Workshops

Our sense of self develops in connection with others and our experiences in early relationships. They shape our beliefs — about ourselves, other people, and what is possible for us in our lives. While we cannot change the past, we can change the parts of our lives that we find difficult or unfulfilling through new experiences of contact. When our need for understanding and emotional attunement is met, our limiting beliefs can change.

In this workshop, we will have the opportunity to:

• Learn skills that will increase our presence and awareness.
• Improve our ability to make good contact.
• Explore how to establish healthy boundaries.
• Develop and track awareness of our physical sensations and emotions.
• Communicate our needs and wants effectively.
• Discover habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating the type of connection we long for.

This workshop includes time for basic gestalt awareness practices, a mixture of didactic and experiential exercises, and some participants will have the opportunity to experience individual “open seat” sessions with Dorothy and with the support of the group

Recommended reading: Korb et al., Gestalt Therapy: Practice and Theory; Mann, Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques

Restore.

It can take time and great effort to move away from the ego affirming busyness of modern day life toward a reflective stillness. In this workshop we will cultivate this slowing, deepening, and going within.

In a community setting, we will allow ourselves to dive below the surface of our thoughts and identities to know ourselves more intimately and untether from the chords that hold us to old behaviors and belief structures. Our practice will include:

• Slow nourishing yoga movements.
• Restorative postures to cultivate regeneration.
• Meditation, mantras, writing, and intentional silence.

With the power of this land, the healing waters, strength of community, and nourishment of slowing down, we will move toward a listening, supple, healing body.

Please bring an eye pillow, and if you are driving, please also bring a bolster and sandbag.

CE Credit Available: 25 hours Continued Education credit for Registered Yoga Teachers (RYT) available through Yoga Alliance; see leader.

This workshop includes $220 in additional tuition.

Discover the profound connection between ancient practices and modern science as we explore the transformative potential of the biofield. Western science is uncovering the power of this energy for healing, from cells to communities. Published research demonstrates how subtle energy healing can reduce pain, alleviate anxiety, shift hormone and immune function, and even prevent the spread of cancer within the body.

In this workshop, you are invited to deepen your relationship with energy and the biofield to help release stagnant emotions and pain, grow your discernment,, and open to new possibilities for your creative and spiritual expression. We’ll be illuminated by the confluences of empirical science with ancient wisdom, exploring both the research in biofield science alongside powerful energetic self-healing practices, including breathwork, vocal work, and meditation from tantric and other biofield healing traditions.

During our time together, you are invited to:

• Engage in breathwork and movement practices to amplify your felt sense of energy and vitalize your body and mind.
• Learn energy psychology techniques to release anxiety, stress, and pain.
• Explore Eastern-based vocal opening practices and Shakti mantras to feel and free your energy, ground in your power and authority, and open to creative flow.
• Practice divine feminine and Buddhist meditations to heal your ancestral karmas and stop the flow of trauma patterns, deepen your spiritual connection and intuitive capabilities, and manifest possibilities for yourself with less “efforting.”
• Explore how systems and complexity science, along with breakthroughs in quantum research, show us how shifting our energy and consciousness can shift the fabric of our inner and outer worlds, including our relationships with others and the possibilities of our life’s trajectory.
• Hear about the healing power of the biofield and how research shows our mind and energy can facilitate healing down to our cells, beyond placebo effects.

This workshop offers a space for curiosity and learning, inviting you to explore the brilliant energetic being you are and the benefits you can experience within your own presence. Leave with knowledge, tools, and a new understanding of energetic power to integrate back into your life.

Continuing education credit is available for professionals through the Spiritual Competency Academy, an approved sponsor of CE by the American Psychological Association. If you plan to apply for CE credit, please notify the faculty during your first workshop session. Additional Continuing Education information here.

In this introductory workshop, couples, partners, and friends will refine their relationship with touch, our forgotten language. Participants will be encouraged to ask for what they want,  listen to each other, gain sensory skills in initiating and receiving touch, experience the felt sense of muscle release, and close with a balanced tenderness.

Seasoned instructors will offer exercises, massage demonstrations, and at-the-table guidance during paired practice. The simple principles of Esalen® massage – presence, attending rather than fixing, self-care, and slow-paced strokes encompassing the body – will build a heartfelt experience with our partner or friend, and perhaps most significantly, ourselves.

By the final session, participants will share and take home the basics of a classical Esalen massage. Experienced practitioners and caregivers may find it refreshing to apply the Esalen method and notice its effect as their rhythm slows and the mind becomes focused on compassionate contact rather than technique.

Touch soothes us and evokes an opening to spirit. Participants are invited to experience a healthy balance of body, mind, and the vast awe of this natural setting. The edgy wildness of Esalen’s grounds, canyons, hot springs, and mountain backdrop helps to sustain a deeper connection. All are welcome.

Join Janet in this nourishing and revitalizing weekend, designed to replenish the nervous system and adrenals, boost the immune system, and ground our hearts and minds in simplicity. We will drop down through body-mind-spirit to find space between effort and surrender, allowing our internal systems to release toxins and integrate the powerful wellness generated by our bodies through our physical practices. Slow and fluid movement, restorative postures, meditation, pranayama (breathwork), and chanting will refill the mind, body, and spirit.

We will create space in our body for introspection and move out of the cyclical fight-or-flight response to cultivate sustainable power, rest, and healing.

We’ll practice:

• Slow yoga to build sustainable power.
• Restorative postures for regeneration.
• Meditation toward stillness.
• Pranayama to balance hormones and the whole being.
• Chanting to awaken the heart’s longing.

Please bring an eye pillow. If you are driving, please also bring a sandbag and bolster.

CE Credit Available: 10 hours Continued Education credit for Registered Yoga Teachers (RYT) available through Yoga Alliance; see leader.

This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

Everything I have experienced in my life, I take into my art. —Anna Halprin

What if everything you’ve experienced in your life could be danced? What if an image drawn carried a message for healing? What if a dance inspired a drawing that sparks words for a poem and the poem transforms a difficult story that needs to be told into beauty?

Grounded in the Halprin Life Art Process™, this workshop’s approach enlivens dialogues between body and imagination, life experience and art making, and creativity and healing. With creative explorations of the expressive arts — movement, drawing, and poetic writing — participants will be guided in creative encounters with the symbolic and metaphoric life of the body.  

Each day begins with somatic awareness and movement to awaken and attune the physical body. From there, you’ll navigate your personal material through a model that interweaves movement/dance, visual art, poetic narrative, performative ritual, and witnessing.

Together, we’ll work with Body Part Mapping and the Self Portrait Process: visual and narrative maps to lead us into the themes, memories, and dreams that inform our lives. Individual and collective life narratives will provide material to generate encounters and inspire embodied models for change.

Participants can expect to explore:

• Models of a practice to facilitate embodied art-making for individuals and groups.
• Examples of movement and art making as a healing force.
• A communication tool that supports giving and receiving feedback.

Please make sure to bring a writer's journal and a box of varied and well-supplied Craypas pastels.

Somatic warm-ups will be guided by guest faculty Natan Dascal, with live music provided throughout the workshop by guest musician Miles Lassi.

Recommended reading: The Expressive Body in Life, Art & Therapy by Daria Halprin

We sleep one-third of our lifetime, an average of 20 to 25 years. Dream yoga is a practice that spans every moment, waking and sleeping. It is a powerful tool of awakening used for hundreds of years by the great masters of the Tibetan traditions. Foundational practices in dream yoga change the practitioner’s relationship to all experiences, develop conscious awareness and often lead to lucidity in dreams. Unlike in the Western psychological approach to dreams, the ultimate goal of Tibetan dream yoga is the recognition of the nature of the mind or enlightenment itself.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche will discuss the relationships between dream and waking, and dream and death. He will show how the causes of dreams are related to the six chakras, and how we can heal blocks in the chakras. He will teach the “four preparations” for sleep and the uses and methods of lucid dreaming.

Recommended reading: Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep and Rinpoche, Sleep & Awakening the Sacred Body.

Explore the spine as the body’s sensorial continuum. Engage the breath, senses, movement, sound, words (mantra), imagination, and feelings to curate somatic experience and immersion. Sensitize to the rhythms and energies of the cerebrospinal axis that hold infinite potential for growth and transformation. The spinal nerves, centers, and energies are a bridge between the body’s material and subtler immaterial dimensions. Attending and awakening to them can be a powerful tool in anyone’s spiritual path and repertoire of psychosomatic practices.

Together, we’ll play with the metaphor of the spine as an “inverted tree,” an organism with its roots “above” (the immaterial realm) and branches “below” (the material body), inviting us to initiate a new relationship with our bodies, senses, and sensorial environment.

Components include:

• Sensitizing to and living from the spine.
• Sessions on breath and energy work (prāṇāyāma).
• Choreographing breath, movement, and attention.
• Exploring somatic dimensions of sound, mantra, and voice.
• Intensive on sitting to meditate (āsana) versus meditative movement.
• Visualizations and readings from ancient texts of yoga and tantra.
• Integrating words and poetry with yoga and movement.
• Finding stillness, curating pleasure and immersion through movement and posture.
• Incorporating inspiration, imagination, and creativity into your own practice.
• Asking and reflecting upon the purpose and promise of your practice (whatever it is).

This workshop is designed for anyone engaged in or experimenting with some form of embodied practice, including meditation, movement, yoga, breathwork, energy work, voice work, journaling, and writing. Come ready to experiment, reflect, and connect.

Learn to activate the right side of your brain to unlock the intuition and 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 how to open the neural pathways to your higher consciousness into  areas where you may feel stuck. By accessing your intuitive mind, you’ll have the ability to access your potential, 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.

Recommended Reading: Thought Revolution: How to Unlock Your Inner Genius by William Donius

This workshop has two options on length of stay: a traditional weeklong of two nights or a long weekend of three nights. The extended stay workshop will include more workshop content which is reflected in the extended stay schedule.

What if reincarnation is not a mere cultural belief or spiritual metaphor, but an emergent data set pointing toward a deeper structure of reality?

For over sixty years, researchers at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies have compiled more than 2,000 rigorously documented cases of young children who recall past lives — often with startling specificity, sometimes including verifiable names, places, and details. These memories, neither the product of hypnosis nor suggestion, challenge dominant paradigms in psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind.

With guidance from psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker, former director of the Division and heir to the pioneering work of Ian Stevenson, and clinical psychologist Christine McDowell Tucker, you will explore a body of evidence that many believe constitutes the most empirically grounded research into reincarnation available today.

This seminar invites participants into a contemplative and critical inquiry of the following questions:

• How do these children’s memories reframe our concepts of self and soul?
• What continuity, if any, carries from one life to the next — and how might this shape our purpose?
• Can we hold reincarnation as a hypothesis within both empirical and spiritual frameworks?
• What might these accounts tell us about the liminal space “between lives”?
• What becomes of death if it is no longer the final end?

This workshop is part of a growing constellation of Esalen offerings that blend scientific courage, spiritual imagination, and the audacity to rethink the very nature of human experience. It is designed to include those who are skeptical yet open, grounded yet curious — who sense that the future of knowledge may lie in the integration of multiple ways of knowing. Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy will join to offer brief introductory reflections, grounding the inquiry in the Institute’s long-standing commitment to exploring the frontiers of human consciousness.

This is not a workshop about belief. It is a gathering of intelligent hearts and minds, exploring whether a child’s remembered life might just be the beginning of a new story for us all.

NOTE: Our time together will combine lectures, dialogue, and guided inner inquiry. While no hypnotic regressions or active channeling will be included, we will engage in reflective and meditative exercises intended to support philosophical, psychological, and soulful integration of these ideas.

What if personal power is not harnessed by doing more but reclaimed by coming home to your body? How might your relationships shift if you could speak your truth in the moment? What if your body became your inner compass — a trustworthy guide through life?

Somatic research affirms what embodied traditions have long known: The body holds the key to authenticity, presence, and sustainable change. By attuning to inner signals, noticing patterns, and staying rooted in connection, space opens for truth, choice, and relational ease. This is not about performing; it’s about becoming available for connection.

Through trauma-informed facilitation, participants will engage in solo reflection, paired explorations, small-group practice, and collective experiences. Grounded in somatics, Authentic Relating, and expressive embodiment, these teachings move into direct practice where learning is explored experientially and through the body.

Over the course of the immersion, we’ll explore:

• Somatic practices for emotional tracking and inner listening.
• Solo and relational exercises rooted in the body’s wisdom.
• Centering to navigate challenges with resilience.
• Relational agility through authentic expression and attunement.
• Mindful vulnerability to bring depth and meaning to connection.

We’ll blend seated, standing, and movement practices, adaptable for all bodies, identities, abilities, and lived experiences. Come home to the wisdom of your body. Everything you need is already within.

Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on. — James Baldwin

Most people don’t actually fear failure; they fear their own brilliance. In this weeklong journey, we’ll explore how subtle self-sabotage, shrinking, and doubt prevent us from claiming our gifts. Through coherence coaching, embodied exercises, and radical self-honesty, you’ll discover the courage to live as the powerful being you already are.

Participants will:

• Engage in guided movement and meditation to release constriction and embody expansive power.
• Use reflective journaling prompts to surface patterns of self-betrayal and write new declarations of possibility.
• Practice storytelling and peer coaching circles that mirror back wholeness, strengths, and hidden capacities.
• Enter creative play exercises to rehearse new ways of showing up boldly.
• Make commitments to sustained daily practices that anchor your dopeness as a lifestyle.

When we embrace our greatness, we move beyond fear into freedom, clarity, and contribution. You’ll receive practical tools and experience a supportive community for the embodied confidence to live your dopeness with courage and joy.

At the very heart of “belonging” is the word “long.” To be-long to something is to stay with it for the long haul. It is an active choice we make to a relationship, to a place, to our body, to a life because we value it. Even knowing that it may not be all that we hope it to be, we are keeping the long view of what is possible, and our life becomes an offering to making it so. ― Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home

There is an irony in living in a world with so many “things” to pursue and so many of us feeling a deep sense of disconnection and alienation. Our fierce individualism often leaves us separate from our bodies, one another, and the Earth. “Belonging” is always an integral strand in our many deeply woven threads to self, our communities, and the Earth. We long to belong, and we are created for connection. Building places of belonging begins with the self, trickles out to our wider circles, and ultimately connects us to the entire world.

This five-day workshop will dive into the dynamics of separation and belonging across these many dimensions, utilizing a mix of teachings, dialogue, and embodied experiences. We will draw on the richness of ecopsychology and the playfulness of the 5Rhythms® moving meditation, and we’ll engage in restorative time in contemplation in the natural landscape of Esalen.

Participants in this workshop will experience:

• 5Rhythms moving meditation
• Contemplative meditation
• Teachings within ecopsychology and ecological and social awareness
• Community dialogues
• Time in nature
• Dreaming and journaling

Participants should be prepared to work with challenging material, to encounter difficult and joyful emotions, to engage in experiential practices, including the 5Rhythms movement meditation, and to play within a respectful, compassionate community. We will investigate the ways in which we form connections with others and our various communities, and we will experience the deep fulfillment that comes from greater connectivity.

Recommended Reading: Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet by Jeanine M. Canty, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner, The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong by john. a.powell, Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Join herbalist, medicine woman, and plant spirit teacher Marysia Miernowska for a nourishing, magickal weekend journey of intimacy with the Earth to receive physical and spiritual healing from medicinal herbal infusions and awaken the energies of spring’s renewal within us and all around.

In a safe and sacred container, you will be guided in:

• Shamanic tea meditations.
• Drinking herbs for the spring.
• Entering restorative states of embodied meditation.
• Connecting to the land and elements.
• Making herbal medicine from the land and Esalen gardens to take home.
• Making flower essences.
• Plant identification of nourishing medicinal herbs, many likely growing around you.
• Earth-based rituals and journal prompts.
• Wildcrafting and gardening.

By communing with safe, healing, and nutritive wild medicine infusions, participants will flood their bodies with the restorative nourishment of the wild earth. While journaling and meeting plant spirits through shamanic tea meditations, we’ll create safety in the body and nervous system and receive insight, inspiration, energy, and replenishment for a personal awakening that mirrors the energy of spring.

By restoring the ancient knowledge of folk healing and plant medicine, we hope to heal the separation between ourselves and nature and awaken a collective passion to protect this Earth we all call home.

This workshop includes a $40 materials fee

What does it mean to remain human in the new age of artificial intelligence? In this immersive weekend workshop, we’ll explore this profound question together, journeying from awareness to empowerment to integration as we discover how to shape our relationship with AI while preserving what matters most.

Through hands-on AI demonstrations, creative labs, and experiential exercises, we’ll witness firsthand both the remarkable capabilities and profound implications of this technology. We’ll experiment with AI as a creative collaborator — making music, art, and even building simple apps. With somatic practices, guided meditation, and time in nature, we’ll envision the future we want, free from tech industry narratives about what’s “inevitable.”

Each session will blend practical exploration with deep reflection. Morning sessions will focus on understanding AI’s current state through live demonstrations and group discourse. Afternoons will combine creative experimentation with embodied practices. In our evening circles, we’ll integrate insights through authentic sharing and community connection.

You’ll have the opportunity to develop your personal AI Code of Practice, create conscious engagement with technology, and forge genuine connections with fellow participants. This workshop offers resources and perspectives to support you in bringing these meaningful conversations to your own communities, helping others find empowerment rather than overwhelm in our rapidly changing world.

Perimenopausal and menopausal transitions are more than biological phases to endure; they are sacred passages that forge a woman into her fullest expression — as a truth-bearer, a pathfinder, a beauty maker, and a new creation.  

When the monthly cycles end, you’ll undergo tremendous transformations in your body, mind, emotions, and psyche. Crossing this monumental threshold awakens your inner sage, a wild knowing sacredly woven from deep intuition and your soul’s language.

Join Jovinna as she weaves a web of story, nature, movement, and community to capture the magic of this time of life. Anchor the new story for yourself and future generations, infusing meaning and sacredness into this wild and inspired time.  

Over the weekend, there will be:

• Practice of Conscious Dance to recharge the body and mind.
• Time to be immersed in nature and connect with your elemental being.
• Rituals and ceremonies to honor these important thresholds of transformation.

Let this be a time of celebration with reverence and levity as you unfold in the field of endless possibilities without your old roles, identities, and patterns.

Please bring a journal, a small piece of cloth that represents your old self, and an article of clothing that you’d like to wear for the ceremony of renewal.

This workshop includes an additional $35 faculty tuition.

The voice is calling me, to come home, to the river that is flowing within me. — Sophia Tuv

The voice is more than sound — it is the breath of our being made audible, the vibration of our essence moving through space. It is our most innate instrument, a direct channel between the soul and the world. When sounded with intention, the voice carries the power to heal, connect, and transform. This is an immersive experience to return to the source of your voice — your primal, dynamic sound that lives within you. Through deep sensing, visualization, somatic exploration, and playful vocal exercises, we will release the blocks that stifle expression and awaken the pleasure, power, and resonance of our true voice.

Together, we will:

• Explore vocal embodiment, using the body as a resonant chamber for sound.
• Engage in practices that dissolve tension, unblocking emotional and physical expression.
• Awaken the imagination and open new pathways of vocal creativity.
• Let breath and vibration guide us into dynamic, liberatory self-expression.
• Experience the joy of surrendering to our voice, allowing it to move through us freely.

This is an invitation to become your voice, to reclaim its raw beauty and medicine, and to honor the deep impact of speaking, singing, and sounding with love and intention. When we free our voice, we free ourselves — our capacity to express, to connect, to be fully seen and heard. This practice strengthens our confidence, deepens our relationships, and supports our ability to move through the world with clarity, presence, and truth. By attuning to the natural resonance of our voice, we cultivate authenticity, self-trust, and a profound sense of belonging within ourselves and our communities.

Awaken the voice you arrived with. Open the portal. Come home to your sound.

Joseph Campbell used to celebrate his birthday at Esalen. When asked why, he’d recount how Carl Jung — wondering, “What myth am I living by?” and realizing he didn’t know — wrote, “I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks.”

“That’s what a birthday is for,” Campbell concluded, “and what Esalen is about.” In 1988, the year after Campbell died, his friends recalled his dictum — “What you do, you do with play” — and gathered at Esalen to inaugurate “Campbell Week,” a tradition that has continued annually ever since and morphed into this annual PlayShop.

Come join us to celebrate Campbell’s birthday and to entertain such questions as: Who were you? What has inspired your biographical saga? What treasures hide in your basement or attic? Who are you? What’s displayed on your refrigerator? What dangles from your rearview mirror? Who do you aspire to be? What’s on your bucket list? Dare to re-vision yourself and join our springtime rebirth rituals.

You needn’t be familiar with Campbell to relive dreams, rekindle visions, and experience mythogenesis. In this immersive experience, we will use myth-making tools — drums and dance, music and song, medicine bags, and masks. We will play D-PiCT™: The Game of Mythogenesis, and we will engage in small- and large-group activities that provide reflective and expressive opportunities for revisioning the myths that have shaped your life.

Please bring your unsung stories and a meaningful—albeit perhaps expendable—totem.

Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation through movement, guided meditation, and the profound practice of Yoga Nidra. This workshop is designed to restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from experiencing a state of calm, clarity, and balance.

Yoga Nidra, which translates to “yogic sleep,” guides you to that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, where you can systematically release stored physical, emotional, and mental tensions. In this state, you can let go of old beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the past and fearful of the future. With this practice, you can fully experience your emotions while knowing that there is unchanging, unshakable ground beneath you — a calm inner presence that allows you to see clearly and navigate life with greater ease.

Throughout the retreat, we will work with our bodies and minds, creating clear intentions to shift from living by unconscious, automatic programming and find a new perspective — an aware, deliberate way of being. You’ll explore how to bring this newfound awareness of your true self into your personal life, relationships, work, and moments of solitude and love.

Together, we will cultivate new tools to help us navigate when we feel lost, tired, or confused and forget who we are. These guiding instruments can help us negotiate life’s challenges, welcome them as opportunities, and remember our true nature.

This workshop is a unique opportunity to recognize your wholeness, the truth of who you are, and the inner peace that has always been within you — that unchanging, unshakable ground of being that you are. All that is being asked of you is to show up, lie down, and let go. Yoga Nidra will do the rest.

What to bring: blankets, a yoga mat, an eye pillow, and anything else you need to lie comfortably on the floor for extended periods. We’ll also have opportunities to practice outdoors, so make sure you have layers to stay comfortable in varying conditions.

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

The March equinox, a time of transition and harmony, is a wonderful opportunity to deepen our practice of yoga. The light is returning from the dark days of winter, and balance is our theme — both on the yoga mat and for our emotional and spiritual selves. Just as the plants are beginning to bud, our own dreams, visions, and creativity are emerging from their winter gestation. The fertile and dynamic land of Esalen is a perfect setting to hold us for this exploration of Spring.

During this retreat, we will combine three healing practices to revitalize the body and calm the mind in the exquisite and rejuvenating natural environment of Esalen. Together, we will focus our attention on the practices of:

• Yoga to yoke body and mind for present-moment awareness.
• Meditation to cultivate concentration and empathy.
• Chanting, or bhakti yoga, the practice of the heart.

This immersive weekend will leave us balanced, revitalized, and ready for the full and active days of Spring and Summer.

This workshop includes an additional $20 fee for workshop materials.

Gratitude for our ancestors! We are the reality of their dreaming.  We are the tip of the arrow of our entire ancestral lineage, which traces back to the beginning of time. We all inherit our ancestors’ strength & resilience, their wisdom & their gifts, as well as their pain and trauma.

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look at our ancestral lineage and how our ancestors continue to influence and affect our lives today.

This workshop offers an opportunity to explore ways of identifying and honoring your ancestors’ positive attributes, as well as heal the discordant or destructive energies you have inherited from your, racial, social, cultural, religious and/or historical heritage.

Together, we will examine the origins of “dis-ease” in our bodies, minds, spirits, and souls and how to heal and realign them. We will discuss the importance of ceremonies, medicinal plants and sacred altars in this healing process. You will be offered the opportunity to participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing and “doctoring” ceremony, and a water blessing prayer ceremony.

You are invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage – you honor and heal yourself, and strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.

Note: Please bring a journal to write in and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.

Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feelings of gratitude and value and their desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.

BIPOC Scholarship: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate or donating to this fund, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. —Rumi

Embark on a five-day journey of artistic discovery in a creative space that nurtures playful practice and community above all. This immersive multimedia experience 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. In the supportive environment of the Esalen Art Barn, these artful practices invite you to navigate the fascinating interplay of freedom and structure, inspiration and technique, abstraction and observation, happenstance and control.

Together, we’ll explore and learn to weave these seemingly contrasting concepts into a robust framework for your unique creative ideas, nourished by the palpable energy of this place. Allow curiosity, playfulness, and experimentation to guide you as outcomes organically surface, transforming your impulses into intentional artistic expression.

No prior art experience is needed. If you’re ready to awaken your inner artist and cultivate your distinctive voice, 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. (Feel free to bring your own favorite art-making tools.)

At the heart of Gestalt Practice lies the understanding that we can grow into greater wholeness and interconnectedness, both inside and out. Gestalt is an awareness practice that invites us to focus on the present moment as a path toward authentic growth, resilience, embodiment, and aliveness.

Its core principles are:

• Cultivating embodied presence and awareness
• Growing responsiveness, resilience, and choice
• Trusting the organism’s inherent capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation

In this workshop, we will focus on trusting the wisdom of our organismic self-regulation and highlight the role of somatic intelligence — our body’s innate ability to sense, respond, and adapt. We will explore how our emotional, mental, and physical well-being is shaped not only by our inner processes but also by our relationships with others, the more-than-human world, and the ecological systems we inhabit. Through embodied awareness practices and somatic inquiry, we’ll engage with natural regulation and balance, exploring vagal nerve and movement-based techniques that support emotional and physiological health.

The concept of an ecology of being invites us to recognize ourselves as living ecosystems within larger ecosystems. Just as nature thrives through balance and interdependence, we, too, rely on the rhythms of self-regulation, co-regulation, and our relationship with the earth. In this light, the boundaries of a “separate self” soften, and we enter an integrated ecology of being where inside and outside meet as one living process.

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

Immerse yourself in the eros of creation. Enter the divine dance between consciousness and form to explore the generative relationship between Shiva, the principle of pure awareness, and Shakti, the principle of creation and form. As these energies are engaged in the body, new layers of intimacy with self and the living world may be revealed.

This workshop calls to seekers, artists, healers, those in transition, and anyone longing to feel more deeply resourced, creatively sparked, or attuned to the rhythms of life. It offers a field for exploration rather than performance — a space where the mystical meets the embodied.

Throughout our week together, an intentionally curated arc of practices will open pathways into this inquiry. We’ll explore movement, somatic and subtle energy explorations, process art, journaling, meditation, relational play, ritual, and land-based practices to create a living tapestry of experience. Each thread is designed to engage different dimensions of being — body, mind, spirit, and relationship — while weaving greater collective coherence.

This workshop is best experienced as a complete journey, with each session building upon the last. Participants are invited to attend fully and remain open to the mysteries of the teachings as they unfold, sometimes in ways that may feel tender or uncomfortable, often holding unexpected gifts.

Out of a sea of spaciousness (Shiva) arises radiant light (Shakti). To enter this mystery is to rediscover life as it is — wild, tender, and whole. Embark a love affair with creation itself and walk away with practices to nourish you beyond our time together.

This workshop includes a $15 material fee.

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 has a faculty funded scholarship to attend this workshop, please email melissa.petro@gmail.com for more details.