Embark on a Personal Journey of Self-Discovery and Renewal

Self-Guided Explorations is a retreat designed to help you reconnect with yourself, your dreams, and your desires. Whether awakening dormant passions, healing past wounds, or simply remembering the joy of being alive, this experience provides a supportive and nurturing environment for transformation. Cultivate a sense of vitality and well-being through embodiment practice and writing, solitude and quiet enjoyment of the land, or whatever you need to reset, refresh, and recalibrate.

To Choose Not To Choose

Opening and closing circles with your cohort bookend a journey that presents you with options. You might take advantage of the opportunity to deepen your yoga practice, explore breathwork and meditation, enjoy conscious dance, immerse yourself in the creative arts, attend presentations by guest faculty, take a long soak under the stars, and so much more — or much, much less. Elevate your self-discovery journey with Esalen® Massage and/or a selection of holistic healing services offered by compassionate practitioners.

With an array of classes, activities, and therapeutic modalities to choose from, you have the freedom to tailor your experience to your individual needs and interests. Your Esalen experience is shaped by your own intuition and curiosity.

What if the love you’ve been searching for is already here — waiting to be remembered?

In this retreat, you’ll explore self-compassion as a lifeboat home — a steady refuge when self-criticism, striving, or overwhelm take hold.

Rather than trying to “fix” yourself, you’ll be invited to gently shift your relationship to experience, discovering the loving awareness that is already present beneath conditioned patterns that do not serve you.

Through a blend of contemplative practice and experiential inquiry, you’ll find how self-compassion can serve as a bridge — from a limited sense of self to a more spacious, connected way of being. To the heart of who you are. We’ll explore how this practice of compassion can be more than a temporary balm and can become a doorway into deeper remembrance.

During our time together, you will be invited to:

• Engage in nondual guided meditations and self-compassion practices that support emotional resilience and inner steadiness.
• Explore experiential inquiries that gently reveal patterns of self-judgment and striving.
• Learn practical ways to meet difficult emotions with warmth and clarity.
• Participate in group discussions that foster connection, insight, and shared humanity.
• Learn how to integrate self-compassion into daily life as a sustainable, embodied practice.
• Deepen your experiential understanding of nonduality.
• Find new ways to access the heart of who you are.

Throughout the week, you’ll be supported in reconnecting with a sense of wholeness. Rather than attempting to fix an illusory and limited self, our time together will support us in having a direct experience of remembering, not “improving,” who we really are.

Recommended reading: The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together, by Caverly Morgan & A Kids Book About Mindfulness by Caverly Morgan

Gestalt is, at its heart, an awareness practice. It invites us to be present with what is. From that presence, insight, emotional regulation, and inner guidance begin to emerge.

Gestalt practice helps us connect with what is real and true for us, beyond old patterns, habitual self-judgment, or the impulse to fix ourselves. In a field of shared inquiry where judgment softens, authenticity has space to reveal itself. Integrative Gestalt Practice™, developed by Perry and Johanna Holloman over the past 30 years, combines deep awareness with embodied exploration. It offers practical tools for navigating relationships, life transitions, and meaningful inner questions with clarity and integrity.

During this workshop, you will:

• Learn Gestalt-based self-inquiry practices that deepen awareness and authentic connection.
• Engage in breath and movement-based exercises to access embodied wisdom.
• Strengthen your ability to recognize and follow your own inner guidance.
• Work in dyads and triads to practice deep listening to one another and your own soul’s unfolding wisdom.
• Participate in group processes that foster presence and genuine community.

Several participants will also have the opportunity to engage in individual “open seat” sessions — live, facilitated personal inquiry processes with Perry and Johanna, supported by the attentive presence of the group. Witnessing and participating in one another’s work are often powerful catalysts for insight, as shared themes and human experiences resonate across the group field.

Join us for a week of embodied inquiry, meaningful connection, and renewed contact with your agency and inner guidance.

Recommended Reading: Gestalt Therapy Verbatim by Frederick S. Perls and Steve Andreas and The Unfolding Now by A. H. Almaas

This workshop includes an additional $50 in faculty tuition.

Embody the power of fall by exploring the many ways to let go and let loose. Discover how to be at ease this season through yoga, soft foam rollers, movement, and stillness.

Surprise yourself with a fresh and creative way to move into release. Autumn is a natural time to liberate old energy and go inward. It’s a season to unwind the restless patterns of body and mind and reset them to a slower pace of time, rhythm, and kinesthetic connection.

As we practice yoga, we’ll shake loose through movement, cultivate deep sleep habits, and roll into release to bridge the contrasts of holding and letting go for inner calm. We’ll explore stillness with movement and long-held poses with fluid vinyasa. We’ll awaken positive muscle memories with relaxation and alignment techniques and learn how to lean more deeply into the bones for emotional and physical strength.

This fall, open into harmonious practices of asana and savasana to increase comfort before moving toward the dark of winter, longer nights, and deeper sleep. Together, we’ll replenish the body with grounding energy by calmly mirroring the trees to awaken inner peace — standing tall through the process of release.

Please bring your own soft foam roller. The recommended roller is 36” in length by 6″ in diameter. It must be long enough to support the whole spine.

Embark on a Personal Journey of Self-Discovery and Renewal

Self-Guided Explorations is a retreat designed to help you reconnect with yourself, your dreams, and your desires. Whether awakening dormant passions, healing past wounds, or simply remembering the joy of being alive, this experience provides a supportive and nurturing environment for transformation. Cultivate a sense of vitality and well-being through embodiment practice and writing, solitude and quiet enjoyment of the land, or whatever you need to reset, refresh, and recalibrate.

To Choose Not To Choose

Opening and closing circles with your cohort bookend a journey that presents you with options. You might take advantage of the opportunity to deepen your yoga practice, explore breathwork and meditation, enjoy conscious dance, immerse yourself in the creative arts, attend presentations by guest faculty, take a long soak under the stars, and so much more — or much, much less. Elevate your self-discovery journey with Esalen® Massage and/or a selection of holistic healing services offered by compassionate practitioners.

With an array of classes, activities, and therapeutic modalities to choose from, you have the freedom to tailor your experience to your individual needs and interests. Your Esalen experience is shaped by your own intuition and curiosity.

Rejuvenate the body and the mind with the deep relaxation that can be found through non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra. Whether you need a break from constant pressure, are navigating a life transition, or wish to delve deeper into your mindfulness and meditation practice, this retreat will provide space and time for contemplation and reflection.

Non-sleep deep rest, a term coined by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, refers to a waking state of deep relaxation. Evidence suggests reaching this state through NSDR protocols, such as yoga nidra, can reset dopamine levels, reduce cortisol, and provide numerous physical and mental health benefits — including better sleep and enhanced neuroplasticity. We will dig into this and other research during the course.

Together, we’ll go on an inner journey to connect to both ourselves and our life paths — and emerge refreshed and deeply rested. This will be a large-group experience, and we will practice lying-down guided protocols throughout the weekend.

This is a beginner experiential course and does not require knowledge of yoga nidra theory or history. There will be lots of chances to journal and connect with one another as we enjoy the natural beauty of Esalen and our time together!

Recommended Reading: The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You by Kelly Boys

Since falling in love is biologically natural, but sustaining love is biologically unnatural, Soul Mate focuses on the art and discipline of sustaining love. You begin with learning how to appreciate your partner so specifically and frequently that your partner feels fully seen and loved.

You then practice both the art and discipline of hearing your partner’s criticisms without becoming defensive. For example, so you don’t have to fear “walking on eggshells” before sharing a concern, your partner first learns how to prepare her or himself to emotionally associate your criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved.

Soul Mate is designed as the next evolutionary shift beyond active listening. Active listening allowed the criticizer to feel heard, but failed to teach the person hearing the criticism how to emotionally associate the criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved. The problem? Unless the receiver of criticism feels safe the person sharing their concern cannot feel safe.

You will learn a series of practices you may integrate into your everyday life:

• Six methods of sustaining a “conflict free zone” for 166 hours of your 168-hour week.
• A “Caring and Sharing Time” the remaining two hours by practicing six mindsets that allow you to not feel defensive when criticized.
• “Eleven Wisdoms” as a foundation for deepening your love.
• The four “depleters of love,” aka the “Four C’s” (Criticisms, Complaints, Controlling, and Complacency)
• How to use your new skills with your children, parents, work colleagues and people you differ with politically.
• How to use music and dancing to revitalize your love (to be practiced by dancing before each session)

To sustain your practice after the workshop, I invite you to free, ongoing, group follow-up calls to resolve stumbling blocks. If you wish to review the insights and exercises at any time, you will also have the option of purchasing a Zoom and book version of the course.

This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations.  Developed over the past 30 years, the workshop is also used by many health professionals in their work with clients and patients.

Recommended Resources: Role Mate to Soul Mate by Warren Farrell (BenBella: July 2024); additional video content on warrenfarrell.com.