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.
Our workshops are designed to support you in the challenging work of self exploration, in partnership with some of the leading minds of the day. Join us in discovering the next frontiers of individual and societal transformation. (Interested in a scholarship? Learn more here.)
Since time immemorial, movement, dance, and the expressive arts have provided individuals and communities with a sense of soulful expression, healing, inspiration, spirit, and connection. We now need to reconnect with these ways more than ever.
The Life/Art Process®, developed by Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin, bridges body awareness, art expression, and psychological processes, providing people with an opportunity to experience dance and the expressive arts as a way to learn, heal, expand creativity, and develop new strategies for personal and professional life. This groundbreaking, innovative approach to human development, embodied creativity, and transformative learning began in the 1950s, and the tradition continues today.
Daria Halprin’s work connects dance, somatics, psychology, and artistic practices to foster personal, group, and community development and creativity. In this workshop, movement, dance, drawing, poetic dialogue, reflective exchanges, and witnessing practices will generate new thresholds of exploration and expression, catalyzing new resources for daily life.
Morning sessions will focus on somatic awareness and individual and group movement exploration to tune the physical body to sensation and feeling. Afternoon sessions will facilitate creative encounters through dance, drawing, and spoken and written narratives to explore our life experiences. Evening sessions will be devoted to questions generated by the day’s work, reflection, and releasing activities, including creative play and meditative art practices.
Participants will be invited to :
No previous artistic experience is necessary. This workshop is designed for everyone.
Recommended Reading: The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy by Daria Halprin
For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used as a strategy for meaningful transformation and self-exploration — marking life’s major transitions and rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.
In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of enhanced states of consciousness. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.
Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.
This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.
Recommended Reading: Holotropic Breathwork by Stan Grof
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Esalen Massage is a moving meditation, a practice in presence and mindfulness, and a loving healing art. When practiced with focused attention, massage comes from a deep, quiet place that resides inside each of us. This practice of meditation helps access the parasympathetic nervous system, where healing originates. As we give a massage, this healing state of mind can permeate the field that practitioner and receiver create together.
In guided sessions, we will explore the practice of sitting meditation to prepare and quiet our minds, and the fundamentals of Esalen Massage as a meditative and self-reflective practice. Special focus will be on quality of touch, breath awareness, centering, and sensitive rapport between partners. The signature long strokes will support a sense of wholeness and integration. Instruction in detailed work for the shoulders, hips, limbs and neck will contribute to the massage experience. There will be supervised practice daily as students exchange massages, with the support of their experienced teachers.
Beginners as well as seasoned practitioners will welcome this week to explore Esalen Massage and meditation, while enjoying the natural beauty of the Esalen grounds.
This workshop is especially useful for those in the helping and healing professions in working with their clients and partners.
26 hours of NCBTMB approved continuing education provided by the faculty through the Esalen® Massage and Bodywork Association Teachers.
Doing personal growth work while still engaging in self-sabotaging behavior is like watering a garden full of weeds and expecting roses to bloom. Learn to overcome negative patterns and transform your pain into authentic power.
In this dynamic three-day workshop with best-selling author and teacher Justin Michael Williams, you will have the opportunity to:
Learn about the practical behavioral changes you can make to help you overcome the hidden patterns standing in the way of your goals. Together, we’ll create your personal action plan and define your “next best move” so you have a ritual for change that lasts well after the retreat. This is your moment to reset, overcome fear and self-doubt, and say “yes” to the life that’s waiting for you.
This program has been designed from the ground up to welcome people of all genders, races, identities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. All meditation experience levels are welcome as well.
Recommended Reading: Stay Woke by Justin Michael Williams
We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own demise or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we? This workshop offers a wide array of resources and teachings to help participants address that final unfinished business and make the most out of every moment that comes before it.
All of life is held within the context of its inevitable extinction. By acknowledging and preparing for death now, we will find ourselves living more fully and fearlessly. Join us as we celebrate the preciousness of life, and ready ourselves and others for this final journey. We will explore how to die a good death and help others pass, engaging with meditations and contemplations that prepare us for letting go. As the Buddhist tradition proclaims, “If you die before you die, then when you die, you will not die.”
With preparation, we can transcend death, turning the greatest obstacle into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and even attain enlightenment. The bardo teachings lead to the death of death. The journey through the bardos is a journey into our mind, so by exploring the bardos, we are exploring ourselves. The teachings apply to any moment that ends – which means they also relate to daily life and can help you live fully within the time you are given.
Together we’ll explore:
We hope you’ll join us for this exploration into the unknown, so that we may all return – fearless, and full of compassion for ourselves and those transitioning from this life.
Recommended Reading: Preparing to Die by Andrew Holecek
This workshop has an additional $20 of faculty tuition.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
“Just as there is a relationship of mind to body, so there is a relationship of body to Earth.” - Carl Jung
Most of us have lost our connectedness to the living world. At the same time, climate change, mental health challenges and chronic illness have skyrocketed. Connection to our bodies and the Earth is the missing piece for sustainable healing.
In this experiential workshop, we will focus on reclaiming our birthright: a deep, and connected relationship with the Earth. A relationship with nature as a pathway to relational and physical healing can holistically transform your life through offering an ongoing source of timeless compassionate love and awareness. Because this is intrinsic to who you are, and we are the Earth.
Set amongst the beautiful Esalen grounds, with the Redwood trees and Pacific ocean, one of the most spectacular coastlines in the world, we will practice both groundbreaking somatic methods based on body awareness science and relational attachment theory, and ancient Buddhist contemplative tools that will support you to foster a connection with nature.
We will mindfully listen to musician John Newton share his own relationship to nature through his original fingerstyle guitar music, reminiscent of the primitive guitar tradition of North America and chamber folk music of the British Isles.
Through embodied mindful awareness, and nature connection practice, you will:
Return home with the budding beginnings of a life-long relationship with the Earth that will help you to remain centered, joyful, and more resourced in an anxious world.
Recommended Reading: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation. Using the profound practice of Yoga Nidra, movement and guided meditation. We will restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from being calm, clear and balanced.
Yoga (meaning “union”) Nidra (meaning “sleep”) is a path to that liminal state of being between waking and sleeping. This is where you can systematically release stored physical, emotional, and mental tensions.
Let go of old beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the past and fearful of the future. Experience your emotions fully, knowing you have unchanging, unshakable ground beneath you — a calm inner presence that allows you to see clearly.
We will work with both our bodies and our minds and create clear intentions to live, not from unconscious and automatic past programming but from a new perspective — an aware, deliberate way of being. We will learn how to take this felt sense of being — this new awareness of the True Self — back into our personal lives, family lives, work lives, and love lives.
Together, we will cultivate new tools to help us negotiate those times when we are under stress and feel lost, tired, and confused — when we forget who we are. These guiding instruments will help put us on the path to gaining life mastery, welcoming your challenges, and remembering your True Being.
This workshop is an opportunity to recognize one’s wholeness, the truth of who you are, and that deep down inside is an inner peace that has always been there.
All that is being asked of you is to show up, lie down, and let go. Yoga Nidra will do the rest. Please bring blankets, a yoga mat, an eye pillow, and anything else you need to lie comfortably on the floor for extended periods of time. And we’ll have opportunities to practice outside, so bring layers!
Recommended Reading: Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep, by Kamini Desai; and Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation Healing, by Richard Miller
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Across various wisdom traditions, there is a common yet paradoxical invitation: Turn toward what is difficult to find freedom from what is difficult. However, when we find ourselves feeling anxiety, loss, judgment, irritation — the full bouquet of difficult emotions — facing these feelings is the last thing we want to do. Fortunately, there are trainable, evidenced-informed practices to help us transmute adversities into joy and insight. By turning toward our challenges, we uncover the wisdom within them, and they transform into our allies.
Teachers and authors Chandra Easton and Eve Ekman have been teaching these transformative tools together and apart for more than a decade. Easton’s expertise draws from her intimate knowledge and practice of Tantric Buddhism and her teachings on the evidenced-based practice of Feeding Your Demons® (FYD) internationally. FYD is a guided five-step process that transforms our so-called “demons” of difficult emotions into our allies. Ekman’s expertise lies in her application of contemporary psychological science of well-being and emotion awareness, sharing the evidenced-based practice of Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) with the world. CEB draws from contemporary emotion science and develops our emotion granularity by mapping our emotion episodes.
In this training, Easton and Ekman guide participants to transform the mind, which is afflicted by our tendency toward enacting destructive emotions. At the heart of all these practices is an ability to transform adversity and joy into the path of our awakening. In contemporary psychological terms, we investigate our so-called “negative” emotional experiences to identify the stories and patterns that occlude our innate compassionate, pro-social nature.
This weekend will include guided meditations based on FYD and CEB, discussions, and time for integration and practice outdoors, weather permitting.
Suggested reading: Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict by Tsultrim Allione & Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron.
This workshop includes an additional $5 materials fee and $110 in faculty tuition.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
What does nature / the cosmos have in store for your life today? What yearns to be birthed in and through you? What if Nature can help you release what stands in your way?
Join us in this deep partnership with the more-than-human world at wondrous Esalen to help you identify and dissolve the obstacles towards manifesting your life purpose.
Discover the alchemy of “forest bathing” – the Japanese practice of mindfully experiencing nature through the senses, which studies have found to improve health, elevate mood, and heighten creativity and problem solving.
Workshop leader Sylvie Rokab will guide you on a journey with Esalen’s spectacular land, waters, mountains and other beings – with invitations that help you clarify and (re)discover the beauty of your uniqueness, talents, and gifts that only you can offer to the world.
Our time together includes:
Participants often share that their stress dissolves, confusion lifts, insights awaken — and they take home a renewed sense of belonging, meaning and purpose in their lives.
Recommended Viewing: Love Thy Nature
Learn to call on your spirit guides and tap into your intuitive mind. Join us in a transformative workshop combining scientifically proven brain-enhancing techniques with intuitive guidance to help you break free from self-limiting patterns and create the life you desire.
This workshop brings together two powerful approaches to help you develop tools for personal growth and transformation. Through easy-to-learn exercises, you will learn how opening neural pathways to your higher consciousness can bring valuable insights into areas where you may feel stuck. By thinking outside the box and accessing your intuitive mind, you have the ability to unlock your creative potential and experience increased productivity and happiness.
Guest faculty Joseph Perreta, a certified psychic medium, will guide you in connecting with your support system on the other side. Joseph’s ability to channel messages directly from the spirit world offers validation, clarification, healing, and peace. His presence will enrich your experience and provide a deeper understanding of the spiritual realm.
Throughout the workshop, you will develop practical tools that you can apply whenever you face important decisions or obstacles in life. By harnessing your intuition and uncovering profound insights about yourself, you will gain the clarity and confidence needed to make positive changes.
Our intention is to empower you to unlock your intuitive mind and carry these transformative practices with you long after the workshop ends. Please come prepared with a notebook or journal and a pen to capture your experiences and reflections.
This workshop has two options on length of stay: a traditional weeklong of two nights or a long weekend of three nights. The extended stay workshop will include more workshop content which is reflected in the extended stay schedule.
Misconceptions about Reiki place its origins anywhere from ancient Egypt to Tibet — even from angels and aliens — but we hold the truth in the palms of our hands. In this workshop, we’ll explore the roots of this Japanese practice and discover the transformative power of universal life energy through Reiki meditations and transmissions.
Over this weekend, students will have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of Reiki from both historical and experiential perspectives. We will discuss how this energy-healing technique originated in Japan, find out how it was influenced by other practices and cultures, and study how it evolved over time.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn:
Participants will receive empowerment ceremonies called reiju or Reiki blessings. We will experience the power of Reiki self-treatments, how to give full Reiki treatments to others, and how to receive Reiki from another, all within the unique Reiki-filled space that is Esalen.
Participants interested in Reiki initiation and certification please email Diane at nycreikimaster@gmail.com, for more information.
“Reiki is medicine for me — both inward and outward. When I first received Reiki, it was in an inward way. It opened me and made me feel what space is, what energy is, and what the universe is.” — Shinobu Saito, a Reiki Master initiated by Hawayo Takata
This workshop includes an additional $60 faculty tuition.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
The chakra system is one of the greatest gifts the ancient yogis and rishis of India shared with the world: a powerful spiritual map for our healing and the awakening of our consciousness so we can fully come alive! This week is an invitation to explore this map and unlock the unbridled joy, creative power, and freedom that lives inside of you.
The ultimate goal of yoga is to live in embodied enlightenment. It is to know and feel the current of mukti (the force of liberation that expands you in the direction of pure potentiality and higher consciousness) and to feel and celebrate bhukti (the gift of embodiment and all the pleasures and abundance of earthly reality). This workshop offers us the opportunity to bring these concepts into reality and into our living beings.
Through embodied ritual practices of yoga, live music, dance, meditation, sounding, and communion with nature, you will begin to shape an intimate connection with each of your energy centers. Together we will work to break through the blockages that keep you stuck and stagnant — preventing you from healing and experiencing the fullness of your power and life. We will dive deeply into the chakra system through accessible, dynamic, and interactive discussions and exercises.
Each day, Cristi will guide us in her signature, dynamic chakra-based vinyasa, woven with mudra, kriyas and pranayama, supported by the sacred rhythms and healing soundscapes of our musical guides. DJ Marques Wyatt and DVINE1, aka Joel Long, will be playing sitar and percussion.
These practices will be enhanced by a variety of daily rituals, ranging from:
Join us as we turn the yoga dance floor into a ritual of self-expression. You’re invited to experience every ritual as a prayer to your highest self to return you home to your body and nature, awaken pleasure, and give you permission to feel. Ignite your power. Heal your heart. Claim your vision and voice. Connect to your own divinity and celebrate this gift of life!
Recommended reading: Chakra Rituals by Cristi Christensen
How much joy we experience in life is limited by our ability to show up each day with unapologetic authenticity. For many people who identify as LGBTQIA2S+, feeling safe or supported to live authentically may not have been an option. As a result, many of us live disempowered lives— stuck in jobs, relationships, and routines that we no longer identify with. In turn, many of us have been able to break free from those past lives but still carry the weight of grief and trauma that come from years of living inauthentically.
This interactive, thought-provoking, and supportive workshop is designed to help you move away from the pain of the past, and set your inner child free into a safe, welcoming and vibrant relationship with you and your Self. During this week, you will explore a series of creative exercises individually and together as a group. By tapping into the voice of your inner child, releasing what no longer serves you, there is safer and more gentle space for experiencing joy like never before.
You will have the opportunity to:
This workshop is welcome to anyone who identifies as an LGBTQIA2S+ person or, a family member or friend of someone seeking to live more authentically in partnership with their inner child, and discover ways to support the LGBTQIA2S+ people in their lives.
Recommended Reading: Sex, Needs and Queer Culture: From Liberation to the Post-Gay by David Alderson, The Empty Chair: Tales From Gestalt Therapy by Vikram Kolmannskog, Body Bliss: A Guided Pleasure Journal for Exploration and Self-Love by Robin Denise.
A daily writing practice and a consistent meditation practice have the power to ground us during difficult times. Writing gives us perspective and helps us make sense of the world. Mindfulness teaches us how to make space for the joy as well as the fear.
This experiential meditation retreat and writing workshop invites writers and meditators of all levels to delve deeply into both practices. We’ll begin each day with a burst of free writing — what Natalie Goldberg calls ‘writing practice’ — generating work we will share with each other in a safe and supportive environment.
We will follow with guided meditations crafted to help us develop the resources necessary to cope in times of crisis, as well as nourish our creativity. Our meditations encourage presence to the world, forge strong mind/body connectivity, and greater access to our emotions and empathy.
The workshop’s meditations are supported by prompted bursts of free writing designed to help us tap into our creative energy, bypass our internal judge, and bring out our most original and deeply felt writing. We’ll explore how the dual practices of free writing and journaling can support us during times of uncertainty and change.
There will be time to write and time to share what we’re writing with the group. Everyone will leave with the tools and the inspiration to cultivate their own daily meditation and daily writing practices.
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Mark Abramson designed the course as a deep dive into self-compassion after seeing students achieve self-kindness from work with his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic at Stanford University. Thirty years of teaching have taught Dr. Abramson that bringing kindness and compassion to one’s self is truly the most altruistic of all practices.
Imagine always being able to count on your own mind being kind to you — no matter what challenges life presents. That is your birthright, and now is the time to claim it! Immerse yourself in this mindfulness-based approach to self-love and compassion.
Mindfulness, meditation, and contemplative practices have entered all spheres of our society, including corporate settings, sports, performance, medicine, and psychology. Science has confirmed that ancient mental and physical training systems, such as meditation practices, confer health benefits for immunity, brain architecture, and pain management, as well as mental and physical resilience.
During our time together, you are invited to:
Throughout the weekend, you will have the opportunity to unite your body, mind, and soul into a self-nourishing whole person while strengthening your ability to give love to others by first loving yourself.
Recommended Reading: Love Yourself For Everyone Else’s Sake by Mark Abramson
What if our lives could feel magical? What if we felt supported in every way?
Join us for this delightful weekend as we connect with plants, ancestors, and ancient wisdom from Mesoamerica and Peru to nourish our hearts and replenish our spirits.
Ayni is the Quechua word for “sacred reciprocity” — the way we humans can be in the right relationship with the world around us. These are the times that Indigenous prophecies have long predicted: an opportunity to create the life and the world that we know is possible. We will work with our ancestors to build our spiritual support team and partake in a plant medicine ceremony with cacao. We will learn how to make specific offerings to the land that help you create magic in your life.
Being at Esalen provides a special opportunity to be in connection with the elemental spirits of the native coastline and the sacredness of the land where the sweet and thermal waters meet the ocean.
During our time together:
Our weekend will feature guest faculty whose magic will enhance our experience and understanding.
Kyle McBride is an international chef, food justice advocate, fermenter, and wild food enthusiast. He draws inspiration from the abundance and diversity of nature and seeks to honor our sacred connection to the earth through his food.
As an Indigenous medicine woman, it is my privilege to share the Quechua and Mazotec traditions that honor living in the right relation with the Earth for thousands of years. I invite you to share a weekend of Earth-based practices in the community with love, support, and guidance.
Bring pictures of ancestors and anything that you want to add to our altar.
This workshop has an additional $60 added for materials.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
We need the medicine of joy, magic, and fun. What if our lives could feel like a sweet ceremony, where all is sacred? What if we felt supported in every way? Join us for this delightful week as we connect with plants, ancestors, and ancient wisdom from Mesoamerica and Peru to nourish our hearts and replenish our spirits.
We will work with our ancestors to build our spiritual support team and partake in a plant medicine ceremony with cacao. We will learn various daily spiritual practices, including offerings to the land to help you create and connect to the magic in your life and within yourself.
Our week will feature guest faculty whose magic will enhance our experience and understanding.
Kyle McBride is an international chef, food justice advocate, fermenter, and wild food enthusiast. He draws inspiration from the abundance and diversity of nature and seeks to honor our sacred connection to the Earth through his food.
During our time together, we will:
Being at Esalen provides us a special opportunity to be in connection with the elemental spirits of the native coastline and the sacredness of the land where the sweet and thermal waters meet the ocean.
Participants are invited to bring a drum or rattle/maraca.
This workshop has an additional $70 added for materials.
How would it feel to move into a meaningful relationship with the living world? Beyond a mere passive appreciation of nature? In the long arc of human history, people across all cultures and traditions have lived in communion with the lands they called home. Though this intrinsic connection has been largely severed in our modern age, the perspectives and practices common to our respective Earth-reverent ancestors are not lost. They lie dormant in the land, among the wild beings, and in our own animal bodies, waiting patiently to be remembered and renewed.
Immersed in the beauty of the Esselen tribal lands now known as Big Sur, we will humbly walk the trails in pursuit of reunion with the wild Earth. We will set out each morning for hikes amongst ancient redwoods, golden grasslands, and fragrant chaparral. Our community and teachers will include the plants, animals, stones, and all aspects of the wild landscape. Acknowledging Big Sur to be the ancestral territory of the Esselen tribe, we will endeavor to behave as reverent and respectful guests on sacred land.
Along the trail, we will cultivate innate capacities for presence and wonder, build ecological knowledge, and explore pathways of reciprocity and connection with the natural world. Pausing together to learn from the land, we will participate in some of the most potent work of our time: rejoining our great family on this wild Earth.
Hiking notes:
This workshop includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 park fees.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: “When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?” —Gabrielle Roth
Take a break from the mundane and let yourself be enchanted again. You are not a project to be solved but a remarkable mythopoetic mystery to be lived! This yoga workshop offers a profound and playful opportunity to commune with the deeper aspects of self through movement, inquiry, and storytelling.
Since the beginning, humans have looked to stories to make meaning of our lives. By learning the stories and songs of the ancestors, we reclaim a sense of belonging. Revered mythologist and 1960s Esalen faculty Joseph Campbell wrote, “Mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words.”
Our experiential practices will remind us how precious our lives truly are. Experiences include:
Our nourishing schedule is balanced harmoniously with relaxing meals, community care, and soaks in Esalen’s healing baths. Music, nature, poetry, connection, and ritual are exquisitely curated for your hero/heroine’s journey.
Whether you’re searching for renewed meaning in life, navigating life’s complex transitions, or simply love being enchanted, this workshop will help awaken your spirit to courage, enrich your heart with devotion, and widen your perspective to vast possibility. You might just fall in love with existence again.
Grace awaits.
Nature provides us with space to quiet our souls, gain perspective, and harness our creativity. Explore Esalen’s stunning grounds to find places that resonate and inspire your mosaic art, be it big vistas, small individual succulents, or anything in between. Mosaic is a slow and contemplative art form, perfectly suited for Esalen’s restorative setting.
In this mosaic workshop, we’ll discuss patterns found in nature, which translate beautifully into the medium of mosaic. Conceive, develop, and realize your own mosaic project, with guidance offered by mosaic artist Wilma Wyss. You will sketch initial concepts in pencil, and Wilma will work one-on-one with you as you develop your concept into mosaic artwork. We compose with a wide selection of stained glass. Demonstrations include cutting and shaping the stained glass, adhesives, and use of color. Presentations illustrate relevant examples and the power of pattern.
Known for her joyful teaching style and her creative use of materials, Wilma provides individual instruction to foster your creativity. This workshop is designed for participants who may have some experience with mosaic, as well as anyone who has never touched a wheeled nipper. All tools and materials are provided to complete one or more wall-hung mosaics.
Contact wilma@wyssdesign.com if you plan to bring your own tools and materials.
Join us for a weekend to remember as we delve into the depths of the human soul, guided by the visionary founders of Afro Flow Yoga®.
This workshop is an immersive experience weaving together the healing powers of yoga, dance, live music, and the ancient wisdom of African and Indigenous cultures. Together, we will embark on a sacred exploration, connecting with our inner selves and the healing energies of the sacred waters, igniting personal and collective transformation.
During this workshop, we will explore:
Join us for a weekend of harmony, healing, and empowerment as we unlock the symphony of our souls and unleash our true potential.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Liminal dreaming is found in the space between waking and sleeping. In that moment, as you pass through hypnagogia and hypnopompia, the zones of liminal dreaming, your mind is in an imaginal place. It meanders between daytime awareness and the depths of the dream. Mystics, poets, philosophers, and scientists have all studied this practice since time immemorial in the hope of catching a glimpse of the mystery of the mind.
The truth is, we all possess the ability to maintain the waking, rational mind while sinking into the free-associative, kaleidoscopic realms of the unconscious. Yet very few of us have ever develop this powerful tool for investigating consciousness.
This workshop will provide an in-depth exploration of the remarkable, transformative, and even mystical mind states of hypnagogia and hypnopompia, accompanied by the hypnotic bouzouki and guitar stylings of Insect Sufers founder David Arnson. You will learn practical exercises for locating and lingering in these astonishing liminal dream states and gain a set of valuable tools to continue your journey and dream practice.
Sessions include:
Together we will explore ways that people across cultures and time have used liminal dreaming for consciousness exploration, creativity, problem-solving, and mental and spiritual healing and balance. Activities will include:
Note: As we will be settling into a dreamy state throughout the weekend, you are encouraged to bring any comforting items that might assist you in relaxing: special pillow, eye mask, blanket, etc.
Our awareness of energy both expands and becomes more subtle as we deepen into relaxation.
The ancient Chinese practice of Qigong, often translated as “cultivating Life Force”, is a system of movement that relaxes and energizes the body/mind. You will find this form “Wai Dan Gong” easy to learn and a powerful means of experiencing Life Force in and around you. We will enjoy moving on the Earth, under the heavens, while gazing at the Pacific. Wai Dan Gong is an excellent preparation for sitting, walking and standing meditation. Saturday morning will be held as a retreat, we will keep noble silence until lunch. At other times we will share with compassion and humor our experiences of riding the wild waves of the mind.
In this rejuvenating weekend we will explore:
Please come ready to enjoy a deep sense of ease and an expanded sense of the energy body.
Many of us have the experience of not belonging — to ourselves, family, community, workplace, this earth. This disconnect expresses itself in a divided self, dysfunctional relationships and communities, and the destruction of the very planet that birthed and sustains us.
However, a sense of belonging and deep connection is the natural state of our being. To know and feel our belonging asks us to have courage, curiosity, and compassion. A deep longing calls us to risk intimacy, vulnerability, and a willingness to feel how life conspires to let us know our interbeing.
When we somatically know our belonging — experience it in our bodies — we engage in the world feeling supported and with greater ease and grounding as we face life’s challenges, joys, and inherently ever-changing nature. This monthlong workshop will be a whole-organism, experiential inquiry into what belonging might be for each of us individually and collectively.
Although not a linear path, we’ll explore:
The group will discover and practice contemporary and time-honored wisdom traditions that cultivate belongingness, including:
Special attention will be given to “what walks with us” in our daily lives as we weave together an eclectic and holistic experience. When we embody the birthright of our interbeing and the ground of belonging, life lives through us.
All light arises from darkness. This includes insight, creativity, vision, and possibility. Darkness is not the absence of light, but a vital, regenerative, and healing expression of nature and consciousness. Join us for a restorative and empowering women’s retreat based in embodied meditation, relational mindfulness, rest, and conscious dance.
Together we will shift away from the world of concepts and ideas, and step into the wisdom and poetry of our bodies and connection with the earth. We will slow down, listen deeply, and explore the invitation of endarkenment alongside enlightenment. We will celebrate inner-connection and interconnection, deepening our kinship with ourselves, each other, the more-than-human world, and the invisible realm.
In the dark, we can soften mental effort and open our hearts to fresh perception. We can see and sense more clearly, beyond the mind of separation, in order to remember who we really are. We can release limiting beliefs and bring our whole selves into the circle of compassion. The challenges we face today require us to let go of our familiar compass and re-learn how to meet the unknown with presence, curiosity, courage, and grace. We can learn to access the emergent map that comes from embodiment, receptivity, deep listening, intuition, inner vision, and relational intelligence.
This workshop includes meditation and inquiry, rest, dharma talks, relational mindfulness, ritual, conscious dance, somatic practices, and deep communion with nature.
This workshop is for women of all ages, colors, backgrounds, and disciplines at all phases and seasons of their life’s journey. This includes anyone who identifies as female or non-binary in the wider
Recommended Reading: Relational Mindfulness by Deborah Eden Tull and Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull
This workshop includes an additional $40 faculty tuition.
Variety may be the one and only truly universal characteristic of human sexuality. — E. Nagoski
The ups and downs of our days, months, and years are unpredictable, but change will always be constant and reliable. The energy we call libido, in all the ways we might perceive it — as sexuality, vitality, creativity, aliveness, pleasure, and more — can shift and often be elusive and hard to maintain. Wanting moves us toward some situations and away from others. The sensations and desires of our libidos change through our different life cycles and relationships. Sometimes, the answer is yes, sometimes no, but the most likely answer is maybe. Libido energy is deeply contextual.
One thing we know for sure is that libido is always on the move. We cannot always know how, where, or why; what turns us on and brings pleasure is always a moving target.
Conscious dance practice offers the skills we need to ride these waves — to stay connected to the emerging truth of our libido energies. We can develop the capacity to move toward and with desires or, when we are on the wrong track, away from them. Open floor movement practice can teach our bodies how to up-regulate, bring more energy to a situation, and down-regulate to settle, create space, or take more time without shutting down or losing focus.
Dancing with others provides opportunities to communicate and track attraction, aversion, consent, and non-consent.
Recommended Reading: Come as You Are By Emily Nagoski
20 CE units for full attendance of this course:
For questions about CE, contact the Spiritual Competency Academy at info@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
This immersive week-long lab is for creators of all kinds––writers, inventors, filmmakers, musicians, and entrepreneurs––anyone who wishes to integrate their spirituality and creativity to tap into the deepest source of inspiration and higher intelligence as they bring guided work into the world.
In the words of Carl Jung, “People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.” By breaking down this process of allowing into three stages (Creation, Manifestation, and Transmission), we will walk together along an impactful, sacred path designed for cohesion, connection, incubation, and transformation.
We live in a world of great distraction that doesn’t encourage deep listening. We must reverse those outer-facing sensory “searchlights” and go inwards. When you dive into the field of all possibilities, ideas surprisingly find you with a very specific intention. As you attune to that purpose, you gain discernment, direction, momentum, and flow.
Over the course of five days, you’ll face the “demons” that get in the way of meaningful work, including inertia, ego, outer blocks, and inner resistance. You will discover how obstacles can become allies in your process, helping you to foster organic, sustainable partnerships, growth, and co-creation.
In this workshop, you’ll be guided through:
Employing timeless principles from Vedic philosophy, this class will use nonlinear brainstorming to deepen our inspiration, along with experiential exercises. You will do yoga, breathwork, meditation, and movement to tap into the matrix of your creative capacity. You’ll recalibrate intentions and goals. Every step of the lab will contain practical solutions to push through whatever is in your way.
The lab is open to creators of all levels. You can attend either as an “incubator” (with a specific project or idea that you want to workshop) or as an “observer/participant” (to glean knowledge about conscious creation by watching the process unfold and also participating). In either case, you must submit a one-page application describing your background and creative goals. If you’re bringing a project to the lab, please describe it in one paragraph, tell us where you are with it, and where you want to take it.
Recommended Reading: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
While we sometimes draw a division between sitting meditation and how we show up to the beautiful and messy field of socializing and relationships, relational mindfulness helps us bridge this divide. Every relationship we will ever have begins with our relationship with ourselves. Beyond the myth of separation, conditioned beliefs, and false divisions that feed human consciousness, belonging is the radical wholeness that leaves no part out. It awakens us to authentic power — shared power rather than “power over.”
Belonging is the state of freedom in which we know, sense, and feel ourselves both as whole and part of the whole. Belonging is a remembrance of who and what we already are — and a recognition of the unconditional and all-welcoming nature of the living intelligence that holds and animates us. The quality of our life experience is determined by the focus of our attention. This retreat is an opportunity to let everyday life — from the easy moments to our greatest challenges — be our sacred laboratory for belonging to ourselves and one another more deeply.
Through embodied meditation and the nine principles of relational mindfulness from Eden’s Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and Our Planet, we will deepen our capacity for receptivity, deep listening, attunement, ease, joy, reciprocity, earth connection, collaboration, and co-creativity with life. By softening effort and getting out of the way, we will allow life to guide us home to our natural state of belonging.
Our exploration will include meditation, relational mindfulness and inquiry, deep time in nature, somatic awareness, and conscious dance. This work spans personal and collective transformation.
All are welcome — from experienced meditators and those new to practice.
Recommended Reading: Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and Our Planet, by Deborah Eden Tull
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Despite our greatest efforts, some of us still struggle to create happy relationships and live our lives fully.
These difficulties and challenges are often related to unconscious bonds and loyalties to our family. Systemic constellation work is the method we will use to recognize, understand and resolve these unconscious ties and hidden loyalties.
In this workshop we will experience how transgenerational trauma may affect our relationships, our health and well-being, and we will encounter transformative solutions to free ourselves from recurrent patterns or symptoms and illnesses.
Learning, healing, and evolving are all part of the very same movement!
This program is for anyone who wants to learn about trauma-informed systemic constellation work as a holistic approach to health and healing and to restoring relationships.
Recommended Reading: Even if it costs me my life by Stephan Hausner
This workshop has an additional $50 of faculty tuition.
Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervishes to the shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain.
This five-day retreat is an invitation to come together to awaken the forgotten wild, ignite your creativity, and dance our way to wholeness. Through an alchemical combination of movement, nature, and sound healing, we’ll reconnect our bodies and minds, digest our feelings and emotions, and open ourselves to the wisdom of our hearts. Most of all, we’ll expand our vision to include a bigger perspective on our spiritual and human interconnectedness.
The practices we’ll cultivate this week will help you:
Allow yourself to be nourished by this sacred land, the hot spring waters, the time we share together, and the friends you’ll make. Experience the beauty, awe, and wonder of being alive so you may return home rejuvenated and inspired to continue walking your unique life path.
This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.
Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.
This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of activity. All participation will be voluntary at all times.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to both challenge and nurture ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.
We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.
This workshop has an additional $30 of faculty tuition.
“Wilderness, by itself, has its own way of teaching. The direct experience of wilderness can spontaneously bring wholeness back into the human community.” – Manual of Gestalt Practice in the Tradition of Dick Price
When we are present in the here and now, every moment in the natural world represents an opportunity to enrich, heal, and clarify our relationships to the Earth, ourselves, and one another. Esalen’s co-founder Dick Price spent much of his time hiking in the Big Sur wilderness, and he believed that wild nature supported wholeness and healing for himself and others. With roots in the Gestalt tradition and values Dick developed at Esalen, Relational Gestalt Practice is designed to help us live our lives with increased awareness and embodied presence — and can be powerfully explored within the natural world.
For five days, we will immerse in awareness practices and deep nature connection on the sacred grounds of the Esalen Institute and in the Big Sur wild (ancestral lands of the Esselen People). Together, we will explore our inner and outer landscapes by mindfully engaging with biodiverse wilderness and Gestalt practices under the open sky. Dorothy Charles, co-founder of Tribal Ground Circle and founder of Relational Gestalt Practice, will support the cultivation of presence, awareness, and the authentic expression of our hearts and minds. Wildtender co-founders Noël Vietor and Fletcher Tucker will guide our reconnection with the living world through a framework of kinship. A community of wild relations — redwood groves, ravens, mossy boulders, and all the beings and aspects of Big Sur — will expand our circle to include the more-than-human world.
This workshop includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 park fee.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Machiel Klerk will lead participants on a journey into the mysterious world of dreams. Through various experiential exercises and discussions, we will explore how to tap into the wisdom and guidance of our inner selves, unlocking new levels of creativity, insight, and personal growth.
Dreams are a powerful tool for accessing the inner workings of our psyche and connecting with our souls. In this weekend workshop, we will learn how to use dream incubation to access the guidance and wisdom of our souls. We will journey into the world of dreams using tangible and practical techniques to work with them, reflect on them, and identify their “lessons.”
Through a series of exercises and discussions, participants will explore the power of intention-setting and ritual as tools for accessing dream guidance. They will learn how to create a safe and sacred space for dream incubation and have the opportunity to practice techniques for working with their dreams.
By the end of the weekend, participants will have:
Machiel will guide participants in the ever-present world of dream and help them connect and communicate to dream figures and experience different dream states of consciousness. Discover how dreams can be used to unlock deeper levels of creativity, insight, and personal growth.
Recommended Reading: Dream Guidance Connecting To the Soul Through Dream Incubation by Michiel Klerk
This workshop has an additional $30 of faculty tuition.
When was the last time you gave something your undivided attention? Nearly 2,500 years ago, Buddha worried we had become too distracted — and that was before paper, let alone smartphones. In 2022, our days are filled with convenient distractions that promise happiness while mostly delivering busyness and frustration. So many of us today live life in a hectic fog, working too much and noticing too little.
There is a different way. For this weekend workshop, we will disconnect, slow down, and meditate together. We will learn the ancient Zen practice of sitting still, bringing our full awareness to what is now.
Our time together will follow a gentle schedule of sitting meditation punctuated by brief lectures, group discussion, relaxing meals, and soaks in the healing baths, all while exploring the process and practice of mindful living. We’ll be listening to our own bodies, noticing the food we eat, and truly engaging with the people around us – exploring what it means to be fully present.
Together we will explore everything you need to start, revive, or deepen your daily meditation practice. You will receive instruction in traditional Zen Buddhist meditation and we will sit together in guided sessions, practicing what we’ve learned. We’ll work together on everything from the mechanics of sitting posture to the mental barriers we all face. We’ll discuss how to overcome common obstacles to meditation and the many ways to incorporate more mindfulness and presence into our daily lives.
Whether you’re brand new to meditation or even if you’ve been practicing for years, join us in learning how to bring meditation into your life and mindfulness to your work and home – today and every day. Come reclaim a healthier and happier way to be
Recommended Reading: Buddha’s Office, by Dan Zigmond
This workshop is a perfect opportunity for you to enjoy the natural beauty of Esalen’s land while gaining a foundation in Esalen® Massage. Senior teachers and staff will guide you in this experience of connection and presence translated to the massage table.
Through lecture, demonstration and practice with your fellow students, you will be introduced to the essentials, including quality of touch, rapport, a respect for our natural impulse toward healing, and mindful body mechanics. You will listen to what is felt as well as what is said. You will learn how to comfortably drape, and how to easily apply the foundational long, integration strokes and gentle stretches. You will have plenty of time for guided practice and to effectively share your experience. At the end of the weekend, you will be able to give a simple massage to friends and family back home.
Esalen massage promotes feelings of wholeness and reconnects us with our natural state of being. Teaching tools include experiential exercises to awaken the senses, demonstrations, and tableside guidance appropriate for you. The class will enjoy an optional evening in the hot tubs, birthplace of Esalen® Massage. The class is appropriate for the new and curious as well as the professional who would like to rejuvenate their senses and the quality of their touch.
We humans are curious and since time immemorial, think deeply about non ordinary states of consciousness. While psychotropic plant medicines can induce altered states of consciousness, humans have been gifted with the ability to induce these states on our own. This fall, embark on a weeklong campus-wide transformative journey of self-discovery with Esalen community as we delve into the depths of the mind through African ritual and sacred art.
According to Nigerian-Igbo myth-science, human history can be divided into Four World Ages: eras of Divine Unity, Separation, Civilization, and Chaos. Blending visual art, traditional African cosmology and ritual, and creative expression, this pathway invites profound engagement with ancient wisdom and personal discovery. Participants will experience these stages through guided visualizations and breathwork after watching a film that explores these four stages. Participants will then have the exciting opportunity to create personal oracle card decks based on images from the film for dream realm guidance.
Lightly-structured in a drop-in class format, this program is a unique opportunity to explore your capacity to reach an altered state of consciousness, expand awareness, and tap into the uncharted realms of the mind while allowing time for reflection, integration, and enjoying all the exciting features that Esalen has to offer.
For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used as a strategy for meaningful transformation and self-exploration — marking life’s major transitions and rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.
In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of enhanced states of consciousness. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.
Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.
This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.
Recommended Reading: Holotropic Breathwork by Stan Grof.
Learn how mindfulness and self-compassion can change everything about how you feel, how you relate and how you live ― for good.
In this workshop, Shauna Shapiro ― a leading scientist studying the effects of mindfulness + compassion on well-being ― shows us that acting with compassion toward ourselves is the key. She explains basic brain science and offers powerful science-based practices to alleviate anxiety, boost creative thinking and deepen our sense of belonging and purpose. With practice, we can literally rewire our brains for greater feelings of calm, clarity, connection and joy. We will immerse ourselves in the natural beauty of Esalen, allowing the sounds of the ocean, the magnificent views and delights of the gardens to nourish and support us.
This workshop is appropriate for anyone curious about mindfulness + compassion and how to deepen our connection with the beauty and mystery of life. All are welcome.
Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Mind Sounds True, Boulder, CO. By Shauna Shapiro.
This workshop includes an additional $390 faculty tuition. For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.
To breathe well is to live well. When we befriend the breath, we expand our capacity for choice, change, joy, and healing. When we embody breath — allowing limbs and bones to express outwardly the dynamic, unceasing pulsation of life within — we touch freedom.
In this new and electrifying experiential workshop, we’ll explore and deepen our connection to our breathing bodies through a number of somatic pathways: embodied movement, breathwork, presencing exercises, meditation in motion, and sound.
Operating from philosopher Havi Carel’s conception of breath as “a juncture of the physiological, psychological, existential, spiritual, and cultural,” we’ll practice dancing and digging at this intersection and, in effect, access a felt reconnection to our wholeness.
Join Sadia in her signature practice, which draws from her many deep pools of training and experience. This deeply embodied practice will include:
Together, we’ll form a sacred community of breathing beings and establish conditions for the unobstructed flow of life force within and around our bodies — and our lives. The natural, subtly explosive intimacy that exists between body and breath — and between you and your breathing body— can emerge anew, rendering you more sensitized to desire, pleasure, purpose, and power; to who you are, what you want, and why.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Surprise yourself with this fresh and creative way to renew your yoga practice this fall: familiar poses with the help of soft foam rollers. Autumn is a natural time to explore the many ways to release, reset, and go inward. It’s your season to unwind the restless patterns of body and mind, to reset the the body and mind into a slower pace of time, rhythm and kinesthetic connection.
This approach is designed to honor all parts of the body with gentle pressure and movement. We’ll learn to use our body weight to lean into pressure points and breathe into long-held tension patterns comfortably. We’ll explore ways to unlock the restrictive movement habits we may be stuck in without even knowing. We’ll seek anatomical neutral and an open and vibrant aliveness to stay present with the field of light that animates the form.
As we roll into release, we’ll discover many playful ways to incorporate this helpful tool and elevate our practice. We’ll lengthen, lift, open, and engage through graceful yoga sequencing, augmented by soft foam rollers, using creative movement paths to find deeper states of stillness and relaxation. This practice is like a dance where the roller is the partner. You will learn to both lead and follow, then return to yoga on the mat to witness how the body moves after being “rolled.”
Yoga means to unite, to yoke, to blend, to unify, and to make parts come together as a whole. When looking at movement as medicine, your practice can be a playground for wholeness; a healing art for body, mind, and heart; and a path to free the spirit.
Please bring your own soft foam roller. The recommended roller is 36” in length x 6″ in diameter. It must be long enough to support the whole spine.
You are what you practice. Or, as the Buddha said, “Whatever you frequently reflect and ponder upon, that becomes the inclination of your mind.”
This essential observation is examined from our intertwined perspectives on contemplative practice, brain science, and music. Through interactive inquiries and guided meditations, Nikki Mirghafori will lead a journey into mindfulness and compassion cultivation. Neuroscientist Clifford Saron will take us on a voyage of discovery into the mysteries of the brain and neuroplasticity. San Francisco Symphony cellist Barbara Bogatin will inspire us with Bach and provide a rare glimpse from inside the process of musical creativity.
Each day unfolds with a thematic focus, allowing us to dive deep into the three intertwined practices and perspectives. Together, we will:
This workshop is for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of themselves and their connection to others through the lens of mindfulness, science, and creativity. Whether you’re a meditator, musician, clinician, or simply curious, you’ll find valuable tools and perspectives to enrich your personal and professional life. No previous experience in meditation, music, or brain research is necessary!
Join us for this unique exploration of how these practices can harmonize, offering paths to inner peace and more joyful engagement with the world.
Qualified participants can receive 18 CE credits via the Spiritual Competency Academy. Click HERE to learn more.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
What innate potential lies dormant within you? What dreams are yearning to be expressed? What does it look like to be fully alive, live an integrated and embodied life, and become an engaged part of the larger ecosystem of nature and community? It’s time to meet your future self and find out.
This workshop focuses on creating a robust, loving relationship with the best future version of you — the one who can help you pivot the direction of your life toward your heart’s vision. We will learn how to communicate with and embody that future self while mapping out the new terrain of your life in a process we call “futuremaking.” Using the sciences of imagination, transformation, and hope, you’ll chart a course for your next chapter.
Join us for a four-day workshop where we will engage in futuremaking experiences, including talks to spark insights; small and large group discussions to ground learning; guided imagery, meditation, and creative processes to connect you with your deeper wisdom; and movement and deep engagement with the beauty of Esalen to renew your spirit.
As we weave cutting-edge science with deep experiential practices and rich connection with kindred spirits, you’ll move forward — not back to “normal” or even a “new normal” — but ahead into a new extraordinary. Your future self is calling for you!
Recommended Reading: Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life by Marilyn Schiltz and Cassandra Vieten.
This workshop has an additional $30 of faculty tuition.
Do you love the beauty of the outdoors and delight in the wonder of nature? Do you want to learn how to meditate outdoors? Would you like practices to stay grounded, connected, and open-hearted in life? Then what better place to discover all this than in the majesty of the Big Sur coastline, where we are serenaded by the lulling sounds of the ocean, cradled by rolling hills, and uplifted by exquisite gardens?
Following ancient spiritual traditions that value the transformative power of nature, this experiential workshop will be spent entirely outdoors to explore embodied sensory practices in the natural beauty and mystery of Esalen. Whether during a sunset meditation as we listen to the soothing waves or while we sit graced by the stillness of cypress trees, we will open to the profound serenity and wisdom of nature.
You will learn about the practice of mindfulness — the capacity to be present to ourselves and our environment — and how it supports a rich, contemplative relationship with nature. You will discover how meditative time outdoors leads to beautiful states of joy, peace, wonder, and love. You will also experience greater connection with yourself, with others, and with the larger web of life.
Recommended reading: Awake in the Wild and A Field Guide to Nature Meditation by Mark Coleman
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Have you ever dived into the ocean of Tantra? Join Tantric scholar-practitioners Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Keith Edward Cantú as we explore Tantric practices and perspectives on topics like freedom from external interference and self-sovereignty (Sanskrit svādhikāra), the link between physical and so-called “subtle bodies,” and the creation of physical mandalas (maṇḍala) or circles and other shapes that potentially can transform our internal and external environments.
Together, we will immerse ourselves in the latest research and ethnographic “participant observation” that challenge and reframe our conventional understandings of what Tantra was, is, and can be. Staying true to the roots of Esalen, we will also intertwine discussion with authentic South Asian folk musical performances, songs, and guided meditations for a creative, visceral experience for the mind, body, and heart. Our collective practice of these new understandings will illuminate Tantra’s connections to a wide variety of vibrant artistic and meditative practices in an eye-opening and unforgettable way.
In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:
We invite both couples and individuals to join us in this workshop that blends meditation, art, and music with a holistic inquiry into Tantra’s power and therapeutic potential to unlock a happier and more fulfilling life. Bring an open mind as we explore deep questions about our bodies and minds in a safe space and nurturing environment.
Please Note: This workshop is NOT about “Tantric Sex” and experiencing enhanced sexual pleasures, although many discussions will address gender identity and sexuality.
This workshop includes an additional $100 of faculty tuition.
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look beyond the false duality of a divided self and the destructive concept of “self versus nature” to discover how to live in harmony and balance within ourselves and the world around us.
You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine. This is your opportunity to examine what that means while sharing healing wisdom and practices. This workshop will offer the tools to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul, and to honor and heal all you have inherited from your ancestral lineage, along with the social, cultural, racial, religious, and historical energies tangled in your lives. You will learn about the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies.
Learn about the importance of ceremonies, sacred altars, and medicinal plants and participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing and “doctoring” ceremony, and a water blessing prayer ceremony.
You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.
We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.
Note: Please bring a journal to write in, and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.
Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
“A brain without a body couldn’t think.” — Moshe Feldenkrais
“We want to get you to a place where gravity is your friend, a nourishing force.” — Dr. Ida P. Rolf
Human beings are relational by nature. We are an intricate web of anatomy, energy, space, and time that takes shape through our life experiences. Our physical structure, function, and sense of self are reflected in our fascial layers and formed by our early development, by principles of self-organization, and by how we engage with our environment.
When we fall into habitual patterns, parts of ourselves become undeveloped, unseen. If our bodies are given a setting in which to relate to gravity, others, and our environment with curiosity and attunement, we can be free to move and relate with more choice and ease.
Using the grounds, waters, and spirit of Esalen as our laboratory, Kate and Kevin will use the Feldenkrais Method and Gestalt process as a guide to contact and nurture the influences of the subtle body – our relationship to ground, gravity, and the space between.
In this workshop, participants will:
Recommended Reading: Feldenkrais, The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion; Gladis, Tales of a Wounded Healer: Creating Exact Moments of Healing; Bodywise: An Introduction to Hellerwork for Regaining Flexibility & Well-Being.
Flow into fall to awaken the inner codes of abundance and vitality with yoga, nature, and community. As we journey into the autumn season, we are guided to turn within and alchemize the inner gold. In the yoga tradition, there are four key aims — purpose, prosperity, love, and liberation — to support this transformation in body, mind, and heart, and when you activate them in a balanced way, your whole life shines.
In this embodied yoga retreat, you’ll discover the key components to awaken and renew these codes in you. Together, we’ll explore the alchemical practices of:
In this retreat, Sianna and Masood will share stories, music, and practices to awaken and strengthen the four aims of purpose, prosperity, love, and liberation in your life with four thematic journeys:
Friday: Invoking Lakshmi — a welcoming practice of asana, mantra, mudra, meditation, setting your intention, and deep rest to restore. Hear the stories of Lakshmi, the yogic goddess of beauty, abundance, healing, and harmony.
Saturday: Rise with Courage — a more up-tempo practice of core work, functional movement, dynamic breathing, and creative patterns of movement to awaken your power and renew your vision.
Saturday: Transform with Love — an introspective practice to turn toward your inner genius to make the shifts your soul is longing for. This practice will focus on hip openers, forward folds, twists, and a sound healing journey.
Sunday: Shine the Radiant Codes — a soulful practice of vinyasa flow, backbends, heart fire vision, and the four aims shining through you. This is a community celebration with vision, vitality, mantra, music, and the love frequency!
Awaken the abundance codes and be an agent of purpose, prosperity, love, and liberation for all beings.
Join us for an enriching exploration into the transformative potential of the Enneagram and discover its profound capacity for fostering reconnection and oneness. As we commemorate the two-year anniversary of Dr. Deborah Egerton’s impactful best-seller, Know Justice Know Peace, we will explore the art of coming together through compassion, kindness, healing, and self-awareness.
For this special event, we extend an invitation for you to unlock the wisdom of the Enneagram and transcend individual boundaries to contribute to a collective vision of unity. Driven by the belief that the future of humankind hinges on the fusion of inner spiritual growth and outward social impact, this gathering promises to be a dynamic journey of self-discovery and meaningful connection.
During this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to:
As human beings, our innate longing for connection forms the very fabric of our survival and prosperity as a species. Regrettably, internal and external divides have created wounds of bias, bigotry, and hatred within ourselves and our communities. To mend these fractures, we must embark on a journey to explore the roots of our disconnections — both within and around us — to pave the way for personal healing and, in turn, the healing of humanity.
Together, we can cultivate a world where belonging and thriving are shared experiences for all.
Our current models of medicine fall short of understanding the depths of our human healing potential, but we are on the cusp of finally awakening to a new path. A growing number of scientists are exploring a true expansion of science with a profound understanding of ancient concepts of spirituality.
Over a 20-year career, award-winning scientist, clinical psychologist, and spiritual practitioner Dr. Shamini Jain has been uncovering and sharing the mysteries of healing. In this weekend workshop, you are invited to learn about the scientific evidence supporting the power of energy-healing practices — along with approachable techniques for application.
Through deep learning and experiential group practice, you are invited to expand the boundaries of what you think is possible for personal and collective healing. We will explore ourselves in new ways, and learn how to integrate the Healing Keys into our lives to move through our days with more energy, joy, and grace.
In this workshop, we’ll also explore:
Discover your Healing Keys and widen your possibilities for joyful liberation. This workshop is open to all ages, genders, and identities. No prior experience is necessary — only a willingness to meet and explore the beautiful being that you are!
Recommended reading: Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health by Shamini Jain
This workshop includes an additional $50 faculty tuition.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
You deserve to feel ease and joy in your body as you age. Movement, time in nature, breath, quiet contemplation, and “Aha!” moments all contribute to expanding happiness and delight in life. Though this is true, you may face challenges. Changes to our bodies — aches and pains, joint replacements, osteoporosis, heart issues, and other conditions — may challenge us to find new ways to understand ourselves and maintain grace of movement and attitude.
During this workshop, you’ll discover yoga therapy and embodied inquiry techniques that increase awareness, empower exploration of your unique body now, and increase your ability to take good care of yourself. Learn to feel yoga poses from the inside out, aligning them well to tune into the energy flowing through your body, and find qigong movements and yoga postures that best serve you.
We have a week together to listen to our inner wisdom and the quiet intelligence of the body. We have the space to share our ideas, fears, limiting scripts, and dreams for our futures.
Together, we will find:
We will be joined during our week by guest faculty and musician JJ Jeffries, who will guide us in “embodied inquiry” and play lovely acoustic guitar during some of our yoga and meditation practices.
This workshop is suited for anyone with a basic understanding of yoga. People working with injuries or body challenges are welcome if they can still participate in practice and have permission, if needed, from their medical provider. Modifications will be given for various ability levels. Participants need to be able to get up and down off the floor on their own. If you are not sure if this workshop is suited for you, please contact Tracy.
In search of balance, the ancient sages of China walked into the woods to attune themselves to nature in its sublime integrity. The timeless wisdom uncovered in their wild wanderings was called simply Tao, “The Way.”
Qigong — the practice at the heart of Taoism — is dedicated to harmonizing body, mind, and spirit with the elements of nature. In this age, when so many of us feel disconnected and overwhelmed, wilderness remains a powerful healer and teacher, and qigong can bring us back to center.
Join us to learn an accessible qigong form called wai dan gong (“easy Tao”) while immersing in the majestic landscape of Big Sur, the ancestral homeland of the Esselen tribe. We rise each morning to practice, harmonizing breath and movements with the flow of waves greeting Esalen’s cliffs. After breakfast, we set out on a wilderness hike to mindfully explore Big Sur’s enchanted redwoods, sun-steeped meadows, and mountains that rise from the sea. All along the trail, we explore qigong and Taoist philosophy as pathways for returning to a grounded, spacious, revitalized state of being — in harmony with nature, embodying Wild Tao.
Notes:
This workshop includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 to cover park fees.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
We will become our opposite if we do not learn to accommodate the opposite within us. — Carl Jung
At the heart of contemplative life is the archetypal journey home to our essential nature, our basic goodness. The Buddha taught that we come to experience this essential nature through the embodied integration of meditative quiescence (shamatha) and contemplative insight (vipashyana). In this workshop, we will cultivate quiescence and insight through the “four applications of mindfulness” of the body, feelings, mental states, and phenomena, which invite us to develop a self-aware gaze, or metacognition.
We will meditate indoors and out and learn how to work with challenges along the path through Feeding Your Demons® (FYD). This Buddhist-based practice is an exquisite five-step process in which we offer attention and compassion to our inner obstacles, our “demons,” rather than struggle with them. In this context, demons are those thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that block our experience of freedom. A 2018 FYD pilot study found that FYD was associated with increased self-compassion, emotion awareness and self-regulation, satisfaction with life, and decreased stress, craving, depression, and intolerance for uncertainty. FYD transcends spiritual constructs, serving as a meaningful tool for anybody, regardless of religious affiliation or personal philosophy.
In this retreat, you will experience:
All are welcome. Please bring loose, comfortable clothing, a journal, and writing implements. Paper and art supplies will be provided. If you have art supplies you like, such as colored pencils, pens, pastels, or watercolors, feel free to bring them.
Recommended Reading: The 4 Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Bunaratana and Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict by Tsultrim Allione.
This workshop includes an additional $5 for materials.
Join us to experience deep rest and renewal! You need and deserve this. So many of us are overtaxed by constant demands, burdens, and worries, especially those of us providing extra support for others through caregiving, healthcare, activism, and other service-oriented jobs.
We bring you expertise in the science, art, and practice of restoration from stress.
Immersed in the beauty of nature at Esalen, our work is well supported. We will learn and practice new ways to restore ourselves, and you will develop a toolbox of short practices that support your daily rejuvenation and sustained vitality.
Fostering close and connected relationships is one of the most important things affecting the quality of our lives. Cultivating trust and openness with a loved one, whether they be an intimate partner or friend, is an essential aspect of any successful, supportive relationship.
This weekend, Perry and Johanna Holloman, intimate partners and friends for over 30 years, will share the most effective tools and practices they have developed to nurture their connection to each other.
The primary tool Perry and Johanna will share is called Gestalt Inquiry. This easy-to-learn, powerful practice provides a safe context for exploring the most meaningful and sensitive aspects of relationships. Perry and Johanna like to think of it as a practice that becomes a continuing part of any successful long-term relationship because it places high value on compassion, respect, and love of truth. As we learn to discover and safely express what is true for us, individually, as a couple, or as friends, we deepen our heart’s capacity for intimacy and connection, which leads to a more fulfilling and meaningful shared life.
During our time together, you will learn practices and resources to integrate into your everyday life, such as:
This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations. A couple may be any two people with a history who desire a better future together, e.g., friends, partners, married or divorced spouses, parent and child, siblings, and others.
This workshop includes an additional $50 faculty tuition
The healing path has a trajectory. Gabrielle Roth called this, The Path of The Wounded Healer. It is here that we look closely at our healing process. We mark both where we are and where we want to be. We dance through the five stages of healing in relationship to being the victim, the survivor, the healer, the transformer and eventually the one who rests in compassionate service.
It is my belief that our sacred task in life is to transform the most difficult things we have been through, into our greatest strengths. These are the stories of our resiliency, vulnerability and strength. It is here one may learn how to move with what is and transform it to what we want it to be.
In the Heartbeat Map, we investigate what is moving through the shores of the heart. Through understanding the relationship of the emotional polarities we come to respect and appreciate what we have been through. Without fear, we do not experience courage. Without anger, we cannot experience forgiveness. Without love, we cannot experience grief. Without loss we cannot experience or appreciate the full spectrum of joy. Without all of these qualities, we cannot know the true nature of compassion.
You are invited to join this journey of movement and awareness, focused on how emotions transform the heart. This map is Gabrielle Roth’s living wisdom. I am here to pass this gift on to you to be carried in your own bones and blood.
Each session will be primarily focused on the 5Rhythms® moving meditation (dance practice). We will integrate each movement session with a seated meditation practice, focused on one of the Buddhist Heart Practices (Brahma viharas) which are equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion and joy. Included in the group will be optional sharing and a question and answer period.
Recommended Reading: Sweat Your Prayers & Maps To Ecstacy By Gabrielle Roth and Dancing with Dharma: Essays on Movement and Dance in Western Buddhism by Harrison Blum
This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.
Recent brain research reveals how constant predictions based on old information can run our lives. As we are flooded with current sensory information, our brains compare past and present to identify discrepancies called “prediction errors,” updating the old predictions to create a better working model of the world.
Inaccurate predictions are often based on unconscious habits of moving, feeling, and thinking — responses developed as childhood solutions to surviving family systems. We’ll make the big people happy so they will love us. Or we’ll try to stop them from hurting. We shift our behaviors toward pleasing or protecting. With mistreatment, we shut down. All these solutions required muscular enforcement. Later, these reactions became adult behaviors — maintained by habitual contractions in our necks, eyes, jaws, backs, and bellies — but predictions based on protective habits are no longer needed or helpful as we recover from injuries.
We can dissolve the hold these old patterns have over us, not by willpower, leaving old instructions in place, or superimposing new commands, but by kinesthetically sensing in our body where — and how — we keep compulsively reenacting them.
CFR® increases the amount and quality of our incoming sensory information. By bringing habits into awareness through exploratory floor work, we connect them to brain areas more supportive of change. By realizing they were clever ways to survive, we develop the self-compassion essential for healing. As our predictions become more accurate, based on the present time, we can make better choices.
Bring your issues, your lingering problems from injuries, and a desire for increased joyful movement.
Please note: This is an advanced class. Participants must have taken CFR® Week 1.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
We are all participants in the ancient and the modern, the ego and the unconscious, the personal and the transcendent — though we all seem to forget these dual allegiances. When we go into nature, when we listen to music, when we encounter the numinous in whatever form it may manifest, we are reminded of our own truest nature, and we long for the reunion. Despite this, our egos inevitably feel threatened by the mysteries of these dualities; therefore, we all need ways of “re-membering” ourselves.
Throughout human history, shamans, mystics, and healers have found portals and pathways that challenge the ego’s primacy in order to encounter the Other within and emerge from the depths transformed. Carl Jung took a pathway he called Active Imagination, plunging himself into a dialogue with his soul that produced The Red Book. In this workshop, we will use Jung’s journey as a template to discover the creative potential accessible to us all.
As a unique mediator of opposites, music unfolds out of the interdependent relationship of consonance and dissonance. This workshop will explore music from neurobiological, spiritual, and experiential perspectives.
Through music’s ecstatic nature — live improvisations inspired by ancient healing techniques and performances of original music as well as the works of J.S. Bach, Robert Schumann, Philip Glass, and Arvo Pärt — you will be guided into yourself and reminded of yourself. Listen and allow the music to be the mediator of the dialogue.
To explore and deepen your relationship with the unconscious, we will work with practices such as:
Throughout the week, we will focus on practices for deep listening and the week will culminate in a concert inspired by Jung’s Red Book. Bringing decades of experience as Jungians, psychotherapists, and professional musicians, John and Rodney will set the stage for an exploration of those portals and pathways within.
In this retreat, you will get in touch with a deep relaxation to rejuvenate the body and the mind through non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra. No matter your reasons — whether you need a break from the constant pressure, are in a life transition, or just want to delve deeper into your meditation practice — this retreat will provide space and time for contemplation and reflection.
The term non-sleep deep rest, coined by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, refers to a waking state of deep relaxation that maintains awareness. Evidence suggests reaching this state through NSDR protocols such as yoga nidra can reset dopamine levels and provide other physical and mental health benefits — including better sleep and enhanced neuroplasticity.
We’ll go on an inner journey together, and the hope is we’ll emerge more connected to both ourselves and our life paths to leave feeling refreshed and deeply rested.
Together, we will:
This workshop includes an additional $50 faculty tuition.
How empowered do you feel as a woman navigating this world? What is your relationship to the feminine? And to female wisdom? Join us inside the Moon Lodge, a place for exploration — for women to find tribal and ritual healing.
The 5Rhythms is a map that teaches us how energy moves. It shows us the patterns, rhythms, and cycles of life — Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness — and can be a direct path to the embodiment and empowerment many of us do not feel in a time of patriarchy.
This workshop will be about celebrating the body of Woman and the sacred feminine within us all. Through dance, meditation, massage, acupressure, and ritual baths, we will share in the Sisterhood of humanity. We will poultice our wounds and celebrate the great gifts of our ancestors.
This workshop includes:
Dr. Julie Von, a specialist in women’s health, will present the Chinese Medicine perspective on the five elements, psychosomatic process, restorative acupuncture, and self-care. She will teach us to prioritize these pillars and recognize when we are out of balance.
Lucia Horan will integrate the stillness of Buddhist mindfulness meditation with the moving meditations of the 5Rhythms®. In sitting meditation, we have the opportunity to observe the mind and body at rest through silent introspection. In the practice of the 5Rhythms, we engage in mindfulness while in motion. Together, these two polarities mirror the dance of life and open the door to peace, well-being, and balance.
This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” —Chinese Proverb
Join us for deep release and renewal as we pause to align with autumn, acknowledge the sacred cycle of life, and move gracefully through this transitory season.
Autumn is a time of letting go and accepting the impermanence of things. For many spiritual traditions, it has long been an opportunity to slow down and reflect. During this period of great change, our yoga and meditation practices can help us feel more grounded, rooted, supported, and nourished. We can create more intentional pauses and open to the sacred present moment as it is while we also fortify our inner resources, nourish our own “roots” for health and wellbeing, and expand our capacity for compassion, connection, and heartfulness. This allows us to slow down to reflect, release, and recalibrate — to consciously participate in the process of closing one chapter and starting anew.
Using a series of yogic and ayurvedic balancing techniques, Jillian will weave heart-based practices with slow flow yoga, deep restorative relaxation, and Metta meditation. Plus, we’ll incorporate inner reflection, seasonal ritual, and self-love to collaborate with the present and flow through fall with reverence, peace, and ease.
With an emphasis on rooting while opening change, we will work with multiple practices to meet this moment of transition and transformation. More than ever, we can benefit by pausing and restoring our energy and nurturing ourselves in order to better nurture our world.
Garth Stevenson will add deeply healing vibrations with his double bass to help us cultivate the balance between grounding and releasing into the spaciousness of the season.
Throughout this retreat, we will practice outdoors and embrace the Autumn elements to truly be with life’s changes and arrive more fully in the present moment.
Recommended Reading: Deep Listening By Jillian Pransky
This workshop includes an additional $135 faculty tuition.
True happiness is not about acquiring anything; instead, it comes from opening to the natural joy and aliveness inside you. As we are bombarded with messages that heighten our fear and sadness about the world, more than ever, it is vital to understand the importance of joy as a central aspect of mindfulness practice. We need to remember how to stay connected to that place inside that makes life worth living. Our cultivation of well-being and joy can become our gift to a troubled world.
This workshop is based on James Baraz’s popular 5-month Awakening Joy course that thousands have taken since 2003. You will learn basic principles and other supportive practices to develop your natural capacity for well-being and happiness, presented in a user-friendly way.
This workshop offers practical tools to incline the mind towards joy through silent meditation and interactive experiential processes.
Themes include:
Recommended Reading: Awakening Joy: 10 Steps to Happiness by James Baraz and Awakening Joy for Kids – Jams Baraz
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Together, we will enjoy giving and receiving therapeutic touch, moving in ways that free energetic flow, settling into silence, and laughing and connecting deeply with our healing community.
During the Streams of Energy month, you will:
This month is designed to open you to your innate healing potentials, for you to experience the power of safe therapeutic touch, and to be more fully present in your unfolding as a unique expression of Source.
This workshop includes a $15 material fee.
More and more, people are discovering the Enneagram as an accurate and profound map of personality. In this workshop, we’ll explore the full scope of its power to illuminate our greatest wisdom, become our truest selves, and face life’s challenges with fortitude and grace.
The nine Enneagram types are based on the three primary centers of intelligence: thinking, emotion, and instinct. However, in almost all human beings, distortions or blockages in these centers lead to a loss of connection with our essential nature and arising ego structures to compensate for this loss. Thus, while our Enneagram type, our true nature, is usually obscured with a characteristic web of defenses, discovering ourselves through the Enneagram can serve as an opening to the deeper reality of spirit.
This workshop will recognize the ways the nine Enneagram types play out in our own personalities. We’ll combine psychological insight into the inner workings of the different personality types with meditation practices and exercises designed for a more direct experience of the qualities of essence, such as presence, clarity, compassion, and joy. Conversational instruction will be added along with group meditations, small-group work, physical movements, and music to help us fully integrate the richness of the Enneagram material into our daily work and relationships.
Join us for a total reset done the Esalen way: seven powerful days tending to heart, mind, body, and spirit. Reconnect with your sense of purpose and power while immersed in the medicine of our iconic, energized setting within a community of similarly minded seekers.
Not for the faint of heart, this deep retreat experience is a heroic dose of Esalen. You’ll engage daily with our lineage practices (Sensory Awareness, breathwork, intuitive movement, Gestalt process, and more) as never before — intensely, purposefully, and under the close and compassionate care of our world-class resident faculty to usher you toward the most expansive version of yourself yet.
Each morning begins with embodied movement and seated meditation practice, followed by a silent communal breakfast. You’ll spend the first part of your day experiencing Sensory Awareness and Gestalt process. After some integration time and a nourishing lunch, you’ll transition to a yoga-based therapeutic movement session.
Afternoons are devoted to one-on-one, presence-based coaching sessions and bodywork with expert practitioners and gifted energy workers. A communal dinner is followed by either the balancing, down-regulating practice of transformational breathwork accompanied by music at the silent baths — an experience reserved for this group — or the sublimely transportive modality of Yoga Nidra.
Prior to arrival, you’ll connect privately with a faculty member to set your intentions for the week. During your time at the Institute, you will experience:
We’ll follow up with you after your experience, and you’ll have the opportunity to join a remote reintegration session and receive guidance to help you stay on the path.
This experience is most appropriate for those in sound health. The activity level, while accessible and adaptive, is high.
This workshop includes an additional $500 tuition fee.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. — Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
Partners Ihab and Ora Balha, a Muslim man and a Jewish woman, are trained in the Mevlevi tradition of Jelaluddin Rumi, one of the greatest mystics and poets the world has ever known. Together, they will share the wisdom of the whirling dervishes, which has been passed down for 750 years.
Each day will include:
The whirling dervishes, mystics who believe one’s path is to God, are devoted to developing one’s abilities and capacity through emotional, intellectual, and physical practices. This workshop will deepen your connection to love, creating an internal peace that brings harmony and healing to the world.
“When you plant a tree every leaf that grows will tell you, what you sow will bear fruit. So if you have any sense, my friend, don’t plant anything but love, you show your worth by what you seek.” — Rumi
Recommended Reading: The Last Barrier: A Journey into the Essence of Sufi Teachings by Reshad Feild, Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks, Rumi Comes to America: How the Poet of Mystical Love Arrived on Our Shores by Bruce Miller
Open to the mysteries and remember the full truth of who and what you are — a magical multidimensional human being and an integral part of all creation. Join Gitanjali, creator and founder of the Syntara System School of Energy Awareness, as she leads you on a skillfully curated journey through your subtle body and morphogenic energy fields, exploring consciousness in deeply integrated and embodied ways.
Culturally, we don’t have a lot of language or context for the unseen realms. In this experiential workshop, we will explore ancient practices and innovative frameworks that will allow you to integrate the sacred with the mundane, becoming a more powerful and compassionate co-creator of the world we know is possible.
Some of the techniques we will use are:
Together, we will gather on these sacred lands, commune with the natural world, embody our essence nature and remember our deep belonging. Honoring all that has come before as we move with awareness towards an emergent future.
Some of the frameworks shared will include:
Our days will follow a nourishing schedule of experiential practices woven together with refined structural teachings, delicious meals, community connection, soaks in the healing waters, and reciprocity with the nature spirits and land.
This work is accessible to beginners while being nuanced enough for those more advanced on the path. Join us!
To fully be in touch with the essence of who we are, and vibrantly live from there, we must embark on a journey to take us from outside distraction to our innermost world. We must travel like a pilgrim, with one pointed focus. There, we expand our awareness to melt into the embrace of silence, stillness, and wisdom. And in that embrace, the bondage of confusion and suffering loses its grip and we are graced by pristine perception, presence, and peace. This is the path to self-mastery.
This journey requires ongoing personal practice, rigor, devotion, surrender, and reflection. Together, we have this rare opportunity to devote seven days to contemplative practices supported by the amazing land, resources, and community at Esalen. Jovinna has curated a syllabus that pulls from rich spiritual traditions to strengthen your body, mind, and spirit and awaken your innate intelligence.
During the week, we will:
The rhythm of the week is slow and steady. The essence of the program is soft yet mighty. Together, we will train the mind to be awake and alert and regain sovereignty of our attention. Return home with a deeper sense of self and purpose. This program is a training ground to build a solid foundation for our continued self-mastery.
Note: Jovinna invites you to detox from or minimize the use of all electronics during your time here. Some yoga experience is recommended. Please bring a journal.
This workshop includes an additional $110 faculty tuition.
Recommended Reading: The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice By T. K. V. Desikachar
Most of us have experienced a flow state at least once or twice. On the dance floor, it sometimes happens that you find yourself in a state of exquisite surrender to the spirit that dances us; those timeless moments when we disappear and all that’s left is Emptiness Dancing.
Often these moments feel like “happy accidents,” a sudden flash of grace over which we have no control or choice. The purpose of this weekend is to practice being prone to these happy accidents — to cultivate an openness so this state of grace becomes an everyday possibility.
In this workshop, you’ll experience a movement-based curriculum centered around:
Open Floor Movement Practice uses universal principles of movement to anchor us in this vast space. Our bodies organically know about emptiness, and at the same time, it can be quite a journey to arrive at this place willingly, even longingly. As with any journey, there are skills to learn, habits to unlearn, and a need for curiosity. This course is an opportunity to say “Yes!” to this blessing.
Recommended reading: Emptiness Dancing by Adyashanti
Some experience with conscious dance is helpful.
CE units pending for full attendance of this course
For questions about CE, contact Spiritual Competency Academy at info@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.
“You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Join herbalist, medicine woman, and plant spirit teacher Marysia Miernowska for a nourishing, magickal weekend of deep communion with the Earth, Waters, Autumnal Air, and Eternal flame within you.
In a safe and sacred container, you will be guided in:
Through restoring the ancient knowledge of folk healing and plant medicine, we hope to heal the separation that has occurred between ourselves and nature and awaken a collective passion to protect this Earth we all call home.
Recommended Reading: Miernowska, The Witch’s Herbal Apothecary: Rituals & Recipes for a Year of Earth Magick and Sacred Medicine Making.
This workshop inclides a $40 materials fee.
“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?” –Alice Walker
How can art contribute to healing while staying centered in the creative process? What kind of art-making responds to the therapeutic experience? What does it mean to live an aesthetic life? And what is possible when we do?
In the early 1960s, a new interdisciplinary approach was developed to explore and respond to these questions: The Halprin Life/Art Process. This work influenced the worlds of dance, environmental design, theater, and psychology. This workshop will be an immersive experience in that approach to the creative process, movement, and healing art. It is aimed at those who identify as artists as well as those who are simply lovers of art seeking to open the doors of their own creativity.
We will enter into an exploration of art-making as a way to encounter and explore themes, challenges, and dreams that are informing our lives. Maps and methods will be taught that are easily accessible and applicable to personal and professional practice.
The opening welcome session will create an environment of group collaboration, including intention setting, play, and collaboration. Each day that follows will emphasize different mediums, including movement/dance, drawing, and poetry/narrative. On the fourth day, we’ll develop ritual performances for participants to present artwork dedicated to something personal and meaningful.
Participants may expect to leave with the following:
Participants must bring the following: Writing materials and a special writers journal, a box of varied and well supplied Craypas pastels/water colors if desired.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.
This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of activity. All participation will be voluntary at all times.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to both challenge and nurture ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.
We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.
This workshop has an additional $15 of faculty tuition.
Attention is the beginning of devotion. – Mary Oliver
A life of fulfillment requires fostering connection with what truly matters to us, whatever that may be. It’s easy to lose sight of what we’re devoted to. In this workshop, we’ll have tranquil, uninterrupted space for yoga, storytelling, and contemplative practice to clear our minds and imbue our hearts with deep remembrance.
This yoga workshop offers a profound and playful opportunity to commune with the deeper aspects of self through movement, meditation, live music, and inquiry. With equal parts courage and tenderness, we’ll hone our beings to be vessels for devotion to move through.
Together, we’ll explore:
Our nourishing schedule is balanced harmoniously with relaxing meals, community care, and soaks in Esalen’s healing baths. Music, nature, poetry, connection, and ritual are exquisitely curated to accompany your journey.
Whether you’re searching for renewed meaning in life, navigating life’s complex transitions, or simply love being drenched in the divine, this workshop will help awaken your spirit to courage, enrich your heart with devotion, and widen your perspective to vast possibilities.
Grace awaits.
This workshop includes an additional $25 faculty tuition.
In 1938, researchers at Harvard University began a 75-year study that addressed life’s fundamental question: What makes a good life? The Grant Study, also known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development, found strong relationships to be the clearest predictor of life satisfaction.
In Relational Gestalt practice, direct and response-able communication is essential for creating intimacy and strengthening our bonds to others. The benefits that flow from solid relationships with partners, relatives, and friends, can be a source of connection and great joy in our lives.
Sometimes, the ways we’ve learned to communicate in relationship creates more distance rather than contact with the people who are important to us.
In this workshop, you’ll have an opportunity to become aware of the ways you communicate; you’ll have the chance to learn, unlearn, and practice ways of communicating to enhance your connection to others. Together, we will explore how the past may be keeping you from making use of the contact that is available in the here and now.
Over the course of the weekend, we will use dyads, repeating questions and open seat sessions designed to facilitate communication and understanding.
Letting go of entrenched ideas — of who we are, of how the world works, of our place in it — is a challenge. It takes energy. Time. Space. Security. This growth asks us to examine ourselves and understand our connection to the whole. This model of change encompasses both personal and communal, and it’s always been at the core of Esalen.
Guided explorations are an evolution of programming designed to function outside of the group structures of our workshops. These experiences are for those who want to immerse themselves in the peace, space, and natural beauty of our campus to do the work of their own personal growth. The beauty of our Big Sur campus supports serenity for the mind, the body, the spirit, and offers nourishment for all three.
Discover research-backed tools to create a loving relationship. Together, we’ll engage in a comprehensive exploration of the psychological and scientific aspects of dating and healthy relationships. We’ll delve into the science of attraction, unlocking the mysteries of chemistry and creating and sustaining meaningful connections — all grounded in the latest research on relationships.
Our key focus will be the art of building deeper connections through effective communication techniques and empathetic understanding. You’ll learn how to nurture skills that foster intimacy, trust, and lasting bonds. Mastering a comprehensive framework for effective communication is essential for stronger, more resilient relationships, and you’ll learn practical ways to apply these skills in your daily interactions.
In this workshop, you’ll find out how to create a personal relationship narrative that aligns with your current life. Reflective exercises will help you identify and rewire limiting beliefs about love for healthier and more fulfilling bonds. The “Dating Funnel” framework, a structured approach that demystifies the various stages of relationship development, will provide a clear strategy for navigating the dating world, from initial contact to a committed relationship.
By the end of our time together, you will be equipped with a comprehensive set of tools to navigate your relationship journey with confidence and clarity. Understand the foundations of attraction, develop communication skills, and reshape your love narrative.
This workshop is open to all gender identities and expressions and all sexual orientations.
This workshop includes $10 additional fee for a workbook.
Recommended Reading: Breakup Bootcamp: The Science of Rewiring Your Heart by Amy Chan
Learn to tap the source and break through creative barriers during this hands-on workshop. Together, we’ll explore a variety of mediums and techniques to find entry into creative expression, including:
The poet Rumi speaks of a river of joy that courses through the world. Through these creative practices, we invite that river to flow freely through us and the powerful energy of Esalen’s natural environment to fill us, dissolving internal blocks and flowing through our hands onto the page.
The core of this workshop is inspiration and energy, but we’ll explore techniques and design principles that will inform your aesthetic and native mark-making language in an intuitive way, without fear of criticism or failure.
We’ll provide multimedia sketchbooks to fill with your artistic experiments. They’ll serve as a repository, a totem, a teacher, and a reminder of what you can achieve when you dip into the river of joy. The blank white pages, which you will fill with a treasured collection of artistic ideas, will be a metaphor for our process.
Whether you are a seasoned professional in the arts or you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, these immersive sessions will awaken the artist within and help you make peace with your inner critic.
There is a $60 material fee for this workshop. All essential materials, including acrylic paints, watercolors, paintbrushes, writing pens, collage materials, sketchbooks, and painting surfaces — everything you need to participate fully in each exercise. Feel free to bring your favorite pens, brushes, or other art-making tools.
Recommended Reading: Drinking From a Cold Spring, a Little Book of Hope, and Color Duets by Erin Lee Gafill
We all long to be happy. Happy as in deep contentment. We all long to feel at ease, to be at peace, to know that we’re okay and that we belong. Most of us are deeply habituated to believing ourselves to be separate, and that we must fix ourselves in order to earn and experience deep connection. Being separate and broken though are illusions. We forget that belonging is already seated in the heart of who we are — and that it’s always available if only we look within. When we do, we can transform far more than just our own lives.
Ask yourself these questions:
These questions will guide our time together on retreat as we explore how meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative technologies designed for the realization of who we truly are can — and must — be applied collectively. Our daily meditation practice will serve as a framework onto which we will begin to weave teachings with personal reflections. You will have the opportunity to connect to yourself and others and the world beyond in solo and group exercises, and discussions that inspire us to put our values into action.
We hope you will join us in this return to belonging, this remembering of the deepest truth of who we are, with the intention of using this understanding to transform our own lives and the world we share.
When was the last time you gave something your undivided attention? Nearly 2,500 years ago, Buddha worried we had become too distracted — and that was before paper, let alone smartphones. In 2022, our days are filled with convenient distractions that promise happiness while mostly delivering busyness and frustration. So many of us today live life in a hectic fog, working too much and noticing too little.
There is a different way. For this weekend workshop, we will disconnect, slow down, and meditate together. We will learn the ancient Zen practice of sitting still, bringing our full awareness to what is now.
Our time together will follow a gentle schedule of sitting meditation punctuated by brief lectures, group discussion, relaxing meals, and soaks in the healing baths, all while exploring the process and practice of mindful living. We’ll be listening to our own bodies, noticing the food we eat, and truly engaging with the people around us – exploring what it means to be fully present.
Together we will explore everything you need to start, revive, or deepen your daily meditation practice. You will receive instruction in traditional Zen Buddhist meditation and we will sit together in guided sessions, practicing what we’ve learned. We’ll work together on everything from the mechanics of sitting posture to the mental barriers we all face. We’ll discuss how to overcome common obstacles to meditation and the many ways to incorporate more mindfulness and presence into our daily lives.
Whether you’re brand new to meditation or even if you’ve been practicing for years, join us in learning how to bring meditation into your life and mindfulness to your work and home – today and every day. Come reclaim a healthier and happier way to be.
Recommended Reading: Buddha’s Office, by Dan Zigmond
Come enjoy the beauty of Big Sur during the quiet time as the days shorten and sunsets blaze across the sky. This is a perfect season to awaken touch, our forgotten language. In this introductory massage course, participants will learn to listen to each other, gain the sensory skill of initiating touch, experience the felt sense of touch and muscle release, and close with a balanced tenderness. Seasoned instructors will offer exercises, demonstrations, and at-the-table guidance during supervised practice. The simple principles of Esalen Massage® – presence, connection, attending rather than fixing, self-care, and slow, lengthening strokes encompassing the body – will build a heartfelt experience with our partner or friend and, perhaps most significantly, ourselves.
By the final session, participants will share the basics of a classical Esalen Massage. Experienced practitioners and caregivers will find it refreshing to apply the Esalen method and notice its healing effect as their pace slows and the mind becomes focused on compassionate contact rather than technique.
Touch can evoke an opening to spirit, either to our innate ability to move into healthful balance or to a broader sense of nature surrounding us. The edgy wildness of Esalen’s grounds, canyons, hot springs, and mountain backdrop invites this deeper natural connection.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org