Workshop Details

The healing art form of Esalen Massage has become the international benchmark for contactful, caring, sensuous, and heartful touch. Birthed more than forty years ago at the Esalen baths to the rhythms of the mighty Pacific, our practice remains timeless as it continues to evolve.
What exactly is classical Esalen Massage? Deborah and Ellen invite you to come and discover for yourself the elements that are essential to our approach to touching another person. Slow, slower, and slowest are the pace, and flowing stillness best describes how we dance and move around the table. Our art form, guided by the client’s breath and our own, includes timely pauses for integration. During these pauses, our intuition, imagination, and inspiration beckon us from hip to foot, foot to knee, hips to heart, until we pause again.
This moving meditation practice is poetry in motion, a playing of the body as one plays a musical instrument. Classical Esalen Massage can elicit the relaxation response of the para-sympathetic nervous system. Once engaged, this branch of our nervous system takes us from fight/flight to a state of relative peace and well-being.
During our week together, we’ll practice at the Esalen baths. We’ll spend time gathering herbs in the Esalen garden for a special salt scrub and herbal bath.
Open to all levels of experience. Bring loose comfortable clothing, and a couple of sarongs, if you have them.
Recommended reading and viewing: Horan, Connecting Through Touch; Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses; Bensen, The Relaxation Response, The Relaxation Revolution; Esalen Massage DVD; Watson, The Art of Essential Touch I and II DVDs.