creativity, and self-expression.

Stephen Cope

Stephen Cope is the Director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living. He is a Western-trained psychotherapist who writes and teaches about the relationship between Western psychological paradigms and the Eastern contemplative traditions. Author of the highly acclaimed Yoga and the Quest for the True Self and The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extraordinary Living, Stephen holds degrees from Amherst College and Boston College. He did graduate and postgraduate training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Boston area, where he practiced for many years before joining the staff at Kripalu Center. In its twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Yoga Journal named him one of the most important innovators in the developing field of American yoga. Stephen is a classically trained pianist and has danced professionally with a ballet and modern-dance company.

Stephen works with a talented and committed staff, bringing together a rich and impressive variety of skills.

goMeet the whole team.