However, Highway 1 south of Esalen is closed indefinitely. Don't let this stop you — there are other routes to reach us. Please review these alternate route driving directions and allow for a little extra travel time while on your transformational and healing journey.
We look forward to welcoming you to Esalen.
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:
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 award-winning instructor 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.
10% of tuition goes to the Dream Bigger Foundation, which provides scholarship funds to underserved communities, and hosts the Liberation Experience, a program that works to unite people across social, political, and religious divides, and other transformational opportunities.
Recommended Reading: Stay Woke, by Justin Michael Williams
America in the late 60s occupied a period of major social transformation. Esalen Institute amplified that feeling, capturing that energy with a wild, unbridled sense of curiosity and openness to explore and pioneer big ideas. There was the music! The art! The literature! The call for change! Human potential personified!
This June we are looking back on what was good and magical about the late 60s while applying some deeply reflective and vulnerable wisdom of 2023 to launch some very special summer programming. Esalen’s own thoughtfully curated social phenomenon.
Real talk: The last few years have been depleting for many. Esalen is all about collective potential, collective fullness. So, to help you refill your love tank, we present to you our Summer Groove Series!! Together we will fill up and get mindfull, heartfull, and soulfull in community. Let’s amaze and delight, get expansive and be inclusive!
With Esalen’s first ever foray into a summer series, we are curating the playfull with the joyfull. Throwback meets future forward: floating flower mandalas and flower crowns in the Art Barn, mass metta meditations on the lawn and in hidden corners of the property. Evening soul shakedowns with summer loving dance parties and an Afrobeat homage to Babatunde. Together we will honor the sacred indigenous land we co-steward through cacao ceremony, share circles, and more. Esalen’s own faculty will be joined by very special guests to add amazing and delightful programming to each uniquely different week and weekend!
Imagine the halcyon elements of the Big Sur Folk Festival and Summer of Love — from live music, dance, poetry, painting and throwback crafting, to the tech embrace of silent DJ-led discos and music-driven experiential altered state parties.
But let’s also get real vulnerable and transparent right there with you — about our past and who we want to be for everyone. While much of the late 60s messaging was about love and peace, access to the sentiment was not a reality for everyone. The Summer of Love wasn’t all love for all people. Across the country it was a “Long, Hot Summer” as riots erupted in cities nationwide in response to a serious lack of equity and equality that disproportionately affected Black and Brown citizens — which our society continues to face today.
The parallels between the harsh realities of yesteryear and the present are far too numerous. Today we face them with more self-awareness, more knowledge, a greater capacity for change, and a deepened commitment to making Esalen, and the world, a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all. Now 60 years in operation, Esalen continues to embrace much of the 60s glow and afterglow, retaining the gold and transmuting the rest.
It’s happening right now, Baby!
Through the practices of 5Rhythms dance, mindfulness meditation, and self-care, we weave together a retreat focused on healing and celebration. Looking back over the past few years, it is clear that many of us are exhausted. In times of turmoil and change, self-care and kindness are needed to connect us to the ability to recharge and renew. In order to move forward with energy, passion, and creativity, it is vital to seed these qualities in our daily life so that we may cultivate resilience.
Do you need to integrate more self-care into daily life? Would you like to be better resourced and have more energy? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, you are in perfect alignment to participate in this workshop.
The 5Rhythms is an externalization process that releases and balances the systems of the body through movement. It is a method of dance focused on presence versus performance. We pair this process with seated meditation to quiet the heart and mind, allowing for stillness and integration. Bringing both together mirrors the dance of life. We come together to create an environment that cultivates and nurtures joy, calmness, and ease.
Each session will be primarily focused on Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms moving meditation practice. We will complete each practice with a 10-15-minute seated meditation. Included will be a discourse on 5Rhythms, mindfulness, and self-care. All practices taught during this course lend to the experience and wisdom of resourcing and renewing vital life energy to send you home with skills and tools to apply to your daily life.
No experience is necessary. All workshop hours contribute to 5Rhythms® Teachers Training.
This workshop will include:
Recommended Reading: Books by Gabrielle Roth: Sweat Your Prayers, Maps to Ecstasy, Connections and Dancing With Dharma: Essay on Movement and Dance in Western Buddhism – Edited by Harrison Blum
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:
America in the late 60s occupied a period of major social transformation. Esalen Institute amplified that feeling, capturing that energy with a wild, unbridled sense of curiosity and openness to explore and pioneer big ideas. There was the music! The art! The literature! The call for change! Human potential personified!
This June we are looking back on what was good and magical about the late 60s while applying some deeply reflective and vulnerable wisdom of 2023 to launch some very special summer programming. Esalen’s own thoughtfully curated social phenomenon.
Real talk: The last few years have been depleting for many. Esalen is all about collective potential, collective fullness. So, to help you refill your love tank, we present to you our Summer Groove Series! Together we will fill up and get mindfull, heartfull, and soulfull in community. Let’s amaze and delight, get expansive and be inclusive!
With Esalen’s first ever foray into a summer series, we are curating the playfull with the joyfull. Throwback meets future forward: floating flower mandalas and flower crowns in the Art Barn, mass metta meditations on the lawn and in hidden corners of the property. Evening soul shakedowns with summer loving dance parties and an Afrobeat homage to Babatunde. Together we will honor the sacred indigenous land we co-steward through cacao ceremony, share circles, and more. Esalen’s own faculty will be joined by very special guests to add amazing and delightful programming to each uniquely different week and weekend!
Imagine the halcyon elements of the Big Sur Folk Festival and Summer of Love — from live music, dance, poetry, painting and throwback crafting, to the tech embrace of silent DJ-led discos and music-driven experiential altered state parties.
But let’s also get real vulnerable and transparent right there with you — about our past and who we want to be for everyone. While much of the late 60s messaging was about love and peace, access to the sentiment was not a reality for everyone. The Summer of Love wasn’t all love for all people. Across the country it was a “Long, Hot Summer” as riots erupted in cities nationwide in response to a serious lack of equity and equality that disproportionately affected Black and Brown citizens — which our society continues to face today.
The parallels between the harsh realities of yesteryear and the present are far too numerous. Today we face them with more self-awareness, more knowledge, a greater capacity for change, and a deepened commitment to making Esalen, and the world, a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all. Now 60 years in operation, Esalen continues to embrace much of the 60s glow and afterglow, retaining the gold and transmuting the rest.
It’s happening right now, Baby!
Multidimensional Integrative Healing recognizes that there are multiple dimensions of reality and experience that exist and can be accessed for healing. EMDR is a powerful therapy for healing and integrating what blocks us from living fully. When we open to multiple dimensions in our work, we increase our capacity to heal on deeper levels that transcend time and space.
In this workshop for advanced EMDR practitioners, we will learn basic tools for creating boundaries and energetic sovereignty. We will meditate together and explore our dreams. We will discuss topics of interest, share our cases and be guided in discovery of spiritual and ancestral resources.
Topics of interest include:
In this workshop participants will learn:
This workshop is meant for Advanced EMDR practitioners, Parnell Institute trained clinicians.. To register for your space, please visit us at https://drlaurelparnell.com/multidimensional-integrative-healing-and-emdr-workshop/
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.
Dealing with work-related burnout and rediscovering creative inspiration require dedicating time and space. Our daily challenges and life circumstances are opportunities to learn — and we can alchemize our life experiences and emotions into greater understanding and clarity. In this workshop, we will bring together a variety of wisdom traditions and explore simple-yet-transformative practices to deepen the relationship between our bodies, our minds, and our aspirations. To clarify both vision and intention, we will weave together the theory and practice of the Tibetan-based Yoga of Renewal with the contemplative science of compassion and emotional awareness. We will also introduce a few of the codes of Andean Cosmology and transformative earth-based rituals.
In this three-day workshop, mornings will be reserved for quiet reflection to promote a clear mind of stillness. Afternoon sessions will foster intentional connections for awe, gratitude, and empathy with one another and the more-than-human world. While we focus on the experiential through individual and small group activities, we will lay the foundational frameworks that help enliven our sense of interconnection and resilience and remind us how to align our lives with our true heart’s desires and the ingredients of a meaningful life.
We will draw on traditional ecological knowledge, contemplative practices, and research-informed strategies to enhance purpose and manage emotional distress in our personal and occupational lives. Discover a cosmological approach to refine your intentions for your clarified purpose. Learn the tools that can help you re-envision your worldview, build resilience and empathy for stronger relationships with friends and loved ones, as well as unity with the more-than-human world.
Eve and Alejandro will be joined by guest faculty Cristina Lanata, MD, a physician and scientist specializing in autoimmune diseases. She immigrated from Peru and is currently a translational researcher studying how epigenetics relates to autoimmune diseases. She is also researching how biofield therapies can regulate maladaptive immune pathways, epigenetics, and outcomes in patients with autoimmunity. Cristina practices the principles of Andean Cosmology and Qigong and is a level one Reiki practitioner.
When the world around us is polarized and the future is uncertain, gathering in community, living in our bodies, and expressing the truth is more important than ever.
In this transformative five-day writing workshop, we’ll use ritual and deep writing to connect with our inner voice, discover the healing power of language, and birth powerful true stories onto the page. Evocative prompts, movement, and guided meditation will lead you deeply into the world of language and story. Discover how to “find the story beneath the story,” why writers need to “slow down where it hurts,” and the secret of crafting tales rooted in the immediacy and physicality of the moment.
As we alternate periods of writing and movement with listening to each other from a place of deep acceptance, you’ll benefit from the strength of a supportive writing circle, witness the healing power of language, and experience the transformation that occurs when we tell true stories and are deeply heard. Open to anyone willing to connect with their creativity in the context of a safe, confidential community. Both emerging and seasoned writers are welcome to attend.
Laura will be joined by Guest Faculty Evelyn Hall. Evelyn Hall is a social worker, master hypnotherapist, and minister. For the past 36 years, Evelyn has guided individuals and led groups, helping people find healing in body, mind, and spirit. Evelyn specializes in transformative healing practices, including somatic awareness, movement, meditation, healing through nature, and leading sacred ceremonies; she has a healing center in Soquel, CA.
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 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 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!
As mothers, we wear a lot of crowns. Crowns are majestic and beautiful but also heavy, and we deserve to take them off sometimes and center ourselves.
Do you find yourself saying, “I need to make time for self-care”? Time to work out, for nails, for hair, time with friends, or even just time alone? You are busy, tired, talented, overwhelmed, overworked, and divine. You deserve time to be with yourself and in community with other mothers — to be still, to process, to heal, and to grow. We invite you to come to Esalen for this incredible wellness weekend created specifically for mothers — to move, to meditate, to process your birth, to strengthen your pelvic floor, and to activate your dreams.
The ultimate goal of this weekend together is for each of us to leave rested, revived, and seated in our power as a Birth Queen.
Together, we will:
Mothering with the support of a village enables us to not just survive but to thrive. We will have an opportunity for yoga, pilates, strength training, meditation, nature walks, small group discussions, and, most importantly, peaceful rest. Bring your loved ones and give yourself the gift of a weekend of healing, laughter, sweat, and new beginnings. Center yourself and prepare to release your power into the world. What are you giving birth to next, Queen?
All levels are welcome. This is a workshop for all Mothers. Postpartum is forever. If you are pregnant, you are welcome. Modifications will be provided. Breastfeeding mamas are also welcome. We can make accommodations for you to store your milk.
Recommended reading: Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.
We are at a crucial moment in our global work culture. Leaders must meet the rising needs and challenges of mental health and well-being. As we navigate rapid changes in the modern world — from hybrid work cultures to pandemics, wars, and overwhelming stress and anxiety — it is critical for human-centered HR professionals, or “people leaders”, to become trauma-informed.
More than ever, people leaders need tools to manage their own stress, burnout, and mental health challenges while they support their teams and executives through similar obstacles.
In this dynamic workshop, Manuela Mischke-Reeds, Justin Milano, and Rebecca Crotts integrate didactic and interactive learning with guided somatic practices and meditations to help leaders become trauma-informed while also supporting their own healing process.
This workshop will offer tools to help you:
This workshop is geared toward executives, people leaders, and HR professionals who wish to better understand and navigate stress and trauma in the workplace.
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.
Join Heidi Rose Robbins for a deep dive into your astrological chart. If you are committed to growing out of habit and negative patterns, and moving into radical authenticity, this astrological immersion is for you. Through an exploration of your astrological map, via deep group study, movement, writing, and even poetry, we’ll practice loving, acting courageously, and fully embracing our next life steps.
In this workshop, we will come together in the beauty of the circle to share wisdom and empower one another through the act of witnessing and being witnessed. Your astrological chart is a lens through which you can find out who you are and the gifts you have to share. As we learn astrology, we can become ever more generous with our own daring and fears, along with our transformations and uncertainties, to liberate love in others and ourselves.
This immersion into the power of the zodiac calendar for self-care and self-renewal will include:
You don’t need to know anything about astrology, poetry, or movement. Just come open and available with the willingness to embrace the richness of everyday radiance.
Recommended reading: Everyday Radiance: 365 Zodiac-Inspired Prompts for Self-Care and Self-Renewal by Heidi Rose Robbins; Zodiac Love Letters by Heidi Rose Robbins; Wild Compassion by Heidi Rose Robbins.
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 be an in your process develops 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 (by application) 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. LINK TO APPLICATION.
Part writing workshop and part tantric retreat, this unique blended workshop explores the relationship between personal writing and subtle body practices.
Religious historian and Tantric practitioner Sravana Borkataky-Varma will lead experiential sessions largely stemming from Hindu Goddess Tantra practices. Author and journalist Erik Davis will then guide the group in reading and writing exercises for skills and techniques to help us creatively express our direct experiences of the meditations.
Exercises and opportunities will include:
Over the days, we will collectively cultivate a feedback loop between writing, discussion, and inner work. Through this alchemical process, participants will learn to more intimately and poetically clarify their subtle experiences, while at the same time using the power and energy of such practices to fire up and inspire their writing life.
America in the late 60s occupied a period of major social transformation. Esalen Institute amplified that feeling, capturing that energy with a wild, unbridled sense of curiosity and openness to explore and pioneer big ideas. There was the music! The art! The literature! The call for change! Human potential personified!
This June we are looking back on what was good and magical about the late 60s while applying some deeply reflective and vulnerable wisdom of 2023 to launch some very special summer programming. Esalen’s own thoughtfully curated social phenomenon.
Real talk: The last few years have been depleting for many. Esalen is all about collective potential, collective fullness. So, to help you refill your love tank, we present to you our Summer Groove Series! Together we will fill up and get mindfull, heartfull, and soulfull in community. Let’s amaze and delight, get expansive and be inclusive!
With Esalen’s first ever foray into a summer series, we are curating the playfull with the joyfull. Throwback meets future forward: floating flower mandalas and flower crowns in the Art Barn, mass metta meditations on the lawn and in hidden corners of the property. Evening soul shakedowns with summer loving dance parties and an Afrobeat homage to Babatunde. Together we will honor the sacred indigenous land we co-steward through cacao ceremony, share circles, and more. Esalen’s own faculty will be joined by very special guests to add amazing and delightful programming to each uniquely different week and weekend!
Imagine the halcyon elements of the Big Sur Folk Festival and Summer of Love — from live music, dance, poetry, painting and throwback crafting, to the tech embrace of silent DJ-led discos and music-driven experiential altered state parties.
But let’s also get real vulnerable and transparent right there with you — about our past and who we want to be for everyone. While much of the late 60s messaging was about love and peace, access to the sentiment was not a reality for everyone. The Summer of Love wasn’t all love for all people. Across the country it was a “Long, Hot Summer” as riots erupted in cities nationwide in response to a serious lack of equity and equality that disproportionately affected Black and Brown citizens — which our society continues to face today.
The parallels between the harsh realities of yesteryear and the present are far too numerous. Today we face them with more self-awareness, more knowledge, a greater capacity for change, and a deepened commitment to making Esalen, and the world, a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all. Now 60 years in operation, Esalen continues to embrace much of the 60s glow and afterglow, retaining the gold and transmuting the rest.
It’s happening right now, Baby!
What is the relevance and significance of the maṇḍala (“circle”)? In this workshop, we aim to individually and collectively understand maṇḍalas and related sacred shapes and their importance in Tantric traditions. Even the geography of Esalen can be perceived as a sacred landscape or maṇḍala. Our focus here will be on the historical development of the maṇḍala and its connecting link between the internal and external worlds.
Join Tantric scholar-practitioners Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Keith Cantú for this fascinating new workshop, the third of a signature series on Tantra, to explore the foundations of Tantric theory and practice. Together, we will investigate the latest findings from academic 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 intertwine our research and discussion with authentic Indian folk music performances and guided meditations to bring these new breakthroughs creatively to life in your 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:
Come to learn how Tantric teachings navigate the interrelationships between the microcosm, or individual, and the macrocosm, or external universe. We’ll pay special attention to the ways deities are called to inhabit maṇḍala and other diagrams, as well as the connection between deities and the power of speech using mantra. We invite you to join us for this workshop that will blend meditation, art, and music with a holistic inquiry into Tantra’s power and therapeutic potential. Bring an open mind as we will 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.
Now more than ever, it is important we build practices to strengthen our internal resolve and self-resourcing amidst a dynamically shifting society. Together, we will listen to our heart’s wisdom in this rich four-day journey (Friday to Monday) through sound, ceremony, and self-discovery.
In this intimate and transformative workshop, you will have the unique opportunity to experience multiple East Forest’s live music performances. Additionally, Radha will lead us in embodiment practices of Self-Awakening Yoga, Yin Yoga, and breathwork to create an all-levels and accessible doorway to inner insights. Through the primacy of our own heart-opening and felt experience, we can discover the inner pathways to fortitude and healing.
East Forest and Radha would like to offer a certain amount of scholarship to those in need. Please apply with this form. If further assistance would be helpful, you may also apply for an Esalen scholarship.
***Please note: While the retreat space and exercises are conducive to deep inner work, the facilitators and Esalen do not condone the use of or provide substances of any kind.
Integrative Gestalt Coaching™ (IGC) is a comprehensive and interactive therapy method Perry Holloman developed over the last 40 years while living at Esalen. He and his wife, Johanna, travel and teach this approach in the USA, Europe, and Asia, working with individuals and groups and coaching businesses and communities.
This month-long program is designed for people who want to learn basic skills in the practice of Gestalt, applicable to both their personal lives as well as their work with individuals and groups.
Gestalt places high value on the development of awareness in the realm of our internal experience (personality structure) and our relational experience (family relationships, intimate relationships, professional relationships, and other dynamics). Developing awareness of how our internal experience influences our relationships — and how those relationships transform us personally — can have a powerful impact on the quality of our lives and will be a central focus of our time together.
Perry and Johanna have developed experiential exercises supported by theoretical knowledge to create a well-rounded program suited for persons who want a month of self-exploration and also those ready to cultivate Gestalt Coaching skills for their work with individuals and groups.
“The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.” Abraham Heschel
Rudolph Otto described the numinous–Mysterium tremendum et fascinans–as the wholly other, experienced as a breakthrough of wonder–both fearful and fascinating. Filmmakers have given us new opportunities to experience the numinous through mystical realism. Quoting Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, Jeffrey Kripal gives us a definition of how mystical realism appears in film: “[As] an imaginative elaboration of human experiences that have actually occurred to numerous individuals… something both fundamentally subjective (mystical) but also empirical and objective (realism).”
In this third workshop at Esalen on mystical realism in movies, you will discover the numinous experience of meeting the “wholly other,” something entirely different from anything experienced in ordinary life, be it another human being, a spirit, an angel, or some form of alien or artificial intelligence. Your cinematic repertoire will include films directed by Jean Cocteau, Terrence Malick, Alfred Hitchcock, Wim Wenders, Steven Spielberg, and a film inspired by Toni Morrison. The seminar employs methods developed over 28 film seminars at Esalen (1990-2016) co-led by Francis and Brother David Steindl-Rast: mindful film viewing, contemplative reflection, and group interaction focused on the participant’s unique experience.
Dr. Lu personally recommends, but does not require, that participants use a N95 mask during the workshop sessions, which will be provided.
For further information about the seminar, please contact Francis Lu, MD, at francislumd@gmail.com
This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring expanded states of consciousness.
New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers too.
Holotropic Breathwork® originated with the psychedelic pioneer Stan Grof and his former wife, Christina Grof. It is a useful practice for those training to become practitioners of and those interested in psychedelic-assisted therapy. No use of substances will be allowed at this retreat in a vast field of transformative potential. 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 psyche, toward a deep mystery within.
For thousands of years, expanded states of consciousness have been used as a strategy for transformation, marking life’s rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self and the natural world.
In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of expanded states of consciousness, including strategies for preparing for, navigating, and integrating these experiences.
Holotropic Breathwork offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with the material that emerges uniquely from your own intrinsic wisdom. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful, including methods for quieting the mind, turning the focus inward, and attuning to the body, senses, and emotions as fully as possible while allowing the experience to be wholly guided from within.
All healing happens from within and these unique states can offer us unmediated access to self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary power. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.
There will be four Holotropic Breathwork sessions: two as “breather” and two as “sitter,” so you will also gain experience sitting for others in non-ordinary state space. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, and expressive arts will be offered throughout the week.
This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring various states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding that leads to more expanded levels of wholeness. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome along with experienced navigators/breathers too.
Holotropic Breathwork originated with the psychedelic pioneer Stan Grof and his former wife, Christina Grof. It is a particularly useful practice for those interested or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Please, no use of substances at this retreat.
“I have never seen anyone who took a huge risk for growth that was not rewarded 10,000 times.” — John O’Donohue
To encounter someone, something, or someplace implies that it’s unexpected or a surprise. Encountering the moment means coming face-to-face with the unknown. In movement practice, we train ourselves to stay open, curious, centered, and responsive at the front edge of any encounter — counterbalancing those innate primal reactions to fight, flee, freeze, or please.
Rather than withdrawing, playing it safe, or tolerating things you shouldn’t, imagine being adept at staying present and standing your ground clearly and authentically. Picture a world where we are able to express opinions, feelings, discontents, and appreciations skillfully while remaining wholeheartedly open to outcome and change.
In this workshop, within a supportive and challenging environment, we will create “safe emergencies” — situations intense enough to command our attention that are managed with care and support, to help us risk moving beyond habitual self-defeating patterns. Participants can receive real feedback and gain plenty of practice making new choices in relation to others.
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.
You will leave this retreat with 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, you will leave prepared 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.
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore the healing wisdom of the “Americas.” We will learn about the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies.
You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, and we will examine what this means in the context of our modern daily lives as we share healing wisdom and practices together. This is your opportunity to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul. You will also have the opportunity to participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing & “doctoring” ceremony and water blessing.
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 will 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, then we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.
Please bring any sacred items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors, sacred objects that have meaning for you, and a journal to write in.
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.
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
Let’s meet together at Esalen, beneath the summer sun and immerse in the power of movement, community, music and the glory of this land and her three waters. Janet, MC Yogi, Marti Nikko, DJ Drez, Amanda Giacomini (and more) will welcome you to a journey so rich with connection and an opportunity to reset. At the edge of the world we will look simultaneously inward outward to reintegrate ourselves to the natural world and our deep inner wisdom. Through yoga, mythology, chanting, dancing, and music we’ll create a different kind of playground — one for the internal senses.
Come dance, sit and wonder with us as we honor the naturalness of transition, the outward and inward, and the waxing and waning of this precious life. Yoga mats will be provided.
Revitalize yourself entirely during this special edition of Amplified Yoga at Esalen. The Amplified Method is a fun and cathartic way to merge yogic traditions, imagination and emotion, musical vibration, and physicality to transform your life in an instant, bringing you closer to the reality of being as happy and healthy as you can be.
Throughout the weekend, Donovan McGrath leads you in the high energy yoga practices that will help you build the strong body, vibrant energy, and mental clarity that is necessary to endure the pressures of modern day living. Expect practices ranging from high energy kundalini designed to induce natural states of ecstasy to complete stillness and relaxation for the deep rejuvenation of all your systems. Using the signature Amplified Yoga style, we will employ ancient yogic technology, kundalini movement, breath work, music, mantra, and meditation to unleash your potential.
Accompanying Donovan’s movement offering will be Guest Musicians DJ Victorien and Monica Dogra.
International DJ and Music Producer, DJ Victorien has mastered the art of the dance floor for over 16 years. With driving, uplifting, soulful, fun, and joy-infused music, he offers a global appeal, serving the crowd with the most epic and positive sound.
Monica Dogra is a multidisciplinary award winning artist who has released 11 studio albums with major record labels in India. She is a student of Vedic Philosophy, studying deeply with Himalayan Monks in order to fully embody and accelerate her on the path of awakening.
No matter where you may be in your life, physically or emotionally, the practices and benefits are accessible to everyone. You’ll head home with a rich trove of tools for:
This weekend aims to inspire you, leaving you renewed and refreshed by the Amplified practice, human connection, and Esalen’s pristine beauty. This event will be indoors and outdoors, so be sure to bring layered clothing. Yoga mats and blocks will be provided in the workshop space.
This is an era of chaos, change, and grief for the world. As we continue moving through these unprecedented times, we are required to face difficulties that may seem insurmountable. We invite you to a weekend retreat to hold together what should not be held alone.
Have you experienced loss and the natural emotions of sadness, anger, fear, and love? How do you process your losses and move through your life? Many of us have not yet found safe and effective ways of expressing these emotions and we can feel burdened, both emotionally and physically, with the cumulative weight of our unfinished business.
Using the tools of the 5Rhythms movement practice combined with a process of grief work grounded in emotional presence, non-judgment, and supportive witnessing, participants will come together in a safe space to help heal mind, body, and spirit:
The weekend also includes didactic and experiential sessions focused on natural and distorted emotional responses to grief, caregiving vs. caretaking, and more.
Please bring photos or other mementos of anyone whose memory you would like to bring into the workshop.
This course qualifies for 10 hours of continuing education credit for:
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, Ellen and Peggy.
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.
Join us in the dance between consciousness and form as we explore the love and play between Shiva and Shakti in our own embodied experience. You’ll be led through an intentionally curated arc of movement and dance exploration, energy transmission teachings, meditations, relational play, land-based practices, and rituals to reunite you with your inner beloved. Held by the Esalen lands and guided by sisters Gitanjali and Niralli, who carry the ancient wisdom streams of their Indian ancestors as a living transmission.
Come experience a sea of spaciousness and emerge renewed in the radiant magnificence of your being. With the new moon, nourishing daily practices, community connections, and the land as our allies, we’ll be woven into the tapestry of creation. By remembering our belonging in this way, we can return to the world, creating in generative and emergent ways that are in service to the whole.
Our days will flow with rich experiential practices, delicious meals, rest, and starlit soaks in Esalen’s healing baths. No matter who you are or where you are on your spiritual path, join us in this love affair with all creation as we dance in devotion to the beauty and miracle of life and being.
“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.
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 will include:
Participants often share that their stress dissolves, confusion lifts, insights awaken — and they take home a renewed sense of connection, meaning and purpose in their lives.
This weekend retreat welcomes couples across the spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity — straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or questioning. You only need to be two human beings who want the joys of a loving relationship. If you are in love, this retreat is your opportunity to rise even higher in love. If you are in crisis, this retreat is an opportunity for healing on the deepest level. During our time together, we’ll explore loving and effective ways to transform the past negative programming we all carry into positive and vibrant connections with our partners and to our present.
Join us to experience exercises and practices designed specifically for couples, couples therapeutic coaching, group support, and time for sharing after each practice.
As couples, you’ll learn tools for deeper appreciation and relationship building, including healthy communication of feelings, seeing your partner as a mirror, understanding and respecting each other’s differences, conflict resolution, healing past hurts, sexual wellness, inner child/inner parent, taking responsibility, and developing a true inner connection.
Recommended reading: Vissell & Vissell, To Really Love a Man and To Really Love a Woman.
We live in times of high existential stress with both ever-increasing personal, societal, and global pressures and the constant pain of witnessing ecological crises and widespread social injustices. These challenges also create opportunities to reconsider our relationships to self, one another, and the planet — and to choose a life of peak purpose and interconnectedness. In this retreat, inspired by the land and its people, we will be guided by rituals reflecting both indigenous and contemporary wisdom. Together, we will learn deep lessons from a variety of modalities, including embodied mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology, and the four directions of life from the aboriginal Esselen Tribe culture to establish, renew, and recharge our commitments to stewardship of our communities and the earth in these rapidly changing times.
We will have small group listening, experiential activities, lectures, and discussions. We will incorporate ritual, meditation, nature immersion, and movement into each day. Guided by renowned author Diane Ackerman, we will have the opportunity to express ourselves through the written word. Led by contemplative mind-body teacher and musician Nichol Chase, we will become present through mindful movement practices.
Join Tom Little Bear Nason, Rhonda Magee, Elissa Epel, and Dan Siegel as we create new pathways to sacred connection and explore, learn, laugh, love, and bring healing to ourselves and our world. All are welcome. We especially embrace people working on environmental justice issues and anyone needing restoration and rejuvenation.
Learn to activate the right side of your brain to unlock the insights necessary to break through self-limiting patterns. Based on a Nobel Prize-winning discovery in neuroscience, this methodology helps you think outside the box and live a more creative, productive, happier life.
William Donius, author of the New York Times bestseller Thought Revolution, spent a decade researching and developing this brain-enhancing methodology. He has taught these skills to a wide range of people, from students and corporate executives to scientists and artists. This innovative approach inspires more creative solutions than conventional thinking or brainstorming sessions. Through easy-to-learn exercises, you can discover ways to harness your intuition and uncover profound insights about yourself that make change possible. You’ll develop practical tools you can apply each time you face an important decision or obstacle in life. You can go home with new ways to unlock your own inner genius and create the life you long for. Please bring a notebook or journal and a pen.
Through experiential, evidence-based practices, this workshop will explore mindful eating and nature as deep nourishment for the body, mind, and heart. Discover mindfulness, mindful eating, somatic practices, ecotherapy nature-based practices, and key teachings from timeless Buddhist wisdom. Learn to develop your own mindful eating and nature-based awareness practice through:
Though we forget, our minds, like our bodies, are part of the natural world. We can get stuck in challenging emotions, beliefs, and mental states when we do not regularly access the deep peace, balance, joy, and well-being that come from being aware of our bodies, minds, and hearts as nature, nourished by nature. This joyful weekend will help us discover and return to our own true nature, build a sense of interconnectedness, and form a healthier relationship with food, body, and daily life.
There comes a time in every person’s life when it’s clear that a restructuring is needed — that the framework you’ve built isn’t serving you any longer. You may feel that you are spending too much time on things that are no longer a priority. Or there’s something you really want to be doing, but other things get in the way. Or you are living your life according to an old story you’ve outgrown. Maybe you’ve made an internal shift, but your outer life hasn’t caught up.
How do we go about making fundamental life changes in a way that aligns with who we are now? That is the question we will explore in this highly interactive program. During the workshop, you will have the opportunity to:
Are you ready to engage in a meaningful process of inner exploration that will set the course for a more authentic life? If so, please join us for this workshop where you can learn essential skills to make life changes with clarity and intention.
Tibetan yogis, monks, and nuns are human like you and me; they have feelings and emotions, and obstacles in their lives. That is why the practices they have created as a way to remove obstacles from their body, energy, and mind are suitable for us too.
These tools remained as secret recipes for centuries, and only in the last couple of decades have started to be known in the West, as they’ve been researched scientifically and practiced now by thousands of people. Those who practice them can discover or tap into a radical sense of presence — an aliveness in the midst of chaos — like a lotus flower coming out of the mud or the sun illuminating everything without bias.
Well-being in the Tibetan tradition is a holistic sense of wellness that encompasses body, energy, and mind. During this program, participants will have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of Tibetan wellness and experientially practice meditative yogic techniques that utilize the healing power of the breath-energy (qi or lung in Tibetan) as a link and support for a healthy body and more aware state of mind. In addition, some of the current research in this area will be presented and discussed.
This workshop encourages participants to explore the potential of their subtle bodies — composed of channels and chakras — as a powerful tool for meditative practice, which utilizes the five breath-energies present in yogic and medical texts. These meditative practices and movements allow one to clear the “poisons” of one’s afflicted emotions, become more familiar with the healing support of the breath, and be radically aware of one’s “inner home.” Please bring a journal.
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:
No previous artistic experience is necessary. This workshop is designed for everyone.
“We will become our opposite if we do not learn to accommodate the opposite within us.” — Carl Jung
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 Lopön 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.
“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 – returning home to the ground of our essential being, our true nature, which is love. Buddhism teaches that when we split from the “ground of being,” we can either take the path of remembrance or forgetting.
The path of remembrance teaches that when we remember who we truly are, we know that we are the ground, and we feel whole and can experience the liberation and freedom of nirvana. On the other hand, if we take the path of forgetting (which is what most of us have taken), we forget that we are the ground, which leads us to samsara, to feeling lost, empty, anxious, alone, and disconnected from love.
Whether we experience nirvana or samsara depends on our own minds, the crux is that they are not two different places – they are states of mind.
Meditation is one of the most impactful tools we have for cultivating positive mental states, states of being that enable us to experience the ground as it truly is, and gain confidence and maturity. This is the teaching on “one ground, two paths, two results” that we will explore together.
“Our fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
In this retreat, we will complement our meditation practice with shadow work called Feeding Your Demons® (FYD), an exquisite five-step process whereby we offer attention and compassion to our inner obstacles, our “demons.” In this context, demons are those thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that block our experience of freedom. This process is greatly beneficial when working with various personal demons and other dilemmas of modern life. A 2018 FYD pilot study found that working through this process was associated with increased self-compassion, emotional 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:
Please bring loose, comfortable clothing, a journal, writing implements, and if you have art supplies, such as colored pencils, pens, pastels, and/or watercolor, feel free to bring them. Paper and art supplies will also be provided in the workshop.
When the wisdom of the sky and the wisdom of the earth are braided through the human heart, then there will be a rainbow of people.”
This prophecy of the Indigenous peoples speaks to the practice of braiding together traditional (earth) and contemporary (sky) knowledge to create something new that embraces both rather than replacing one or the other. Through this braiding, or weaving, we can learn to live modern lives guided by ancient wisdom, bringing the sacred home to ourselves.
In this experiential workshop, we will engage in cross-cultural practices and non-ordinary states of consciousness through drumming, guided journeys, and ceremony. These practices have been shared by Indigenous cultures over thousands of years to deepen connections to the self, cultivate a relationship with the planet, and find more balanced ways of being. You will be introduced to different techniques designed to ground and integrate these non-ordinary states and discover how to incorporate these teachings into your daily lives.
This workshop will cover the components of ceremony, including:
In our time together, we will explore the braided way. You’ll have the opportunity to reconnect with wisdom practices that forge sacred space for self and community. Come ready to restore, reveal, and leave inspired!
Participants are encouraged to bring drums or percussion instruments, a Journal for note taking, a blanket or wrap for floor work, and a water container.
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.
“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”~ Alan Watts
Throughout the ages and across cultural traditions, nature has inspired the human spirit. The wilderness of Big Sur allows us to imprint the collective wisdom of this alive and wild coast in our bodies. The ancient redwood-forested canyons, dramatic meeting of earth and sea, and soft grassy hills remind us of the presence, wisdom, and deep sense of belonging that live in each of us.
This workshop will present simple yet profound practices designed to help us access our connections with the essential movement processes of life — and enhance our capacity to both participate and innovate. Along with physical practices, group discussions, and direct experience of nature, we will draw on ancient movement traditions of tai chi, aikido, and contemporary somatic practices that offer ways of centering, grounding, and knowing our belonging to the greater community of being.
During our time together, we will venture out on four to eight-mile hikes. Being immersed in the wild we are in an intimate embodied sensory dialogue that literally invites us to come to our senses. We will experience increasingly refined awareness and explore perceptual practices to enhance our sensitivity to all the wilderness offers, and reawaken the elements of wilderness within. With awakened senses, we can receive nature’s richness and beauty, inspiring a deepening relationship with grounding, centering, and embodiment.
All evenings and most meals will be at Esalen. All levels of experience are welcome, although participants should be prepared for vigorous physical activity and the opportunity to simply sit still in quiet reflection. More information and a waiver will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, visit FAQs.
Please note: Participants need to be capable of moderate exercise. Hikes will be between four to eight miles.
How do we celebrate our aging and become wisdom holders for our communities in a youth-obsessed culture? As we ripen into the late summer and autumn of our lives, how can we let go of what no longer serves and enjoy the abundance of each precious moment?
As part of our spiritual awakening, we have the opportunity to fully inhabit the eight limbs of yoga and broaden our daily embodiment of freedom and joy. The experience of living through many years affords the ability to see life through the lens of compassionate presence. In this workshop, we will celebrate this perspective and create space in our bodies for joy and curiosity about the future.
During this time together, we will:
Students aged 50 and older are welcome. Basic mobility is required; otherwise, please come with someone who can assist you. You must be able to lie on the floor and put your legs up the wall for five minutes and accept your physical limitations without judgment. Three months of a semi-consistent yoga practice is recommended. Please come with a beginner’s mind, even if you’re not a beginner.
Asanga’s Nine Stages of Staying is one of the oldest and most comprehensive systems of concentration in the Buddhist tradition. Sometimes called the Elephant Path, this approach was originated by the great Buddisht master in 506 A.D., and it is now the main method of training the mind in the Tibetan tradition.
In this weekend meditation retreat, participants will learn all nine stages of the Elephant Path. Students will learn the basic tools of this concentration meditation, gain the capacity to stay more continuously and completely focused on the meditation object, and learn how to develop some capacity for automaticity in this practice. By the conclusion of the retreat, students will have all the instructions necessary to successfully master all nine stages of tranquility.
Training the mind in this way can lead to a direct experience of equanimity and can put the student in a range of practice, wherein pointing out the real nature of the awakened mind is possible.
No experience with meditation is required. If you have your own preferred meditation pillow and mat, please bring them
Wouldn’t it be nice to feel comfortable in your own skin? How do you “do” you?
Return to Source is a dance and movement-based deep dive into the 5Rhythms® movement meditation practice to explore, celebrate, and connect to the beautiful authenticity that is you. Your authentic presence is as unique as your own fingerprint. It is a source of great potential that requires courage, curiosity, and support to harness. The motion of our bodies in alignment with our intentional breath is an accessible tool to sculpt, hone, and discover your unique self.
During this impactful weekend, you will have the opportunity, through movement, group shares, and sensory awareness, to explore your edges, move with intention, and unearth your own relationship to authentic being.
In this dynamic program, we will explore:
The 5Rhythms® can be a powerful lens through which we can track, express, and embrace how sensation moves and is felt within the body. Return to Source honors the maps of the 5Rhythms® practice through authentic expression of the body, in all shapes and forms.
No prior experience necessary.
Recommended Reading: Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth
You feel a call — destiny calling you to create something amazing because you are a creator.
What is it that you truly want to create, manifest, and activate in your life right now? What is the work you have been avoiding and procrastinating doing? What is your vision for your health, home, relationships, vocation, offerings, finances, creativity, travel, spiritual life, and higher potential? You know the time is now. Whatever you want to create is possible.
You have to get clear about your vision. You need to move out of your comfort zone and into your courage zone. You need to make a plan. By transforming the vibration of your body, mind, heart, and spirit, you can find the deep fulfillment and satisfaction that comes from accomplishing goals and aligning with your greater potential and your True Self.
It’s a lot easier to be a creator when you are in the presence of other creators. This powerful and practical program will provide the community you need to craft your vision. Your dream should not remain a dream. It is your time to pull it into your reality. Conscious Creation will help you manifest your Big Vision for your life.
In this workshop, we will focus on foundational transformations through guided meditations and visualizations, empowerment conversations, writing exercises, and specific exercises, such as Emotional Freedom Technique (also known as Tapping). This is your opportunity to allow your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings to inspire you to speak the words and take the actions necessary to become the living embodiment of your visions.
Join us for a transformative workshop where ancient traditions intersect with modern science to unleash the power of transpersonal breathwork practices. Through this week-long immersive experience, you will discover the profound benefits of Holotropic Breathwork® and other multicultural techniques that have been validated by Western science.
Developed by the renowned Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD, Holotropic Breathwork® is a potent way to access non-ordinary states of consciousness without the use of psychedelics. In this workshop, you will have the opportunity to participate in four Holotropic®sessions, each designed to take you on a journey of self-discovery and transformation.
We’ll start our days with an invigorating kata led by Mac Murphy, a breathwork expert trained in China. You’ll learn qigong and other breathing practices inspired by Tummo and Wim Hof, and you’ll even have the option to take a refreshing dip in the nearby Hot Springs Creek.
Each afternoon, you’ll delve deeper into Holotropic Breathwork® in three-hour sessions. With the support of a “sitter” and under the expert guidance of Ellen Watson and Perry Holloman, you’ll explore accelerated breathing techniques that have been documented by Harvard Mind-Body Clinic co-founder Herbert Benson, MD, to have profound effects.
This workshop also includes time for integration, including creative expressions of your experiences, such as drawing mandalas, writing poetry, and exploring your experiences using the powerful tool of Integrative Gestalt Practice under the experienced guidance of Perry and Ellen.
Relax your body and mind, and let the evocative music guide you on a journey through your chakra system! Join us for a life-changing week of self-discovery and transformation through the power of breath. Experience the convergence of ancient traditions and modern science to unlock your potential for personal growth and healing.
To find out more about Holotropic Breathwork®, please read Stan Grof’s The Holotropic Mind or review these videos: Stanislav Grof – Holotropic Breathing (YouTube) and Stanislav Grof: Holotropic Bodywork Workshop [Part 1] (YouTube).
The landscape for leadership has changed. It is no longer enough to be smart, experienced, and committed. Leadership needs to be a transformative experience that starts with leading the self. The world, with all of its uncertainty, risk, and loss, needs leaders who can provide psychological safety in the face of dangers and threats.
Psychological safety begins with the “person effect” you cast out into the world. Leaders who are unaware of their “person effect” have a liability and can find it incredibly difficult to stimulate high performance. However, those who intentionally create psychological safety are able to foster the creativity and innovation necessary to thrive.
Drawing on studies of high performance leadership from the worlds of sports, business, medicine, music, theater, military, and hostage negotiation, this workshop invites participants to synthesize this knowledge and apply it to the contexts in which they live and lead. More specifically, participants will develop and learn:
A transformative experience on leading self, others, and organizations. This is a week-long journey into the roots of your leadership strengths and an exploration of your leadership talents. This workshop will offer cutting-edge theory, experiential learning, and opportunities to do personal work that can help you overcome barriers to becoming a true leader.
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, Dr. Shauna Shapiro, a leading scientist studying the effects of mindfulness and compassion on well-being, shows us that acting compassionately toward ourselves is the key. She explains basic brain science and offers powerful research-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.
This workshop is appropriate for anyone curious about mindfulness and compassion and how to deepen our connection with the beauty and mystery of life. We will immerse ourselves in the natural beauty of Esalen, allowing the sounds of the ocean, the magnificent views, and the delights of the gardens to nourish and support us. All are welcome.
For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for tuition scholarship possibilities.
Recommended Reading: Shapiro, S (2020). Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Mind Sounds True, Boulder, CO.
Yoga invites us into our bodies. Zen meditation stabilizes and opens the mind. Inquiry offers a gateway to deeper understanding and insight. All three can be entered through the doorway of the heart. This retreat offers an opportunity to harness the power of these practices and to step into the fullness of our hearts and lives.
Mornings will open with guided meditation, then a dynamic vinyasa flow practice. In the afternoons, Rosemary and Simon will lead the group in inquiry, a practice of heart-centered self-discovery. Participants will be invited to explore their inner experiences through insightful questions both alone and in pairs. The afternoon practice will also incorporate restorative yoga and zen meditation to allow for deeper integration of the day’s insights.
For centuries, people have discovered what it is to be human through the forms of yoga, meditation, and inquiry. Join us for this inner exploration that will open you to the heart of your practice and life.
All levels are welcome. Some yoga experience recommended.
We are in a place in our human journey where we need guidance and support. As we navigate world events, the pandemic, climate change, and our own individual traumas, our goal must be not only to survive but to thrive with powerful, proud lives.
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. Join us for two days of ceremony as we reconnect, heal, and nourish our hearts through Earth wisdom teachings from Mesoamerica and Peru. 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 two 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.
Marisa Anita Reyes is a community leader and medicine woman who uses her voice, charango, harmonium, frame drum, and crystal bowl to take people on a journey to open their hearts, meet their ancestors, and connect to Spirit.
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.
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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
We need the medicine of joy, magic, and fun. We are in a place in our human journey where we desperately need guidance and support to navigate life in these uncertain times. With the pandemic, climate change, and our own individual traumas, humanity is longing for community, connection, healing, and ceremony with the Earth more than ever.
Join us for a week of ceremony with Earth wisdom teachings from Mesoamerica and Peru as we reconnect, heal, and nourish our hearts. 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 two 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.
Marisa Anita Reyes is a community leader and medicine woman who uses her voice, charango, harmonium, frame drum, and crystal bowl to take people on a journey to open their hearts, meet their ancestors, and connect to Spirit.
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.
The practice of painting is healing and meditative. No experience is necessary as we transform our everyday consciousness into the inner artist that lives in each of us. The week is designed to introduce the possibility that you are an artist, and that the artist path is one of joy, insight and awareness.
Our days begin with meditation, dream work and sharing about our paintings. Then we paint! Paul and an assistant provide personal instruction and one-on-one help with techniques. In just a few days, you can finish a colorful painting that reveals many of the deep inner patterns that connect you with your soul. “In my 30 years of teaching,” said Paul, “I have never seen one painting that was not beautiful.” After seeing mandalas made during Paul’s workshop, Eckhart Tolle commented, “These paintings carry a healing presence.” Deepak Chopra said, “These paintings are archetypal manifestations of higher consciousness.”
After the workshop, you will have the foundation for painting sacred art and mandalas at home, as you continue on this path of self-discovery and the newfound relationship to art and your soul. ($25 materials fee will be added to the workshop cost.)
Recommended reading: Heussenstamm, Divine Forces: Art that Awakens the Soul and Color Yourself Calm.
Since falling in love is biologically natural, but sustaining love is biologically unnatural, Soul Mate focuses on the art and discipline of sustaining love. You begin with learning how to appreciate your partner so specifically and frequently that your partner feels fully seen and loved.
You then practice both the art and discipline of hearing your partner’s criticisms without becoming defensive. For example, so you don’t have to fear “walking on eggshells” before sharing a concern, your partner first learns how to prepare her or himself to emotionally associate your criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved.
Soul Mate is designed as the next evolutionary shift beyond active listening. Active listening allowed the criticizer to feel heard, but failed to teach the person hearing the criticism how to emotionally associate the criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved. The problem? Unless the receiver of criticism feels safe the person sharing their concern cannot feel safe.
You will learn a series of practices you may integrate into your everyday life:
To sustain your practice after the workshop, I invite you to multiple free, ongoing, group follow-up calls to resolve stumbling blocks. If you wish to review the insights and exercises at any time, you will also have the option of purchasing a Zoom version of the course.
This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations. Developed over the past 30 years, the workshop is also used by many health professionals in their work with clients and patients.
Recommended resources: Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, pp. 1-87, by Dr. Warren Farrell; additional video content on warrenfarrell.com.
Machiel Klerk will lead participants on a journey into the mysterious world of dreams. Through various experiential exercises and discussions, we will learn 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 and learn tangible and practical ways of working with them, reflecting on them, and identifying 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 Machiel Klerk
Discover the benefits of Tibetan sound healing meditation. Learn practices that bring together the mind and its embodied energy, supported by the simple and powerful ancient Tibetan vocalized sounds (A, Om, and Hung) that work with different chakras to provide a sense of embodied meditation.
We will also study the clinical research done at MD Anderson Cancer Center on using these practices to help patients regain cognitive capacity after chemotherapy.
Meditating with these healing sounds can help you clear away obstacles, recuperate your being, and bring lost qualities back into your everyday life. This ancient healing modality can help connect you to your inner wisdom to achieve a relaxed yet aware state of mind and a healthier lifestyle.
Recommended Reading: Tibetan Sound Healing by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.
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For the first time, resident faculty members are joining forces, combining lifetimes of expertise and decades of institutional knowledge for a month-long workshop that synthesizes the very "best of Esalen" — a full immersion into our history, current on-campus culture, and some revelatory healing practices developed over the last sixty years.
Whether you spend one weekend, one week, or one month living in community here at the edge of the world, one thing is nearly certain — you’ll leave wondering how to spend more time with us. Diving more deeply into our homegrown practices — leading edge, forever evolving, and recognized worldwide as portals for transformation — will bring you further into the very heart of you. Our newly launched experience, the Esalen Deep Growth Experience (EDGE), is a soulfully reimagined residential study program for changemakers ready to transform from within to affect and effect collective change outside of our Big Sur campus.
What does it mean to reach toward your growing edges? Maybe some discomfort, perhaps quite a bit of vulnerability. Expanding our individual capacity can also feel exciting and exhilarating. There is an activated art to facing what we typically avoid, and it takes self-aware stretching to move beyond our self-imposed limitations.
EDGE is a transformation accelerator. It is designed to help the visionary within each of us unfurl and blossom — to cultivate our potential with group support within the nourishing container that is Esalen. Each individual week of the four weeks is devoted to one of our four programmatic pillars: heart, mind, body, and spirit. These foundations are undergirded by the Esalen community. EDGE programming utilizes breakthrough practices developed at Esalen, including Gestalt process, an array of somatic and embodiment practices, dance, movement, and facilitation experiences rooted in the Esalen ethos to retrieve, fully experience, and with support, articulate the reality of our lived experience. It is only then that we can begin to shape it most consciously.
Esalen is a microcosm of the larger human ecology — Conversations at the hot springs baths plant seeds for deep friendships. Words exchanged over a meal in the Lodge become the foundation for future relationships. Workshop participants develop supportive dynamics typically developed in relationships measured in years. Within the framework of EDGE, the Esalen Effect is amplified for even greater connectedness.
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.
Recommended reading: Riso and Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Personality Types (Revised Edition, 1996), and Understanding the Enneagram (Revised Edition, 2000); Hudson, The Enneagram: Nine Gateways to Presence (2021).
As women, we tend to overlook the creative power locked away in one of our primal energy centers. This may surprise you, but this energy center isn’t the heart or even the brain. So, where does our creative energy get blocked?
It is easy to miss, but creative power can actually get trapped in the pelvis, the special area of the body that gives us the ability to create new life. That new life may be another human being — or it could be a passion project that makes your spirit sing. It might be that memoir you’ve always wanted to write to help other women move through life with more ease and courage. Or that inspiring new business you want to launch from your kitchen table. Or it could be that juicy new course you feel called to create and teach online. All that creative energy can be blocked — unless you intentionally release, heal, transform, and integrate it.
Physical, emotional, or spiritual trauma to the pelvic floor can be standing in the way of you being and feeling fully alive. In this course, we use guided imagery, movement, and hands-on exercises (all clothed) to heal the pelvic core, including the vagina and uterus — places that often hold our deepest wounds. These wounds can include rape, abortion, miscarriage, sexual abuse, surgery, childbirth tearing and scaring, self-esteem issues, and negative imagery about our femininity. We’ll also learn scientific and anatomic information and practice pelvic core yoga and abdominal massage.
Rarely does a course offer the opportunity for this type of in-depth healing that women desire. In these seven days, you will experience whole new possibilities for renewed feminine energy, greater health, and a deeper sense of pleasure in being a woman.
We will also spend time exploring nature and how our connection to the earth deepens our connection to ourselves. The workshop will culminate in a special evening of nurturing at the Esalen natural hot spring baths.
In addition to being extremely profound for women on a personal level, this course is valuable for healthcare professionals or anyone wishing to learn non-invasive techniques to heal women.
Recommended Reading: Read and Listen to the audio in Full Body Presence: Learning to Listen to Your Body’s Wisdom, and Reclaiming Your Body: Healing From Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s Wisdom. See the Online Training Center at www.HealingFromTheCore.com for additional recommended reading list and handouts for the class.
“Rhythm is the universal mother tongue. It is the language of the soul.” Gabrielle Roth
Silent introspection (seated meditation) and movement awareness (5Rhythms®) are both practices that support unlocking the gateways of healing, celebration, and joy. Together, we will build an environment that cultivates peace, balance, and well-being. Through sweat and stillness, we will ride the rhythms of the mother tongue and turn the heart toward self-realization.
The 5Rhythms dance method is focused on presence versus performance. It is a place where movement becomes the metaphor for all of life. It teaches us how energy moves and where it gets stuck. The rhythms of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness help us to more skillfully understand and navigate the inner and outer landscapes of reality.
Trauma-sensitive mindfulness builds a container to hold both movement and stillness in a way that supports all that you are facing. This approach offers tools that allow you to both “work with” and “be with” what is present.
This workshop will include:
Please note: This work is trauma-informed. This group is not trauma-focused.
Recommended Reading: Dancing With Dharma: Essays on Movement And Dance In Western Buddhism” edited by Harrison Blum, Published by McFarland & Company, Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy by Gabrielle Roth and Connections by Gabrielle Roth
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Join Dr. Deborah Egerton to learn to lead from the heart and find your place in the great rehabilitation of our humanity through love, light, and connection.
The authentic self rises when we let go of the flawed dualistic mindset — that our feminine energy provides only nurturing support and our masculine energy is strength. Setting aside this binary thinking and these stereotypical roles, we come together to honor and explore the totality of energies that allow us to be our authentic selves.
Through guided exploration, participants will identify our three centers of intelligence to gain access to and realign with the heart center and step into their true power. Participants will learn to uncover what “gets in the way” of finding compassion for themselves and others when faced with real-life conflict.
Participants will:
We are faced with divides and disconnects because we have forgotten how to maintain contact with our true hearts. Messages of love and understanding have been replaced with self-preservation, isolation, and judgment — “me and mine” versus “us and ours.”
We will discuss how we have fallen into pre-programmed patterns of responses and explore the “roadblocks” we face in accessing the heart space. The unique approach of finding the root causes of our judgments, biased beliefs, and even inequitable value systems allows participants to apply what they’ve learned to real-world scenarios, take action in their lives, and lead with the heart to reconnect across any divisions.
Recommended Reading: Know Justice Know Peace, by Deborah Threadgill Egerton, Ph.D
Are you longing to be in the beauty of the outdoors and delight in the wonder of nature? After a long pandemic and looking at too many digital screens, what better remedy than to step outside and meditate in the majesty of the Big Sur coastline, 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 meditating entirely outdoors in the natural beauty and mystery of Esalen. Whether during a sunset meditation listening to the soothing sounds of the ocean or as we sit graced in 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 then find out how to apply this receptivity to a contemplative relationship with nature. We can discover how meditative time outdoors leads to beautiful states of joy, peace, wonder, love, and connection with oneself, one another, and the larger web of life.
Recommended reading: Awake in the Wild and A Field Guide to Nature Meditation by Mark Coleman
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Mothers are the frequency holders of the household. As the common phrase says, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
In this self-care immersion, mothers of all ages and stages — new moms, single mothers, empty nesters, and those who are ready to become mothers — gather for rest, reflection, and personal reset. Movement, breathwork, and ceremonial self-care provide sensual and centering practices that help clear and revitalize energy. Therapeutic journaling and wisdom circles help participants identify what truly matters. A meditation practice is encouraged for stress reduction and emotional wellbeing.
This journey includes contemplative and experiential circles exploring:
You will leave feeling seen and energized, and with a clear strategy for infusing your discoveries into your home life.
Included in your registration is a self-care list, habit tracker, and community connection via a dedicated Telegram group.
Revolutionary findings in neuroscience have demonstrated that we can literally re-architect the very structure of our brains. In fact, we can even rewire our neurology to be more focused, calmer, and happier.
In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro — a leading scientist studying the effects of meditation on well-being — will teach you the most powerful science-based practices for increasing the neural pathways of happiness. She’ll explain basic brain science and offer a clear roadmap for living a joyful, connected, and meaningful life. Be prepared for unexpected transformation and delight.
During this weekend workshop, we’ll learn:
*For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.
Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire the Brain for Calm, Clarity + Joy and Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity + Joy by Shauna Shapiro
How can we adopt and combine the best empirical science and time-honored indigenous wisdom to foster personal growth for ourselves and others? You’re invited to discover some of the many varied and powerful ways to expand, grow, and flourish from both scientific and embodied perspectives. In this deep and experiential workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to gain the energy and resources necessary to consciously create new possibilities for your life and offerings for the world.
During this weekend workshop, you’ll have the chance to:
This workshop is open to everyone, regardless of their prior meditation, vocal practice, mental health, or energy healing experience. Just arrive curious, open to transformation, and ready to meet the powerful creator within you!
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Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervishes to the Shakers, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, cleansing, and clarity, guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain. This five-day retreat is an invitation to come together to celebrate our strength and resilience and to dance our way home to wholeness.
Through an alchemical combination of movement, relaxation, and yoga philosophy, 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.
Throughout this week, we’ll cultivate practices to help you:
The physiological and psycho-social benefits of these embodiment practices will continue guiding you into the future. Allow yourself to be nourished by these healing and energizing practices, this sacred land and hot springs waters, and the friends you’ll make so that you may return home rejuvenated, eager to continue walking your life path.
Enjoy a rising tide of empowerment and end your daily guessing game about life. Find the guidance you seek when you say “Yes!” to the Beauty of Tarot.
Join renowned master teacher Brenda Rose for this playful and magical journey through the sacred stories of tarot. You’ll gain a meaningful connection with the cards and learn to provide insightful readings. Stories of the major and minor arcana will be shared in an intimate setting and customized way. The Beauty of Tarot can amplify your spiritual transformation by helping you cultivate more unconditional love and intuitive guidance for your daily life.
This is an immersive and interactive workshop. The magic of tarot comes alive as you practice giving and receiving readings with your classmates under the supportive guidance of Brenda Rose and her graduate students. We’ll learn vibrant tarot spreads together and discover how both the evident and esoteric tarot stories are activated.
In this workshop, we will learn to:
This immersion welcomes all levels of experience, and each participant receives Brenda’s original deck, The Beauty of Tarot, and a workbook chronicling each card as part of the tuition.
The natural world – in all its arresting beauty and enchanting complexity – calls out for our presence and reverence. There are subtle currents of communion and communication happening all around us; the land and wild beings beckon us into expanded states of sensitivity, reciprocity and fellowship.
Immersed in the wilds of Big Sur, and the beautiful grounds of Esalen, we will cultivate our fundamental connection with the land. Through practices of sensate engagement, earth-based ritual, and mindfulness, we will build relationships with this place and our other-than-human kin. We will traverse physical hiking trails alongside the trails of intuition, affinity, and imagination. Following our innate curiosity, we will grow our ecological knowledge and uncover the stories of the mountains, waters, animals, plants, and fungi that live around us.
Acknowledging Big Sur to be the ancestral homeland of the Esselen tribe, we will endeavor to behave as reverent guests on sacred land. Regarding the landscape as both our teacher and relation, we will weave offerings of gratitude and respect into every practice. May these humble efforts help unsettle the anthropocentric paradigm of objectification and extraction which degrades our earth and all life.
Come wander with us, dear wild ones! Ground yourself in the peace of the soil, and feel your animal body lively and awake on the trail. Expand your awareness of the living world, and sense into a renewed state of wholeness – as we begin to relate reciprocally with the land.
Notes:
Time flies when you’re in your lane doing what you do best, operating in the ways that are the most natural and effective for you.
This workshop incorporates the Kolbe assessment to gain clarity and understanding of your instinctual style of being in the world. Once you have that, you are free to structure your world to support you instead of exhausting you. You can be truly free to be and do you!
In this workshop, you are invited to learn:
The Kolbe is a unique assessment. It does not evaluate intelligence, personality, or social style. Instead, it measures the instinctive ways you take action when you are in your zone. It helps you understand and honor how you naturally move through the world and interact with others. When you are allowed to be yourself and play to your natural strengths, the difference can feel astounding.
Once you understand your Kolbe profile, you can easily structure life’s activities and leverage your instinct style to your advantage while mitigating the activities that exhaust you, which deliver “lesser” results. Relatively minor adjustments can create great joy in your life.
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 three-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.
Slowing down can be a revolutionary act in which we attune to our bodies, hearts, the earth, and the more-than-human realm. Join Deborah Eden Tull for this restorative retreat at the cusp of the autumnal equinox to celebrate deep time. By looking past the dominant paradigm’s fixation with speed, busyness, and productivity, we can create a more authentic relationship with time for interconnection, emergence, and wholeness — that recognizes receptivity as the seat of our authentic power as women.
Meditation is, ultimately, a practice of listening to life as it unfolds, moment by moment, in an embodied, tactile way through every cell of our body, far past simple auditory processing. Inspired by the Zen teaching of “being time,” we will engage in practices that teach slowness so that we may return to our earthly bodies. Together, we’ll release the collective conditioning that convinces us there’s “not enough time,” which constantly prizes productivity over restoration. We will remember our choice to reside in the spaciousness of shared presence.
In this age of accelerated change and global uncertainty, let us consider the steady and unhurried wisdom that helps us savor this precious world and strengthen our resolve to save it. Let us embrace a more organic dynamic with our seasons and relationships, including the ancestral realm and with our future selves. We can balance stillness and action, attunement and productivity, and yin and yang for a more significant and powerful impact on our planet, one another, and ourselves.
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 realm of gender expression.
As the last week of summer culminates on the autumn equinox, we’ll journey through the chakras and call ourselves home to our hearts using sound and alchemy crystal singing bowls.
Sound is one of the oldest and most natural forms of healing, and modern science reinforces what ancient cultures have always known: We live in a vibrational world. All beings are interconnected through frequencies. By using sound healing intentionally, we have the opportunity to be deeply nourished, embrace higher consciousness, and transform the world around us.
Sound healing is the symphony of resonance that awakens the soul’s melody, restoring harmony within and guiding us back to our true essence. Together! We will explore and experience how sound and vibration can entrain our brainwave patterns, calm our hearts, soothe our nervous systems, and balance our chakras.
We will study the basics of the singing bowls, and each day will also include:
Come away with new practices to help you feel empowered, connected, and in harmony within and with the world around you. “Sound is the medicine of the future, unlocking the profound healing potential that lies within every cell of our being.” — Dr. Mitchell Gaynor
Recommended Reading: Sound Medicine: How to Use the Ancient Science of Sound to Heal the Body and Mind by Kulreet Chaudhary, MD
Imagine if, whatever challenges life may present, the one thing you could count on is your mind being kind to you. 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 the health benefits in immunity, brain architecture, pain management, and mental and physical resilience that have been part of an ancient mental and physical training system through meditation practice.
During our time together, you will be invited to:
Throughout the weekend, you are invited to bring 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
The soothing quality of massage is a delightful antidote for stress or that out-of-sorts feeling. Sharing a massage heightens non-verbal connection and awakens sensory awareness. Whether you’re a novice or professional, this workshop will guide you through the basic concepts of Esalen Massage in a pleasant, easy-to-follow format.
With brief lecture demonstrations and plenty of at-the-table guidance, the instructors will offer the essential elements, highlighting the foundational long, integrating strokes and gentle stretches. Grounding, sensing, contact, and the impact of touch will be introduced and practiced with classmates, building a firm base. The professional caregiver or practitioner can also refresh their existing work with Esalen’s pace, presence, and sensitivity — “the listening hand.” Don’t be surprised if you come away realizing you like giving a classic Esalen massage as much as you like receiving one.
Arrive prepared to enjoy the healing waters of Esalen’s natural hot mineral springs and the serene beauty of the Esalen land. The sound of the waves and the flowing strokes harmonize into an extraordinary massage experience.
Arrive prepared to enjoy the healing waters of Esalen’s natural hot mineral springs and the serene beauty of the Esalen land. The sound of the waves and the flowing strokes harmonize into an extraordinary massage experience.
View the continuing education syllabus.
10 hours of CE credit for Massage Therapists.
Learn more about the requirements to receive continuing education credit.
Recommended Reading: Connecting Through Touch by Peggy Horan
Even when we only desire to assist and support another’s struggle for justice and equality, we can easily stumble and create unintentional outcomes. How do we become true allies and collaborators and avoid these negative effects? By fully preparing and considering our involvement — getting ready to lend a hand — we can develop our best selves and build valuable lives of service.
In this workshop, we’ll discuss how becoming an ally, collaborating, and joining forces help create progress. This can include support for racial, gender, LGBTQ, homelessness, and other identities.
To prepare for our work as allies and to evolve to collaborators, we’ll use:
We become our best selves — happy, committed, and proud — by being in service to others. However, being an ally requires work. It means discovering our underlying prejudices and developing meaningful approaches to potential action plans.
Recommended Reading: The Crossroads of Social and Climate Justice by LaVerne Hillis McLeod
The hunger to belong is at the heart of our nature. ~ John O’Donohue
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.
Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, social critic, author, poet, and mystic — RD Laing wore many robes. At the peak of his fame in the 1970s, Laing was the most widely-read psychiatrist in the world. Arguably the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud, he experienced a meteoric rise in the 1960s by making complex ideas accessible with best-selling classics The Divided Self (1960), Sanity, Madness and Family (1964), The Politics of Experience (1967), and many others.
Laing’s impassioned plea for more humane treatment of society’s most vulnerable catapulted him into the forefront of intellectual and cultural debates about the nature of sanity and madness. A generation of psychology students, intellectuals, and artists turned this disarming Scotsman into a social icon, and Laing was a regular presenter at Esalen until his death in 1989.
One of the most seminal aspects of Laing’s approach to the human condition involved an exploration of how we treat one another. As a psychoanalyst, philosopher, and existentialist, he had a no-holds-barred critique of the dark sides of the human condition, as well as its virtues — the healing dimensions of our relationships. Our symposium this year will explore what healing entails in all of the many contexts we experience it, including psychotherapy, altered states, psychedelics, education, and any experience that brings us peace of mind and a more meaningful existence.
In previous Esalen workshops, we have explored the meaning of sanity, therapy, authenticity, love, happiness, spirituality, and ethics. The focus of this year’s Esalen symposium and workshop will shift to psychotherapy and training in existential psychoanalysis, a more philosophical yet personal approach to therapy initiated by Laing at the Philadelphia Association in London. Two of our workshop leaders trained with Laing and founded Free Association, Inc., and the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis to further this approach to healing. The workshop will consist of theoretical presentations (including several student presentations), panel discussions, and experiential breathwork exercises to demonstrate practical aspects of Laing’s legacy.
Among the questions we will explore:
Join us for five revelatory days to explore how we can promote more humane and effective ways of helping those suffering from the anguish of living.
Note to prospective participants: This program is best suited for those who are familiar with Laing’s work and who wish to explore it further. This program is not structured as an experiential workshop. There will be more lectures and witnessed dialogue than group discussions. Please read the description thoroughly to ensure this workshop is right for your personal growth goals.
Recommended Reading: The Death of Desire: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness and Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity by M. Guy Thompson
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.
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.
A consistent meditation practice can lower stress, improve health, strengthen relationships, and increase happiness. A regular writing practice can help you make sense of the world and your place in it while making you a better and more creative writer. This combination writing and meditation workshop invites writers and meditators of all levels to delve deeply into both practices and combine their benefits.
Our daily guided meditations will nourish your creativity by encouraging you to be present, establishing a strong mind/body connection, and helping you access emotion and empathy — all important tools for writing.
Daily bursts of free writing will provide opportunities to tap into your creative energy — without judgment — so you can do your most original and authentic writing. Both practices will be supported by discussions of the craft of writing to help you master the technical aspects of storytelling. Each day, we will set aside time to share our work in a safe and supportive environment.
By the end of the workshop, everyone will have acquired the tools necessary to develop daily meditation and writing practices — and make them stick. Participants will also receive a free month’s membership to Creative Caffeine Daily, an online community to inspire, share work, and provide feedback.
Recommended Reading: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Awe is the feeling of encountering vast mysteries that transcend our current knowledge and understanding of the world. In its greatest sense, it is an astonished and transformative appreciation for the moral beauty of others, for nature, for the arts — and is always rooted in a spiritual understanding of life.
In this new, paradigm-shifting workshop, we will uncover the latest scientific understandings of awe. By engaging in evolutionary and neuroscientific approaches to the mind, and considering the narrative and cultural meanings of awe, we will begin to tease out where this feeling lives in our own minds and hearts, and learn how to cultivate it more deeply.
Together, we will discover a number of practices to cultivate this transcendent amalgam of reverence, astonishment, and admiration in our own lives and how to deepen one’s relationship to it. We’ll travel by way of reflective writing, using expressive writing principles and models from Contemplative Studies.
During our time together, we will:
Join us for this incredible opportunity to refresh your heart and mind in the breathtaking natural setting of Esalen and Big Sur.
“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.
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.
Esalen® Massage builds on the Institute’s rich legacy of studies to integrate body, mind, and spirit. This extraordinary course is designed for certified bodyworkers seeking in-depth experience and training in the famed Esalen massage approach.
After course completion, graduates may call themselves Esalen® Massage professionals. This workshop includes the basic methods and techniques of Esalen Massage and more, including daily exercises in mindful centering and self-reflection, grounding, awakening the senses, and developing the art of being present. Through lectures, demonstrations, and supervised practice, you will learn optimum body mechanics to support the slow flow of the signature long strokes, detail work, assisted movement, and energy balancing. At the heart of the work is compassionate communication. The results will permeate every aspect of your life. “It’s not that the massage has changed; you’ve changed,” said one recipient.
Successful completion includes the course work, two hands-on assessments, and fifteen documented massages at your home site. Once you certify, you earn the right to call yourself an Esalen® Massage practitioner. This is post-certification professional education and does not qualify for CAMTC transcript credit. Those with bodywork experience who are not interested in professional certification may still apply.
We look forward to meeting you to share our love for Esalen Massage.
This is an advanced course for post-certification students only. Please supply your certificate type, source, date, and number on your application at the end of your essay.
For the first time, resident faculty members are joining forces, combining lifetimes of expertise and decades of institutional knowledge for a month-long workshop that synthesizes the very "best of Esalen" — a full immersion into our history, current on-campus culture, and some revelatory healing practices developed over the last sixty years.
Whether you spend one weekend, one week, or one month living in community here at the edge of the world, one thing is nearly certain — you’ll leave wondering how to spend more time with us. Diving more deeply into our homegrown practices — leading edge, forever evolving, and recognized worldwide as portals for transformation — will bring you further into the very heart of you. Our newly launched experience, the Esalen Deep Growth Experience (EDGE), is a soulfully reimagined residential study program for changemakers ready to transform from within to affect and effect collective change outside of our Big Sur campus.
What does it mean to reach toward your growing edges? Maybe some discomfort, perhaps quite a bit of vulnerability. Expanding our individual capacity can also feel exciting and exhilarating. There is an activated art to facing what we typically avoid, and it takes self-aware stretching to move beyond our self-imposed limitations.
EDGE is a transformation accelerator. It is designed to help the visionary within each of us unfurl and blossom — to cultivate our potential with group support within the nourishing container that is Esalen. Each individual week of the four weeks is devoted to one of our four programmatic pillars: heart, mind, body, and spirit. These foundations are undergirded by the Esalen community. EDGE programming utilizes breakthrough practices developed at Esalen, including Gestalt process, an array of somatic and embodiment practices, dance, movement, and facilitation experiences rooted in the Esalen ethos to retrieve, fully experience, and with support, articulate the reality of our lived experience. It is only then that we can begin to shape it most consciously.
Esalen is a microcosm of the larger human ecology — Conversations at the hot springs baths plant seeds for deep friendships. Words exchanged over a meal in the Lodge become the foundation for future relationships. Workshop participants develop supportive dynamics typically developed in relationships measured in years. Within the framework of EDGE, the Esalen Effect is amplified for even greater connectedness.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org