#myEsalen — Teaching here has been one of the great honors of my life

As she sits on the Serpent Bench overlooking the sea, walks through the patch of the Garden with medicinal plants — “alive with subtle energy” — and passes Leonard Pavilion, where she leads her quarterly Power of Breath workshops, Sadia Bruce is conceptualizing the new artistic and cultural offerings she envisions bringing to Esalen and seemingly endless original programming possibilities. “Ones with the effect of translating complex ideas into embodied, actionable experience, offering guests pathways for praxis, integration, and belonging,” says Esalen’s Director of Product.

From where she lives in Cormorant Cove, a private part of campus with “the sweetest frequency for me,” Sadia brainstorms upcoming campus-wide celebrations, intentionally matching talent and experiences with the energies and register of the seasons: “When I first programmed Go Within and Summer Groove, I wasn’t just curating a seasonal series. This was about culture-shifting. Some of the most transportive moments I’ve experienced at Esalen have been musical, and I was building a living, breathing soundscape of cultural restoration and future vision.” Sadia continues to welcome some extraordinary visionaries — “like Tricia Hersey, Amy Secada, and Shahzad Ismaily” — and is planning to create new opportunities with names like adrienne maree brown, Patsy Rodenburg, Rick Rubin, Prentis Hemphill, Shamel Pitts, and Anoushka Shankar, to name a few. “Those whose work could profoundly nourish and expand our collective field while also, ideally, bringing some qualities of expansion to the teaching artists themselves,” she adds. 

“The experiential offerings I steward are designed to act as vital connective tissue — complementing the more esoteric, emergent, and rigorous cerebral content that anchors our workshop programming,” says Sadia. “As we continue to refine the full architecture of our programmatic ecosystem, I look forward to deepening my collaboration with my colleague, Head of Workshop Programming Frederica Helmiere, to strengthen the synergy between conceptual inquiry and transformative embodiment.”

Her bold plans for community, events, and workshops that spark transformation, much like her path to the Institute, have been quietly building for a lifetime. “My Esalen story began long before I ever set foot on the land. As a child growing up in suburban New Jersey, I was instinctively drawn to the lone New Age/Occult shelf in the corner of the bookstore,” says Sadia. “I lost myself in titles like Creative Visualization, The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, and The Seat of the Soul. Again and again, they pointed toward a mythical place called ‘Esalen’ and another oft-referenced name that seemed to carry a similar gravity: ‘California.’ Even then, I understood that both would find their way into my life.”

In 2021, after “stumbling” into the wellness industry and building a thriving teaching life in New York City, Sadia, weary from the disembodiment of pandemic life, applied for a residency at Esalen: “I arrived just days after my birthday — and the land, in its particular way, rearranged me.” She describes nature here as a “great teacher” that strips away artifice: “It insists on rhythm, on relationship, on truth-telling with the body and the spirit alike. Being here is a conversation with something ancient and elemental — something that demands stillness, summons endurance, and can only be met with awe.”  

What began as a brief residency unfolded into a deeper calling. “Since my first teaching stint, I’ve had the honor of guiding thousands of guests through movement, breath, and somatic inquiry. Through open classes, circles, and curated experiences, I’ve helped guests orient not just to Esalen but to a deeper conversation with themselves and the unseen intelligence of the land.” In 2023, Sadia formally joined the full-time staff as Head of Experiential Programming.

“Teaching here has been one of the great honors of my life,” says Sadia. “Nowhere else have I encountered such a continuous stream of extraordinary people — guests who arrive carrying their entire lives with them and who, somehow, are willing to meet the moment with vulnerability and hope.”

When asked about her visions for the future, Sadia details a “revitalization of this ecosystem —  a flourishing return to praxis, embodiment, community, sensuousness, and a deepened relationship with the land itself. I see us continuing to foster spaces where the abstract and the embodied are in dialogue — where philosophy and practice, inquiry and ritual, scholarship and creativity are not siloed but dance together in living, breathing conversation.”

Envisioning an Esalen that is even more vibrant and vital, Sadia describes “a sensuous ecosystem, where intellectual rigor meets embodied knowing, where the arts are not an accessory but a core expression, and where awe and aliveness are simply the ground we walk on.”