Esalen Center For Theory & Research Initiatives

Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology

• 1962: The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow, co-founder of both humanistic and transpersonal psychology, arrived at Esalen by chance, and came to play an important role in its development, leading several workshops and guiding the founders. Esalen workshop leaders eventually played a pivotal role in the growing discipline of humanistic psychology.
• 1964: Fritz Perls, co-founder of Gestalt therapy, arrived at Esalen in poor health and relatively unknown. In the ensuing five years at Esalen, his health improved and he was provided a public platform for his work through regular demonstrations in the lodge and sundry workshops. By his death in 1970, several training centers had opened and Gestalt had become an important component of the psychotherapeutic landscape.
• 1967: Will Schutz published the national-bestseller Joy and took up residence at Esalen, which subsequently became a major center for his style of encounter groups, thereby helping to spark a boom in group-centered therapies.
• 1970: an Esalen team visited Europe to find new approaches to personal growth and discovered Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, an eclectic and comprehensive approach to development focused on the positive and "higher" dimensions of humans. This group then introduced Assagioli’s work to America in the winter of 1971. Key figures: Michael Murphy, James and Susan Vargiu, Stuart and Sukie Miller, James Fadiman, Robert and Donna Gerard.
• 1970-1971: a number of Esalen group leaders traveled to Arica, Chile to study with the Sufi teacher Oscar Ichazo. Key figures: Claudio Naranjo, John Lilly, Steven Stroud, Jack Downing. This eventually resulted in the proliferation of work on the Enneagram, a system of personality typology, as well as the founding of the Arica school.
• 1971-1975: summer programs in Berkeley, co-sponsored with the Association of Transpersonal Psychology, on "Human Consciousness: Exploration, Maps, and Models." Core seminars taught by: John Lilly, Dorothy Fadiman, James Fadiman, John Perry, Charles Tart, Stanley Keleman, Arthur Hastings, Stanislav Grof, Joan Halifax-Grof, Jean Houston, and Arthur Deikman. These summer programs helped shape the nascent discipline of transpersonal psychology.
• 1977: during a month-long seminar at Esalen, Christina and Stanislav Grof invented Holotropic Breathwork, a non-drug method for exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness using deep breathing in a group setting with evocative music and bodywork. In 1987, they created a formal training program, which has since spawned its own international organization and journal.

Education

• 1965: George Brown, professor at UC-Santa Barbara, first began teaching workshops at Esalen on new paradigms of education.
• 1966: Esalen sponsored "Education in the Year 2000," a workshop jointly led by Richard Farson, director of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute; George Leonard, west coast editor for Look magazine and winner of more national awards for education reporting than any other writer; and Richard Suchman, Director for the Divisions of Elementary-Secondary Research and Higher Education Research in the U.S. Office of Education.
• 1966: Rollo May, a leading figure in humanistic psychology, led a workshop on "Education and the Dimensions of Consciousness."
• 1966: James Bugental, prominent existential psychologist, facilitated a workshop on "Ontogogy: Education for the Human Frontier."
• 1967: a Ford Foundation grant led to the creation of the Ford/Esalen Project in Confluent Education, joining affective and cognitive learning. Dr. George Brown, a regular Esalen workshop leader and Professor of Education at UC-Santa Barbara, spearheaded the program. His work was summarized in an Esalen book entitled Human Teaching for Human Learning. and a subsequent book called The Live Education: Innovations Through Confluent Education and Gestalt. This project gave rise to the Confluent Education program at UC-Santa Barbara’s School of Education, which has conferred more than 80 doctorates and 300 master’s degrees.
• 1968: Esalen’s vice-president, George Leonard, drawing upon his reporting background and experience in the human potential movement, published Education and Ecstasy, a radical, utopian vision of education that is still influential today.
• 1970: Esalen San Francisco sponsored a regular series of lectures and workshops for educators on humanistic education.
• 1970-1973: Esalen implemented a sub-grant from George Brown’s Ford Foundation work in which fourteen teachers and principals spent three years training in Esalen techniques and then applied such methods to their work in education.
• 1971: Esalen’s education work, under the direction of Sukie Miller, was awarded a Title-III grant from the state of California for a demonstration program in confluent reading in the Newark school system.
• 1973: Esalen seminars on education became available for academic credit through the UC-Santa Barbara extension program.
• 1977: Esalen created the Gazebo school under the guidance and vision of Janet Lederman, a regular seminar leader on educational subjects, an innovative teacher, and author of Anger and the Rocking Chair. The Gazebo became a long-term experiment in applying new principles to the field of education.
• 1987: invited conference on "Early Childhood Education for the '90's," convened by Janet Lederman.

Somatic Education

• 1962: Esalen opened as an educational center, with a strong emphasis on incorporating the body into visions of human development. Over the years, a distinctive style of massage developed and became known as Esalen massage. Thousands of massage practitioners from around the world have now been trained in this approach.
• 1963: Charlotte Selver arrived at Esalen for the first time, bringing with her the Sensory Awareness approach, first developed by Elsa Gindler in Germany. Through her regular workshops at Esalen this work became much more widely known and practiced.
• 1964: Ida Rolf, creator of Structural Integration, began a series of extended residence periods. Structural Integration involves a deep muscular-fascial restructuring of the body. With Esalen as a platform, this work grew into international prominence, with its own licensing body and training program.
• 1965-present: Esalen offered a major West Coast venue for Reichian and neo-Reichian approaches to personal growth, among them the Bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos.
• 1970: Moshe Feldenkrais, creator of the Feldenkrais method, held his first major training in the United States at Esalen.
• 1971: Judith Aston gave her first training in Aston Patterning at Esalen.
• 1987: conference on "The Biological, Psychological, and Cultural Body: Methods of Transformation" bringing together experts in various somatic disciplines, including Don Hanlon Johnson, Ted Melnechuk, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, George Leonard, Judith Aston, Thomas Hanna, Candace Pert, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, George Solomon, Charlotte Selver, Michael Murphy, Leslie Gray, Barbara Halpern, and Susan Griffin.
• 1988: first of three conferences on "The Body and Spirituality," funded by Laurance Rockefeller’s Fund for the Enhancement of the Human Spirit, convened by Don Hanlon Johnson. Participants: Lauren Artress, Diana Beach, Shepherd Bliss, Grita Gil-Austern, Alan Jones, June Keener-Wink, Paul LaChance, Daniel O’Connor, Michel Pantenberg, Paula Pohlman, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Thomas Stoll, and Alton Wasson.
• 1989: second conference on "The Body and Spirituality" convened by Don Hanlon Johnson. Participants: Phyllis Ocean Berman, Richard Bollman, Sandy Boucher, Sister Myriam Dardenne, Sister Rose Mary Dougherty, Clare Fischer, Reverend Marsha Foster, David Griffin, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, Elise Saggau, Dmitri Spivak, Halima Toure, Ted Tracy, Arthur Waskow, Rabbi Sheila Weinberg, Judith Aston, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Robert Hall, and Jean Lanier.
• 1990: third conference on "The Body and Spirituality." Participants: Joseph Couture, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Sister Myriam Dardenne, Robert Hall, Rosemarie Harding, Vincent Harding, Barbara Holifield, Don Hanlon Johnson, Michael Murphy, Naomi Newman, Dr. Mohammed Shaalan, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Father Thomas Matus, Father Innocenzo Gargano, Victor and Luiza Krivorotov, Dmitri and Leonid Spivak, Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko.
• Out of the "Body and Spirituality" conference series came several projects, including the Healing Center for Survivors of Political Torture in San Francisco, and the Group for Healing the Body of Slavery, based in Oakland.
• 1991: Conference convened by Don Hanlon Johnson on Somatics and Phenomenology. Participants: Elizabeth Behnke, Seymour Carter, Edward Casey, Maureen Connolly, Chris Gove, Robert Hall, Drew Leder, Kennard Lipman, David Rehorick, Glen Mazis, Kay Toombs.
• 1992: invited conference on "Somatic Therapy and People of Color" convened by Clyde Ford and Don Johnson.
• 1995: Don Johnson edited the first in a series of CIIS-sponsored texts on somatic literature Bone, Breath, & Gesture : Practices of Embodiment as an outgrowth of the working group established through the Esalen conferences, which included Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Continuum; Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Body-Mind Centering; Clifford Smythe, Feldenkrais; Michael Salveson, Rolfing; Darcy Elman, The F. M. Alexander Guild; Robert Hall, Lomi; Michael Marsh; Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School; and Stuart Newman, PhD, NY Medical School.
• 1997: Don Johnson edited the second volume, entitled Groundworks: Narratives of Embodiment, to emerge from the working group, including articles by Robert Hall, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Emilie Conrad Da’oud, Michael Salveson, Elizabeth Beringer, and Darcy Elman. Each therapist described how he or she approaches and diagnoses a patient's problem, how he or she determines what and where to work, and the progress of a session.
• 1998: Don Johnson edited the third volume, entitled The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology, with cases that explored the interface between bodywork and clinical psychology.

Holistic/Humanistic Medicine

• 1971-1974: Esalen created the Program in Humanistic Medicine in which twenty carefully selected medical professionals met monthly over a period of three years to explore various human growth methods, somatic disciplines, Eastern spiritual practices, and alternative medical models. This understanding was then applied to a more humane practice of medicine. Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen and the late Dr. Alan Barbour, among others, participated in the first group. This program also trained and consulted for SAMA (Student American Medical Association).
• 1973: workshop on "Holistic Medicine" led by Gay Luce.
• 1974: workshop entitled "Four Pillars of Health: A Workshop in Preventative Medicine" led by John McCamy and Al Drucker.
• 1974: workshop on "Femininity in Humanistic Medicine" featuring Rachel Naomi Remen, Marguerite Abell, and Mary Morgan.
• 1974: first Esalen month-long workshop devoted to health. It emphasized nutrition, bodywork, structural integration, meditation, and group work, and was led by Dr. John McCamy
• 1974: the Program in Humanistic Medicine became a separate entity called the Institute for Study of Humanistic Medicine after receiving a $1.2 million grant from HEW Manpower. This program was subsequently adopted by Mt. Zion Hospital.
• 1976: The first federal legislation (PL94-434: Health Professions Education Assistance Act) mentioning "humanistic medicine" came before Congress, sponsored by Sukie and Stuart Miller, directors of Esalen’s program.
• 1976: month-long seminar for professionals and graduate students entitled "Holistic Medicine and Traditional Healing," facilitated by Joan Halifax-Grof, Dr. Stanislav Grof, and Dr. Kenneth Pelletier. Visiting faculty included: Carl & Stephanie Simonton, Michael Harner, John Lilly, Gay Luce, and Julian Silverman.
• 1976: Wayne Jonas attended an alternative health month-long workshop, planting many of the seeds which later manifested in his work as the head of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine.
• 1979: Esalen approved by the Board of Registered Nursing and the Califonia Medical Association in California as a provider of continuing eduction.
• 1979-1980: two public conferences on "Stress: Harnessing Its Energy for Health," led by stress experts Hans Selye and Meyer Friedman, targeted to nurses and physicians for continuing education.
• 1981: creation of a four-month residential training program in Holistic Health, designed for health care professionals and students in the health field. It included fifteen major areas of study: homeopathy, gestalt, acupuncture, herbology, group process, nutrition, t’ai chi, massage, healing meditations, organic gardening, movement integration, bach flowers, anatomy, deep tissue, and community health. This residential training was repeated in the fall of 1982 and the fall of 1983.
• 1981: invited conference on "The Perinatal Period: Interface of Biology and Behavior," bringing together specialists in neurobiology, neuroendocrinology, anatomy & physiology, clinical psychology, obstetrics, hypnotherapy, psychiatry, and philosophy to discuss the effect of birth on consciousness and to find ways to create more humane and psychologically sensitive birth experiences. Participants: Peter Levine, Jeffrey Babbitt, Lewis Mehl, Suzanne Arms, Stanislav Grof, John Lilly, Gayle Petersen, Michael Leon, David Cheek, Michael Leon, Jack Downing, Stephan Porges, and Ian MacNaughton.

International Relations

• 1981-1987: six conferences on "Citizen Diplomacy" organized first by James Hickman and subsequently by James Garrison. During the first of these conferences, Joseph Montville coined the term "track-two diplomacy" to refer to private-sector initiatives between Soviets and Americans that supplemented formal diplomatic channels. Participants: James Hickman, Joseph Montville, Jay Ogilvy, John Marks, Michael Murphy, Dulce Murphy, Peter Schwartz, and David Harris. The first conference provided John Marks with his primary inspiration for the creation of the NGO Search for Common Ground in 1982 (www.sfcg.org), which now has offices in Washington, Brussels, Amman, Bujumbura, Gaza City, Kiev, Luanda, Monrovia, and Skopje. This group engages in creative conflict-reducing and bridge-building activities in many of the world’s most troubled zones.
• 1982: pioneered the first spacebridges, allowing Soviet and American citizens to speak directly with one another via satellite communication. These spacebridges inspired subsequent satellite teleconferences between Soviets and Americans, including an ongoing Congress-to-Supreme Soviet teleconference.
• 1983-1987: four conferences, entitled the Erik Erikson Symposia, on the political psychology of Soviet-American relations with career diplomat Joseph Montville and psychologists Erik and Joan Erikson. Participants: the eminent historian James McGregor Burns, diplomat Joseph Montville, John Mack, Charles Lindbloom, political psychologist Vamik Volkan, theologian Harvey Cox, psychologist Erik Erikson, philosopher Sam Keen, and psychologist James Hillman. Many participants were members of the Political Psychology Society and through Andre Melville, prominent Soviet delegate to that society, their reflections on the psychodynamics of the relationship between the superpowers were transmitted to high levels of the Soviet bureaucracy. Effects: 1) James Blight attended one meeting and was inspired to take a similar psychodynamic approach to the Cuban missile crisis, which resulted in several books and a PBS documentary. 2) Joseph Montville edited a special edition of the Journal of Political Psychology called "A Notebook on the Psychology of the U.S.-Soviet relationship." 3) John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning psychoanalyst at Harvard, set up his own research center called The Center for Psychology and Social Change, influenced by Esalen work. 4) Vamik Volkan, professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia medical school, created the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction at UVA.
• 1983: co-sponsored a conference entitled "Faces of the Enemy." Speakers, including Sam Keen, Ashley Montagu, Robert Bly, and Soviet diplomat Valentin Berezhkov, discussed the psychology and politics of enmity, propaganda, and projection. Keen’s book Faces of the Enemy, destined to become a classic in the field, was influenced by this conference.
• 1984: meetings between Dulce and Michael Murphy and the leaders of the Soviet Writers’ Union eventually led to its joining the International Pen Club.
• 1985: helped create the Association of Space Explorers with astronaut Rusty Schweickert, the first forum in which Russian and American astronauts and cosmonauts could share their experiences in space and their hopes for the future of space exploration.
• 1985: signed one of the first agreements between an American private-sector group and the USSR Ministry of Health, brokered by Dulce Murphy. This agreement facilitated work in the areas of health promotion, productivity in the work place, and non-pharmacological methods of treating disease and stress.
• 1986: co-produced a spacebridge on Chernobyl and Three Mile Island with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the USSR Academy of Sciences.
• 1986: major delegation of Soviet writers toured the United States under the auspices of the Soviet-American exchange program.
• 1987: convened a conference on "Sino-American Dialogues on Social and Economic Transformation" led by James Garrison.
• 1988: hosted Academician Abel Aganbegyan for his first visit to the United States as one of Gorbachev’s chief economic advisors. This led to the development of a management training program in Moscow with senior executives from across the Soviet Union.
• 1988: sponsored the first Russian conference on psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), an interdisciplinary field concerned with the relationship between psychological processes and the functioning of the immune system. Inspired by Dulce Murphy, this conference led to productive Russian-American collaborative research in the field and to a follow-up conference, held in 1991 at Leningrad’s Institute for Experimental Medicine.
• 1989: coordinated, in conjunction with the United States-based International Center for Economic Growth and Moscow State University, a conference called "Entrepreneurship in the World Economy."
• 1989: hosted Boris Yeltsin on his first trip to the United States. Esalen arranged meetings for Mr. Yeltsin with President Bush, former President Reagan, and many leaders in business and government.
• 1990: conducted the Furth Ruble Prize, an international competition for the best proposal offering a practical solution to the question of ruble convertibility in international trade. Award recipients were chosen by a panel of Soviet and American scholars, including Abel Aganbegyan, Joseph Brada, Ed Hewett, and Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief.
• 1992: organized a conference in Moscow to address the resurgence and persistence of neo-Bolshevism in Russian society. Russian and American participants confronted the Bolshevist mentality and discussed ways to embrace democratic pluralism rather than totalitarianism.
• 1992: played an instrumental role in a conference, held at the Vatican in Rome, to raise awareness of the emotional and physical needs of people with disabilities.
• 1993: hosted a major conference at Stanford University, entitled "Toward the Further Reaches of Sport Psychology," in which prominent coaches, athletes, and sport psychologists from the former Soviet republics and the United States discussed current trends in theoretical and applied sport psychology.
• 1994: The Russian-American Center became a separate 501c3, although it remains in close collaboration with Esalen.

Empirical Study of Frontier Topics

• 1976: Michael Murphy inaugurated The Transformation Project to systematically study extraordinary bodily transformations that occur in such areas as religious practice, mind-assisted healing, biofeedback, sensory isolation, sports, acupuncture, physical therapy and mental illness.
• 1982: Esalen sponsored a four-week interdisciplinary training program on "Paranormal Intelligence: Explorations of the Limits of Human Capacities." Its focus areas included: 1) Paranormal experience and abilities 2) Modern parapsychological research 3) Psychosis: Disease or spiritual emergency? and 4) New approaches to self-exploration. Leaders: Christina and Stanislav Grof, Fritjof Capra, Rupert Sheldrake, Russell Targ
• 1981-1987: seven invitational conferences on "Psychic Research." Participants: Charles Tart, Russell Targ, Keith Harary, Helmut Schmidt, Daniel Benor, Herbert Benson, William Braud, Marilyn Schlitz, Jacob Zighelboim, Alyce Green, Elmer Green, Stephan Schwartz, Rand DeMattei, Janet Quinn, Bernard Grad, Charles Spence, Ed Brame, Nancy Lunney, Michael Murphy, David Deamer, Bruce Pomeranz, and Lynn Trainor. As a result of the first meeting on Time and Psi, the Parapsychological Association held a symposium on the subject with many of the same participants, providing the nucleus for a ninety-minute BBC television program, "The Case of ESP."
• 1983-1984: two invitational conferences on the "Scientific Investigation of Subtle Energies" convened by George Leonard. Participants: Fred Lorenz, Charles Tart, Chris Cullander, Tod Mikuriya, Julian Isaacs, Bernard Grad, and Tim Scully.
• 1987: invitational conference on "Science and the Transpersonal," designed to explore issues relating to the development of scientific methodologies, styles and concepts which accept and adequately address the implications of a transpersonal realm. Participants: Julian Isaacs, Charles Honorton, Rex Stanford, Michael Murphy, Stuart Twemlow, Rowena Pattee, Ruthann Corwin, Charles Tart, Rachel Bagby, Rodger S. Jones, Shinzen Young, Arthur Hastings, and Michael Harner.
• 1987: conference on "New Directions in Biological Research and Evolutionary Theory," led by David Deamer, a prominent origins-of-life researcher.
• 1988-1995: seven conferences on "New Directions in Meditation Research," convened by Tom Hurley and co-sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Participants: Joan Borysenko, Jon Kabbat-Zinn, Daniel Brown, Beverly Rubik, Roger Walsh, Frances Vaughan, Elmer Green, Stanley Krippner, Charles Tart, Willis Harman, Charles Alexander, Etzel Cardena, Michael Washburn, Stephen LaBerge, Kenneth Pelletier, Ron Kurtz, Michael Murphy, Steve Donovan, and Michael Mahoney.
• 1992: publication of The Future of the Body, Michael Murphy’s comprehensive scholarly guide to metanormal abilities and a wide range of extraordinary human experiences. This volume was the fruit of work begun in 1976 with The Transformation Project and continued through invitational conferences and scholarly exchanges.
• 1993-1998: conference series on "Direct Mental and Healing Interactions," which then became "Distant Mental Influences on Living Systems," convened by Marilyn Schlitz and co-sponsored with the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Participants: William Braud, Sharon Thom, Richard Bierman, Dean Radin, Stephen Braude, Deborah Delanoy, Robert Morris, Bruce Pomeranz, Helmut Schmidt, Richard Wiseman, Dennis Stillings, Elisabeth Targ, Fr. Sean O’Laoire, Ellen Levine, and Garret Young.
• 1996: publication of the scholarly resource book The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Review of Contemporary Research with a Comprehensive Bibliography: 1931-1996, by Michael Murphy and Steve Donovan, updated by Eugene Taylor. This remains the most complete survey of empirical research into the effects of meditation.
• 1998: invited conference on "The Survival of Bodily Death," gathered leading researchers in the fields of reincarnation, near-death, out-of-body, channeling, mediumship, multiple personality, and cross-cultural studies to address the empirical evidence for some form of survival of bodily death. Participants: Adam Crabtree, Bruce Greyson, Michael Grosso, Arthur Hastings, Emily Kelly, Ed Kelly, Sukie Miller, Michael Murphy, and Charles Tart. Summary of proceedings at www.esalenctr.org.
• 1999: invited conference on "Subtle Energies and the Uncharted Realms of Mind," brought into collaboration researchers studying telepathy, precognition, subtle energies, martial arts, lucid dreaming, remote viewing, and distant mental healing. Participants: Kathy Dalton, Bernard Grad, Wayne Jonas, Mary Ellen Klee, Stephen Laberge, George Leonard, Fred Luskin, Roger Nelson, Dean Radin, Beverly Rubik, Marilyn Schlitz, and Russell Targ. Summary of proceedings at www.esalenctr.og.

Physics and Consciousness

• 1974: public lecture for Esalen San Francisco by Nick Herbert on "Physics, Consciousness, and Psychic Phenomena."
• 1976: Esalen and the Physics Consciousness Research Group of San Francisco conduct a month-long invited conference on the conceptual gaps and possibilities in theoretical physics and the relevance of modern physical thought for consciousness transformation on the planet. Participants: Jack Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Michael Murphy, Fred Alan Wolf, Nick Herbert, Peter Flessel, Ralph Abraham, Michael Karnov, and John King
• 1976-1988: eleven annual invited conferences on "Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality" convened by Nick Herbert. Special attention was devoted to Bell’s Theorem and its implications. Participants: Gary Zukav, Charles Brandon, Nick Herbert, Ariadna Chernavska, John Clauser, Ralph Abraham, Saul-Paul Sirag, Bernard d’Espagnat, and Henry Stapp.
• 1979: Gary Zukav publishedThe Dancing Wu Li Masters , which explored the implications and origins of quantum physics for a popular audience, and won the American Book Award for Science. It was partially inspired by the Esalen conferences
• 1987: Nick Herbert published a popular science book Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics, inspired partially by Esalen work and subsequently published Elemental Mind : Human Consciousness and the New Physics to expand these ideas further.

Sports Psychology

• 1972: Michael Murphy, co-founder of Esalen, published Golf in the Kingdom, destined to become one of the classic works on the inner game of sports.
• 1973: Esalen created the Esalen Sports Center, designed to foster an orientation to sports beyond mere competition and physical activity. Former professional football player David Meggyesy, Bob Kriegel, a group leader and sports coach, and Mike Spino, an innovative running coach, joined with Michael Murphy to build programs that saw sports as vehicles for self-development and avenues to a higher nature. The first weekend program was so successful that Esalen launched a two-week summer program. Prominent faculty: Stewart Brand, Judith Aston, John Brodie, Tim Galway, George Leonard, Stanley Keleman, Dave Meggyesy, Eleanor Metheny, Dan Millman, Robert Nadeau, Mike Murphy, Al Huang, Will Schutz, Jack Scott, Mike and Dyveke Spino.
• April 15, 1973: New York Times article on the Esalen Sports Center stated that, "Such is the clout generated by Esalen that the occasion may be to a change in sports what the storming of the Bastille was to the French Revolution."
• 1975: George Leonard published The Ultimate Athlete, which presented a theoretical framework for the kind of work the Sports Center was fostering.
• 1976: the Esalen Sports Center began a six-moth program in mind/body development, coordinated by Mike Spino, featuring running, meditation, yoga, and other disciplines.
• 1978: Michael Murphy and Rhea White published In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports, the most comprehensive scholarly effort to date on metanormal experience in sport.
• 1993: Esalen hosted a major conference at Stanford University, entitled "Toward the Further Reaches of Sport Psychology," in which prominent coaches, athletes, and sport psychologists from the former Soviet republics and the United States discussed current trends in theoretical and applied sport psychology.

Integral Practice

• 1983: George Leonard gave the first of three Leonard Energy Trainings at Esalen, a rigorous eight-week integral program of physical, mental and spiritual disciplines.
• 1992: George Leonard and Michael Murphy initiated a two-year experimental class in what they called Integral Transformative Practice (ITP), which combined meditation, imaging, affirmations, intellectual study, physical discipline, nutrition, and group work to create a comprehensive program for development. This experiment led to the publication of Leonard and Murphy’s The Life We Are Given in 1995 and to the creation of numerous ITP groups in the U.S. and overseas. (web site: www.itp-life.com)

Environmental Studies

• 1966: Gerard Haigh and William Zielonka led a workshop entitled "Man in Confrontation with Nature" to explore how modern humans distance themselves from the natural world and how best to remedy this separation.
• 1968: Ralph Metzner led a series of dialogues on ecology and psychology at the Esalen San Francisco center.
• 1971: lecture by Alan Watts and Lynn White on the "Ecological Crisis" at the Esalen San Francisco center, a lecture which inaugurated a joint effort by Esalen and Friends of the Earth to develop a psycho-ecological approach to human problems.
• 1987: invitational conference on "Thinking About Biotechnology: Environment, Public Health, Social Priorities," convened by Walter Truett Anderson.
• 1990: invitational conference on "Tropical Ethno-Medicine," gathering botanists, phytochemists, ethnologists, and ecologists working to preserve and understand rain forest plants with healing and psychotherapeutic potential.
• 1991: invitational conference on "Ecological Transformation," bringing together environmentalists and activists to explore the confluence of ecological, cultural, and personal transformation, with a focus on a local project.
• 1993-1994: two conferences, convened by Theodore Roszak, on "Ecopsychology: Theory and Practice" which helped create a new field of inquiry. Participants: Charlene Spretnak, James Hillman, Mary Gomes, Allen Kanner, Sharon Thom, Margot McLean, Lane and Sarah Conn, Ellen Cole, Carl Anthony, Chellis Glendinning, Laura Sewall, Betty Roszak, Leslie Gray, John Seed, Elizabeth Ann Bragg, Dolores LaChapelle, Claire Greensfelder, Robert Greenway, Jeanette Armstrong, Steven Harper, Alan Hunt Badiner, Harold Gilliam, Steve Beck, Danile Moses, Renee Soule, and Jerry Mander. These conferences resulted in the publication of Ecopsychology, considered the defining work for the nascent field, and indirectly contributed to the formation of the first Department of Ecopsychology at Hayward State University.
• 1995: conference on "Sustainability Consciousness," designed to forge relationships between activists, journalists, scientists, artists, business people, and educators, to encourage ecological thinking, and to weave together issues of sustainability, spirituality, and systems theory. Participants: Ralph Abraham, Rebecca Adamson, Andra Akers, Carl Anthony, Allan Hunt Badiner, Andrew Beath, Steve Beck, Mirabai Bush, Andre Carothers, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Christina Desser, Mark Dowie, Barbara Dudley, Joan Halifax, Paul Hawken, Mark Hertsgaard, Bill Joy, Joshua Karliner, Jay Michael Levin, Amory Lovins, Terence McKenna, Miguel A. Reynal, Catherine Sneed, Betsy Taylor, and Nina Wise.
• 1995: conference on "The Business of Restoration," convened to envision the vital role business will play in the restoration of the Earth. Participants: Christina Desser, Allan Hunt Badiner, James Thornton, Steve Beck, Paul Hawken, Joshua Karliner, Amory Lovins, William McDonough, Elizabeth Pinchot, Gifford Pinchot, Artemis Joukowsky, Ted Halstead, Tamotsu Yamaguchi, Michael Stewart, Laurance Allen, Anita Roddick, Michael Totten, Daniel Ellsberg, Elisabet Sahtouris, Vandana Shiva, William Irwin Thompson, James Thornton, Will Keepin, and Lester Brown.

Alternative Views and Approaches to Psychosis

• 1962: Richard Price co-founded Esalen with a strong personal commitment to finding ways to deal with psychosis that were more humane than the prevalent practices of institutionalization, medication, and electroshock.
• 1968: series of workshops and seminars entitled The Value of Psychotic Experience, designed to integrate and extend the theories of John Perry, R. D. Laing, Fritz Perls, and Kazimierz Dabrowski.
• 1969: Esalen launched the Agnews Project, a three-year study of alternative approaches to psychosis, in a California State mental hospital, drawing expertise from Esalen faculty and methods and with support from the National Institute of Mental Health and the California Department of Health. Dr. Julian Silverman, an eminent research psychologist from the National Institute of Mental Health, headed the program, which had three main objectives: 1) Identify, via neurophysiological lab techniques, those individuals who go through psychotic experiences and emerge as better integrated personalities. 2) Develop a unique therapeutic milieu, including encounter groups and didactic seminars, where certain patients are allowed to go through psychosis unmedicated. 3) Revise theories of acute schizophrenic reactions to include the possibility of positive, healing, or problem-solving features of the state as well as the more ominous features.
• 1976: Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax-Grof led an Esalen month-long seminar for professionals and advanced students on "Schizophrenia and the Visionary Mind," including guest faculty such as Gregory Bateson, Erik Erikson, Jean Houston, Claudio Naranjo, Kenneth Pelletier, John Perry, Betty Fuller, and Will Schutz. Areas of focus included the biochemical, psychological and cultural variables in schizophrenia, the study of mystical experience, and various techniques for personal self-exploration (e.g. sensory isolation tank, biofeedback, bioenergetic work).
• 1980: creation of the Spiritual Emergence Network by Stanislav and Christina Grof, with Esalen sponsorship. This organization is a referral and information network which now has a worldwide presence and thousands of members.
• 1981-1988: seven invitational conferences at Esalen on "Alternatives to Institutional Psychiatric Treatment" convened by Larry Telles.
• 1984: month-long Esalen seminar for professionals and graduate students on "Spiritual Emergency: Understanding and Treatment of Transpersonal Crises" led by Stanislav and Christina Grof.
• 1987: invitational conference on "Spiritual Emergence," convened by Stanislav and Christina Grof.

Governance

• 1981-1990: nine invited conferences on "Appropriate Governance," convened by social psychologist and futures planner Donald Michael, designed to explore the nature of appropriate governance for nations and groups that require both autonomy and increasing independence, with special attention to the viability of heterarchy as an organizing principle. Participants: M. Brian Murphy, Walter Anderson, Donald Michael, Jack Ballard, Patrick Ophuls, Lynton Caldwell, Keith Thompson, James Ogilvy, Jack Fobes, and Elsa Porter.

Philosophy

• 1987-1988: a three-year program on "Revisioning Philosophy," convened by former Yale professor James Ogilvy. Participants: Huston Smith, Robert Solomon, Jacob Needleman, Don Johnson, Robert McDermott, Michael Murphy, Joanne Ciulla, Robert Bellah, Bruce Wilshire, Brian Swimme, and Jean Lanier.
• 1991: publication of Revisioning Philosophy, James Ogilvy (editor) by SUNY Press as a result of the above conferences.

Race Relations

• 1967: the first interracial encounter group, named "Racial Confrontation as Transcendental Experience," was led by Look editor George Leonard and black psychiatrist Price Cobbs.
• 1967-1970: a series of twenty-two weekend encounter groups designed to heal deep rifts between the races. Price Cobbs, Ron Brown, John Poppy, and Mike Brown eventually continued this work as independent consultants.

Women’s Issues/Studies

• 1967: workshop at Esalen, led by Arthur Shedlin, entitled "Exploring Woman Power -- A Workshop for Women."
• 1973: beginning of the Women’s Studies Program at Esalen’s San Francisco Center, featuring lectures by Betty Dodson, Anais Nin, and Phyllis Chesler.
• 1991-1992: two conferences on "The New Older Woman" in which prominent American women shared viewpoints on what it's like to be energetic, ambitious, optimistic and over 50 in today's America. Participants: Peggy Downes, Patricia Faul, Virginia Mudd, Ilene Tuttle, Ruth Asawa, Mary Catherine Bateson, Virginia Boyak, Ruth Brinker, Denise Scott Brown, Cecelia Hurwich, Mildred Mathias, Elizabeth Mullen, Gail Sheehy, Harriett Woods, and Marilyn Yalom.

Theology

• 1969: Interdisciplinary Series on Religion, supported in part by the National Council of Churches, began at Esalen San Francisco, with a focus on grounding theological reflection and philosophy in human experience. Leaders included: Sam Keen, William Nicholls, Harvey Cox, Michael Novak, Bishop James Pike, John Cobb, Robert Cromey, Bishop John Robinson, Gordon Kaufman, William Hamilton, and Richard Rubenstein.

Intuition/Psychical Phenomena

• 1974: Esalen San Francisco launched a public series of introductory and in-depth seminars on various psychic abilities and phenomena, including presentations and seminars by Lawrence LeShan, Edgar Mitchell, Robert Monroe, Anne Armstrong, Montague Ullman, Helen Palmer, Frances Clark, and Uri Geller.
• 1986: invitational conference on "Exploring the Inner Processes of Intiution," including Angeles Arrien, Arthur Hastings, Charles Tart, and Helen Palmer.
• 1987: invitational conference for practicing intuitives to exchange information on personal methodologies such as somatic and visual psychic perception, remote viewing, shamanism, and out-of-body techniques. Participants: Wes Agor, Anne Armstrong, Angeles Arrien, Frances Cheyna, Laura Day, Keith Harary, Robert Johnston, Helen Palmer, Stephen Schwartz, Joan Steffy, Charles Tart, and Frances Vaughan.
• 1988: conference entitled, "Applications of Intuition to Areas of Psychology, Business, Medicine and Race Relations" convened by Helen Palmer.

Creativity & Imagination

• 1982: Esalen/Aperture Arts Symposium gathered leading photographers and artists to discuss foundational issues of art and creativity, problems of censorship and expression, and visions for the future of photography. Participants: Michael Hoffman, John Grimes, William Christenberry, Judy Irving, Chris Beaver, Raye Fleming, Brewster Ghiselin, Thomas Ockerse, Ray Metzker, Jerome Liebling, Siegrfried Halus, Mark Holborn, John Grimes, Alison Knowles, Linda Connor, Ingrid Sischy, Frank Gohlke, Raymond Depardon, Martha Chahroudi, and R. H. Cravens. A special 1982 issue of the photography journal Aperture highlighted the results.
• 1988: invited conference on "The Nature of Creativity" convened by Michael Hoffman.
• 1988: invited conference entitled "Living in the Imagination" convened by Terence McKenna and Lewis Carlino.
• 1993: invited conference on "Creativity" in which writers, artists, psychologists, and scholars explored the nature of the creative process. Participants: Sharon Thom, James Hillman, Margot McLean, Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Deborah Groening, Sarah LaSaulle, Walter Murch, Aggie Murch, Lucy Wilson, Sam Wilson, Frank Barron, Nancy Barron, and Lou DeMattei.

Social Outreach

• 1990: conference entitled "Be Your Own Hero: Careers in Commitment" designed to give students at all levels an opportunity to learn of everyday, self-realized heroes, to study their endeavors, and to emulate them.
• 1995-1996: two conferences, co-sponsored with the San Francisco Zen Hospice Program, on "Living Mindfully with HIV" designed for people with HIV and AIDS who were interested in using mindfulness practice to live more fully and compassionately with life threatening illness. Frank Osteseski, Howard Cohn, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Marcy Bahr, and Mary McBride worked with 16 HIV-positive people representing a cross-section of races, sexual orientations, and stages of disease progression.
• 1996: invitational conference for spiritual teachers, psychologists, and social activists to explore the nature and application of compassion. Conveners: Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk and author; Ajahn Amaro, a monk in the Thai forest tradition and founder of the Abhayagiri Monastery and Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
• 1996: conference entitled "Dream Seekers: Empowering African-American Youth" which hosted eight inner-city teens for three days of meditation, T’ai Chi, exercises, artwork, and psychological games.
• 1998: conference led by Akuoye Graham bringing ten inner-city children to Esalen.

Shamanism

• 1977: month-long seminar for professionals and graduate students on "Shamanism and the Mystic Quest," coordinated by Joan Halifax and featuring the following guest faculty: Joseph Campbell, Barklie Henry, Janet Lederman, Charles Lloyd, Matsua, Kathleen Mullin, Henry Munn, Barbara Myerhoff, Richard Price, Christine Price, Gabrielle Roth, Ruturi, Alexander Shulgin, Beverly Silverman, and Julian Silverman.
• 1984-1988: five invitational conferences on "Shamanism" led by Prof. Michael Harner, anthropologist at the New School for Social Research and chair of the National Academy of Sciences committe on anthropology. Additionally, many of Michael Harner’s training programs in shamanism took place at Esalen.

Publishing

• 1969: Esalen began a publication series in conjunction with Viking Press to showcase works from the growing human potential movement. These books included: The Act of Will and Psychosynthesis (Roberto Assagioli), The Further Reaches of Human Nature (Abraham Maslow), Human Teaching for Human Learning (George Brown), On the Psychology of Meditation (Claudio Naranjo and Robert Ornstein), Depression and the Body (Alexander Lowen), Golf in the Kingdom (Michael Murphy), Anger and the Rocking Chair (Janet Lederman).

Miscellaneous

• 1973: San Francisco public conference on "Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness to Submit," designed to address cultish problems in human growth arenas. Panel included: Joe Adams, Bernard Apfelbaum, Stewart Brand, Arthur Deikman, Werner Erhard, Richard Farson, Arthur Hastings, Michael Kahn, Sam Keen, Stanley Keleman, Paul Krassner, George Leonard, Peter Marin, Richard Marsh, Michael Murphy, Claudio Naranjo, Jerry Rubin, Lee Sanella, Will Schutz, Thomas Szasz, William Irwin Thompson, and John Vasconcellos.
• 1983: invited conference on the topic of personal identity, chaired by Michael Murphy. Participants included: Chris Sizemore, multiple personality expert; Jay Ogilvy, philosopher; Michael Harner, anthropologist and expert on shamanism; Michael Murphy; Kenneth Ring and Carlos Alvarado, near-death researchers; and Charles Tart, parapsychologist.
• 1985: invited conference, co-sponsored with the Elwood Institute, on "Critical Questions about New Paradigm Thinking," designed to address the question of whether there is an emergent, holistic world view and if so, what are its contours? Participants: Paul Gunn Allen, Walter Truett Anderson, Richard Baker Roshi, Ernest Callenbach, Fritjof Capra, Tyrone Cashman, Jacqueline Doyle, Leonard Duhl, Riane Eisler, Patricia Ellsberg, Stanislav Grof, Randy Hayes, Hazel Henderson, Eleanor LeCain, Robert Livingston, David Loye, Don Michael, Patricia Mische, Daniel Moses, Brian Murphy, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jay Ogilvy, Janice Perlman, Ziauddin Sardar, Charlene Spretnak, David Steindl-Rast, and Brian Swimme.
• 1986: conference on the investigation of UFOs and related phenomena. Participants: Keith Thompson; Allen Hyne; Richard Baker-Roshi; Jerome Clark; Richard Haines, Director of the International Space Station Project; James Harder; Michael Harner, anthropologist; Budd Hopkins; Jacques Vallee; Bruce MacCabee; Ruth Montgomery; Michael Murphy; John Rimmer; David Saunders; John Schuessler; Berhold Schwartz; R. Leo Sprinkle; Peter Sturrock, chairman of the astronomy department at Stanford; and Charles Tart, UC-Davis professor. Keith Thompson’s 1991 book Angels, and Aliens:UFOs and the Mythic Imagination, grew partially out of this conference.
• 1988: invited conference on "Holonomic Processes in Social Systems" convened by Karl Pribram.
• 1988: Mobius-Esalen conference on "Human Potential Issues" convened by Stephan Schwartz.
• 1988: conference on "Mysticism Reconsidered" convened by Frances Vaughan.
• 1992: The Joseph Campbell Foundation Invitational Conference, in which the foundation reviewed its first year of operation and planned activities for the next year, including a major conference entitled "Myths of the Twenty-First Century: The Creative Legacy of Joseph Campbell."
• 1992: invited conference on "The Global Film Community: Present and Future" in which representatives of the film industry from America, Japan, Europe, India and the Soviet Union, met to discuss the changing global influence on the media; ethics in the international film community; how the art form is altering global consciousness; universal stories and themes; innovations in sound and visual effects; and global financing and distribution.
• 1994-1995: two conferences entitled "The Pacific Symposium on Psychedelic Drugs," convened to consider the use of psychedelics as healing and research tools in the fields of psychotherapy, neuroscience, and medicine, and to consider public policy issues. Participants: Howard Kornfeld, Alise Agar, Jerome Beck, John Buffum, Enoch Callaway, Rick Doblin, Michael Gilbert, Charles Grob, Stan Grof, Deborah Harlow, Robert Harris, Steve Hyman, Peyton Jacob III, Robert Jesse, Reese Jones, Mark Kleiman, Robert MacCoun, Deborah Mash, John Mendelson, David Presti, Juan Sanchez-Ramos, Thomas Schelling, E.A. Sandling, Lewis Seiden, Alexander Shulgin, Jennifer Snyder, and Eric Sterling.