Workshops

Bring in the New Year with a rejuvenating week of meditation, music, and gentle yoga, guided by Buddhist teacher and author Lopön Chandra. As winter invites us to slow down and turn inward, we’ll explore “wintering” — the art of embracing rest, renewal, and the quiet gifts of this season.

Enjoy meditation sessions, both indoors and outdoors, while gazing over the Pacific Ocean, perhaps even spotting migrating whales. Learn techniques for developing shamatha, meaning “calm abiding,” and concentration, including mindfulness of breathing and Buddhist-based awareness practices. Experience the healing benefits of mantra recitation and devotional music, along with gentle, therapeutic yoga to support deeper states of relaxation and insight.

This week is designed for fun, reflection, and restoration. Whether you’re new to meditation and yoga or an experienced practitioner, you’ll find accessible practices, supportive accommodations, and a welcoming community. Seated and supine meditations will be offered for all bodies and abilities.

Throughout the week, guest musicians Cassian Rose and Robert James Ryan III of Sorelia bring decades of experience in improvisatory music and the contemplative arts, weaving violin, percussion, flute, vocals, looping, and subtle sound design into rich, immersive soundscapes for ceremony and ritual space.

Come as you are and leave refreshed, carrying winter’s quiet wisdom and renewed inspiration into the New Year. All are welcome.

The gateway of the body is a powerful vessel that allows us to move and be moved. During this unique seven day retreat, we will dance into and through the gateway of the new year, crossing the thresholds of past, present, and future. We will honor the darkness of this season while igniting the light of prayer and hope for the future, dancing out of distraction and into the focused space of collective movement medicine.

If we have the courage to move the body, the heart and mind can follow. Come open the gateway of your body by unlocking presence and potential. Join us and find out what is waiting for you on the other side.

The 5Rhythms®, a moving meditation practice, teaches us skills and tools to use in our everyday lives that help us facilitate the union of presence-based awareness. The rhythms — Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness — allow us to explore the true nature of who we are and how our energy moves in this world.

In the 5Rhythms, we engage in mindfulness while in motion as a pathway to externalize energy and activate the nervous system. Seated meditation allows the space for quiet integration of the nervous system. The two polarities of moving and sitting meditation together mirror the dance of life and open the door to cultivate peace, well-being, and balance.

No experience is required. All workshop hours contribute to 5Rhythms teacher training prerequisites.

Recommended reading:  Maps to Ecstasy, Connections, & Sweat Your Prayers, by Gabrielle Roth, Dancing with the Dharma Edited by Harrison Blum, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven

This workshop includes an additional $120 of faculty tuition.

In play we can discover a curious version of ourselves, while balancing our light and shadow and laughing at our attachments. This workshop invites us to be soft, brave, and available to the moment. This is an immersive practice that explores our most vulnerable and creative self.

Using tools found in improvisation, meditation, altered states, and movement practice, we will explore clowning around as a spiritual practice. The work begins with exercises that help you drop into the body and descend from the mind to access the flow state. With the foundation of a sacred container, we will engage in primarily nonverbal, physical games and rituals that give birth to organic impulses inspired by the child within. There is no pressure to perform, but an invitation to get lost inside yourself, an openness to go beyond your comfort zone, and a willingness to play within the moment.

There is nothing to learn but rather much to uncover — to allow us to move through life in a more open state, with a greater connection to ourselves and the world. This workshop is physical, open, and accessible for diverse bodies. Come unravel the child within! Please come unprepared.

Recommended reading: Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir, Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

Conflict is inevitable. The health of a relationship depends not on whether conflict happens but on how skillfully we repair. The Art of REPAIR is a practical, embodied, and deeply relational process that transforms rupture into connection, clarity, and trust.

In this workshop, relationship facilitator Hazel-Grace Yates will guide you through the six-step REPAIR Process™. Grounded in an integrative approach, The Art of REPAIR blends somatic and nervous system intelligence, authentic relating and relational attunement practices, power dynamics, trauma-informed communication, interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, and restorative justice principles. This multidimensional framework helps participants approach conflict not as a threat but as a portal to deeper intimacy, collaborative problem-solving, and long-term relational health.

To integrate your learning, we will weave in movement, songs, playful connection games, guided reflection, and time in nature, supporting not only cognitive understanding but a full-bodied, lasting transformation.

Through guided practices, interactive exercises, and real-life application, you will learn to:

• Regulate your nervous system to meet conflict with clarity, presence, and care rather than reactivity.
• Create a shared reality in complex disagreements so both perspectives are heard and understood.
• Explore five actionable pathways to restore integrity, rebuilding trust and connection.
• Strengthen courage and boundaries to speak your needs without defensiveness or collapse.
• Turn conflict into connection by replacing avoidance or resentment with repair conversations that foster intimacy.

Open to individuals, couples, and groups of all kinds. Come ready to practice, play, and expand your capacity for love. You will leave with tools you can use for life and perhaps discover that conflict, when navigated well, can be one of your greatest access points to connection.

New to The Art of REPAIR? Begin with this 2-minute introduction video for a feel of the workshop experience, then explore the 20-minute mini-course overview to discover the core principles and the 6-step REPAIR process you'll begin practicing.

Recommended Reading: Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship by Terry Real

When the ground falls out from underneath us, our instinct is usually to cling tightly to the beliefs, stories, relationships, and identities that give us the greatest sense of stability and comfort. But what if we viewed these moments as wondrous opportunities instead of terrifying threats? Could the experience of groundlessness offer an unexpected freedom from the constant effort of molding the world to our liking?

In this workshop, we will explore how the loss of our bearings — an inevitable and recurrent fact of life we often intensely resist — can become a spontaneous and nourishing invitation. Together, we’ll ask how we might begin to meet these uncertain moments with curiosity rather than fear. What if we could find pleasure in the ongoing evolution of our identities and greet the natural transformation of our relationships with openness rather than resistance? What if we exchanged fantasies of control, certainty, and rigid beliefs for qualities like surrender, adaptability, and emotional ease? What if we learned to experience the thrill of groundlessness — not as a crisis to be solved, but as a profound opportunity to live more honestly in rhythm with life’s unpredictability?

We’ll explore these questions by way of a dazzling and playful journey through contemporary film and popular culture, ancient and modern spiritual philosophies, and holistic medicine and psychology. From the Zen Buddhist axiom on resisting the poison of egoic-attachment, to the injunction by US-American Philosopher Alan Watts to live in the present moment. From psychedelic therapy’s loosening of rigid thought patterns, to the trippy identity-dissolving visual experiments of recent science fiction and fantasy films — all of these and more will be our teachers.

Together, we’ll tap into a wide range of psychological and spiritual resources — many already at our fingertips yet often overlooked or dismissed in our daily pursuit of holding it together. Because in the end, life offers no absolutes, only the thrill of groundlessness and the freedom that comes when we finally surrender to its flow.

Morning sessions will focus on open group discussion and embodied practices; afternoon sessions will include film screenings followed by collective dialogue about what we’ve watched.

Recommended reading: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Training in Compassion: Zen Teaching on the Practice of Lojong by Mark Fischer, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa

This workshop includes an additional $10 material fee.

This workshop is for anyone feeling the need to slow down, reconnect with themselves, and step into the New Year relaxed and awake. Whether you’re navigating change, seeking greater balance, or simply wanting to deepen your relationship with yourself, this is an invitation to pause, breathe, and replenish through gentle movement, the healing sounds of crystal bowls, and stillness.

Throughout our time together, we’ll explore practices that soften the body, calm the mind, and open the heart. Each day, we’ll return to the present moment through qigong, gentle yoga, restorative movement, sound healing, meditation, and poetry — all held within a compassionate and nurturing container. These practices will allow us to feel deeply into our yoga sankalpa — our heartfelt intentions — for the New Year.

The rhythms of the week are designed to help reset the nervous system, create space for reflection, and support attunement to your own inner landscape. The healing vibrations of crystal singing bowls will support deep rest and spaciousness, offering opportunities for insight and integration.

This workshop is for anyone longing to:

• Begin the New Year with more presence, ease, and self-awareness.
• Reconnect with their body and breath through mindful movement, including qigong, gentle yoga, and restorative stretching.
• Release long-held tension and cultivate deeper rest.
• Reflect on and clarify heartfelt intentions in a supportive space.
• Experience the benefits of sound healing and meditative stillness.
• Gently replenish their energy and return to daily life with more resilience.

All levels and bodies are welcome to experience this balanced blend of movement and mindfulness. To participate fully, you’ll need to be able to move independently between standing, seated, and floor-based postures — or attend with a support person who is also registered for the workshop and can assist you throughout the week.

Join this engaging, interactive experience designed to support the discovery, clarification, and meaningful application of your highest personal values. It’s a surprising fact of life that most people do not know — or cannot clearly articulate — what their values truly are. Guided by Robert MacPhee’s unique and accessible approach, this process is crafted to reduce confusion and enhance clarity with simple ways to bring your discoveries into your daily life.

Together, we’ll explore your values in deep, experiential (and fun!) ways that address a variety of learning styles. The journey can be relevant across all areas of life — at home, at work, in relationships, as a parent, and as a leader.

In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:

• Explore the areas of your life that feel most meaningful to you.
• Identify qualities and characteristics you most want to express.
• Learn how to implement and apply what you have discovered to be most important to you, both personally and professionally.
• Begin crafting a personalized plan that aligns your daily life with living a truly values based life.

Gaining clarity around your values can become a powerful compass, gently guiding your decisions, your attention, and your time. This workshop offers a space to reconnect with what feels most authentic, purpose-driven, and meaningful for you.

Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervishes to the shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain. As the old year ends and the new begins, come to sweat, honor the past, and make space for a new beginning.

Through an alchemical combination of movement, nature, and sound healing rituals, we will reconnect our bodies, minds, and hearts to gain clarity about the past year’s journey, anchor our new intentions, and intuit our way forward with confidence and curiosity.

Over the weekend, we will:

• Partake in rituals to give thanks to the new cycle of the year.
• Call in blessings for the land, communities, families, and friends.
• Cleanse from our core through our pores to free our minds.
• Listen to the body’s wisdom to inform our new directions collectively.

Allow yourself to be nourished by this sacred land, the hot spring waters, the time we share together, and the friends you make. Experience the beauty, awe, and wonder of being alive so you may return home rejuvenated and inspired for this brand new year.

Bring a journal, pen, and a piece of festive clothing.

This workshop includes an additional $35 in faculty tuition.

Deep Bodywork®, when applied with great sensitivity, is one of the most effective healing modalities available to the professional bodyworker. It combines the integrating qualities of flowing massage with therapeutic deep tissue work to promote relaxation, restore tissue health, and support long-term structural change. Developed by the Hollomans over the course of 40 years, the form emerged from the knowledge brought to and created at Esalen in the ’60s and ’70s by early bodywork masters.

Through Deep Bodywork techniques, practitioners can enter the deeper soft tissue layers, freeing previously dense, hardened areas that may be chronically painful due to a lack of fluid exchange and energy flow. As these areas soften and “re-organize,” chronic tension patterns release, revitalizing living tissues with blood, lymph, and chi (life) energy.

With a clear curriculum and moves designed for easy integration into any practice, we’ll focus on intermediate and advanced deep tissue techniques blended with Esalen® Massage to enhance the therapeutic skills of practicing bodyworkers, including massage therapists, acupuncturists, physiotherapists, and chiropractors. We will learn effective Deep Bodywork techniques on the entire body, integrating them with the presence-based long strokes characteristic of Esalen Massage. This creates a powerful blend of structural change and pain management with deep relaxation and integration.

Emphasis will be placed on proper body mechanics so practitioners can learn to work with a sense of inner ease and avoid placing unnecessary stress on their own bodies. We’ll also explore how these techniques can complement other healing modalities in the treatment of soft tissue pain for a multidisciplinary approach to pain relief and functional restoration. Previous massage experience is recommended for this workshop.

Notes:

• Participants should have prior hands-on experience giving bodywork (massage, somatic work, or related modalities) and be physically capable of both giving and receiving deeper touch over multiple sessions.
• *30 CEUs are available through the NCBTMB, provided by Deepbodywork® LLC for bodyworkers. There is an additional $50 fee for CEUs. Please contact johannaholloman@gmail.com or phollomanconsulting@gmail.com with any questions.
• This workshop includes an additional $30 for materials.

Recommended reading: Quantum Healing by Deepak Chopra

What if your greatest vulnerability could become your greatest strength? This transformative language arts workshop is designed for anyone ready to level up by unlocking their authenticity.

The curriculum draws from the wisdom in the instructor’s critically acclaimed book, Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, which explores how shame is weaponized in our culture to keep us from knowing our worth and achieving our goals. Through reflective writing, shared stories, and guided readings, participants will explore ways to break free from shame’s grip and reclaim their power.

Through the act of writing and reading inspirational texts — along with learning about the instructor’s journey as a former sex worker and survivor of sexual exploitation and media humiliation — we will explore essential questions about the insidious role that shame plays in our modern lives. We will examine how shame hinders us and discuss effective ways to reclaim ourselves and our communities from its grasp.

Participants will be invited to:

• Learn about their own unique shame triggers.
• Develop a greater awareness of how shame functions in our society.
• Cultivate vulnerability by sharing intimate stories in a safe space.
• Practice empathetic listening as others speak their uncomfortable truths.

By developing shame resilience, we can reconnect to our highest goals and purest ideals. We can embody our most authentic self, and embolden others to do the same. The workshop is open to people of all gender identities and expressions and is appropriate for professionals and laypeople alike. No prior writing experience is necessary; all levels are welcome, and all course materials will be provided.

This workshop is more than a learning experience — it’s an invitation to connect deeply with yourself and others in a supportive and creative space. Together, we’ll explore the profound potential for healing and growth that arises when art and psychology converge. No artistic experience is necessary; this workshop is about creative expression, not perfection.

Integrating art therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this workshop combines two evidence-based emotional and psychological growth approaches. Creating art stimulates your brain, unlocking new pathways and possibilities. Art therapy offers a dynamic way to visually explore your thoughts and emotions, providing a unique outlet for self-expression and growth. CBT complements this process by helping you identify and challenge dysfunctional thought patterns, empowering you to shift your mindset and embrace change.

• Bring your inner monster to life through art, and then engage with it through conversation to gain clarity and understanding.
• Delve into themes of control, shifting perspectives, and transformation through the power of poetry.
• Draw your own emotional landscape and gain practical tools to continue your healing journey long after our time together.
• Compose your personal Declaration of Independence (to free yourself from what keeps you stuck).

Led by a board-certified art therapist, this interactive workshop combines drawing, collage, painting, writing, and group dialogue. Together, we’ll explore the fears, anxieties, and barriers holding you back, empowering you with tools to create meaningful and lasting change.

Please note this is not a traditional art class or open studio experience. This is a guided and supportive creative process designed to help participants explore emotions through art making rather than focusing on artistic skill or creating “perfect” artwork.

Participants are asked to bring their own sketchbook so all of your retreat artwork stays in one place as a keepsake. Recommended options: 8.5″ x 8.5″ or 7.6″ x 5.3″ Watercolor paints will be provided, but you’re welcome to bring your own if you’d prefer not to share (optional). Recommended sets: Full set or Travel set

All other supplies will be provided—brushes, paper, pens, colored paper, glue, pastels, and more. A materials fee of $17.50 is included in the registration cost to cover shared materials.

When we tend to and align with the cycles and seasons, we glimpse the divine. The period between the start of the calendar new year and the beginning of the lunar new year is a time of liminality. Midwinter is a time for reflection, gestation, and non-doing, while we await the birth of a new cycle. It is a beautiful phase to synchronize our minds and bodies with the phenomenal world. Within our collective work, it is an equally poignant time to mend our Western psyches to nature, tending to our disconnected and disjointed worldviews and practices.

During this five-day retreat, we will work with our minds, bodies, and nature to bring our earth-based origins and contemporary, often problematic Western psyches into greater harmony. Participants should be prepared to engage in substantial embodied practices — including meditation, taijiquan, and qigong — listen to short talks, spend time in nature, work in pairs and small groups, keep a contemplative journal, and be in respectful, compassionate community. Our work will bring the balance of the feminine water and earth as we prepare to welcome the Year of the Fire Sheep.

Participants in this workshop will experience:

• Extensive sitting, standing, and walking meditation
• Short talks that introduce key ideas and themes
• Substantial embodied practices, including taijiquan and qigong
• Interactive experiential exercises in pairs and small groups
• Time in nature
• Contemplative journal reflections

Please bring clothing layers for comfort both indoors and outdoors, comfortable flat walking shoes, and a waterproof jacket in case of rain. We also recommend bringing a journal and pen.

Recommended reading: Cultivating Qi: An Introduction to Chinese Body-Mind Energetics by Jun Wang, Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet by Jeanine M. Canty, Tao Te Ching (any version and suggest Stephen Mitchell’s New English Version)

What if joy isn’t something you chase but something you relax into?

Many of us spend our lives searching for happiness while carrying the very tension that keeps us from experiencing it. This workshop offers another possibility: that joy isn’t something we create but something we uncover — emerging naturally as the body softens, the heart opens, and awareness returns to itself.

During our time together, you’ll be guided through five elemental phases of unfolding. Water softens the nervous system into safety and trust. Earth restores a felt sense of grounding, belonging, and inherent worth. Wind frees the breath, mind, and emotions through movement and inquiry. Fire awakens vitality, creativity, and joyful aliveness. Space invites you to rest in open awareness — the quiet fullness of simply being.

Through guided meditation, gentle movement, somatic inquiry, partner exercises, and contemplative reflection, you’ll discover practical ways to release chronic tension, deepen presence, and allow joy to move more freely through your body and life.

By the end of the weekend, you may find yourself:

• Feeling more grounded, relaxed, and at home in your body.
• Discovering the difference between believing you’re enough and truly feeling it.
• Reconnecting with your natural vitality and creative aliveness.
• Resting more easily in the spacious awareness beneath the changing conditions of life.

James Baraz, co-founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, has spent decades sharing the path of loving-kindness and awakening joy. His son, Adam, brings a complementary, body-centered approach, drawing on nearly twenty years of somatic practice and dharma study with wisdom teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Together they offer an experiential exploration of the SomaWaken framework — Adam’s five-phase approach to embodied awakening — integrating somatic practice, contemplative inquiry, and Buddhist wisdom in a grounded, accessible way.

Whether you’re new to meditation or have practiced for years, this workshop offers a gentle, experiential path toward greater ease, resilience, and embodied well-being.

No prior experience is necessary. Gentle movement, seated meditation, and lying-down practices will be offered throughout. All are welcome.

Recommended Reading: Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You On The Road to Real Happiness by James Baraz

Explore the dynamic connections between mind, body, and lifestyle for optimal vitality. Drawing from decades of research, this workshop weaves together the latest scientific insights in metabolic health and mindful eating with experiential practices to support greater awareness and agency in your approach to well-being.

Participants will engage in evidence-informed practices derived from clinical trials and discover the emerging research on biosensors and glucose monitors that offer real-time feedback on stress and metabolic responses.

We’ll take a closer look at how to create optimal insulin sensitivity — a foundational aspect of good metabolic health and a key factor in healthy aging. Rather than rigid rules or complex diets, we’ll focus on core principles of optimal nutrition and metabolic function to help us develop — and sustain — lifestyle choices that align with our needs and abilities.

Together, we’ll explore:  

• The impact of stress on eating behaviors, and how both inside knowledge of the food industry and self-compassion can serve as powerful antidotes to shame and food stigma.
• How different micronutrients, macronutrients, eating patterns, and timing affect glucose regulation, mitochondrial function, cellular aging, and mental health.
• Experiential practices, such as mindful eating, yoga nidra, breathwork, and exercise, and their effects on appetite regulation, insulin sensitivity, and energy levels.
• How to wisely use glucose monitors, stress monitors, and time-restricted fasting.

Elissa and Robert will be joined by mindfulness-based registered dietitian and nutritionist Andrea Lieberstein, who will lead mindful eating practices, including an optional guided mindful meal. Movement teacher Nichol Chase will offer embodied movement sessions throughout the weekend.

Join this compassionate, research-informed space to explore the intersections of nutrition, mindfulness, and metabolic well-being. Whether you’re managing chronic stress, curious about metabolic health, or simply seeking a more conscious relationship with food and your body, you are welcome here.

Please note: This workshop is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to treat eating disorders, will not focus on weight loss, and may not be appropriate for individuals currently experiencing a severe eating disorder. It is not intended for medical advice or treatment. Always consult your healthcare provider before making significant changes to your nutrition, movement, or health practices.

We rarely give ourselves permission to stop and ask the hard questions: Are you showing up the way you’d like? Have you created the impact you want? Are you going in the right direction?

This workshop is for anyone who knows they are at a threshold and want more aliveness and truth in the next chapter of their lives.

Our time together will unfold through a progression of experiential exercises, including movement, reflection, intimate group work, and practical frameworks for understanding where you are and what comes next. The majority of the workshop will draw on the Esalen tradition and imaginal psychology, where we will engage embodied knowing, intuition, and the wisdom of the heart to discover what calls to us at this stage of life and begin building a vision grounded in that truth. Expect real depth and real fun.

This is not a workshop you just do alongside other people. The group itself is an essential part of our work together. The witnessing, shared vulnerability, and live coaching create a container that private reflection can rarely replicate.

The environment is carefully designed — rigorous and warm, challenging yet safe — to create a space where key questions can be explored honestly, in community with others doing the same work.

If you want a more powerful and authentic life, one lived with integrity and directed by what you truly value, this is where the work begins. Active participation is warmly encouraged. Nothing is required.

This workshop invites you to explore the creative spirit that resides within each of us. Whether you are an experienced artist or simply seeking to uncover your potential, this meditative experience promises to be enriching.

We will begin with colored pencils to open our hearts and let creativity flow naturally. Then, with acrylic paints, participants will create a personal mandala (an integrated image of wholeness), Sri Yantra (a mystical diagram used in Hinduism that represents the union of the masculine and feminine divine energies), or designs of their choice. By the end of the workshop, you will have finished a unique and beautiful piece of art.

The practice of painting is both healing and meditative, and this journey is meant to expand our consciousness and ability to deepen our connections with nature and our inner selves. It is a gentle entry into the left brain hemisphere to open our capacity for creative experiences. Our time together is designed to provide the foundation for painting as a sacred art, to introduce participants to their possibilities as an artist, and to help them walk down the artist’s path — one paved with joy, insight, and awareness.

Our sensual connection to our bodies and the living world is under threat. We have become numb to the Earth’s touch.

But the Earth is calling us home.

Are you yearning for the analog, messy, and real? Do you desire to return to your body and shed the phantasms of the overculture? This week-long workshop offers an immersive, slow, and sensual experience in the erotic ecology pathway — a space to reawaken our sensory, pleasurable, and nourishing connection to two landscapes: our bodies and nature. Erotic ecology is a life philosophy that honors aliveness as the compass. Vitality for self, other and the Earth. If the living world is a tapestry of intimacy, then life is only possible through honoring the desire, pleasure, and sensuous experience of life itself.

From this shared ground grows flourishing relationships. From eros blooms aliveness for all.

Through embodied exploration, contemplative practice, and nature rituals, you can rediscover your birthright: an intimate relationship with the natural world. This kinship reminds us that, at our essence, we are not separate from the Earth — we are the Earth.

Set amongst Esalen’s sacred landscape, where redwood forest meets the Pacific Ocean, we’ll engage in practices designed to open you to ecological eros: the ever-living and abundant source of pleasure, aliveness, and vitality.

During our time together, you are invited to:

• Learn and practice the eight stages of interoceptive awareness, our body’s portal to sensing the Earth.
• Attune to the pace of nature and move at the rhythm of our surroundings.
• Practice attuned and consensual touch.
• Remember, feel, and embody your own aliveness.
• Awaken a felt sense of kinship with the natural world.
• Reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom and capacity for vitality.
• Expand in playful connection to nature through art, poetry, mandala-making, ritual, and dance.
• Savor the nourishment of surrendering to the Earth’s embrace and seduction.
• Taste the deepest wellspring of rest and nourishment that is nature’s baseline.
• Learn how to speak the language of the Earth.
• Connect your own erotic vitality to collective liberation and ecological justice.

You’ll be guided to return home with the kindled flame of a love affair with the Earth — an enduring resource in an increasingly disconnected world.

Recommended Reading: Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees by Lindsay Branham and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

How we sit, stand, move, and respond to our inner and outer world reflects deeply ingrained patterns wired into our nervous systems since childhood. They reflect our early solutions to physical survival in our family system. Out of awareness, these beliefs and strategies can still run our adult lives, limit our choices, and prevent physical ease and emotional healing.

If you still have pain or limitations from a past injury, it is usually because many other areas in your body had to overwork to protect and avoid using the injured area while you were recovering. These unconscious compensations can create an imbalanced workload and, eventually, new issues elsewhere in our body that prevent complete healing.

Using CFR®, we slowly explore and deeply sense small, gentle movements that bring these hidden patterns into awareness. When our genius nervous system becomes aware of a habit that is no longer useful, it extinguishes it. A greater experience of self-trust and self-worth is uncovered. A new sense of self-love, which comes from paying attention to your details without judgment, usually emerges.

This workshop is for the sedentary who want to become more active, the highly active who want to avoid injury and gain a competitive edge, and the chronically tired and stressed who want to improve breathing, posture, and flexibility. It is for those who have experienced physical injury or emotional trauma and those in helping professions who wish to enhance outcomes for clients and patients.  

You will leave equipped with simple yet effective tools for continued self-healing. Your discoveries will lead to a state of awe about what is possible in your body, your movement, and your life.

Recommended Reading: Somatics by Thomas Hanna and The Elusive Obvious by Moshé Feldenkrais

This workshop includes an additional $50 in faculty tuition.

Continuing education credit is available for Physical Therapists who are licensed in CA and TX. Note that TX has reciprocity with the following states: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CO, CT,  FL, ID, IN, KY, MA , MI, MS, MO, MT, NH, NC, ND, OR, RI, SD, VT, WA. Please check with your state board to confirm.. Please see the faculty during your first workshop session for more information. OR email faculty member Melissa Krikorian info@thenexusway.com

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 Buddhist 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 the stages of the Elephant Path using the body as the primary object of concentration. Students will also receive an introduction to the basic stages of ordinary insight. By the end of our time together, students will have all the instructions necessary to successfully incorporate a robust meditation practice into everyday life.

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.

Embark on a five-day journey of creative discovery in a space that nurtures playful practice and community above all. This art immersion is an invitation to explore an array of techniques and mediums, including:

• Torn paper collage
• Color field painting
• Observational sketching
• Acrylic and watercolor painting
• Free writing

With over thirty years of teaching experience, Tom and Erin will guide you through an inspirational week of personal discovery — with an emphasis on process over perfection. Their ever-evolving teaching practices invite you to navigate the fascinating interplay of freedom and structure, inspiration and technique, abstraction and observation, happenstance and control.

As you explore and experiment, you’ll learn to weave these contrasting concepts into a robust framework for your own practice, nourished by the palpable energy of Big Sur. Allow curiosity, playfulness, and a “what if?” attitude to guide you as outcomes organically surface, transforming your impulses into intentional artistic expression.

No prior experience is needed. If you’re ready to awaken your inner artist, this workshop is for you!

Recommended reading: Drinking From a Cold Spring, a Little Book of Hope, by Erin Lee Gafill

This workshop includes an additional $75 fee for workshop materials that will cover all essential materials, including acrylic paints, watercolors, paintbrushes, writing pens, collage materials, various papers, and painting surfaces — everything you need to participate fully in each exercise.

What does it mean to be fully, authentically human? Gestalt Practice offers an invitation to pause, to sense, and to come into direct contact with the unfolding experience of our lives. At its core, it is an awareness practice in which we cultivate embodied, present-moment awareness of the here and now on a journey toward authentic growth, wholeness, and aliveness.

Drawing from the foundations of Gestalt Practice, wisdom traditions, and contemporary approaches to awareness, we learn to become increasingly aware of our habitual, reactive, behavioral, and emotional patterns—especially those that may no longer be skillful—in support of a more deeply embodied daily life. Together we cultivate emotional and somatic awareness as we learn to support, respect, and gently turn toward whatever arises from moment to moment, allowing more space for silence, sensation, emotional expression, and authentic communication.

During this workshop, we explore the rich practices and principles of Gestalt Practice. Applying them to everyday life invites the simple yet profound possibility of showing up more fully and authentically for the daily presentations of living an awake life.  This practice invites us into a more intimate relationship with who we already are and with the life that is already unfolding.

Gestalt Practice cultivates curiosity, equanimity, and acceptance, expanding our capacity for choice and creative possibilities. Rather than focusing on fixing or achievement, this approach invites you to:

• Cultivate awareness and embodied presence.
  • Grow responsiveness, resilience, and choice.
  • Trust in your organism’s inherent capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation.

Together, we’ll explore the elements of this approach through experiential practices, interactive exercises, and Gestalt Awareness Movement. Practices and exercises will be done solo, in pairs, triads, and groups, allowing us to deepen our awareness and discover how to enrich our relationships — to ourselves, others, and the unfolding circumstances of our lives. There will be time for some participants to experience classic one-to-one Open Seat practice sessions with Steven in the roles of Initiator and Reflector within the supportive context of the group. To enrich our understanding, we’ll touch lightly on the rich history, theory, and neuroscience that inform this approach.

Through Gestalt Practice, we bear witness to the ineffable mysteries of experience, opening to living life more fully. Participants are invited to show up, choosing to be present, paying attention to what has heart and meaning, and opening to what life presents—letting life live through us.

The workshop is appropriate for all levels of experience, with the understanding that participants are exploring a model of an awareness gym or lab for living—not a therapy. A welcome letter will be sent upon registration, along with additional information about our time together.

Healing ourselves is a journey of return. During this weekend workshop, you will be invited to learn about the practice and traditions of “curanderisma” (folk medicine) to bring forth awareness and attune us to our individual healing journeys. Through meditative and contemplative practices, touch, prayer, plants, and natural elements, this work honors a lineage of centuries-old wisdom to bring a sense of well-being to those seeking renewal.

This workshop will include:

• Optional morning movement and meditation practice.
• The Point of Origin, a session focused on the navel and abdominal massage for somatic release and greater self-connection.
• Limpia con huevo (washing with an egg), a lesson sharing the practice of clearing and divining one’s energies with the use of an egg.
• Barridas (plant sweepings), working with medicinal herbal bundles for purification
• Empathic connection, an exploration of our intuition, revealing how to listen and connect with one another and ourselves, more deeply.
• Baños de flores (evening flowering baths) to attract blessings

Through Margaret and Michael’s teachings, you’re invited to connect to your own innate healing potential and discover the ability to support others with love and intention.

Imagine your relationship expressing the true depths of your love and commitment. If you are in love, this retreat is an opportunity to rise even higher in love. If you are in crisis, it is an opportunity for healing on the deepest level.

We all carry some degree of negative programming from our past, and there are loving and effective ways to transform this programming into a positive and vibrant celebration of our connection.

During this workshop, you and your partner will take part in guided exercises, experience therapeutic coaching from the Vissells, and connect with the support of other couples, with time set aside for sharing after each practice.

This weekend offers a collection of tools for deeper appreciation and communication building. Themes include healthy communication of feelings, understanding and respecting each other’s differences, navigating conflict resolution, healing past hurts, exploring sexual wellness, connecting with the inner child and inner parent, taking responsibility and developing a true inner connection. Participants are encouraged to explore how these practices might apply to their lives together, both during the retreat and beyond. For more information, visit www.SharedHeart.org.

This workshop welcomes couples of all gender and sexual orientations.

Recommended Reading: To Really Love a Man by Joyce and Barry Vissell & To Really Love a Woman by Joyce and Barry Vissell

Your life is not simply a project to be managed but a mythopoetic mystery to be lived. Take a break from the mundane and let yourself be enchanted again. This workshop offers a profound opportunity to commune with the deeper aspects of Self through movement, inquiry, and mythology. To dream. To play. To feel alive.

Since the beginning, humans have looked to stories to make meaning of our lives. Revered mythologist and 1960s Esalen faculty Joseph Campbell wrote, “Mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words.” On this retreat, we’ll engage with daily stories that have the power to help us make sense of our lives, nourish, teach, inspire, empower, and heal us.

Experiential practices include:

• Archetypal wisdom and nondual yogic mythology
• Breathwork and meditation
• Yoga (all levels), dance, and somatic journeys
• Self-inquiry and writing
• Rewilding, song, and nature ceremony

Music, nature, poetry, connection, and ritual are exquisitely curated for your hero/heroine’s journey. Our nourishing schedule is balanced harmoniously with relaxing meals, community care, and soaks in Esalen’s healing baths.

Whether you’re searching for renewed meaning in life, navigating life’s complex transitions, or simply enjoy being enchanted, this workshop will help awaken your spirit to courage, gladden your heart, calm your mind, and widen your perspective to vast possibilities. You might just fall in love with existence again.

Grace awaits.

Your legacy is not just something you leave behind. It is something you create through the way you live each day. This is an invitation to reflect on the deeper impact of your life, relationships, work, creativity, and leadership — and to consciously embody the legacy you are here to live.

Through guided practices, storytelling, visioning, and transformational dialogue, participants will reconnect to what truly matters and align their lives with enduring meaning, authentic contribution, and purposeful action.

Together, we will explore questions such as:

• What is the unique contribution only you can make?
• How do you want the people you love to experience you today, not just remember you tomorrow?
• What values, wisdom, and way of being are you here to embody and pass forward?
• What old identities or stories are ready to be released so your authentic legacy can emerge?
• How do you live in a way that allows your presence to become your greatest gift?

Leave with greater clarity about the life you are creating, the relationships you are cultivating, and the enduring gifts you are already living. Whether your contribution is expressed through your family, community, creativity, leadership, service, or the way you show up each day, discover practical tools, renewed inspiration, and a deeper commitment to creating your living legacy.