Our podcast showcases in-depth interviews with the dynamic teachers and thinkers who are part of Esalen Institute. Hosted by Sam Stern, a former Esalen student and current staff member, the podcasts have featured engaging conversations with authors Cheryl Strayed and Michael Pollan, innovators Stan Grof and Dr. Mark Hyman, teachers Byron Katie, Mark Coleman and Jean Houston, Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, and many more.
These podcasts are made possible in part by the support of Esalen donors and are licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.
Listen to the latest episodes here, and subscribe to Voices of Esalen on Spotify, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.
Leah Song is one half of the musical duo Rising Appalachia — alongside her sister Chloe, they are an internationally touring folk ensemble steeped in the soul of the South that blends Americana music with lyrics, rhythm, and poetry to form a unique sound influenced by a blend of Appalachian, Irish, Latin and world roots music. Leah was at Esalen Institute for a week this summer to dance and make music with Lucia Horan and Douglas Drummond’s 5 Rhythms workshop, and she was kind enough to do a live interview on a Wednesday evening for a rapt audience of more than a hundred lucky souls. She spoke wisely about her history with activism, her love of 90's hip hop, her dynamic relationship with the festival scene, what slow music means to her, and a lot more. She even played several songs. What a gem!
Known to the masses as simply "JJ," JJ Jeffries is a recognizable figure on the Esalen campus, meeting and greeting arrivals with a kind and pleasant vibe, as well as a memorably dry sense of humor. Mentor, Gestalt and Embodied Awareness practitioner, musician, and memory-keeper, JJ teaches a host of classes at Esalen, including "How to Drop Into Esalen" and his suite of "Pathways to Joy" offerings.
JJ describes his pre-Esalen self as a “clueless yokel from Indiana” — the middle child of six boys, “born poor, perpetually confused, raised on corn and really bad TV.” Until he hit his stride at 22, when “I joined the privileged ranks of bartenders and ne’er do wells and never looked back.”
Says JJ, "Eventually, at Esalen, I was asked to lead meditation, which I crafted to include music, sensory awareness, and the chakras. Then, when asked to do a dance, I chose to delve into my studies of early childhood development, attachment theory and many other somatic arenas as vehicles to transform dance into a format that put these theories into practice. The intention was 'how do we connect without words and how do we discover our deepest desires by taking risks and being vulnerable together' — letting the body and experiences be our pathways to joy."
Vivian Rosenthal is co-founder of Frequency Breathwork and Diamond Rose Sanctuary, where she combines Kundalini, breathwork, and energy medicine to create profound shifts in consciousness.
Vivian has guided over 10,000 people through therapeutic breath work sessions. In this episode, we’ll split our time between Vivian speaking about how breath work can elicit non-ordinary states of consciousness that can help combat anxiety and stress, and an actual full length breath work session.
Vivian's is doing a lot in the world: her commitment to mental health has led her to collaborate with scientists on groundbreaking research, including a pilot study on using breathwork to treat PTSD, depression, and anxiety in veterans. She's also created the ambitious immersive symphonic breath work journey, “Symphony of the Soul” which debuted in Flint, Michigan, bringing together hundreds of people to embark on a communal and transcendent experience.
Get ready for an illuminating and experiential hour that might just change the way you think about your own body and the simple act of breathing.
Snow Raven, also known as Suor, a performer from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Arctic Siberia, now residing in the United States, performed live at Esalen Institute in January 2024 during our Go Within Series. Snow Raven is renowned for her unique blend of traditional shamanic practices and modern electronic music, which she uses to connect with and teach about her indigenous culture.
Snow Raven's artistic practice is rooted in neo-shamanism. She believes in the interconnectedness of all things. This philosophy extends to her use of technology, which she views as a natural extension of human innovation. She has collaborated on various projects that blend traditional shamanic elements with modern technology, including creating an algorithmic generator of her vocal sounds.
She stunned the crowd at Esalen with her riveting performance. Esalen's Sadia Bruce joins us today in this episode to talk about how she came to bring Snow Raven to Esalen. To conclude the episode, Bruce gives us a preview of Esalen's Summer Groove series for 2024, an exhilarating celebration of sound, creativity, and movement nestled amidst the breathtaking beauty of Esalen Institute.
Experience Snow Raven live when she returns to Esalen for the last week of this year's Go Within series, January 27–31, 2025.
Maddy Dychtwald is the author of the new bestselling book Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan. Maddy has been recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the top fifty female futurists globally. With her husband Ken Dychtwald, she is the co-founder of Age Wave, a world leader in understanding and addressing the far-reaching impacts of longevity and our aging population. She’s a member of The Wall Street Journal’s Expert Panel and has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Newsweek, Time, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR.
Her book Ageless Aging provides an insider’s guide to living better longer, covering everything from fitness and nutrition to hormones and ageism. Some pieces of the book:
Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social entrepreneur. As a historian, she studies Indian religions focusing on esoteric rituals and gender, particularly in Hindu traditions (Goddess Tantra). As an educator, she is the Instructional Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. At present, she is a Center for the Study of World Religions fellow at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University. In the past, she has taught at Harvard University, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, the University of Montana, and Rice University.
Sravana is currently working on no less than four book projects: Divinized Divas: Superwomen, Wives, Hijṛās in Hindu Śākta Tantra, The Serpent’s Tale: Kuṇḍalinī and the History of an Experience, Living Folk Religions, and Religious Responses to the Pandemic & Crises: Isolation, Survival, and #Covidchaos. Details of her published works can be found on this website, under the “Written” tab.
As a social entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of a nonprofit, Lumen Tree Portal. Sravana invests in building communities with individuals from various faith backgrounds who believe in kindness, compassion, and fulfillment. We are proud to have her as a Board of Trustees member for Esalen Institute. She also serves as an Advisory Board member for Compassionate Houston.
Kamilah Majied is a contemplative inclusivity and equity consultant, mental health therapist, clinical educator, researcher, and internationally engaged consultant on building inclusivity and equity using meditative practices. After 15 years of teaching at Howard University, she joined the faculty at California State University, Monterey Bay as Professor of Social Work. She teaches clinical practice to graduate students employing psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness-based, and artistic approaches to well-being, and authored a chapter in the second edition of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy, “Contemplative Practices for Assessing and Eliminating Racism in Psychotherapy.” Kamilah gave opening remarks at the first White House Conference of Buddhist Leaders on Climate Change and Racial Justice, where she also facilitated a dialogue on ending racism amongst the internationally represented Buddhist leadership. She is the author of the forthcoming book Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living (Sounds True, 2024).
In this episode we discuss her latest work, Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living, a book that not only challenges us to rethink our approach to justice but also invites us to engage with joy as a radical act of resistance. Through this discussion, Kamilah shares how interdependence and Buddhist insights, when blended with Black wisdom traditions, can offer rich perspective and possibility for both justice and joy. In this conversation, we explore how language and culture play pivotal roles in shaping our approach to liberation, and how art, music and contemplative practices can nurture joy as well as help us confronting the biases of our own intuition. So dig in, and get ready to build your discomfort resilience and stoke your fierce compassion.
Music credits: Blue Dot Sessions tracks
Dr. Andrea Juhan is a revered figure in the realms of somatic psychotherapy, dance, and yoga. With over forty years dedicated to exploring embodiment through diverse avenues — be it bodywork, somatic psychotherapy, or dance — Dr. Juhan has profoundly impacted the fields of mindful movement and therapeutic practices.
Andrea is not only a licensed Marriage and Family Psychotherapist but also holds a Ph.D. in Dance and Movement Therapy. Her commitment to the development of body awareness and embodied movement practices has guided hundreds of movement teachers, psychotherapists, and healthcare professionals.
As a co-founder of Open Floor International, Andrea has helped foster a global community dedicated to using conscious movement and dance to promote creativity, social justice, and well-being. Her journey reflects a deep devotion to the felt sense of life, blending the transformative qualities of presence, compassion, and spiritual union.
In our conversation, Andrea shares her experiences from those formative years at Esalen — how the dynamic and expressive environment fostered her deep interest in the embodied movement practices that would define her career. She reflects on the support of pivotal figures like Janet Lederman, Dick Price, Chris Price, Dean Juhan, Gabrielle Roth, her father, Dr. Jack Rosenberg, and the Esalen massage crew of the 1980's. We also get into catharsis, trauma, holotropic breathwork, Open Seats, the original encounter groups, the genesis of Open Floor, and much more.
Join us as we delve into a thoughtful discussion on the healing powers of movement and the continuous journey of self-discovery.
In recent times, an essential piece of our nation’s history is facing challenges and censorship across the country, making it all the more crucial we reaffirm our commitment to honoring and understanding our shared narrative. Our discussion today is not just a journey through the past; it's a conversation about the importance of preserving these narratives in the face of attempts to erase them.
Historian Jan Batiste Adkin’s work meticulously documents the rich history of Black people in these regions, shedding light on the experiences of these communities. She is the author of African Americans of San Francisco, African Americans of Monterey County, and African Americans of San Jose and Santa Clara County and in this conversation she sheds light on the major trends and experiences of Black communities in the California Bay Area from the time of the establishment of the Golden State.
This conversation was recorded live at Esalen in late February of 2024.
Visit Jan Adkins at www.africanamericanhistories.com.
Bayo Akomolafe is an author, teacher, and modern philosopher whose work challenges the boundaries of conventional thought. Bayo was born in 1983 into a Christian home to Yoruban parents in western Nigeria. Soon after he was born, his family moved to Bonn, Germany, to accommodate his diplomat father. While in Zaire, Bayo’s father passed away suddenly, leaving a teenaged Bayo to grapple with the painful loss.
As a young, restless academic, Bayo studied psychology and notions of healing, eventually meeting with scores of traditional shamans in a quest to better understand the notion of trauma, healing, and well-being. His concerns for decolonized landscapes congealed into a life spent exploring the nuances of a “magical” world he describes as “too promiscuous to fit neatly into our fondest notions of it.”
I think you’ll find that Bayo's work is deeply rooted in the trickster archetype, which above all else encourages us to reconsider the solidity of things: of our understandings of reality, identity, and activism. He’s an advocate for a world beyond fixed boundaries, where his only clear allegiance is to emergence, to a perpetual becoming rather than being.
I had such a wonderful time talking to Bayo — and I’ll mention that his ideas, so rich in density and expressed with a true poetic grace — might not unfold their meanings upon first listening. Let the buyer beware. Yet, as we navigate this conversation, the layers begin to reveal themselves, and in the end, they present a convincing argument for reconceiving reality, not as a static entity but as a dynamic unfolding of relations.
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