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 the Catalog. In this section we highlight a few of these offerings by providing a bit more information than you'll find in the Seminars section.

David Berceli

Since 1989, David Berceli has lived and worked in nine countries providing trauma relief workshops and designing recovery programs for international organizations around the world. "As someone who has lived in war and experienced many natural disasters globally, I have had the remarkable opportunity to watch human beings living on the edge of life and death," he writes. "When we live at or experience this edge of humanity, our organisms (bodies) starkly reveal their most primitive protective mechanisms. We use these same mechanisms in our daily lives but they are not as evident or easy to recognize.

"As a result of these experiences, I began to see the human body as a kind of amoeba on this planet. It is the observation of this primitive, organismic response that helped me to develop Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE™), which cooperate with the body's natural survival and restorative mechanisms to help release the deep chronic tension created in the body during a traumatic experience. What I discovered is that every human body is genetically encoded with primitive defense mechanisms for protection and for safety. This realization allows us to use the body's natural mechanisms to restore ourselves back to a place of safety and relaxation after experiences of daily stress or disturbing traumas.

"When we activate the body's natural biological capacities, we are able to restore ourselves back to healthy states of consciousness and physical ease with less need for external interventions." This spring, join David Berceli at Esalen for an introduction to TRE and an opportunity to explore your own "body history."

Upcoming Workshop: March 4-9, 2012
Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises

Mu Soeng

Buddhist thought and practice has found a place within contemporary American culture in recent years. While there is an enormous range of interpretations and viewpoints in current conversations about what Buddha's teachings stand for, Mu Soeng sees his engagement with Buddhist practice primarily in terms of human sanity. He considers exploration of our individual and collective delusion and the restoration of sanity at both levels the great gift of Buddha's teachings.

Mu Soeng was born in India and came to the United States at an early age. He became interested in existentialism and then Zen Buddhism in the 1970s. He practiced in the Korean Zen Buddhist tradition for many years and was a monk in that tradition for eleven years.

He sees Buddha's teachings as first and foremost a blueprint for the cultivation of a noble person; such a person is defined not by any one culture's imperatives, but rather through discovering one's own essential humanity. The radical nature of these teachings demand that one deconstruct all the constructions one chooses to privilege in overt or covert ways. Mu Soeng believes that if humanity is to change itself, an open, constructive, creative dialogue about what we are doing to ourselves is an urgent requisite.

Mu Soeng has lived and taught at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies for the last twenty years. He is currently the program director and resident scholar there. He is the author of a number of books, including Thousand Peaks—Korean Zen Tradition and Teachers.

In his Esalen workshop, Mu Soeng connects the teachings of Buddha with recent developments in cognitive science and quantum physics.

Upcoming Workshop: March 23-25, 2012
Emptiness and Form: The Dance of Life in Buddhism and Quantum Physics

Sue Johnson

"We are in the midst of a revolution—a relationship revolution," Sue Johnson writes. "We now have a map to the most important mystery of all: the mystery of human attachment and bonding. The patterns in the neural duet that shape a tender, loving moment or a moment of disconnection and misery are now clear." For almost thirty years, Sue Johnson has been fascinated by the study of human emotion, attachment, and the pathways to healing our most intimate relationships. She is a couples' therapist, and was hooked by that calling ever since her very first session with a distressed couple. Since then she has steered Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT) into a prominent position in the field of empirically tested psychotherapies, applied this model to many different kinds of couples, and researched key topics such as the creation of forgiveness after injuries and the nature of the attachment bond between partners. She has recently created an educational version of EFT based on her book, Hold me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.

Sue Johnson has written more than a hundred academic articles and chapters on attachment and the repair of love relationships. She has also written five and edited two books on the subject. Sue travels all over the world teaching EFT, and is professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ottawa and distinguished research professor at Alliant University in San Diego, Calif.

Upcoming Workshop: June 8-10, 2012
The New Science of Love and Attachment: Creating Connection

Bradley Lewis

Each era requires us to ask, who are we now? How should we live in today's world? What goals and values should we strive to meet? What should be the sources of our daily happiness? How should we plan for the future? Bradley Lewis has been asking himself and his students these questions for many years. He believes that these questions are even more pressing today as our world faces growing ecological, social, and financial uncertainty.

Lewis is a psychiatrist, cultural theorist, and professor at New York University who has published a series of books that use philosophy to reconsider contemporary psychiatry. Lately, he has thrown his net wider and is combining his psychotherapeutic and philosophical trainings to consider "the good life" in our postmodern era.

Ancient philosophers, Judeo-Christian mystics, Eastern spiritual leaders, the romantics and transcendentalists of the eighteenth century, and counter-cultural collectives in the 1960s have all asked how we might live a sustainable and happy life. These thinkers and movements offer a rich array of cultural resources from which we can draw.

For Lewis, Esalen is a perfect venue to develop philosophic, spiritual, and embodied practices that will help us flourish in our current era. The sacred grounds, the eclectic culture, and the deep friendships the site fosters are all uniquely inspiring to this end. He believes there is no better place to seek fresh answers to today's most important questions: "Who are we now, and how can we live happily in our uncertain times?"

Upcoming Workshop: June 22-24, 2012
Flourishing in Challenging Times

Coby Kozlowski

Your twenties can simultaneously be inspiring and challenging. Coby Kozlowski uses her experience as a professional life coach, inspirational speaker, movement artist, yoga and dance teacher, expressive arts therapist, and expert in transformative leadership to support this sometimes overlooked group of emerging adults. Coby writes, "Throughout my childhood, I was an athlete. Though I was a good athlete, I was a great support system for my team members. I always had the ability to shine light on different perspectives, give the necessary source of inspiration, and bring people together. Leadership abilities were something I wanted to learn more about. This interest followed me to college and beyond. I was passionate about studying group dynamics, outdoor leadership, and education. I had always wanted to be a teacher and now realized I wanted to be one that used outdoor experience, yoga, and self-inquiry to help young adults create lives of deep fulfillment.

"It is said that 80% of twenty-somethings consider themselves on some kind of spiritual path and yet many don't feel they have the guidance they want. To me, this age is a critical point in life. Not only is it a time of firsts (first home away from parents, first job), it is a time to really examine indoctrinated belief systems and start creating a deliberate and conscious life. It is an exciting time, but also can be really scary.

Emerging adults want to be inspired: by the cars they drive, the food they eat, the work they do, and the ways their communities contribute to society. They are a generation that realizes the old way of doing things isn't working. Quarter-Life Calling provides the scaffolding on which to discover your authentic self, the inherent leader within, and the path toward a deeply meaningful life."

Upcoming Workshop: June 24-29, 2012
Quarter-Life Calling: Creating an Extraordinary Life in Your 20s