Workshops

All people have an innate ability to move toward healthy, satisfying relationships. Old patterns of behavior and fixed ideas formed in early relationships may block our ability to communicate and make contact with the people in our lives.

The Gestalt approach aims to increase awareness of these patterns and our ”unfinished business” by relating in a group that meets our needs for emotional attunement and understanding, that supports us in identifying and expressing our emotions, and which is committed to creating an atmosphere of respect, kindness, acceptance and honesty. These relational experiences support energy, aliveness and good contact.

Over the course of this workshop, we will

• Seek to learn skills to improve our ability to make contact,
• Develop and track awareness of our emotions and sensations,
• Learn to express and practice communicating needs and wants effectively.

We may discover habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating the type of relationships we want, and develop new skills for relating.

The workshop will include time for gestalt awareness practices, and a mixture of didactic and experiential exercises. Each participant will have an individual “open seat” session with Dorothy, with the support of the group.

Master Chungliang “Uncle Al” Huang, one of Esalen’s most cherished faculty members, brings 50+ years of teaching  experience to welcome you into China’s ancient practice of qigong.

During this workshop, Master Huang will teach the most essential qigong exercises — guiding students through energetic practices of movement, storytelling, and subtle energy work. This is an experience for those who wish to sustain a daily practice for the mind, body, and spirit.

Master Huang will teach easy-to-absorb, adaptive exercises and assist you through metaphors, visualization, sonic chanting, meditation, and deep circular breathing methods. Participants will hear about the great history of this ancient practice as Master Huang shares his vast wealth of knowledge.

A fun, joyful weekend for all ages and levels of practitioners! We will learn to incorporate this healthy practice as a consistent habit: Wei Wu Wei — “doing by not doing, spontaneously.”

Beginners and “advanced beginners” are welcome.

Every yoga posture embodies a story. Every story embodies a posture.

The warrior’s focused intention, the divine monkey’s formidable leap, the lotus’s sacred stillness — these are not mere ideas but encapsulations of physical practice. Encoded in each āsana is a mythic psychology: a map of consciousness, a demand on the practitioner, a doorway into the living tradition from which yoga emerges.

Drawing on Raj Balkaran’s The Stories Behind the Poses, this weekend renders myth experiential rather than informational. Participants will not study these stories from the outside; they will enter these enchanted storyworlds so that the stories, in turn, will inhabit the practitioner.

Each session moves through a thematic arc — from the qualities that make practice possible, through the tensions that deepen it, to the surrender that completes it. Stories of Śiva, Hanumān, Indra, and the great sages are the primary texts, read through breath, posture, and relational presence. Mythic narrative and physical form illuminate one another: posture becomes story enacted in the body; story becomes posture enacted in consciousness.

No background in mythology or Sanskrit required. What is needed is willingness to meet ancient India’s wisdom traditions not as history but as living tradition.

Recommended reading: The Stories Behind the Poses,  by Raj Balkaran

To be truly creative, to let go of preconceived restrictions, is to allow yourself the freedom to flow. Taoist wisdom calls this Wu Wei — the art of not interfering with what is already happening.

During this weeklong workshop, we will playfully reinvent Tai Ji forms with ancient Tai Ji rituals, Five Moving Forces of Nature, and traditional Tai Ji motifs. We will explore, improvise, and evolve to find renewed and refreshed ways to dance the open structures of this ancient wonder of movement meditation.

With more than fifty consecutive years of teaching experience at Esalen, Master Huang creates a unique Tai Ji class for practitioners at all levels. Come prepared to enjoy “Uncle Al’s” storytelling, energy practices, and qigong mastery in this creative “Living Your Tao” Tai Ji experience.

Esalen® Massage combines partner-based attentiveness with the overlaying energetic field. This workshop presents the 12-meridian system of Asian medicine, attuned to Esalen Massage’s slow-flowing strokes. The intent is to facilitate release of long-held muscle tension while providing pauses and point work to nourish and harmonize. This energetic alignment can encourage resilience, lift the heart, quell anxiety, or provide support for difficult emotions. The results bring balance and chi energy flow without loss of the personal, intuitive connection. As an added bonus, both giver and receiver can access these energetic portals for their personal self-care.

Guided by longtime Esalen practitioner, teacher, and acupuncturist Daniela Urbassek, we’ll discover how to sustain a massage session in a calm, centered state by utilizing chi-balancing movement. We’ll be joined by guest teacher Mac Murphy, who nourishes his Esalen Massage with the qigong practice he learned in China. Through lectures and PowerPoint demonstrations, students will be presented tools to easily apply the long integrative oil massage strokes following structural and meridian pathways. We’ll explore when to add detailed depth and how to stimulate 14 vital energy points, including an excellent point to close a massage.

There will be ample time for guided practice, peer feedback, self-reflection, and leisurely hot tub soaks. This smaller class is a good match for professionals seeking a new frame of reference and for newcomers, particularly those who have already experienced the joys of sharing a great massage.  CE credit pending, CAMTC transcript credit.

Even in the deepest conflict, the human capacity for connection and healing remains.

What does it take to connect in a time of deep division?
How do we remain open, and in relationship when pain, history, and identity pull us apart?

In this experiential workshop, you’re invited into a living field of practices that have supported Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, in meeting across some of the most profound lines of conflict. Emerging from years of work with Together Beyond Words and the Army of Healers (formed in the wake of October 7), this approach brings together body, heart, and mind to gently rebuild trust — within ourselves and with one another.

While rooted in the Middle East, the work speaks directly to the challenges many of us face today, including rising polarization in the United States. It offers grounded, human ways to stay present, connected, and curious, even in the midst of difference.

Together, we will explore simple yet powerful practices — grounding, movement, play, storytelling, and deep listening — that help us meet ourselves and others with awareness and care. Drawing from Internal Family Systems, you’ll be guided to notice and work with your own inner reactions, “unblend” from activated parts, and practice the U-turn as both an inner and relational tool.

Through compassionate communication, listening partnerships, and small-group exploration, you’ll have space to slow down, connect, and experience what becomes possible when we meet one another with curiosity instead of certainty.

Whether you’re a facilitator, educator, healer, or simply someone longing for more authentic connection in divided times, this workshop offers both personal transformation and practical tools. It invites you to deepen your capacity to navigate conflict with presence, build trust across differences, and reconnect with a sense of hope.

Recommended reading: The Magic of Tears by Nitsan Joy Gordon;  Together Beyond Words: Women on a Quest for Peace in the Middle East by Nitsan Joy Gordon;  The internal Family Systems Workbook by Richard Schwartz; Creating Healing Circles by Chris Burris;Wounds into Wisdom by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone; Dance, Dialogue and Despair by Haim Gordon; I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish; The Lemmon Tree by Sandy Tolan; Gift of the Red Bird by Paula D’Arcy

Grof® Breathwork, developed as “holotropic breathwork,” was born at Esalen in the 1980s by Stanislav and Christina Grof. This powerful practice offers participants the opportunity to enter

expanded states of consciousness through accelerated breathing, evocative music, and supported somatic release.

Through this practice, we “journey” using our breath, opening to the psyche’s intrinsic intelligence for emotional release, physical relaxation, stress reduction, and profound numinous experiences.

You will experience two complete Grof® Breathwork sessions — one as a breather (engaging your own deep inner work) and one as a sitter (compassionately supporting another’s journey). Sessions last approximately three hours and are preceded by a comprehensive preparation presentation on Friday night.

Integration is supported through group sharing and reflection on the transformative aspects. Between sessions, we invite you to integrate your experiences through Esalen’s movement offerings and time in the stunning natural environment.

This is an opportunity to experience Grof® Breathwork on the land where the practice originated.

Recommended reading: When the Impossible Happens, by Stan Grof, Holotropic Breathwork, by Stan Grof, Watch: The Way of the Psychonaut

Imagination is the foundational ingredient in problem solving – the ones in your own life as well as problems in society. Yet how many courses in imagination did you take during your K to12 education? Were you ever taught how to explore, harness, and apply it? How many healthcare professionals have taught you evidence-based ways to use imagination to enhance healing and recovery? Have you ever been taught how negative forms of imagination can contribute to depression, anxiety, or worse?

This workshop focuses on the science, power, and magic of imagination.

• The science: You’ll learn about newly discovered territories of imagination and how it is being redefined as one of the most important skills we can cultivate. You will explore the neurodiversity of imagination and create your own imagination profile.
• The power: You’ll take away tools to implement imagination into your physical and emotional healing, your relationships, and your work to powerfully imagine the next steps in your own life’s journey.
• The magic: You’ll explore the further reaches of imagination to create an extraordinary life. Discovering how altered states of consciousness, shamanism, psychedelics, and virtual reality/AI can provide access to a wellspring of wisdom and embodied imagination. Let whimsy and wonder re-enchant your life and our world.

Imagination is the seed of every invention and every social movement. It has led to nearly every scientific discovery, every building that has been built, every piece of art, film, story, every ship that has ever sailed, and every mission to outer space. Almost every human advancement has been sparked by the question, “What if?”

Through interactive presentations, experiential practices, self-inquiry, thought experiments, and speculative dialogue, you will explore truths that emerge from art, fiction, and fantasy — and return with new knowledge, tools, and inspiration.

Cassandra will be joined by guest faculty Fabrice Guerrier who brings experience knowledge of collective worldbuilding, futurism, poetry, and creative writing. Fabrice will provide unique perspectives and engaging experiential exercises to our work (and play) with imagination.

Recommended reading: Imagination: Exploring Your Inner World for an Extraordinary Life by Cassandra Vieten

What positive shift would create the most meaningful change in your life right now?

Your extraordinary potential is built into your DNA and awaits your discovery. In this enlivening workshop, experience the essence of Integral Transformative Practice® (ITP), a living platform for growth, well-being, and evolution. Created by Esalen Institute luminaries Michael Murphy and George Leonard, ITP focuses on the interconnectedness of all aspects of the self to support the changes you want most — for yourself and the world.

This experiential journey weaves movement, writing, and sharing circles so you can listen deeply to the wisdom of your whole being, revealing who you are, who you’re becoming, and your next natural steps. Using the body as a guide for learning, we’ll engage in solo, partner, and group energy-awareness practices developed by ITP Co-Founder and Master Aikido Sensei George Leonard. We’ll also explore a revitalizing daily practice to restore balance, boost energy, and invite deep relaxation —one that can be integrated as a supportive tool for everyday life.

You are invited to:

• See life through a refreshing new lens.
• Uncover hidden insights.
• Align with your natural rhythms.
• Nurture personal autonomy for the journey ahead.

By applying the integral model of body, mind, heart, and soul — a portal to our innate wholeness — we’ll also explore the worldview that gave rise to Esalen Institute, where this transformative practice was developed. This evolutionary framework offers a pathway to our extraordinary potential, our individual connection to wholeness, which is ready to emerge.

Recommended reading: The Life we are Given, by Michael Murphy & George Leonard & Living an Extraordinary Life: The Magic of Integral Transformative Practice, by Christina Grote & Pam Kramer

In an economy predicated on capitalizing our attention, what if we apprenticed ourselves to ecological forces whose temporality refuses capture? How might sitting at the feet of a glacier, as our elder, liberate our presence?

Enter this five-day apprenticeship with the glacier as a teacher, following the glacier’s quality of time as a grammar for re-patterning our minds, bodies, attention, care, and labor as students of the earth.

Drawing on land-based practices created by the facilitators and their collaborative work in Southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay, each day will begin with storytelling from the lands we study — to cultivate a collective ethos and, in the words of Martin Shaw, “attend to a world in constant disclosure.” Guided by the earth as scripture, these transmissions will orient our practices as they are translated into embodied prompts to empower our capacity to love and protect the sacred amid ecological and social crisis.

Practices will include:

• Daily meditation: sitting in stillness to take on the posture and soul of the glacier.
• Daily movement: slow movement and wanders on the land to embody the pace of the glacier.
• Grief + praise work: How does the glacier’s rapid melting call upon our grief and worship?
• Reading the landscape through pattern recognition to pay attention to the birds, tides, bees, plants, and stones at Esalen, and ask, “What do we learn about the earth’s nervous system, and what does it teach us about our own?”
• Writing and intimate council shares: As glaciers face extinction, what stories are at risk of extinction through the endemic nature of you? What stories do these practices call forward to be shared? How does writing and speaking them in council affirm and protect your own life as something the earth desperately needs right now?

On our fourth day together, participants will be invited to a half-day of silence on the land, culminating in story-sharing around the fire and soaking. Prepare to be thrilled by, and thrill the earth, with your glacial pace.

Our oldest traditions carry the same instruction for this moment, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year: go in.

Many who have touched the sacred through mystical states, grief, love, or a profound life transition carry an unfinished question: How do I live in service to what I have seen?

This workshop is devoted to that question, approaching it through the logic of descent. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology, contemplative practice, and symbolic imagination, our time together follows the ancient pattern of the katabasis. Inanna goes down before she can return. Orpheus descends before he can bring anything back. The structure is older than any single tradition. What transforms us is rarely the encounter at the height. It is the slow, unglamorous work of sitting with what the dark has shown us and letting it rearrange how we live. The mystery traditions built their initiatory structures around descent. The solstice is the hinge. We gather here to do that work.

Together, we will:

• Work with Jungian frameworks, including shadow work, archetypes, and symbolic amplification, as the psychological ground for metabolizing what has been opened by the visionary or peak state.
• Practice anchoring insight into daily life through journaling, somatic inquiry, dreamwork, ritual, and sacred conversation.
• Examine the risks of spiritual inflation and spiritual bypass — what goes wrong when experience outpaces integration, and how humility and discipline protect what the vision opened.
• Reframe psychedelic and non-ordinary experience as one expression within a larger soul journey, asking what it means when altered states become initiatory rather than episodic.
• Return to the values that inner work produces — love, accountability, and the relational responsibility that is the fruit of any spiritual encounter.

This gathering is the winter companion to the June workshop. Whereas the June work carries the quality of ascent, of doors opening and light expanding, this workshop honors the opposite movement. The winter solstice calls us into descent: into the dark, into what the earth knows when it turns inward. Integration, understood this way, is not a summer task. It is the slow work of the long night, the composting that happens below the surface before anything can grow again.

The work is to carry what you’ve seen with honesty, with discipline, and with the kind of reverence that does not require drama to sustain itself.

Note: While this workshop explores the history and meaning of psychedelic and non-ordinary states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore traditional healing wisdom and the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, spiritual and soul bodies.

You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, and we will examine what this means in the context of our modern daily lives as we share healing wisdom and practices together. This is your opportunity to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul. You will also have the opportunity to participate in three traditional healing ceremonies.

You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage, and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you will strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.

We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love: for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, then we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.

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

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

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

Winter solstice is a time to reflect — to cultivate vitality and nurture ourselves. The dark days of winter are an opportune time to slow down and make space for self-care. This winter solstice yoga retreat will focus on cultivating inner awareness. By practicing in community, we build inner vitality and brightness to return home renewed.

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 being by using:

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

The word solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still) because the seasonal movement of the sun’s path appears to come to a stop before reversing direction at the solstices. Moving into stillness, we can return to our lives refreshed and strengthened for the new year to come.  

All levels are welcome.

This workshop includes an additional material fee $20.

Let’s be real — queer men are already masters of reinvention. We’ve learned to shapeshift, decode signals, seduce with a glance, armor up when needed, and sometimes dissociate in the name of survival. Our sexuality has been a battlefield and a playground — sometimes both in the same night. Sexuality offers a lens through which we may examine and deeply experience ourselves and our connection to all of existence. By fully immersing yourself in your sexual experiences, there is more — more pleasure, more presence, more freedom — hiding in plain sight. In your hips. Your breath. Your belly. Your no. Your yes. Your body.

This weekend is a playful deep dive into what it means to live in a queer male body — cis or transmasculine — with curiosity, with courage, and in relation to society and one another.

Together, we’ll explore the wild terrain of gender and sexuality — not from a textbook, but from the inside out. Through guided practices, embodied rituals, and communal reflection, you’ll get to ask big, juicy questions like:

• What kind of man am I when I stop trying so hard? If I move past the “masc” persona and its acceptable coded behaviors to embrace an energy that is both boundless and de-gendered?
• How much of my desire is mine, and how much is performance?
• What would it feel like to inhabit my sexuality without apology — or choreography?

We’ll explore how shame, culture, trauma, and liberation show up in our movements, our fantasies, our ability (or inability) to receive touch. We’ll stretch out of binary thinking and into something more fluid, more alive, more you. You’ll be invited to experiment with different ways of relating, touching, and expressing — from the tender to the wild, the sacred to the silly.

This is not about being “good at sex.” It’s about being honest in our sexuality. And maybe even finding new ways to experience it as medicine, mischief, and art.

Why this, why now? Because queer men are still carrying a lot — even in all our glittering freedom. We’ve inherited both boldness and bruises. While we celebrate open sexuality in our culture, we rarely get the space to slow down and feel what it all means in our bodies. This is that space. Join us to make meaning together — with breath, touch, and truth.

Please note: This workshop, designed specifically for those who identify as queer men (cis or trans), includes partial nudity, guided touch, roleplay, and somatic exploration of gender and sexuality. All activities are optional. The space we create together centers safety, sovereignty, and presence, prioritizing your agency and comfort at every turn. Your consent leads the way. Although we will explore touch and sensuality, no sexual acts of any kind will be instructed or included in this workshop. It will not include full nudity, nor anything you do not enthusiastically consent to.

Recommended reading: Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas; The ManTantra Letters by Victor Bliss & Nathan James

How can those of us who yearn without belief or ritual find our way? Many of us have lost our connection to a mainstream faith, or maybe never had it. We long to find more, even if we are afraid that it may not be there. Some of us have experienced our worlds cracked open with dreams, visions, presences, or moments of mystical union — and may not know how to make sense of what has happened.

We’ll begin our time together with an open sharing of stories of spiritual search and spiritual experience, with an invitation for participants to speak about their frustrations and their hopes. During the weekend, you will be introduced to pathworkings — guided meditations that take those without traditional faith on a spiritual journey —  and have the opportunity to use your voice to sing through your own journey.

This workshop is designed for those who want to more deeply understand the feeling of loss, awe, and the ineffable in the absence of a mainstream faith, and anyone who wishes they could believe, finds they can’t, and still imagines the possibility of a way forward.

A consistent meditation practice lowers stress, improves health, strengthens relationships, and increases happiness. A consistent writing practice not only helps you make sense of the world, it also can make you a better, and more creative, writer.

This combination writing and meditation workshop invites writers and meditators of all levels to delve deeply into both practices.

Our daily guided meditations will nourish your creativity by encouraging you to be present to experience, establish a strong mind/body connection, and access emotion and empathy — all important tools for writing.

Our daily bursts of free writing will give you an opportunity to tap into your creative energy — without judgment — so you can do your most original and authentic writing. Both practices will be supported by discussions of writing craft to help you master the technical aspects of story-telling.

Each day, we will set aside time to share our work in a safe and supportive environment.

By the end of our time together, you will be given the tools needed to develop daily meditation and a daily writing practice and make both stick. To help you stay connected and inspired, participants will also receive a free month’s membership to Creative Caffeine Daily, an online daily writing community.

Recommended Reading: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Who will you become when you put down your phone and pick up your life?

In just two decades, technology has rapidly reshaped our psyches, relationships, and communities. The average person now spends the equivalent of 61 to 80 days a year on their smartphones. Apps increasingly frack our attention while human empathy has steadily declined.

Though living a phone-based life can be overwhelming and feel hopeless, the power is still yours . Your hands are the living hands of your ancestors. What wants to be expressed through them? This workshop invites you to recover your focus, creativity, presence, and humanity. In community, we will reckon with the impact of the digital age and remember the somatic wisdom of bodies and the intelligence of our souls.

Recent research reveals that insecure attachment styles (anxious or avoidant) make us more vulnerable to compulsive smartphone use as we seek a digital “secure base” over human connection. By rebuilding our capacity to turn toward one another, we can re-parent ourselves and repair relational ruptures from our past.

Each day will include:

• Morning meditation to connect to the inner self.
• Lectures on the psychological and relational impacts of technology.
• Guided exercises to reflect on our attachment histories and “styles.”
• Interpersonal practices to replace screen time with real connection.
• Collective ritual for going offline intentionally for 72 hours.
• Practices in poetry therapy, movement, ritual, song circle, and nature-based meditation to reignite your creative spark.
• Community gatherings to rest and restore, including Yoga Nidra for attuning to the technology of the heart.

The digital age calls for a renaissance of re-humanization. The nature found at Big Sur pulses with a wildness that can help us reawaken our souls and reclaim our power. Come make meaningful changes that honor your whole self.

Recommended reading: The Power in Your Hands: Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology by Shannon Algeo, Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Trust Your Truth by Shannon Algeo

Winter Solstice marks a sacred turning point — the threshold where darkness begins to yield to the returning light. As nature grows quiet and the earth turns inward, we are invited to slow down, listen deeply, and tend the inner flame.

Guided by the wisdom of the chakra system, this immersive retreat explores the seven chakras as flames of radiance and portals of awakening for our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives. Throughout our time together, we journey through these inner landscapes, exploring both the luminous gifts and shadow expressions held within each energy center.

Each day we weave transformative practices — meditation, kundalini kriya, asana, dance, yin and somatic movement, sound healing, writing, creativity, and seasonal ritual — designed to nourish the body, support restoration, awaken the heart, quiet the mind, and rekindle the sacred fire within.

This retreat includes:

• Dynamic and restorative chakra-inspired yoga
• Somatic movement and guided + freeform dance
• Crystal bowl sound journeys
• Breathwork, mantra, mudra, and meditation practices
• Guided contemplations inspired by The Radiance Sutras
• Winter Solstice ritual
• Time in nature, deep rest, and the healing waters

In yogic philosophy, radiance is not something we acquire; it is something we uncover. Like a flame sheltered beneath ash, our inner light remains present even in seasons of challenge, transition, or uncertainty.

Together, we gather at Winter Solstice to honor both the darkness and the returning light, tending the sacred flames within and awakening more fully to the joy, mystery, vulnerability, and wonder of being alive.

Gather with us on the longest night of the year for a weekend of deep ritual, mythic remembrance, and communal rebirth. As the sun pauses in stillness, we will circle the hearthfire to honor the turning of the wheel and the return of the light through sacred ceremony, fire circles, folklore, green magic, herbcraft, candlelit herbal baths, sound healing, self-inquiry, and divination.

Drawing on solstice observance rituals of Celtic, Nordic/Eurasian, and Indo-European origins – and respectfully informed by Indigenous animistic practices from around the world — this gathering is a weaving of ancestral wisdom and living earth-based spirituality. Together, we’ll step into a shared ceremonial container of reverence, gratitude, and connection with our Earth Mother as she begins her sacred journey back toward the light of our brilliant sun.

During our time together, we will honor the Solstice turning with:

• A ceremonial spiral of light
• Harvest herbs and hands-on herbcraft
• Sunset and sunrise ceremonies to mark the sacred transition
• Solstice fire and storytelling by the flames
• A nourishing dinner and feast in community
• A candlelit herbal sound bath in hot spring waters

Come as you are — in devotion, curiosity, or quiet wonder. This is a space for remembering, re-rooting, and rekindling the light within.

This workshop includes an additional $25 for materials.

Now more than ever, it is important we build practices to strengthen our internal resolve and self-resourcing amidst a dynamically shifting society. Together, we will listen to our heart’s wisdom in this rich four-day journey (Friday to Monday) through sound, ceremony, and self-discovery.

In this intimate and transformative workshop, you will have the unique opportunity to experience multiple East Forest’s live music performances. Additionally, Radha will lead us in embodiment practices of Self-Awakening Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Breathwork to create an all-levels and accessible doorway to inner insights. Through the primacy of our own heart-opening and felt experience, we can discover the inner pathways to fortitude and healing.

• Intimate live musical performances by East Forest
• Group co-creative musical process with East Forest
• Yoga and meditation practices
• Awe-inspiring time in nature
• Breathwork
• Meditation and group insight exercises
• Journaling
• Dance party

East Forest and Radha would like to offer a certain amount of scholarship to those in need. Please apply with this form. If further assistance would be helpful, you may also apply for an Esalen scholarship.

This workshop includes an additional $350 in faculty tuition.

Workshop Disclaimer: While some of our workshops explore the history and potential of psychedelic tools and altered states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.

Sometimes the wisest part of you speaks through images. Inspired by the work of Carl Jung, SoulCollage® is a powerful expressive arts method that invites your authentic inner voice to come forward. Through this accessible yet profound practice, we’ll intuitively create collaged cards using images and imagination, journaling with our creations for meaningful and often unexpected insights. Over one immersive weekend, we’ll create six cards using a variety of techniques and approaches, guided by engaging prompts that invite our deepest wisdom to speak. We’ll quiet the inner critic with guided meditation, gentle movement, and time in nature. With small-group sharing, we’ll create community and connections that encourage confidence and creativity.

Our time together will be a journey through three movements that mirror nature during the winter solstice: the stillpoint, when the sun appears to pause; the turn, when momentum returns; and the return of light, when what has been taking shape in the dark becomes visible. With guided imagery, mindfulness, meditation, and intuitive card-making, our hands will lead the way. We’ll create with intention, exploring our surroundings, witnessing with care, and consulting our collages to answer our questions for the year ahead.

No artistic or writing background required, just a willingness to be surprised by what you create and an openness to where it leads.

This workshop includes an additional $40 for materials.

Soul is flow. It’s an ever-changing play of sensations and feelings. It’s how the deathless presence meets and moves our finite human body. In this workshop, we will reclaim the body-in-motion as a doorway to the life unfolding just under the surface of everyday forgetting.

A formless dance form, Soul Motion® allows for passionate, full-bodied movement as well as mindful inner explorations, art-making, ritual, and luscious lounging. Together, we will integrate conscious movement, body-based inquiries of Gestalt Practice, and the stillness of nature for a process to transform body, heart, and spirit.

Soul Motion is a meeting between self and other in a dance that is deeply creative, nourishing, and transforming. It is a movement toward the dynamic stillness at the center of all things — the place of rest at the heart of sound and motion.

During this week together, we will:

• Dance, inspired by a wide range of music and the great sound of silence, supported by the benevolent presence of earth and sky.
• Learn skills for stress reduction, relaxation, and renewal through conscious movement and stillness.
• Build resonance with the movements of life around us by moving from the inside out — alone, in pairs and trios, and as a group, sometimes indoors, sometimes in nature.
• Explore and express what is alive inside us through movement, awareness practices, and sharing in pairs and as a group.
• Experience through movement all the landscapes of relating — to self, to the world, and to the great Mystery that we also are.
• Spend time on the land in sitting and walking meditation, allowing ourselves to dissolve a little into space.

Open to anybody willing to move, pause, listen, and truly relax into one timeless moment. This workshop is especially helpful for people in the healing professions who work with clients, patients, and students.

What if your pleasure is the key to your liberation? What if it could be your prayer, your medicine, and your power? When was the last time you felt fully alive in your body — unapologetically?

Pleasure Alchemy is a somatic journey designed to awaken, heal, and empower you through the sacred art of sensual embodiment. By engaging all five senses through sacred touch, movement, and sound rituals, we’ll explore how to rewire shame and reclaim pleasure as a path to healing. Together, we will co-create alchemy through collective care. We invite you to experience yourself in community more fully and authentically by:  

Activating the body temple through guided somatic practices, breathwork, and movement rituals designed to reconnect to your sensual body as a source of truth, beauty, and divine intelligence.

• Rewiring shame into sovereignty by exploring the roots of erotic shame through compassionate inquiry and release practices.

• Experiencing the alchemy of touch with guided consensual touch rituals — solo and partnered — that can reawaken your pleasure pathways and open portals to healing and intimacy.

• Awakening the inner lover through mirror work, sensual self-devotion practices, and energetic cultivation to deepen your relationship with your erotic self.

• Reclaiming pleasure as medicine through sound healing, journaling, and group integration circles. With tools for integration, you can anchor the wisdom of your pleasure into your daily life as a revolutionary act of self-love and spiritual power.

Join us for an opportunity to reclaim your pleasure as a source of personal power, liberation, and deep connection in community. Pleasure is not just indulgence — it’s medicine.

Please Note: Pleasure Alchemy is best experienced somatically — in the body — and through community ritual. We invite learning through touch and presence. You are always at choice. While sensuality will be invited into the space, no overt sexual behavior will be part of the workshop.

Recommended reading: All About Love, by bell hooks, Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom

We are living at speeds the nervous system was never designed to sustain. In a culture organized around acceleration, optimization, and constant responsiveness, the present moment increasingly becomes something to manage rather than inhabit. Over time, this accumulates in the body as urgency, fragmentation, exhaustion, and the persistent feeling of being unable to fully arrive inside one’s own life.

In wild times such as these, steadiness becomes essential. Not as retreat from reality, but to provide the capacity to remain in responsive relationship to it — to stay grounded, perceptive, and connected amid intensity, uncertainty, and continual change.

This immersive exploration of yoga, breathwork, meditation, rhythm, and embodied presence is designed to cultivate this capacity from the inside out. Drawing from the science of nervous system regulation, contemplative practices, and the body’s innate intelligence, the workshop offers participants an opportunity to experience a different relationship to time, attention, and internal pace.

Before productivity and clock time became the dominant organizing forces of human life, experience moved differently — through rhythm, repetition, seasonality, ritual, and cycles of return. The body still recognizes this language, even if modern life has trained us to override it. Through intentional practice, participants begin reconnecting with these deeper rhythms, discovering what becomes possible when urgency loosens its grip on the nervous system.

Throughout the weekend, participants will explore how acceleration operates internally — shaping breath patterns, posture, attention, thought, emotional response, and one’s relationship to self and others. Through intelligently sequenced practices ranging from grounding yoga and restorative stillness to rhythmic breathwork and guided meditation, the body becomes both laboratory and teacher.

Rather than treating regulation as a fixed achievement, this work approaches steadiness as a trainable, dynamic skill — one that develops through practice, attention, and lived experience.

This is not an escape from modern life, nor a nostalgic return to an imagined past. It is an experiment in reorganization — an opportunity to cultivate steadiness within the conditions of contemporary life itself.

What becomes possible when groundedness is no longer accidental, but practiced? When presence becomes sustainable enough to accompany you beyond the retreat space and into the realities of daily life?

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.