Esalen Video Shorts

Rod Stryker’s new program, Luminous Coherence: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, Lasting Freedom, invites you into a state of unified awareness where old patterns soften and the deeper self comes into view. Blending tantric practice with modern neuroscience, this workshop offers a rare chance to rediscover coherence, intuition, and the possibility of real transformation.

She keeps coming back to see what else is possible.

Theda has been returning to Esalen since the 1980s, drawn again and again by curiosity about practice and what it makes possible over time. She first arrived as a student and seeker during a period of academic intensity, looking for a way to reconnect with herself beyond structured study.

A formative early experience came when she joined a workshop with Babatunde Olatunji. Through movement, drumming, and collective rhythm, she encountered something she had not felt before. A sense of freedom and recognition in the body. She has described it as the first time she experienced dance not as performance, but as something that unified mind and body rather than separating them.

Over the decades, she has returned in many forms, as a seminarian, work scholar, workshop participant, and assistant. Each return deepening a practice of inquiry and embodiment. What brings her back is simple and ongoing. It is a place where she can reset her nervous system, reconnect with her center, and return to herself.

In a world that often feels fast and unrelenting, Esalen remains a kind of refuge. A space to rest, practice, and continue beginning again.

Lihi Benisty’s August workshop The Inner Atlas: Mapping the Self Through Somatic Self-Inquiry invites participants into a rich cartography of the self through breathwork, somatic movement, writing, sound, and relational mirrors. Each day explores a different inner landscape: sensation, emotion, lineage, archetype, story, and possibility. Watch the video for a glimpse into this week of embodiment, reflection, and self-discovery.

They spend their lives caring for others, and found a way to care for each other.

Paras and Mike came to Esalen from San Jose. Both work in the emergency room, and, carry the steady weight of caring for others. The pace is constant and the stakes are high in the ER. Outside of work, life had brought additional strain. Paras is moving through grief after the loss of her brother, alongside the physical and emotional intensity of menopause, as well as deep concern for family back in Iran. It became too difficult to keep going at the same pace.

When she saw a weeklong massage workshop, she applied for a scholarship for them. They were accepted. Paras was coming to relax and breathe more deeply; Miike was focused on supporting her through the experience.What unfolded was something they had not fully expected. As the days went on, the work began to include both of them. Touch became a way back. They slowed down. They listened. They practiced. Something shifted between them. Not just relief, but deeper connection. They left Esalen with a shared language they could carry home. They had a way of caring for each other, not only for others.

Jeffrey J. Kripal reflects on Biological Gods: Evolution and the Coming Superhumans, a July 2026 seminar with John Allison exploring the charged intersection of evolution, myth, language, and spiritual transformation. Drawing from Darwin, Nietzsche, Aurobindo, Sylvia Wynter, psychedelics, and Esalen’s own history of human potential, the workshop asks whether the stories we tell about humanity may help shape what humanity becomes.

The ego often rests in a quiet assumption of insufficiency: the sense that we are somehow not enough, or that this moment is not enough. Through movement, stillness, somatic inquiry, and relational mindfulness, Deborah Eden Tull's upcoming August 2026 workshop, Fluidity in Motion: Presence, Play, and Spontaneous Awareness, invites participants to soften that grip and rest more deeply in presence, guided by the wisdom of the water element. Set against the dramatic coastline of Big Sur, the experience offers space to reconnect with the intelligence of the body, the living world, and the deeper currents moving beneath ordinary life.