Esalen News February 2022
This month we've got a great line-up of new workshops, plus, if you've been looking for a way to spend an extended amount of time with us in Big Sur, we're excited to announce the return of our four-week work-study program. This beloved program isn't new, but it is improved and it has a new name, the Live Extended Education Program (LEEP).
The season of rebirth is well on its way, and it’s accompanied by a buzz of excitement for the launch of our Live Extended Education Program (LEEP), formerly the work study or work scholar program.
For one month, 12 students come from everywhere imaginable to live, learn, and work at Esalen. A program that’s been transformative in so many people’s lives since its inception in the 1970’s, you’ll be hard pressed to sit in the Lodge and not share a meal with a former work scholar who became rooted in the community through this program. Many of our current staff members began their journey at Esalen this way.
Streams of Energy: Eastern Bodywork and Movement
What would happen if you pressed pause on your everyday life and dedicated four weeks to explore yourself and life at Esalen in one of our Live Extended Education Programs? If you’re ready to take the LEEP, we’re accepting applications for this exciting program.
This month with Jim Gallas is designed to open you to your innate healing potentials, for you to experience the power of safe therapeutic touch, and to be more fully present in your unfolding as a unique expression of Source. Connect and laugh with a supportive healing community while you learn Shiatsu, Qi Gong, and Reiki.
Deepen your knowledge of mind-body and biofield science, moving through grief, healing with sound, Chinese medicine, Tantra for vitality, spiritual connection, and saying goodbye to old patterns, and much more.
The Healing Keys: Biofield Science and the Future of Health, March 18–20, 2022 with Shamini Jain
Unlock your healing capacities with the Healing Keys, and find out how to integrate them into your life. Move through your days with more energy, joy, and ease by discovering mind-body and biofield science, plus, a variety of supportive practices to help you release old patterns, foster your creativity, and deepen your connection to spiritual guidance. Listen to the keys with Dr. Jain, here.
Grief Dancer, March 18–20, 2022 with Lucia Horan and Peter Selwyn
How do you process profound loss? Many of us have not found effective ways of expressing grief and carry the cumulative weight of our unfinished business with us everywhere. Movement, story sharing, and supportive presence will help you move through grief and into the next phases of your life.
Spring Equinox: Journey Through the Chakras With Sacred Sound & Wonder, March 21–25 with Deva Munay
Celebrate the first week of Spring and find connection, levity, and light through the alchemy of crystal singing bowls and sound healing. Learn the science, the technique, and the magic in applying innovative sound healing techniques to your daily life to help balance your energy, nourish your chakras, and manifest harmony in all areas of your life.
Beyond Duality: Equinox Healing Wisdom for Balance and Harmony, March 21–25, 2022 with Erika Gagnon
Spring Equinox is a time when the dual energies of day and night — Sun and Moon — are in balance. Learn about ancestral lineage, traditional ceremonies, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. Draw on the energy of the equinox to help you live in harmony with yourself and the world around you.
Alchemy of Love: Celebrate & Deepen Intimacy With Your Partner, March 25–27, 2002 with Sianna Sherman and Masood Ali Khan
This nourishing weekend is designed for committed couples to renew, connect, and deepen in their love. Utilizing yoga, healing music, shadow work for couples, energy-harnessing techniques, and more, it’s the perfect alchemical elixir for relationships in the modern-day.
Learning Tarot: Awakening the Magic of Your Own Inner Guidance, March 28 – April 1, 2022 with Brenda Rose
Take an introductory level deep-dive into the powerful insights of tarot, guided by a master teacher. Engage with the sacred stories of tarot, establish your own connection with the cards, and learn to give insightful readings using good spiritual and energetic ‘hygiene’ practices.
Meet Your Better Half: Unlock Your Right Brain, April 1–3, 2022 with William Donius
Learn to activate the right side of your brain and learn what holds you back from your own potential. Bill Donius, author of the New York Times bestseller Thought Revolution helps you break through self-limiting patterns and learn critical skills to live a more creative, productive, and happy life.
Awe and Wonder: An Exploration Through Science, Contemplation, and Narrative, April 1–3, 2022 with Dacher Keltner and Mollie McNeil
Awe is the feeling of encountering vast mysteries that transcend our current knowledge and understanding of the world. Rooted in a spiritual understanding of life, it helps us appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. Come learn about the latest scientific understandings of awe and discover a variety of practices, including reflective writing, to cultivate a deeper relationship with awe in your own life.
Nature, Art, Movement and Ritual: Embodying the Five Elements of Chinese Medicine, April 11–15, 2022 with Jiling Lin
Come home to the wild beauty of your inner radiance by embodying the Five Elements of Chinese medicine — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water — through nature, art, movement, and ritual. Come away with practical and poetic Five Element philosophy, plus, tools for daily life. Design your own elemental practices and rituals to align with seasonal rhythms. Watch Jiling Lin on Esalen Live!
Metta and the Divine Abodes: Meditation, Yoga, and Wisdom to Live a Better Life, April 11–15 with Hannah Muse
Blending philosophy teachings with a variety of experiential exercises, this workshop will explore the Brahmavihārās (Divine Abodes): loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekka). These profound, classical Buddhist Heart practices help you awaken to the beauty and possibility available in your complex, often messy, mundane, yet wholly sacred human experience.
Tantra: The Body and The Release, an Esalen Signature Series, Part 2: Wheels and Breath: A Tantric Body, April 15–18, 2022 with Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Keith Edward Cantú
As the second installment of a signature series exploring the foundations of Tantric theory and practice, this workshop will focus on the historical development of the Tantric body with its physiology of wheels and channels. Discussions of academic research findings will be intertwined with meditation, art, and music, creating a holistic inquiry into what gives Tantra its power and therapeutic potential. Watch: The Myth, Reality, and Freedom of Tantra.
COME ALIVE: Meditation for People Who Can’t Stop Thinking, April 18–22, 2022 with Justin Michael Williams
Here’s the truth: If you can worry, you can meditate. Learn the truth behind meditation and why it’s difficult for so many people. Build a practice that doesn’t just help you relax, but becomes a tool to help you become more fully alive. With daily meditation practice, intentional ritual-building, TED Talk-style lessons, live music, morning movement, and a dance party on Wednesday night — this class will rejuvenate your spirit and bring you back home to yourself.
Unraveling the Mother Knot: Writing as a Pathway to Explore & Heal That Primal Bond, April 18–22, 2022 with Laura Davis
The bond between mothers and their children — whether severed, fraught, intact or cherished — is one of the most complex, significant relationships we have in life. Whether you’re a mother, a daughter, or a son, this transformative writing workshop will utilize creative exercises, guided meditation, and evocative writing prompts to lead you to a deeper understanding of this most primal of relationships.
Nature Therapy from Self to World: A Love Thy Nature Earth Day Weekend, April 22–24, 2022 with Sylvie Rokab
What if your grief from witnessing the assaults on Nature could be tended by Mother Nature herself? And what if tending that grief could empower you to better steward your life and world? Using practices such as mindfulness, forest bathing, and storytelling, transmute challenging emotions into hope, motivation, and passion for compassionate environmentalism that transcends divisions and reveals a mutual caring with Mother Nature.
Returning to Human: Touching Our Hearts, Liberating Our Bodies, April 22–24 with Madeline Lam and Jordan Grinstein
When we come home to ourselves, we can experience the body as a source of wisdom and a site of empowerment and healing. Come co-create a supportive community to unpack and analyze how systems of oppression impact our interpersonal lives and bodies, confront and rewrite violent social narratives that have become internalized beliefs, and learn somatic tools to foster joy and connection.
Meditation and Modern Life: A Zen Meditation Retreat, April 29 – May 1, 2022 with Dan Zigmond
Take a weekend to disconnect, slow down, and meditate. Receive instruction in traditional Zen meditation, enjoy discussions that unpack obstacles to meditation plus how to overcome them, as well as times of guided practice. You will leave this retreat with everything you need to start, revive, or deepen a daily meditation practice. Experience a bit with Zigmond on Esalen Live!
Revisioning Your Hero's Journey®: A Mythological Toolbox, May 9–13, 2022 with Robert Walter
In this ‘Playshop’ led by Robert Walter, former editor for the famous author and mythologist Joseph Campbell and president of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, you’ll have the opportunity to retool the myths shaping your life. Through both individual and group activities, you’ll relive dreams, rekindle visions, embrace mythmaking tools like drums and dance, music and song, masks, medicine bags, and altars as you dare to revision yourself.
Healing With Sacred Medicine, May 23–27, 2022 with Dr. Lissa Rankin
What really causes disease? What really optimizes healing? And is there any way we can be proactive about becoming miracle prone? Take a transformational journey through the world’s medicine bag, and gain experience with a wide variety of tools collected by a medical doctor on a ten year quest to unravel the mysteries of healing and answer these burning questions. Learn approaches for healing yourself, your relationships, and the earth while honoring the principle of “first, do no harm.”
Introduction to Esalen® Massage: The Art of Healing Touch, May 30 – June 3, 2022 with Ellen Watson and Robin Fann-Costanzo
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced practitioner, come rest in the natural beauty of Big Sur while gaining a foundation in the art and practice of Esalen® Massage. Beginners learn basic skills and gain the ability to give and receive a simple and satisfying massage session, while seasoned practitioners will take away techniques to integrate into their sessions, inspiring and infusing their work with a deep sense of presence and flow.
Plus, we have even more programs still open for enrollment or wait list.
And if you’ve always wanted to visit Esalen but haven’t been able to find the room in your budget: do you know about our scholarship program?
New Esalen Bath Products
Just in: Our fresh, new Bathing & Spa collection, inspired by Big Sur’s woods and meadows. In its fragrant notes: an invitation to dive deeper.
Shop now.
Voices of Esalen
Payton Nyvquest heads Numinus, a for-profit company that empowers people to heal and be well through the development and delivery of safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies.
Listen now.
The Journal
Dismantling the limits of relationship labels, Reverend Erika Allison, a queer interfaith minister, shares why you should never apologize for your definition of love.
Read now.
New Esalen Bath Products
Just in: Our fresh, new Bathing & Spa collection, inspired by Big Sur’s woods and meadows. In its fragrant notes: an invitation to dive deeper.
Shop now.
Voices of Esalen
Payton Nyvquest heads Numinus, a for-profit company that empowers people to heal and be well through the development and delivery of safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies.
Listen now.
The Journal
Dismantling the limits of relationship labels, Reverend Erika Allison, a queer interfaith minister, shares why you should never apologize for your definition of love.
Read now.
New Esalen Bath Products
Just in: Our fresh, new Bathing & Spa collection, inspired by Big Sur’s woods and meadows. In its fragrant notes: an invitation to dive deeper.
Shop now.
Voices of Esalen
Payton Nyvquest heads Numinus, a for-profit company that empowers people to heal and be well through the development and delivery of safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies.
Listen now.
The Journal
Dismantling the limits of relationship labels, Reverend Erika Allison, a queer interfaith minister, shares why you should never apologize for your definition of love.
Read now.
Check out the latest episodes of Voices of Esalen:
Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman: Hatred Never Ceases by Hatred
Dr. Deborah Egerton on Using the Enneagram for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism
Reverend Erika Allison: Gay the Pray Away — Healing from LGBT Conversion Therapy
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info@esalen.org
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