“Yoga at Esalen” can sound obvious. Of course there is yoga here. Yoga has been woven into the fabric of this place since the earliest days, carried forward through decades of inquiry, embodiment, and experimentation.
Today, yoga is everywhere. You can practice in studios on nearly every corner, in your living room, and over Zoom with teachers across the globe. The postures are familiar. The breath patterns are known. The rituals are well-loved.
What changes everything, however, is where you practice. At Esalen, yoga unfolds against the raw immensity of Big Sur: cliffs dropping into the Pacific, fog rolling in like a slow-moving prayer, hot springs steaming beneath open sky. Here, the practice is about letting the land, the ocean, and the shared field of community transform.
Yoga means union: of breath and body, inner and outer, self and world. When practicing together in this landscape, that meaning becomes visceral. You are not just moving through poses, you are moving with the elements, alongside others who have also come to immerse themselves in a different, soul-shifting backdrop.
Below are several yoga-centered workshops coming up this year. Each offers a different doorway into the practice, while sharing a common invitation: to take something already essential to your life and experience it in a place where it feels, for many, like home.
Janet Stone with Guest Musician Christian Dimarco
Janet Stone’s work is known for intelligence, heart, and accessibility. Moving Into Stillness invites you to explore the paradox at the center of yoga: how deliberate movement can guide us toward deep quiet. Mindful flow, breath, and reflection emphasize listening — to the body, to sensation, to the subtle cues that arise when effort softens into awareness.
Janet Stone with Guest Musician Christian Dimarco
In Nourish, Janet turns attention toward replenishment — physical, emotional, and energetic. This weekend workshop is a reminder that yoga is not only about discipline or strength, but about care. Practices are designed to restore balance and resilience, offering participants space to receive as much as they give.
dhruva
Drawing on classical yogic wisdom and embodied inquiry, dhruv raj nagar’s The Inverted Tree places the spine at the center. Through movement, meditation, and mantra, participants explore the spine as both physical structure and symbolic axis — rooted below, reaching upward, connecting heaven and earth.
Ulrika Engman
Ulrika Engman’s Luminous Yoga Spring Renewal centers on clarity, vitality, and inner radiance. Thoughtfully sequenced practices guide participants toward shedding winter’s heaviness and reawakening a sense of ease and brightness — on the mat and beyond it.
Hannah Muse
Your life is not simply a task to be managed but a mythopoetic mystery to be lived. Take a break from the mundane by engaging with archetypal wisdom, nondual yogic mythology, breathwork, meditation, yoga, dance, somatic journeys, self-inquiry, writing, and stories with the power to help us make sense of our lives. Awaken your spirit to courage, calm your mind, and widen your perspective to vast possibilities. You might just fall in love with existence again.
Jet Eveleth and Alex Halenda
The Sanskrit word Lila (“divine play") suggests creation isn’t an obligation but a spontaneous, joyful expression of the divine. This workshop is designed to help you dance between the everyday mundane and the spiritually sublime — with yoga, breathwork, and meditation to energize, exercises for nuanced body awareness, physical games that give birth to organic impulses, and opportunities to hear and share. Come unprepared, ready to explore, and open to an entirely new outlook on life.
Devarshi Steven Hartman
More than physical practice, yoga has always been a method of inquiry. In this workshop, Devarshi Steven Hartman explores yoga as a contemplative path — using movement, breath, and meditation to cultivate witness consciousness. The emphasis is on observing experience with clarity and compassion.
James H. Bae
This workshop introduces Tibetan yogic practices that work with the subtle body. Under James Bae’s guidance, students explore movement, breath, and visualization techniques designed to support energetic awareness, balance, and transformation — bridging physical practice with esoteric understanding.
Sianna Sherman and Masood Ali Khan
Held under the full moon, Mythic Yoga Flow® weaves yoga, mythology, and storytelling. Participants are invited into a symbolic practice where archetypes, lunar rhythms, and embodied movement converge — offering a deeply immersive, imaginative experience.
Cristi Christensen with Guest Musician Marques Wyatt
Soulstice Soulfire blends yoga, transformational dance, breathwork, crystal bowls, and immersive live soundscapes to awaken your inner fire and expand your summer light. Explore the chakras as pathways of consciousness, clear old energetic debris, and reconnect with embodied power. Emerge grounded, inspired, and glowing — and carry home ritual tools and a renewed sense of vitality to set your soul alight.
Janet Stone with Guest Musician DJ Drez
Guided by Janet Stone and DJ Drez, our days will weave strong and soulful yoga practice with music, mantra, mythology, and moments of stillness. We’ll sing, move, dance, rest, and remember — creating space to reaffirm intention, soften the nervous system, and reconnect with what matters most.
Janet Stone with Guest Musician DJ Drez
Through yoga and intentional music crafted from ancient beats, gather with Janet Stone & DJ Drez for our annual celebration of our inter-dependence. We’ll dive into meditation, pranayama, chanting, yoga asana, dance, hot baths, lovingly prepared food, open time, and space for connection, creativity and collaboration. Meet us at sacred Esalen on the cliffs, in the hot baths, in the redwoods, on the mat, and in the heart.
Annie Carpenter
Take an interiorizing journey from reactivity toward active, patient presencing. By blending alignment, breathwork, asana, and meditation, each practitioner will be gently guided and adjusted without judgment to their own personal edge — where clarity, focus, and authentic self-awareness emerge, and one can see, know, and be their truest self.
Practicing yoga at Esalen is an opportunity to let something familiar be made luminous by land, lineage, and collective presence. Sometimes the most profound shift doesn’t come from changing what you do, but from changing where, and with whom, you do it.
“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.”
–Aaron
“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve
“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer
“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne
“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter
“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.
“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori
“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.
Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.
What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?
Lead photo: Wari Om Yoga Photography
“Yoga at Esalen” can sound obvious. Of course there is yoga here. Yoga has been woven into the fabric of this place since the earliest days, carried forward through decades of inquiry, embodiment, and experimentation.
Today, yoga is everywhere. You can practice in studios on nearly every corner, in your living room, and over Zoom with teachers across the globe. The postures are familiar. The breath patterns are known. The rituals are well-loved.
What changes everything, however, is where you practice. At Esalen, yoga unfolds against the raw immensity of Big Sur: cliffs dropping into the Pacific, fog rolling in like a slow-moving prayer, hot springs steaming beneath open sky. Here, the practice is about letting the land, the ocean, and the shared field of community transform.
Yoga means union: of breath and body, inner and outer, self and world. When practicing together in this landscape, that meaning becomes visceral. You are not just moving through poses, you are moving with the elements, alongside others who have also come to immerse themselves in a different, soul-shifting backdrop.
Below are several yoga-centered workshops coming up this year. Each offers a different doorway into the practice, while sharing a common invitation: to take something already essential to your life and experience it in a place where it feels, for many, like home.
Janet Stone’s work is known for intelligence, heart, and accessibility. Moving Into Stillness invites you to explore the paradox at the center of yoga: how deliberate movement can guide us toward deep quiet. Mindful flow, breath, and reflection emphasize listening — to the body, to sensation, to the subtle cues that arise when effort softens into awareness.
In Nourish, Janet turns attention toward replenishment — physical, emotional, and energetic. This weekend workshop is a reminder that yoga is not only about discipline or strength, but about care. Practices are designed to restore balance and resilience, offering participants space to receive as much as they give.
Drawing on classical yogic wisdom and embodied inquiry, dhruv raj nagar’s The Inverted Tree places the spine at the center. Through movement, meditation, and mantra, participants explore the spine as both physical structure and symbolic axis — rooted below, reaching upward, connecting heaven and earth.
Ulrika Engman’s Luminous Yoga Spring Renewal centers on clarity, vitality, and inner radiance. Thoughtfully sequenced practices guide participants toward shedding winter’s heaviness and reawakening a sense of ease and brightness — on the mat and beyond it.
Your life is not simply a task to be managed but a mythopoetic mystery to be lived. Take a break from the mundane by engaging with archetypal wisdom, nondual yogic mythology, breathwork, meditation, yoga, dance, somatic journeys, self-inquiry, writing, and stories with the power to help us make sense of our lives. Awaken your spirit to courage, calm your mind, and widen your perspective to vast possibilities. You might just fall in love with existence again.
The Sanskrit word Lila (“divine play") suggests creation isn’t an obligation but a spontaneous, joyful expression of the divine. This workshop is designed to help you dance between the everyday mundane and the spiritually sublime — with yoga, breathwork, and meditation to energize, exercises for nuanced body awareness, physical games that give birth to organic impulses, and opportunities to hear and share. Come unprepared, ready to explore, and open to an entirely new outlook on life.
More than physical practice, yoga has always been a method of inquiry. In this workshop, Devarshi Steven Hartman explores yoga as a contemplative path — using movement, breath, and meditation to cultivate witness consciousness. The emphasis is on observing experience with clarity and compassion.
This workshop introduces Tibetan yogic practices that work with the subtle body. Under James Bae’s guidance, students explore movement, breath, and visualization techniques designed to support energetic awareness, balance, and transformation — bridging physical practice with esoteric understanding.
Held under the full moon, Mythic Yoga Flow® weaves yoga, mythology, and storytelling. Participants are invited into a symbolic practice where archetypes, lunar rhythms, and embodied movement converge — offering a deeply immersive, imaginative experience.
Soulstice Soulfire blends yoga, transformational dance, breathwork, crystal bowls, and immersive live soundscapes to awaken your inner fire and expand your summer light. Explore the chakras as pathways of consciousness, clear old energetic debris, and reconnect with embodied power. Emerge grounded, inspired, and glowing — and carry home ritual tools and a renewed sense of vitality to set your soul alight.
Guided by Janet Stone and DJ Drez, our days will weave strong and soulful yoga practice with music, mantra, mythology, and moments of stillness. We’ll sing, move, dance, rest, and remember — creating space to reaffirm intention, soften the nervous system, and reconnect with what matters most.
Through yoga and intentional music crafted from ancient beats, gather with Janet Stone & DJ Drez for our annual celebration of our inter-dependence. We’ll dive into meditation, pranayama, chanting, yoga asana, dance, hot baths, lovingly prepared food, open time, and space for connection, creativity and collaboration. Meet us at sacred Esalen on the cliffs, in the hot baths, in the redwoods, on the mat, and in the heart.
Take an interiorizing journey from reactivity toward active, patient presencing. By blending alignment, breathwork, asana, and meditation, each practitioner will be gently guided and adjusted without judgment to their own personal edge — where clarity, focus, and authentic self-awareness emerge, and one can see, know, and be their truest self.
Practicing yoga at Esalen is an opportunity to let something familiar be made luminous by land, lineage, and collective presence. Sometimes the most profound shift doesn’t come from changing what you do, but from changing where, and with whom, you do it.
Lead photo: Wari Om Yoga Photography
“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.”
–Aaron
“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve
“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer
“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne
“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter
“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.
“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori
“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.
Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.
What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?
“Yoga at Esalen” can sound obvious. Of course there is yoga here. Yoga has been woven into the fabric of this place since the earliest days, carried forward through decades of inquiry, embodiment, and experimentation.
Today, yoga is everywhere. You can practice in studios on nearly every corner, in your living room, and over Zoom with teachers across the globe. The postures are familiar. The breath patterns are known. The rituals are well-loved.
What changes everything, however, is where you practice. At Esalen, yoga unfolds against the raw immensity of Big Sur: cliffs dropping into the Pacific, fog rolling in like a slow-moving prayer, hot springs steaming beneath open sky. Here, the practice is about letting the land, the ocean, and the shared field of community transform.
Yoga means union: of breath and body, inner and outer, self and world. When practicing together in this landscape, that meaning becomes visceral. You are not just moving through poses, you are moving with the elements, alongside others who have also come to immerse themselves in a different, soul-shifting backdrop.
Below are several yoga-centered workshops coming up this year. Each offers a different doorway into the practice, while sharing a common invitation: to take something already essential to your life and experience it in a place where it feels, for many, like home.
“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.”
–Aaron
“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve
“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer
“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne
“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter
“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.
“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori
“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.
Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.
What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org
