What’s the "Esalen Experience?"
Esalen President & CEO Gordon Wheeler's Blog
March 2009
What’s the essence of an Esalen experience? People tell us it’s a special quality of multiple dimensions of what they experience here. The way you go from the quiet magic of nature to the active hum of the lodge, from solitude to contact and back again, from the challenge of your course or practice to the deep satisfaction of the baths, the bodywork, the many healing spots on the property (many people have told me they have their own, and that it’s a secret!). The way the life of the mind and the life of the emotions, the life of the spirit and the life of the body, and our lives with other people, all flow together at Esalen, interpenetrating each other in a way that enlivens each dimension with the energy of all the others. This, people often say, is what makes Esalen so unique and valuable to them, and what they come back for year after year (or more often, when they can). We lift up one element, one topic for focus and study at one time or another, in one course or another—but all of them are there all the time, and each nourishes the others.
If your workshop at Esalen is in personal exploration and healing, relationships, or some other aspect of your personal development, you know you’re learning and practicing in an institute dedicated to spiritual paths as well—and on a site that has been in ritual, healing use by the Esselen Indians before us for an estimated 6,000 years.
If you’re studying bodywork and embodied healing modalities, you know that Esalen is also dedicated to societal transformation, with subsidized and pro bono initiatives that range from early childhood education to to sustainability to international affairs.
If your interest is in environment, conflict resolution, or founding a non-profit to change the world, you still know you’re at Esalen, where the curriculum for lifelong personal development and embodied healing was pioneered, and where cutting-edge practices continue to be tried out and offered.
As I write this, in the coming week we have a high-brainpower conference group on property sharing their new work in Evolutionary Metaphysics beyond materialism, beyond fundamentalisms and sects, and beyond the "culture wars" of today’s geopolitical scene. It sounds ethereal, but really has to do with who we essentially are, a whole new approach that puts together empirical science, consciousness, and spiritual insights into a new human story.
On the other hand, the following week features an activist group working on different aspects of the "Abrahamic Family Reunion" project—the joining together of leaders from the worlds of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to explore our common spiritual legacy, beyond artificial barriers and boundaries. These conferences are by invitation only (and perhaps not your cup of tea anyway), but you can still hear about them when they report at the weekly Wednesday night program. It is always open to everyone at Esalen.
We can’t be everywhere and do everything at once, yet it’s exciting just to know we’re taking part in such rich ferment, where all the dimensions of our shared lives are in constant conversation around us. All the different voices are in dialogue—mind and body, emotions and spirit, the personal and the social, the world of the mind with the world of deep ecology, deep relationship, deep personal healing and more.
Meanwhile, these same two weeks feature public workshops in topics ranging from dance, yoga, massage, and personal renewal to movement, couples’ relationships, and body healing; and on to organizational psychology, the mother-daughter bonds, and "Mythology at Play in the Year of the Ox" (Esalen’s annual program with the Joseph Campbell Foundation). And that’s all just in this 12-day period. At the same time, the internship programs and staff will be getting ready to start a two-month study of "Permaculture," which is sustainability with the human dimension built in.
Whatever program you’re in—or if you’re at Esalen for a few days of quiet Personal Retreat,—you have a sense that all the rest of this is going on around you, always something new, always different, yet always centered in our integral mission of "personal and social transformation."
I like to think that this is the hallmark of an Esalen program: this idea that these two crucial dimensions of living—the personal and the social, our inner lives and our shared lives—always reach into each other, and cannot truly be separated. This is part of what makes Esalen stand apart—still pioneering after all these years.
When we’re on a path of personal growth and healing, then we know that the healing will be marked, as it matures and completes, by a natural arc toward service and giving back. This isn’t "obligation." It’s gratefulness practice, articulated here over the years by longtime Esalen teacher Brother David Steindl-Rast. We know this is how personal healing becomes fully anchored and integrated into our lives—when we can make use of it and pass it on in some new way to others in our shared world.
If you’re on a path of spiritual transformation, then that dimensional development likewise turns naturally toward service, quietly and privately, or sometimes toward "spiritual activism," in the vivid examples of the "Abrahamic Family Reunion" conferees described above.
And if you’re already in the world of social service, social action—teaching, healing, working with business or organizations or communities—then we know, and you know, that your effectiveness as a change agent is enhanced when you "get in touch" with the emotional, embodied, and deep social/relational sides of life. Work in any dimension empowers all the rest. How can we ever forget that at Esalen. Here, where we have the baths, the miraculous bodywork, the open campus classes in yoga and embodied expression, and the "open seats" and other venues for exploring all these vital dimensions of our being?
We are all change agents in our own lives, and through outreach, in the lives of others. That’s what "the integral" is all about. Each of us is embodied, each of us is unique, and each of us has a contribution to make, in the transformation of our world. This isn’t grandiose (though sometimes that’s a good thing!): it’s the "new human story" in action. Come to Esalen soon, and join in!