Well, the postman struggled to squeeze it through my slim mail slot. And when I picked it up to quickly review its contents, I realized that reading it slowly is a much better objective. At a full-figured 136-pages, it’s a thing of beauty.

I’m talking about the Omega Institute 30th-anniversary catalog, a guide to 300-plus summer seminars in every spiritual practice imaginable, workshops in virtually any healing modality known to man from “Getting the Love You Want” to “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” to “Apology, Remorse and Forgiveness in Trauma’s Aftermath” to “The Transcendent Power of Drumming.”

This season, Omega boasts a rather unbelievable program of spiritual retreats for men, women, couples, and whole families beginning in late April and lasting through this coming October. Take a quickie two-day workshop with your favorite spiritual teachers, or plan part of your summer vacation around a full five-day retreat with bonus relaxation and detox. Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Jean Houston, Pema Chodron, Debbie Ford, David Deida, Eckhart Tolle, Iyanla Vanzant, Deepak Chopra, Krishna Das and hundreds more will be teaching and lecturing at Omega this year.

If you don’t live on the Eastern seaboard, consider calling a skilled member of Omega’s reservation’s staff and figure out how to fly to Albany or New York, or take a train to Rhinebeck, New York, a beautiful area not far from New York’s Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley. (I recently met a woman from Maryland who organizes busloads of women to come to Omega.) All manner of accommodations are available with different price points from private rooms to campgrounds. In between your workshop sessions, you may benefit from body work, massage and spiritual counseling at the healing center. And the whole food cooking served up in Omega’s community dining room is both innovative and delicious.

Give yourself a treat and study Omega’s website, which also features films of the work of some teachers. Ask them to mail you a catalog, since the paper copy is sometimes easier to read and manage. Here are some other retreat centers I heartily recommend. And here’s a faith-based retreat center guide.

If you’re shopping for a Buddhist retreat center in your area, best buy “The Complete Buddhist America Guide.” Please post the name of your favorite retreat center if it’s not mentioned anywhere in here. And tell us about your retreat experiences.