Seminar Spotlight: A Closer Look
In our efforts to expand our programming in new directions, we continue to present leaders whose names may not be as familiar to you as others in our catalog. In this section we highlight a few of these offerings by providing a bit more information than you’ll find in the Workshops section.
Mario Martinez
For the last fifteen years Mario has been developing and refining what he calls the mind-body code, the way our symbolic self and our biology create a language to communicate. Drawing from psychoneuroimmunology (how thoughts and emotions affect our biology), cultural anthropology, cognitive science, and contemplative psychology, Mario proposes his theory of biocognition to explain how our cultural beliefs have more power than our genes in determining our health, worthiness, and longevity.
Because of his specialty in how cultural and spiritual beliefs affect the immune system, Mario has investigated cases of stigmata for the Catholic Church, National Geographic, and the BBC. He works with Fortune 500 companies on decision-making skills based on how the immune system responds to uncertainty. His Empowerment Code model shows how productivity and wellness are inseparable, and why companies that consider the worthiness of their employees as their greatest asset are leading the market in profits and employee health. He is the author of the psychological novel The Man from Autumn (Llumina Press, 2005) and the CD training series The Mind-Body Code: How the Mind Wounds and Heals the Body (Sounds True, 2009).
During Mario’s workshop, participants will have opportunities to apply these healing interdisciplinary tools to their unique life challenges.
Upcoming Workshop: July 19-24, 2009
The Mind-Body Code: How Cultural and Spiritual Beliefs Affect
Health and Longevity
Erica Ariel Fox
How does the human potential movement point to greater potential for business and a deeper meaning of success for ourselves and for our companies?
After the events of September 11, 2001, Erica Ariel Fox felt a strong pull to investigate new perspectives on conflict and to respond to a need expressed by many for deeper meaning in their lives. Already a lecturer at Harvard Law School and an emerging leader in the field of negotiation, Erica also had been part of the Harvard Negotiation Project. In 2003 Erica founded the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative (HNII) to explore what ancient wisdom traditions and contemplative practices could offer the contemporary negotiation and conflict field. HNII was a living laboratory, bringing together diverse professionals from dozens of countries to explore the interface between the worlds of action and reflection. The program drew a broad range of professionals, from lawyers and business leaders to midwives and educators. After several years, Erica expanded the project to an independent non-profit called the Global Negotiation Insight Institute, which seeks to build a wise, mature, and less violent global community.
In her work, Erica focuses on helping professionals to cultivate internal qualities such as awareness, presence, and balance, as well as to master best practices of external skills for interacting with others. This combination enables them to make conscious and constructive choices in their lives both at work and at home. Erica also brings the deeper dimensions of leadership and culture transformation into businesses through her work with Mobius Executive Leadership. Mobius is a consulting firm that aligns with companies to create lasting systemic change, including workshops and customized off-sites; strategic counseling and conflict mediation; leadership development; and coaching for managers and executives.
Erica is recognized internationally for her pioneering work that explores the personal, spiritual, and deeply human aspects of negotiation and leadership. She has led seminars and courses around the globe, including in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Canada, all over Europe, and throughout the United States. She is currently writing a book about her work.
Upcoming Workshop: August 21-23 2009
Beyond Yes™:Negotiating with Wisdom, Living with Mastery
Doug Fine
Like millions of other modern Digital Age citizens, I wanted to make sure that my lifestyle not only didn’t pollute the earth, but also helped heal it. That, of course, meant getting fossil fuels out of my life. But I simply didn’t want to believe the conventional wisdom that a sustainable life meant living primitively, eating steamed dirt outside a shack somewhere. Still, as a lover of modern comforts and the planet, I knew the only way I could see if petroleum-free living was possible today in the course of a modern, Digital Age life, was to leap in and see if I could do it myself. And let me tell you, I screwed up COMPLETELY at first.
Keep in mind, I grew up in the Long Island suburbs, subsisting on Dominoes pizza and sugar water. When I moved to New Mexico to "go carbon- neutral," coyotes ate my chickens, I nearly electrocuted myself when wiring my solar panels, and my new vegetable-oil powered truck’s exhaust gave me the munchies (it smelled like Kung Pao Chicken). But within a couple of months I noticed it was all starting to work. And now, two years later, I have removed 90% of petroleum from my life. I’m coming to Esalen to show you that if I can do it, you can do it too, no matter how little you think you know about living green. And you don’t have to give up any- thing. I still have my vehicle, my Internet, my booming stereo subwoofers, my fridge, my washing machine – all powered by the sun or alternative fuels. Join me as we have fun while helping save the planet.
P.S. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been since getting largely sustainable, and I think there’s a connection!
Upcoming Workshop: November 13-15, 2009
Petroleum Free in One Year
Ralph Abraham, Mary Catherine Bateson & Jean Houston
What happens when you put a chaos theorist, a cultural anthropologist, and a visionary human potentials leader in a room together and get the three of them talking about the known and unknown universe? If it happens at Esalen this conversation is called a trialogue, and it’s bound to soar along the frontiers of many disciplines. This November, Ralph Abraham, Mary Catherine Bateson, and Jean Houston will gather at Esalen for just such an event.
Ralph Abraham, professor of mathematics at UC Santa Cruz, recalls the first trialogues, which took place at Esalen with Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, and himself in 1989. "In the course of many trialogues we made the connection between chaos theory (a new branch of mathematics, also known as dynamical systems theory, which has many applications in the sciences) and everyday life that has been my fascination in the decade since. So the trialogue format is very important for me, and I am delighted to have a date with Jean and Mary Catherine to carry on this tradition. I have high expectations for the unexpected to emerge."
Mary Catherine Bateson is a cultural anthropologist whose incisive insight into human lives is illuminated through her body of work. Her books, including Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery and Composing a Life, among others, capture the intricacies and opportunities inherent in our changing times. She also published a memoir of her parents, With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Meade and Gregory Bateson. Her work is colored by the proposal that lives should be looked at as compositions, each one an artistic creation expressing individual responses to the unexpected. Until recently, Mary Catherine taught at George Mason University and was a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is president of the non-profit Institute for Intercultural Studies, founded by Margaret Meade in 1944.
Jean Houston is a visionary thinker and doer, a scholar, philosopher, and researcher in human capacities. Jean is the founder of the Mystery School, a human development program of crosscultural mythic and spiritual studies now in its twenty-sixth year. She also leads an intensive program in Social Artistry for international leaders to learn innovative leadership strategies. In addition to authoring twenty-six books, on the world stage Jean has been an advisor to UNICEF, the UN Development Program, and UN Habitat in human and cultural development. She has worked in over a hundred countries and over forty cultures to integrate unique cultural gifts into leadership, health, and educational systems. She has worked closely with world leaders including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and President and Mrs. Clinton.
Upcoming Workshop: November 20-22, 2009
Trialogues on Global Human Potential
Laura Simms, Ishamel Beach & Richard Reoch
Laura Simms writes: "I met Ishmael Beah in 1996 when I was a facilitator who helped children tell their stories at a UNICEF conference. On this particular day, fifty-three children circled diplomats and journalists with a song. These were children who had been soldiers, prostitutes, slaves, and street thieves; their chant engaged everyone. Then Ishmael spoke: 'The problem in my country is war and poverty. I was forced to be a soldier when I was thirteen years old. Please do not be afraid of me. I am no longer a soldier. Now, I am only a child. I was told that I could revenge the death of my parents. So killing or be killed became my existence. I learned that revenge only causes revenge. We must simply stop.' Like the great poetic orators of his African ancestors, he threw open the doors of change that have not shut. He changed my life.
"Ishmael became my son and settled into life as a high school student. I rededicated myself to the practice of mindfulness awareness and social action that explores the role of storytelling for healing, transformation, and peacemaking, working with people affected by poverty, conflict, and trauma. I took Ishmael to hear Richard Reoch speak. Richard told the story of Ashoka, an Indian king, who after a battle saw the futile carnage of war. He became a Buddhist ruler perpetuating peace by unlocking the abiding courage of the heart. Richard’s involvement in conflicts worldwide, advocating for human rights, moved both of us. The three of us began a conversation that has not ended. We are a storyteller become activist, a child soldier become writer and advocate, and a humanitarian working with Amnesty International become president of a Tibetan Buddhist organization devoted to compassionate action in the world.
"How does enduring change happen? How do presence and an unbiased heart access an innate power to instigate wisdom and compassion? Why is a practice of mindful awareness not a self-serving endeavor? How do we overcome our own blind addiction patterns of ignorance in order to help others and not become subject to overwhelming stress and burnout? We designed a weekend workshop that brings together our experiences to explore these questions and share our findings in the context of the peacemaker's art."
Upcoming Workshop: December 4-6, 2009
The Peacemaker's Art: An Unbiased Heart