Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
Learn More.

Learn more.

Due to road closures along Highway 1 to our north and south, Esalen is closed through April 11.
Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.

Esalen opens May 3, 2024

Visitors are now able to access Esalen as well as other businesses and trails in northern Big Sur via twice-daily convoys on Highway 1 operated by Caltrans.

Convoys run only at 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. each day. These are the only opportunities to travel into and out of Big Sur, so visitors must plan accordingly.

Learn more.

Brontë Velez

brontë velez (they/elle) is a black-boricua transdisciplinary ritual artist, shepherd, minister, and cultural worker. their theological praxis is an intergenerational prayer to resanctify labor with land through rebuking the hauntings slavery has had on our precious relations with earth-rooted ritual and craft. brontë’s ministry is committed to re-ecologizing the roots of pastoral care — as shepherds who paid attention to the earth, followed the wisdom of their rhythms and patterns and through that devotional awareness received prophetic instructions for liberation. 

the prayer of brontë’s life is to support safe and hilarious bedside care through climate collapse. they don’t know if we will get to the “other side” but are interested in the quality of tenderness, attention, awe-fullness, and miracles we can offer to each other and the earth on the path of presence. they care for the crossroads of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the earth through serving as artistic director for bakiné ritual arts studio (FKA Lead to Life) and adult programs director/educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. 

they are currently co-conjuring an absurdist opera with Esperanza Spalding about a frequency that can disarm. they are practicing pastoral care (in an ecological and ministerial sense) as a co-steward of The School for Inclement Weather in Kashia Pomo territory in Northern California. brontë is currently an MDiv candidate at Duke Divinity. mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.

brontë velez (they/elle) is a black-boricua transdisciplinary ritual artist, shepherd, and cultural worker. their eco-social art praxis is an intergenerational prayer to resanctify labor with land through rebuking the hauntings slavery has had on our precious relations with earth-rooted ritual and craft.

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