Workshops

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.

Midwinter invites us to slow down, listen deeply, and remember what truly nourishes us. Beneath the surface of apparent stillness, roots deepen. Seeds quietly prepare. Life is already organizing itself for spring. What if our own hearts follow this same rhythm?

Join us for a restorative week of immersive sound journeys, contemplative practices, movement, creative exploration, and time in nature designed to help you remember your place within the living intelligence that connects all things.

With a rich collection of alchemy crystal singing bowls, chimes, voice, and other resonant instruments, each sound journey becomes an invitation to settle the nervous system, attune the heart, and cultivate a deeper sense of presence, wonder, and belonging. Throughout the week, we’ll explore how vibration influences the body, mind, and heart through both timeless contemplative wisdom and emerging research into sound, resonance, coherence, nervous system regulation, and emotional well-being.
Together, we’ll explore:

• Seven immersive sound journeys that cultivate deep rest, relaxation, and inner renewal.
• Mindfulness, breath, gentle movement, and deep listening practices that can be woven into everyday life.
• Shared creativity in Esalen’s Art Barn as a pathway into presence, intuition, and joyful expression.
• The symbolic and traditional wisdom associated with the crystals, minerals, and metals of the Earth, inviting reflection on the wisdom of the natural world.
• Meaningful community, reflection, and connection in one of the world’s most inspiring natural settings.

Held during the quiet beauty of the new moon and the ancient seasonal threshold of Imbolc — a celebration of the first stirrings of light and renewal — this retreat is supported by Esalen’s healing hot springs, ocean air, rugged coastline, and expansive night skies. Together, these elements create a spacious container for rest, reflection, and renewal.

Whether you are new to sound meditation or have an established contemplative practice, you’ll leave with practical tools for cultivating greater ease, resilience, and vitality, along with a renewed sense of belonging — to yourself, to one another, and to the living intelligence that quietly connects us all.

Explore your unique creative process and express your human potential in a weekend deep dive with The Brothers Koren.

Discover your distinct creative personality and how to find harmony and coherence in your own creative process.

The brothers specialize in facilitating a safe space for you to move beyond the inhibitions and align to your authentic expressive impulse by identifying and supporting your distinct voice and creative code.

By using their embodied voice techniques, creative process design flow, and collaborative games, you will learn how to hold a space for playfully encountering your own brilliance and bring your creative expression to life.

Bring your voice, your ideas and your curiosity. All creative modalities are welcome. Art, music, voice, entrepreneurship, anything!

The brothers believe that almost everything we do in life involves a level of creative energy; from writing a song or painting a picture, to choosing what to wear in the morning and having a conversation – we are constantly improvising and using our creative life force.

However, many of us feel disconnected, blocked  and disempowered in our creative process. Some of us end up feeling stuck or shut down in different stages of our creations, whether experiencing trouble starting or finishing ideas.

What might be possible for you if your creative process was back in flow? The brothers are ready to help you reframe what it means to be creative, and to connect back to the way nature intended it.

Life is a radically creative act. Join them and explore what is possible!

No creative experience necessary.

A journey to heal oneself and awaken deeply from within. Through meditation, yoga, and time in nature, we will tap into the stories our bodies have to tell and develop skills to nourish ourselves in 2027.

This workshop focuses on the transition from one year to the next as an opportunity to purposefully cultivate a sense of renewal. During our time together, you will be guided to explore and experience what this means for you personally.

Ritual invocations of energy and the power of the Esalen grounds themselves will support your healing journey by providing an intentional space for you to reflect on all you have experienced individually and collectively within your community during the past year.

Throughout the weekend, we will share new ways of grounding and connecting to the sacred energy of nature and the elements constantly surrounding us.  This supports the act of renewal, cultivates greater presence, and creates capacity to build and replenish energy throughout the coming year.

In this workshop, all participants are invited:

• To understand themselves at a much deeper level.
• To begin meaningful personal transformation and discover tools to support their work.
• To gain a heightened sense of awareness and presence in ritual practice.
• To experience new ways of relating to nature, to receive the energy around them, and to form relationships with the natural world.
• To experience how healing resonates within a community.

Exploring the renowned Esalen® Massage at its place of origin. This workshop offers an introduction to the foundational concepts and flow of the Esalen approach through a blend of experiential exercises, lecture-demonstrations, guided hands-on practice, and personal reflection.

Participants engage with key elements found in meaningful massage experiences: breath awareness, mindful centering, body mechanics, quality of touch, rapport, and integration. Long, flowing strokes and gentle stretches—hallmarks of Esalen bodywork—will be explored, alongside methods that may support the release of physical tension through an approach that emphasizes working with, rather than on, the body.

The workshop is open to a range of experience levels, from those encountering bodywork for the first time to professionals seeking fresh perspectives. Instruction includes at-the-table guidance, group discussion, and opportunities for participants to share and reflect on their own experiences.

The practice of Esalen Massage invites connection with one’s sense of wholeness and wonder. Teaching tools include music, charts, massage tables, and exercises designed to awaken the senses. The healing waters of the hot springs and the natural beauty of the Esalen grounds offer a supportive context for this immersive experience.

All levels of experience are welcome.

26 hours of continuing education provided by the faculty through Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association Teachers.

Join Heidi Rose Robbins and her team for an enlivening exploration of your astrological chart. Through poetry, movement, writing, and group counsel, we’ll bring our astrological map to life — and in so doing, we will practice loving, act courageously, and fully embrace our next life steps.

In this workshop, we will come together in the beauty of the circle to reflect and share wisdom. Your astrological chart is a lens through which you can see yourself and the gifts you have to share. As we study the map of the heavens from the moment we are born, we can become ever more generous and daring, naming our fears and uncertainties and courageously offering up our gifts to liberate love in others and ourselves.

During our time together, we will focus on:

• Exploring our personal astrological charts to uncover our greatest strengths, challenges, and clues about our future paths.
• Embodying astrological energies by moving and stretching our bodies into new spaces. No prior movement experience is required.
• Reading poetry out loud  and receiving all it reveals about parts of our astrological map.
• Journaling and collage to visually and artistically express the planets and astrological signs in our charts.

Once we receive your birth data, we will prepare your unique astrological chart, and you will receive it in the workshop! All are welcome. Previous knowledge of astrology, poetry, or movement is not necessary. Come with an open mind and a willingness to embrace the richness of your astrological chart.

This workshop includes an additional $10 material fee.

The Artist lives within everyone! Art can be made out of just about anything! It’s a time to leave the critic behind and allow oneself to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit. It’s also a time to enjoy the company and camaraderie of like-minded peers. Now is your time to discover the joys of art based on community and collaboration and to find out how meaningful and grand a shared, creative experience can be.

In this transformative workshop, we will use repurposed material in a whole new context of re-creation.

Come experiment with a vast array of reused materials to create mixed-media mosaics, sculptures, and collages. There will be an assortment of recycled glass, metals, wood, plastics, paper, photographs, fabrics, and old artifacts — bits and pieces of the past and present.

In a beautiful, nurturing, supportive setting, we will reclaim and shape society’s scraps and discarded objects into re-imagined meaning. Find your own inner voice of expression as you delve into the process of creating art out of different materials and mediums,  and learn new skills.

Not only will you have the opportunity to explore your own expression and immerse yourself in solo creations, but we will also engage in a collaborative group project to enter the whimsical world of community-oriented magic and play.

There is a transformative joy that comes from engaging with others in the artistic process. It opens doors unseen and forges deeper bonds between people. This exciting, shared experience teaches us how beautiful it is to break down barriers and collaborate.

This workshop is geared toward anyone with the desire to create. From the beginner to the advanced, this is a time to explore new possibilities. Together, we will:

• Explore our own creativity and immerse ourselves in solo artistic expression.
• Engage in a collaborative group project and enter the whimsical world of community-oriented magic and play.
• Leave the critic behind and allow ourselves to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit.
• Discover the joys of art based on community and collaboration and how meaningful and grand a shared experience can be.

If there are any recycled materials, special mementos, poems, or photos you would like to bring and include in our creations, please feel free!

This workshop includes an additional $125 for workshop materials.

Fostering close and connected relationships is one of the most important things affecting the quality of our lives. Cultivating trust and openness with a loved one, whether with an intimate partner or friend, is an essential aspect of any successful, supportive relationship.

This weekend, Perry and Johanna Holloman, intimate partners and friends for over 30 years, will share the most effective tools and practices they have developed to nurture their connection to each other.

The primary tool Perry and Johanna will share is called Gestalt Inquiry. This easy-to-learn, powerful practice provides a safe context for exploring the most meaningful and sensitive aspects of relationships. Perry and Johanna like to think of it as a practice that becomes a continuing part of any successful long-term relationship because it places high value on compassion, respect, and love of truth. As we learn to discover and safely express what is true for us, individually, as a couple, or as friends, we deepen our heart’s capacity for intimacy and connection, which leads to a more fulfilling and meaningful shared life.

During our time together, you will learn practices and resources to integrate into your everyday life, such as:

• Embodied practices involving movement, breath, meditation, and awareness to develop a sense of palpable presence as the foundation upon which your relationship can flourish.
• The Art of Conscious Communication: learning to care as much about understanding our partner and what they’re communicating as we care about being heard and understood by them.
• How to express needs, feelings, and appreciations in an attuned manner to deepen relational trust.
• Understanding the “distancing behaviors” we engage in, usually as an unconscious form of defense against vulnerability and contact.
• Learning to co-regulate each other in structured exercises, emphasizing compassion and respect so presence-based relating naturally arises.

This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations. A couple may be any two people with a history who desire a better future together, e.g., friends, partners, married or divorced spouses, parent and child, siblings, and others.

This workshop includes $50 in additional faculty tuition.

What if play could become a path of presence?

Mindful improv brings together the liveliness of improvisational theater with the steadiness of mindfulness practice. Improv is spontaneous, expressive, and often funny; mindfulness is quiet, attentive, and still. Though they may seem like opposites at first, both invite us into openness, curiosity, acceptance, and the freedom to meet the moment as it is.

In this experiential weekend workshop, you will explore improv as a form of mindfulness that begins within and extends into connection with others. With warmth, levity, and “serious silliness,” we will use simple improv games and mindfulness practices to explore how we relate to ourselves, one another, and the unfolding moment.

During our time together, you will be invited to:

• Practice guided meditation to cultivate embodiment, steadiness, and ease.
• Engage in accessible improv games that support spontaneity, listening, and creative connection.
• Explore judgments about yourself and others with kindness, humor, and curiosity.
• Notice the roles, habits, and identities we carry — and experiment with holding them more lightly.
• Reflect individually and in community on how these practices can support flexibility and ease in daily life.

No improv experience is needed. Discover practical ways to take mindfulness off the cushion — and tune into a lighter, more responsive relationship with yourself, others and the unfolding moment.

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.  

Recommended Reading: https://www.andreajuhan.com/content/open-floor-encounter-dance-therapy-and-transformation

20 CE credits available for full attendance of this course

• CE credits for psychologists are provided by the Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA) which is co-sponsoring this program. The Spiritual Competency Academy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Spiritual Competency Academy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
• The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CE credits for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.
• LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFTs, and other mental health professionals from states other than California need to check with their state licensing board as to whether or not they accept programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.
• SCA is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN Provider CEP16887) for licensed nurses in California. RNs must retain their certificate of attendance for 4 years after the course concludes.
• For questions about receiving your Certificate of Attendance, contact Nicole@AndreaJuhan.com

For questions about CE, contact Spiritual Competency Academy at info@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.

Power without surrender is force. Surrender without power is collapse. True freedom comes from knowing how to embody both.

BDSM is often misunderstood as only rough sex or kink, but at its core, it’s the consensual exploration of power dynamics. It can include play with dominance and submission, sensation, and restraint — but ultimately, it’s about trust, communication, and the courage to feel deeply.

In this experiential workshop, we’ll explore power and surrender as embodied states, not just ideas. Using the Wheel of Consent® as our foundation, we’ll uncover how these dynamics show up in our desires, boundaries, and interactions. Through guided exercises, movement, and deep noticing, you’ll gain tools to navigate these energies with clarity and confidence — in erotic and everyday contexts.

You’ll be invited to:

• Engage in structured practices to embody power, surrender, and choice.
• Explore the emotions, sensations, and meanings behind these states.
• Use breath, sound, and movement to expand your awareness.
• Practice dynamics like take/allow, serve/accept, and lead/follow.
• Discover how power and surrender can bring connection, agency, and pleasure.
• Develop a deeper trust in yourself — unafraid of power, unafraid of surrender, and ready to claim both.

This workshop is somatic and participatory, with options to learn through touch and simple props like rope or blindfolds. All participation is optional — your consent always leads the way.

Please Note: This workshop will not include:

• Nudity
• Sexual activity
• BDSM technique tutorials
• Anything you do not enthusiastically consent to

This workshop includes an additional $50 of faculty tuition.

Recommended reading: The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent, by Betty Martin

Join LaVerne McLeod and Melanie DeMore for a weekend of exploration and celebration of Black History Month as we express ourselves, connect, play, and honor humanity.

Together, we will explore what it is like to walk in another person’s shoes to understand and empathize with viewpoints that might differ from our own. We will build a safe container of trust and get curious about what might be lying beneath the surface —  while moving toward resilience and empowerment.

Using empathy, songs, visualization, and movement exercises, we will connect and relate to one another, letting go of what no longer serves us and exploring effective responses to life’s challenges.

In this workshop, LaVerne McLeod will lead the group in empathetic practices that call forth bridging gaps of separation. In celebration, Melanie DeMore, a vocal activist, will lead soulful ballads to energize spirits and exemplify the rejuvenating power of healing through music.

This workshop is highly recommended for all races, identities, gender expressions, and nationalities. It can be a creative catalyst for educators, therapists, and artists that leads to one’s own inner healing. Those in leadership roles working with diverse populations may find this workshop to be a source of empowerment. Together, let’s connect our heart centers to the path that nourishes and heals us.

‍Recommended reading: Corn Hollow, 2nd edition by LaVerne Hillis McLeod and The Crossroads of Social and Climate Justice by LaVerne Hillis McLeod.

* Locals rate available for locals who do not require overnight accommodations. Click “Register Now” for more information. Valid ID required.

What lies behind today’s evidence-based mind-body practices for well-being, resilience, and purpose? This three-day workshop explores the deep lineages and sacred traditions from which many modern methods arise, guided by teachers who walk both worlds of rigorous science and timeless wisdom.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center, Alejandro Chaoul pioneered programs to support patients with chronic illness through Tibetan Yoga, meditation, and integrative medicine. At UCSF, Eve Ekman developed and researched secular, evidence-based tools to strengthen emotional resilience and prevent burnout among healthcare providers.

Together, they will share cutting-edge science and evidence-based practices alongside the sacred dimensions often missing from conventional approaches to healing and renewal.

Participants will explore:

• Tibetan Yoga of Renewal through breathwork practices
• Mapping emotions underlying stress
• Sacred syllables and mantra to protect the mind
• Meditations to uplift and expand heart and mind

This workshop offers practical, research-informed tools and a sacred perspective to rekindle creativity, ease emotional distress, and reconnect with meaning and purpose — for patients, providers, seekers, or anyone on the path of healing.

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