These places also have in common that they're not for everyone. On its Web site, Dragonfly Ranch posts a frank notice cleverly summed up in the phrase "A Marriott, We Are Not." It explains that there is no pool or bar, that there are animals in the house and there might be insects, too (and poisonous sprays are verboten), that roosters crow early in the morning and that, in the Honaunau jungle, mildew sometimes happens and there are "no white glove inspections."

At Yoga Oasis, co-owner Hayward Coleman says "we have no dogmas" — guests are free to consume or do what they like in their cabins, but no meat or alcohol in the main house, please.

Smoking is out of the question at most retreat inns.

Nor are these places for those who are uncomfortable with the "alternative" world — one where skepticism plays little role, where rocks can speak and crystals can heal, and Pele's power reverses the magnetic forces that have been bringing you down.

YOGA OASIS | EXPAND MIND THROUGH MEDITATION

On Pohoiki Road, the trees interlace leafy fingers overhead and the forest is color-splashed with wild orchids and escaped geraniums. The cheerful Hilo radio station suddenly sounds noisy and clamoring; you turn it off as you turn into a narrow driveway marked by Tibetan prayer flags and an alley of palms and bamboo.

When Hayward Coleman and Heather-Star bought the 26 acres in 1992, it was all jungle. The business partners cleared judiciously, walking ahead of the bulldozer to protect the trees and features they wanted to preserve. Coleman, a bamboo enthusiast, has planted more than 50 species among the 'ohi'a and ginger.

Now guests stay in spartan rooms in the main house or in gracious one-room cabins with baths that look out on the forest. The decor is eclectic, with touches of Bali, Thailand and India. Screens serve as walls to bring the outdoors in.

Yoga class is from 8 to 10 a.m. after which a serve-yourself vegetarian breakfast buffet is set out (cereals, yogurt, fruit, nut butters, even salad — the menu is 80 percent raw).

Rates from $75 per day include yoga class and breakfast. During the busy season — in fall and winter — vegan and lacto ovo dinners are served at an additional cost, with fresh fish an occasional option.

There is a weekly acrobatics class attended by local enthusiasts; Coleman is a mime and acrobat and he and Heather-Star toured with acrobatic shows before building Yoga Oasis.

Coleman says the Yoga Oasis experience is centered in three things: the daily yoga practice; the location, where sounds of nature put you to sleep and wake you up, where you go barefoot and can actually see the night sky; and healthful food, much of it grown locally.

The heart of Yoga Oasis is a second-floor space that glows with golden cedar and 'ohi'a woods; the sprung wood floor is paved with spongy-firm tumbling mats. Hazy light pours in through walls made of screen. The patter of the daily rain shower makes a pleasant white noise. A small altar occupies one corner.

Coleman began studying yoga in 1972. "The first thing I had to do was to learn how to breathe," he recalled.

Breathing is a focal point of the retreat's teachings, which incorporate chi gong and hatha yoga.

"We learn how to take in more oxygen," by breathing deeply from the belly up, said Coleman. He explained that contemporary life, with its busy-ness and stress, causes people to clamp down and breathe shallowly, as though in pain. A lack of oxygen stresses muscles and joints, blocks drainage of toxins, saps strength.

But here, yoga is more than a physical practice; it is for meditation and mind expansion, too.

AHU POHAKU HOÇOMALUHIA | ECO-CONSCIOUS SPA

Jean Sunderland's experience in high-end hotel spas had taught her that many guests hungered for healing that went beyond seaweed baths. One day, in a meeting of Five Mountains Hawai'i, a Big Island consortium that promotes wellness tourism (www.five mountains.org), someone said, "You know, somebody really needs to build a proper healing retreat here."

Sunderland blurted, "I'll do it."

"You know how sometimes something falls out of your mouth and you just know it's the truth? That was one of those times," she recalls.

She and her husband, retired physician Robert Watkins, are investing their savings, and the equity from their Hawi-area home, in the idea.

It's a chicken-skin story. When Sunderland went to look at some nearby property they'd heard about, it felt eerily familiar. But she couldn't recall ever having been down Paipo-Kane Road.

It took some time for the memory to surface: Years before, her teacher, the late herbalist and healer Tommy Solomon, had brought her to Hono'ula Gulch on a boat trip. Sunderland and Solomon walked on the beach. When she asked why they were there, the old man answered, "I don't know, I was just told to bring you here."

Today, the 60-acre property encompasses a hillside above the gulch where the retreat center is nearing completion and the valley below, where, after scrambling through thickets of lantana, Sunderland and Watkins found a ring of stones. Locals believe this is a place where Kamehameha I met with his advisers.

"We were real clear that the valley was what was calling us," she said. "The mana here is just palpable." They have carefully cleared it, preserving native species and planting a few things. Tutu lives here, too, on a hill above the meadow. It will be a place for walking, meditating, meeting.

Ahu Pohaku Ho'omaluhia, which will open after the first of the year, will offer Ritz-Carlton-level pampering in a cliff-front lodge with nine spacious rooms ringing a garden courtyard. In the lodge are a library, media room (no TV or Internet elsewhere), dining room and yoga floor, plus one spa treatment room. A larger spa, with multiple treatment rooms and a swimming pool, will open in a separate building shortly thereafter. Seven bungalows and a yurt village will be added in the future.

Rates from $250 per night include daily yoga and meditation but no meals or treatments.

The designers have made extensive use of "green" ideas: solar and photovoltaic power, natural air flow in place of air conditioning, a recycling program, Sunderland said.

"One of the purposes is to be an example that renewable living and gracious living are compatible," said Sunderland. "We have the technology to take care of our planet. We just have to do it. Perhaps people will take some of these ideas home.

Much of the the lodge's business will be for groups — yoga and meditation workshops, wedding or family gatherings, therapeutic retreats.

The property is entered by a narrow, gravel-paved road. "This is deliberate," she said. "It's very important that people transition from their normal life into this place of retreat."

A goal is for guests to reconnect with their life's meaning.

"All of us know what is our calling. We know how to connect with the spirit. We just don't remember that we know," Sunderland said. "The important thing is just to have the time to be still and not be distracted.

DRAGONFLY RANCH | THERAPIES TUNE YOU IN TO HEALTH

A visit to Dragonfly Ranch is a gentle whirlwind of experiences, sights, scents and and information. Proprietor Barbara Moore pops you into the closet-size TheraSauna she built from a kit — "it gets the toxins out," she says; pops a spoonful of delicious homemade yogurt in your mouth (as well as some not-so-delicious algae); whisks you upstairs to the honeymoon suite for a foot massage; leads you past her somewhat scraggly organic garden and on a meditation walk on the brightly painted labyrinth floor overlooking the gully in which her bed and breakfast inn is perched.

"I help people make changes if they want to make changes. I have a lot of tools to offer people and I tell them about things, if they're interested. If not, that's fine, too," said Moore. Her tools include flower essences, a rebounder, massage, a chi machine, an amethyst bed, exercise, swimming in bays where dolphins might come to play. "We just try to tune people into their health."

Dragonfly Ranch is a sprawling house furnished in a jumble of bright colors, artworks and chachkas that Moore has collected over three decades. A cat wanders through. Geckoes are more than welcome. "More than once I've had people say this is the Hawai'i I've dreamed about, the old, real, natural Hawai'i," said Moore.

Accommodations range from simple bedrooms with separate baths to a largish apartment where a whole family can camp out on futons and beds. Prettiest is the honeymoon suite, which looks into the canopy of the monkeypod trees on the property and has a sunken bath, a stone deck and an outdoor shower where it's perfectly acceptable (and private) to go nude. Rooms, from $100 a night, include breakfast.

There's also a "private spa" cottage a few minutes away, with two bedrooms and two baths, a deck, TV and sound system, sauna, rebounder and chi machine (from $300, with minimum three-night stay).

Breakfast is a serve-yourself, cook-for-yourself thing. A buffet of fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, yogurt and such is laid out, and there are always eggs if guests want to prepare them, and organic Kona coffee. Moore can bring in licensed massage therapists, but sometimes offers free massages just for the love. And sometimes she chooses to share her evening meal with guests, again free.

"I tell people make yourself at home. There is no off-limits here," she said.

As Moore talked with a visitor, a pair of Mainland guests, still rosy from massage and a sauna, whipped up a fruit smoothie in the blender. "We have wanted to come here for years," the man of the couple said. "And it's just what we hoped."

Many of her guests are practitioners of alternative therapies, taking a break from giving. "I learn so much from my guests. If I were going traveling, they're who I would look for," said Moore.

The healing center's name came from Moore's early fascination with dragons as protectors. But then someone referred to her as "the dragon lady" and that didn't sit right. "One day a big, huge neon turquoise dragonfly circled me for several minute and I got the message. I thought, 'I'll use him to protect me instead of dragons. It just seemed whimsical and fun." Like this place.

IF YOU GO ...

Yoga Oasis: Bed-and-breakfast accommodations in rooms and cabins in the Puna rainforest, daily yoga classes, lomilomi massage, vegetarian and raw foods, eco-adventure tours, group rates. Rates: $75-$100 a night for rooms; $125-$145 a night for cabins. No TV; computer access available; rustic atmosphere. P.O. Box 1935, Pahoa, HI 96778; on Pohoiki Road near Pahoa; 45 minutes from Hilo, three hours from Kona. (808) 965-8460. www.yogaoasis.org

Dragonfly Ranch: Bed and breakfast accommodations in various configurations in a sprawling older home in Honaunau, 30 minutes from Kona. Alternative therapies, free use of kitchen, amenities include meditation labyrinth, natural foods, high-speed Internet access, cable TV and DVD selection, phones, small sauna, library. Note: House has a weathered, down-home feel and includes "friendly and respectful dogs and cats." Rates: $100-$225 a night for rooms; $300 a night for two-bedroom, two-bath free-standing cottage. Off Highway 11 (Mamalahoa Highway), two miles makai on Route 160 (Keala O Keawe Road). (808) 328-2159. www.dragonflyranch.com

Ahu Pohaku Ho'omaluhia: Soon-to-open, high-end, ecologically conscious health retreat near Kapa'au, on a cliff overlooking the ocean with beach access. Lodge with nine lavish guest rooms, dining room, yoga floor, courtyard garden, media center, library, spa treatment room, views; taking first guests in January. Massage, spa treatments, alternative therapies. Designed for group retreats and workshops, weddings and family gatherings, but individuals also welcome. Rates: $250-$550 per night (depending on room and time of year). Jean Sunderland, (808) 889-5061. www.hawaii-island-retreat.com (click on Hawaii Retreat Lodge). (Some photos on Web site are of Sunderland's nearby vacation rental; Ahu Pohaku Ho'omaluhia is still under construction.)

Other Big Island options:

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.