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.

He gives back to the place that helped shape him.

Some experiences stay with us for a lifetime. For Joseph, Esalen has been the setting for some of the most meaningful chapters of his life. He first arrived in 1980 as a teenager and soaked in the baths beneath the stars, an experience that left, as he describes it, “a lasting imprint on my psyche.”

Three decades later, at a difficult crossroads, he found his way back to Esalen. What began as a return became an ongoing relationship with Esalen as a workshop participant, work scholar, volunteer, and devoted member of the community.

As a work scholar, Joseph has worked in the Kitchen, Farm & Garden, and CABinS departments. As a workshop guest he often brings friends and family. As a volunteer, he contributes his time and energy to a place that has given him so much.

“Esalen Institute has given me so much and really changed the trajectory of my life,” Joseph says. “I’ve received so much from here and, at the same time, I want to give back, and it is my pleasure and honor to be able to give back to the Institute and the place that has given me so much.”

She burned out trying to change the world, and learned transformation begins inside the body.

Marea came following years of environmental and social justice organizing during and after her studies at UNC Charlotte, where she studied Public Advocacy Communication and Urban Studies. She worked in student organizing and on grassroots campaigns, mobilizing students around environmental issues, including efforts to ban plastic grocery bags in California. The work was intense and became unsustainable. She felt burnout.

When Marea came to Esalen, she was carrying exhaustion and grief for our strained ecological systems. She could no longer override her depletion. A severe illness consumed her mere days before her scheduled arrival on the land. An experience that was for her an intense physical and spiritual purge. As she landed and began to heal, Marea learned to slow down. She began to notice her fear instead of pushing through it. “I have been living with a lot of fear,” she shared.

Something shifted in how she understood her work. She began to see that external change and internal transformation were inseparable. Now she carries that understanding forward, building a different foundation for the change she wants to bring into the world.

He didn’t think connection was possible, until he felt it.

Wuya has lived many lives already. His path has taken him through many worlds, studying Spanish in Puerto Rico, picking fruit and working construction in New Zealand, herding sheep and woodworking in Mexico, farming in Japan, mentoring youth in Taiwan. In California, he worked as a Cantonese and Mandarin interpreter in Monterey Bay, while also doing elder care and food delivery, supporting others as he searched for something more aligned, and for a sense of home.

When he arrived at Esalen, he was “in transition… looking for something more meaningful.” He didn’t expect much. “I thought it was just a tiny stepping stone,” he said. “I didn’t think I would have American friends. But it turned out to be the most amazing period of my life.”

One night, dancing with others for the first time, something shifted. He felt free in his body, open in a new way. He began to meet parts of himself he had long kept at a distance, and found they did not need to be pushed away. He let people in.

Now back in China, caring for his grandmother in her final chapter, Wuya carries that openness forward with a different sense of what’s possible.

Kiri came to Esalen to celebrate two milestones: her 70th birthday and her cancer survival anniversary. She arrived with her friend Wind, who was experiencing Esalen for the very first time.

Together, their week was a reminder of what makes Esalen special: the chance to step away from the demands of daily life and reconnect with oneself, with others, and with what matters most.

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.