Esalen has never been a static place. It’s a living, breathing experiment: part sanctuary, part laboratory. A collective transformation unfolds here through courageous self-inquiry, inspired creativity, and the willingness to explore what’s next. Such deep and lasting change doesn’t just happen. It’s studied, stretched, embodied, challenged, and reimagined.
As we look ahead, deeper into 2025, we ask: What might some of Esalen’s current edges lean into?
Among the many new frontiers we're exploring is artificial intelligence. Voices of Esalen host Sam Stern recently created a charming and thoughtful claymation-style video, using Google’s Veo3 to illustrate human connection, play, and peace. The piece is quirky, soulful — and entirely AI-generated. With our curiosity and experimentation come larger questions: What is authorship in the age of machines? What does responsible innovation look like? How can we stay rooted in embodiment while experimenting with digital processes?
As with any new tool, exploration comes with complexity, including ethical questions and environmental concerns. We don’t claim to have all the answers. But we do believe in creating provocative conversations and staying curious as we chart new territory together. We invite you to view the piece and join the conversation.
Continuing our decade-by-decade Find Your Potential illustrated series, we now present Esalen in the 1990s when seekers came to dance with the cosmos, drift under the spell of hypnosis, study the Enneagram, and share space as we expanded our global potential through backdoor diplomacy. Discover the characters who have journeyed to 55000 Highway 1 over the past six decades and notice what has changed and what has endured. Message us if you would like us to include someone who should be represented in the 21st century!
We are enthusiastically sharing some visioning for innovative programming coming to you in this second half of 2025 and beyond — from new workshops, new faculty, and immersive experiences through our expanding Self-Guided Explorations to the deeper cultural pulse shaping Esalen’s next chapter.
Three world-class artists from last year’s annual Seasonal Series are returning as workshop leaders. This September, holistic dance educator Amy Secada, interdisciplinary vocalist and composer Odeya Nini, and Guillermo Martinez, a master craftsman of Mesoamerican instruments, will help us go deeper and reconnect to the source through body, breath, and sound.
Steven Harper is a longtime Esalen faculty member who helped found the Esalen Farm in the early 1980s. He has spent decades leading workshops that blend hiking in the Big Sur wilderness with embodied Gestalt practice. We trace Esalen’s generational heartbeat through Steve and his sons, a story about healing, holding space, and continuing the work.
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Our life unfolds within relationships — our connections with family, friends, colleagues, community, the world. For most of us, our relationships are where the rubber meets the road. Caverly Morgan, who will lead Return to Belonging: The Heart of Who We Are this October, shares how practice on our cushions can seem quite peaceful, and then we get off our cushions and into the relationships of our lives!
An Esalen elder takes us back to 1967. The self-proclaimed first Esalen yoga teacher talks about studying with some of the greats — including Ed Maupin, Charlotte Selver, Bernie Gunther, Jim Fadiman, Claudio Naranjo, Michael Murphy, Gia-Fu Feng, Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Alan Watts, and John Pierrakos — and takes credit for some mainstreamed Esalen traditions: “Hardly anyone from then is alive to refute me.”
This month, our track list includes memoirs and biographies of musical geniuses who have impacted culture here at Esalen: Babatunde Olatunji, “Queen of Folk” Joan Baez, "Lady of the Canyon” Joni Mitchell, pop superstar and recent workshop leader Kesha, and more!
Our talented kitchen crew frequently creates culinary choices that tempt, if not convert, meat-eaters to dig into green and leafy items. While our tuna poke is without a doubt thirds-worthy, our vegan beet poke is not just tasty, but it’s sustainable, local, and stellar for the brain, heart, and digestive tract.
Our life unfolds within relationships — our connections with family, friends, colleagues, community, the world. For most of us, our relationships are where the rubber meets the road. Caverly Morgan, who will lead Return to Belonging: The Heart of Who We Are this October, shares how practice on our cushions can seem quite peaceful, and then we get off our cushions and into the relationships of our lives!
An Esalen elder takes us back to 1967. The self-proclaimed first Esalen yoga teacher talks about studying with some of the greats — including Ed Maupin, Charlotte Selver, Bernie Gunther, Jim Fadiman, Claudio Naranjo, Michael Murphy, Gia-Fu Feng, Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Alan Watts, and John Pierrakos — and takes credit for some mainstreamed Esalen traditions: “Hardly anyone from then is alive to refute me.”
This month, our track list includes memoirs and biographies of musical geniuses who have impacted culture here at Esalen: Babatunde Olatunji, “Queen of Folk” Joan Baez, "Lady of the Canyon” Joni Mitchell, pop superstar and recent workshop leader Kesha, and more!
Our talented kitchen crew frequently creates culinary choices that tempt, if not convert, meat-eaters to dig into green and leafy items. While our tuna poke is without a doubt thirds-worthy, our vegan beet poke is not just tasty, but it’s sustainable, local, and stellar for the brain, heart, and digestive tract.
Our life unfolds within relationships — our connections with family, friends, colleagues, community, the world. For most of us, our relationships are where the rubber meets the road. Caverly Morgan, who will lead Return to Belonging: The Heart of Who We Are this October, shares how practice on our cushions can seem quite peaceful, and then we get off our cushions and into the relationships of our lives!
An Esalen elder takes us back to 1967. The self-proclaimed first Esalen yoga teacher talks about studying with some of the greats — including Ed Maupin, Charlotte Selver, Bernie Gunther, Jim Fadiman, Claudio Naranjo, Michael Murphy, Gia-Fu Feng, Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Alan Watts, and John Pierrakos — and takes credit for some mainstreamed Esalen traditions: “Hardly anyone from then is alive to refute me.”
This month, our track list includes memoirs and biographies of musical geniuses who have impacted culture here at Esalen: Babatunde Olatunji, “Queen of Folk” Joan Baez, "Lady of the Canyon” Joni Mitchell, pop superstar and recent workshop leader Kesha, and more!
Our talented kitchen crew frequently creates culinary choices that tempt, if not convert, meat-eaters to dig into green and leafy items. While our tuna poke is without a doubt thirds-worthy, our vegan beet poke is not just tasty, but it’s sustainable, local, and stellar for the brain, heart, and digestive tract.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org
