There’s something uniquely horrifying about any place that requires you to wear color-coded robes “for optimal vibrational resonance.”
Welcome to the Hollow Valley Spiritual Compound — home of spinning, chanting, dubious science, and more white linen than a Renaissance Faire at laundry day.
Hollow Valley, according to the enthusiastically photocopied brochure I was handed at the gate, is situated on an “ancient energy vortex” where ley lines, cosmic forces, and “fifth-dimensional light harmonics” converge in perfect, profitable harmony.
The map included detailed walking paths for “energy alignment rituals,” all lovingly drawn in colored pencil, and a stern reminder to “respect the sanctity of the vortex by silencing your inner cynic.”
Reader, I failed immediately.
Newcomers were assigned robes based on their “current spiritual frequency.” Apparently my aura “read” as “cautiously blocked,” so I was handed a mustard-yellow tunic that smelled like a decades-old yoga studio and directed toward the “realignment circle.”
This turned out to be a field where about thirty adults were spinning slowly in counterclockwise circles under the careful guidance of a man named Sage (real name, Gary) who shouted encouraging phrases like, “Unleash your luminous spiral!” and “Flow freely into the photon bath of rebirth!”
After twenty minutes of this, several people were visibly dizzy. One man staggered sideways into a shrub and was promptly proclaimed “energetically reborn.”
Other highlights included “Crystal Bowl Sound Journeys” — imagine someone trying to tune a satellite dish with a mallet — “Vortex Meditation Hikes” along paved sidewalks lined with Home Depot solar lights, and “Sacred Swirl Workshops” where you paid extra for literal spinning lessons, preferably while wearing a branded Hollow Valley t-shirt that looked suspiciously like a rejected middle school PE uniform.
Lunch was served at the “Organic Vibrational Café,” where everything was gluten-free, guilt-free, and taste-free. I paid twelve dollars for a kombucha labeled “brewed under a Sagittarius moon.”
It tasted exactly like disappointment.
The grand finale was the “Galactic Activation Ceremony,” held in a geodesic dome strung with fairy lights. Participants sat in concentric circles, chanted vowel sounds, and waved glowsticks “to amplify interdimensional communication.” The only thing I amplified was my headache.
If you’re looking for true spiritual transcendence, you won’t find it spinning in a field in a borrowed bathrobe while a guy named Sage yells about photon rebirth. You’ll find it somewhere quiet, far from anyone trying to charge you $99.99 for an “Ascended Being” starter kit.
If you go, bring water, bring Advil, and for the love of whatever sanity you have left, bring your own clothes.