Our workshops are designed to support you in the challenging work of self exploration, in partnership with some of the leading minds of the day. Join us in discovering the next frontiers of individual and societal transformation.
Interested in a scholarship?
Learn MoreOur emotions help us respond to the threats and opportunities in our daily lives and profoundly impact our individual and collective well-being. Feeling the joys and pains of our emotions is universal, yet what makes us emotional and how we respond is unique. We become emotional without our conscious awareness. Developing emotional awareness is like navigating this otherwise invisible inner landscape by holding the full range of our human experience with compassion and creativity.
In this experiential workshop, we will draw from the evidence-based Cultivating Emotional Balance training, which integrates the wisdom traditions of modern psychology and emotion research and ancient contemplative practices as a path for transformation.
Each session will balance learning, being, and connecting. Learning will include teachings on the scientific and contemplative foundations of emotional awareness. We practice being with guided meditations and reflective practices to develop mindful awareness and compassion for our mental and emotional patterns and habits. Connective practices include discussion and small group work to investigate the roots of our emotions through mapping of our emotional episodes. Mapping our emotional episodes is like slowing down the reel and seeing the story beneath what triggers us, how we feel, and how we respond to our fears, delights, frustrations, enjoyments, feelings of shame, and more.
The foundation for emotional awareness is connected with our internal longing for contentment and flourishing, reflections on genuine well-being and meaningful life, and meditations that establish the clarity of intention and commitment to our own and other’s well-being. Through learning, being, and practicing with our emotions, we can remove the “dust from the gold” of our compassionate hearts.
A daily writing practice and a consistent meditation practice have the power to ground us during difficult times. Writing gives us perspective and helps us make sense of the world. Mindfulness teaches us how to make space for the joy as well as the fear.
This experiential meditation retreat and writing workshop invites writers and meditators of all levels to delve deeply into both practices. We’ll begin each day with a burst of free writing — what Natalie Goldberg calls ‘writing practice’ — generating work we will share with each other in a safe and supportive environment.
We will follow with guided meditations crafted to help us develop the resources necessary to cope in times of crisis, as well as nourish our creativity. Our meditations encourage presence to the world, forge strong mind/body connectivity, and greater access to our emotions and empathy.
The workshop’s meditations are supported by prompted bursts of free writing designed to help us tap into our creative energy, bypass our internal judge, and bring out our most original and deeply felt writing. We’ll explore how the dual practices of free writing and journaling can support us during times of uncertainty and change.
There will be time to write and time to share what we’re writing with the group. Everyone will leave with the tools and the inspiration to cultivate their own daily meditation and daily writing practices.
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look beyond the false duality of a divided self and the destructive concept of “self versus nature” to discover how to live in harmony and balance within ourselves and the world around us.
You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine. This is your opportunity to examine what that means while sharing healing wisdom and practices. This workshop will offer the tools to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul, and to honor and heal all you have inherited from your ancestral lineage, along with the social, cultural, racial, religious, and historical energies tangled in your lives. You will learn about the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies.
Learn about the importance of ceremonies, sacred altars, and medicinal plants and participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing and “doctoring” ceremony, and a water blessing prayer ceremony.
You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.
We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.
Note: Please bring a journal to write in, and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.
Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com
The Artist lives within everyone! Art can be made out of just about anything! It’s a time to leave the critic behind and allow oneself to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit. It’s also a time to enjoy the company and camaraderie of like-minded peers. Now is your time to discover the joys of art based on community and collaboration and to find out how meaningful and grand a shared, creative experience can be.
In this transformative workshop, we will use repurposed material in a whole new context of re-creation.
Come experiment with a vast array of reused materials to create mixed-media mosaics, sculptures, and collages. There will be an assortment of recycled glass, metals, wood, plastics, paper, photographs, fabrics, and old artifacts — bits and pieces of the past and present.
In a beautiful, nurturing, supportive setting, we will reclaim and shape society’s scraps and discarded objects into re-imagined meaning. Find your own inner voice of expression as you delve into the process of creating art out of different materials and mediums, and learn new skills.
Not only will you have the opportunity to explore your own expression and immerse yourself in solo creations, but we will also engage in a collaborative group project to enter the whimsical world of community-oriented magic and play.
There is a transformative joy that comes from engaging with others in the artistic process. It opens doors unseen and forges deeper bonds between people. This exciting, shared experience teaches us how beautiful it is to break down barriers and collaborate.
This workshop is geared toward anyone with the desire to create. From the beginner to the advanced, this is a time to explore new possibilities. Together, we will:
If there are any recycled materials, special mementos, poems, or photos you would like to bring and include in our creations, please feel free!
This workshop includes an additional $110 for art materials.
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Sitting in stillness to draw a flower, tracing the mountain’s slope with brushstrokes by eye, following the sound of waves down corridors of memory, and free association through writing – these are gestures of connection as much as they are creative acts. Join us for an intimate creative workshop on the enchanted grounds of Esalen Institute and along the trails of the Big Sur coast to explore art making as a relational practice with the wild.
Immersed in the outdoors during the first lovely days of summer, we will write, draw, and craft to nourish our innate creative capacities and cultivate kinship with the land. We will hike to set ourselves on the creative path, grounding our bodies and opening our senses as we move through the landscape. While emphasizing a spirit of play and practice over product and gathering inspiration and materials from the environment, we will engage with a variety of media as pathways of meaningful connection with the self and the natural world.
Acknowledging Big Sur to be a precious, biodiverse wilderness and the sacred ancestral land of the Esselen Tribe, our artistic gestures will be humble offerings of reverent attention to the living world. May we joyfully participate in a collective creativity – one we share with the trees, boulders, rivers, birds, and all beings – to honor the Earth and our interconnectedness.
Activities will include:
Please note that this workshop is for people with all levels of creative practice, including those with no previous experience. You do not need to identify as an “artist” to participate. Various hiking abilities can be accommodated, but bear in mind that day hikes will be up to five miles long with rugged, uneven, and sometimes steep terrain. Participants must be able to sit on the ground for periods of time. If you have any questions about your ability to participate, please read the workshop FAQs or email info@wildtender.com. Answers to frequently asked questions about the workshop can be found here.
This workshop includes a $40 material fee and $60 of additional tuition for park fees and art supplies.
We are going to write. We are going to gather and fill our notebooks with prose, poetry, and possibility.
The moment we dare to show up on a blank page, we begin to transform our pain and fear. We reclaim energy when we write our truths. The page is a great reflection of our inner lives and offers the possibility of the new. In our days together, Heidi will share poetry and prose and offer prompts for inspiration and exploration.
We will definitely explore the beauty of poetry, but we will write in all manner of forms. Do not feel that you need to write poetry this week. Write anything and everything. You will have space and time and plenty of inspiration to put your heart on the page.
Now and then, we will also share our work with one another. When we read our work out loud, we catalyze the changes we are exploring in our lives. When we name something about ourselves or our world and sound it forth, we begin to set it free or make it manifest!
Heidi’s writing has spanned decades. Her love of poetry infuses all that she writes. Esalen itself is a nature poem, and to write in a landscape that is poetic is truly a gift.
Join Heidi for a weeklong of nourishing, deep-diving days.
Recommended reading: Everyday Radiance: 365 Zodiac-Inspired Prompts for Self-Care and Self-Renewal by Heidi Rose Robbins; Zodiac Love Letters by Heidi Rose Robbins; Wild Compassion by Heidi Rose Robbins; This Beckoning Ceaseless Beauty by Heidi Rose Robbins
Come home to your whole body instrument and discover your unique sound!
Isaac and Thorald Koren have been guiding people home to their voices for over 20 years, through their original embodied approach.
They both believe singing and speaking are radical acts of self-expression and that exploring your instrument with full freedom takes tremendous courage. Science confirms the healing power of the voice — that intentional vocal toning creates measurable vitality and joy in our lives and empowers our whole body experience of life itself.
During this weekend exploration of your Embodied Voice, the brothers set a safe space for you to reclaim your power and connection to your body through a series of practical and experiential practices that require no prior musical or singing ability. Through simple and fun exercises, they will help you ground down into the gravity of your whole body instrument and sound out powerfully what it feels like to be you and alive.
The benefits are clear: from finding new freedom and trust in your singing and speaking voice, to moving through voice trauma and learning to use your voice as a sacred healing tool. Practically, whether speaking at a conference, teaching a class, or singing in an arena, we see it as all one center of personal gravity, held deeply in the Embodied Voice you’ve been gifted this lifetime. These are joyful and rewarding practices that you can integrate into your daily life.
The brothers’ method invites you away from performing and welcomes you into a real time experience of your voice, reclaiming a new relationship to your own expressive self, deepening a connection to the music of the Earth and the resonance of life.
The brothers invite you to experience your voice as incomparable, unmistakable, fascinating, and wholly distinct. They welcome you to experience your soul’s voice through fun and embodied practices of self-expression, union, and communion.
No musical or singing experience required.
Beginners encouraged!
For over 30 years, Paul Heussenstamm has been traveling worldwide and teaching Art as a Spiritual Path. His beautiful soul mandalas have been created by individuals who have never painted before, and others seeking to expand their creativity through mandala practice. Mandala painting is a genuine form of meditation, cultivating inner harmony as the mandala births itself through painting participants.
Art as a Spiritual Path has been taught at Esalen since the 90’s, and we have shared the wisdom of the mandalas with participants from all over the world. The mandala, an integrated image of wholeness, dates back to ancient times. Mandala practice, while painting, opens the heart, calms the mind, and has the capacity to expand consciousness.
During this dynamic program, we will…
Reveal the artist inside each of us!
The workshop is a gentle entry into the left brain hemisphere revealing the capacity to open each of us to the creative experience. Each participant joins the workshop as an individual, while the mandala binds the group together, as we all work together to have each individual artist reveal a beautiful, meditative, and radiant mandala.
There is no experience necessary as the workshop technique has been simplified to allow either a beginner or advanced creative person to have the experience of finishing a mandala and/or another sacred image. This workshop includes an additional $25 for materials.
When we experience moments of ecstasy, we taste what life is meant to be. — Gabrielle Roth
The 5Rhythms® maps hold all the information required to lead us where we want to go. What is your destination? There is a science to achieving ecstatic states, and this is the mastery we have come to share. This workshop is designed for all who want to discover these possibilities for entering altered states in a natural way.
"I want to take you to a place of pure magic ... It's the place athletes call ‘the zone.’ Buddhists call ‘satori’ and ravers call ‘trance.’ I call it the Silver Desert. It's a place of pure light that holds the dark within it. It's a place of pure rhythm,” wrote Gabrielle Roth. Her dance and somatic meditation can assist you in navigating your way out of resistance and into ecstasy and help you build a skill set that supports balance, ease, and joy. If you have been looking to increase appreciation, gratitude, and happiness, now is a perfect time to celebrate being alive in the wild, wondrous, natural beauty of Esalen.
This course will include:
Lucia and Douglas, the dancing duo, invite you to join them for a week of dance and celebration under the new moon. Together with our team of musicians and artists, we seek to bring you inspiration and lightness so you return home feeling nurtured and alive.
Recommended Reading: Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy by Gabrielle Roth, Connections by Gabrielle Roth, Dancing with the Dharma edited by Harrison Blum
This workshop has an additional $100 of faculty tuition.
To breathe well is to live well. When we befriend the breath, we expand our capacity for choice, change, joy, and healing. When we embody breath — allowing limbs and bones to express outwardly the dynamic, unceasing pulsation of life within — we touch freedom.
In this new and electrifying experiential workshop, we’ll explore and deepen our connection to our breathing bodies through a number of somatic pathways: embodied movement, breathwork, presencing exercises, meditation in motion, and sound.
Operating from philosopher Havi Carel’s conception of breath as “a juncture of the physiological, psychological, existential, spiritual, and cultural,” we’ll practice dancing and digging at this intersection and, in effect, access a felt reconnection to our wholeness.
Join Sadia in her signature practice, which draws from her many deep pools of training and experience. This deeply embodied practice will include:
Together, we’ll form a sacred community of breathing beings and establish conditions for the unobstructed flow of life force within and around our bodies — and our lives. The natural, subtly explosive intimacy that exists between body and breath — and between you and your breathing body— can emerge anew, rendering you more sensitized to desire, pleasure, purpose, and power; to who you are, what you want, and why.
We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Through mindful viewing of eight feature films — today’s vehicles of myth — participants will open their hearts to the quality of belonging with and to others that is so important in our time. We will trace how cinema’s greatest directors have depicted intolerance and ways to embrace the other through compassion, love, and recognition of our interdependence as humans. Your cinematic repertoire will include films directed by D.W. Griffith, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Kon Ichikawa, Kenneth Branagh, Celine Song, and more.
Employing methods developed over the course of 28 film seminars co-led by Francis Lu and Brother David Steindl-Rast, this seminar will include mindful film viewing, contemplative reflection, and group interactions focused on each participant’s unique experience of these carefully curated films. As Joseph Campbell taught, “the images of myths are reflections of the spiritual and depth potentialities of every one of us …Through contemplating those, we evoke their powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves.”
The viewing experience will be supported by 4K Blu-Ray video projection and a surround sound of seven loudspeakers.
5.5 CE Credits for Health Professionals are available for an additional $35 fee payable to the workshop leader. Click here for details.
Dr. Lu personally recommends, but does not require, that participants use N95 masks during the workshop sessions, which will be provided.
For further information about the seminar, please contact Francis Lu, MD, at francislumd@gmail.com
Part writing workshop and part tantric retreat, this unique practice week explores the relationship between personal writing and subtle body practices.
Religious historian and Tantric practitioner Sravana Borkataky-Varma will lead experiential sessions largely stemming from Hindu Goddess Tantra practices. Award-winning author and scholar Erik Davis will then guide the group in reading and writing exercises, developing skills and techniques that will help us creatively express our embodied experiences.
Exercises and opportunities will include:
Over the days, we will collectively cultivate a feedback loop between writing, discussion, and inner work. Through this alchemical process, participants will learn to more intimately and poetically clarify their subtle experiences, while at the same time using the power and energy of such practices to fire up and inspire their writing life.
This workshop has an additional $50 of faculty tuition.
Join us for an extended opportunity to explore the true essence of Esalen, and find yourself in the process. Like a snapshot of all that we do here on campus, this workshop is composed of enlivening and heart-opening classes that are driven by Esalen’s founding areas of focus: Heart, Mind, Body, Spirit, and Community.
During this month-long program, a cohort of like-minded students will have the opportunity to lean into the richness and diversity of programming that has both grown up on campus and is being infused into its current culture. In addition to working in service to the running of Esalen, the workshop classes have been designed to support the process of healing, transformation, and joy.
Classes will be led by the Esalen Resident Faculty Team, each bringing something uniquely transformative to the daily experience. Practices will include:
Come experience Esalen for a heartful and healing month of service and transformation!
Since time immemorial, movement, dance, and the expressive arts have provided individuals and communities with a sense of soulful expression, healing, inspiration, spirit, and connection. We now need to reconnect with these ways more than ever.
The Life/Art Process®, developed by Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin, bridges body awareness, art expression, and psychological processes, providing people with an opportunity to experience dance and the expressive arts as a way to learn, heal, expand creativity, and develop new strategies for personal and professional life. This groundbreaking, innovative approach to human development, embodied creativity, and transformative learning began in the 1950s, and the tradition continues today.
Daria Halprin’s work connects dance, somatics, psychology, and artistic practices to foster personal, group, and community development and creativity. In this workshop, movement, dance, drawing, poetic dialogue, reflective exchanges, and witnessing practices will generate new thresholds of exploration and expression, catalyzing new resources for daily life.
Morning sessions will focus on somatic awareness and individual and group movement exploration to tune the physical body to sensation and feeling. Afternoon sessions will facilitate creative encounters through dance, drawing, and spoken and written narratives to explore our life experiences. Evening sessions will be devoted to questions generated by the day’s work, reflection, and releasing activities, including creative play and meditative art practices.
Participants will be invited to :
No previous artistic experience is necessary. This workshop is designed for everyone.
Recommended Reading: The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy by Daria Halprin
For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used as a strategy for meaningful transformation and self-exploration — marking life’s major transitions and rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.
In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of enhanced states of consciousness. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.
Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.
This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.
Recommended Reading: Holotropic Breathwork by Stan Grof
Are you feeling the existential impacts of climate imbalance, global crises, and so much more? Are you seeking sustainable ways to care for both yourself and the Earth? This workshop, led by Cambridge University psychologist and eco-doula Lindsay Branham, will equip you with somatic and contemplative tools to explore your own relationship with the Earth.
As Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum famously said, “In the end, we will conserve only what we love.” This statement from 1968 still speaks directly to the missing piece at the heart of the unfolding environmental mega-crisis: the fact that human beings have been severed from our physical, emotional, and spiritual connection to nature.
Learn meaningful ways to foster a relationship with the Earth that can improve your personal, mental, and physical health. In return, you’ll transform how you love the Earth. Intersectional sustainability meets erotic ecology in this experiential workshop, which blends ecological education with storytelling, meditation, and embodied practices to help you develop your own unique relationship with nature.
You are invited to become re-enchanted with the Earth. Come explore the wondrous cosmic tenderness of interconnectivity. We belong to one another, every living thing.
Recommended Reading: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Learn to call on your spirit guides and tap into your intuitive mind. Join us in a transformative workshop combining scientifically proven brain-enhancing techniques with intuitive guidance to help you break free from self-limiting patterns and create the life you desire.
This workshop brings together two powerful approaches to help you develop tools for personal growth and transformation. Through easy-to-learn exercises, you will learn how opening neural pathways to your higher consciousness can bring valuable insights into areas where you may feel stuck. By thinking outside the box and accessing your intuitive mind, you have the ability to unlock your creative potential and experience increased productivity and happiness.
Guest faculty Joseph Perreta, a certified psychic medium, will guide you in connecting with your support system on the other side. Joseph’s ability to channel messages directly from the spirit world offers validation, clarification, healing, and peace. His presence will enrich your experience and provide a deeper understanding of the spiritual realm.
Throughout the workshop, you will develop practical tools that you can apply whenever you face important decisions or obstacles in life. By harnessing your intuition and uncovering profound insights about yourself, you will gain the clarity and confidence needed to make positive changes.
Our intention is to empower you to unlock your intuitive mind and carry these transformative practices with you long after the workshop ends. Please come prepared with a notebook or journal and a pen to capture your experiences and reflections.
This workshop has two options on length of stay: a traditional weeklong of two nights or a long weekend of three nights. The extended stay workshop will include more workshop content which is reflected in the extended stay schedule.
How much joy we experience in life is limited by our ability to show up each day with unapologetic authenticity. For many people who identify as LGBTQIA2S+, feeling safe or supported to live authentically may not have been an option. As a result, many of us live disempowered lives— stuck in jobs, relationships, and routines that we no longer identify with. In turn, many of us have been able to break free from those past lives but still carry the weight of grief and trauma that come from years of living inauthentically.
This interactive, thought-provoking, and supportive workshop is designed to help you move away from the pain of the past, and set your inner child free into a safe, welcoming and vibrant relationship with you and your Self. During this week, you will explore a series of creative exercises individually and together as a group. By tapping into the voice of your inner child, releasing what no longer serves you, there is safer and more gentle space for experiencing joy like never before.
You will have the opportunity to:
This workshop is welcome to anyone who identifies as an LGBTQIA2S+ person or, a family member or friend of someone seeking to live more authentically in partnership with their inner child, and discover ways to support the LGBTQIA2S+ people in their lives.
Recommended Reading: Sex, Needs and Queer Culture: From Liberation to the Post-Gay by David Alderson, The Empty Chair: Tales From Gestalt Therapy by Vikram Kolmannskog, Body Bliss: A Guided Pleasure Journal for Exploration and Self-Love by Robin Denise.
Nature provides us with space to quiet our souls, gain perspective, and harness our creativity. Explore Esalen’s stunning grounds to find places that resonate and inspire your mosaic art, be it big vistas, small individual succulents, or anything in between. Mosaic is a slow and contemplative art form, perfectly suited for Esalen’s restorative setting.
In this mosaic workshop, we’ll discuss patterns found in nature, which translate beautifully into the medium of mosaic. Conceive, develop, and realize your own mosaic project, with guidance offered by mosaic artist Wilma Wyss. You will sketch initial concepts in pencil, and Wilma will work one-on-one with you as you develop your concept into mosaic artwork. We compose with a wide selection of stained glass. Demonstrations include cutting and shaping the stained glass, adhesives, and use of color. Presentations illustrate relevant examples and the power of pattern.
Known for her joyful teaching style and her creative use of materials, Wilma provides individual instruction to foster your creativity. This workshop is designed for participants who may have some experience with mosaic, as well as anyone who has never touched a wheeled nipper. All tools and materials are provided to complete one or more wall-hung mosaics.
Contact wilma@wyssdesign.com if you plan to bring your own tools and materials.
Join us for a weekend to remember as we delve into the depths of the human soul, guided by the visionary founders of Afro Flow Yoga®.
This workshop is an immersive experience weaving together the healing powers of yoga, dance, live music, and the ancient wisdom of African and Indigenous cultures. Together, we will embark on a sacred exploration, connecting with our inner selves and the healing energies of the sacred waters, igniting personal and collective transformation.
During this workshop, we will explore:
Join us for a weekend of harmony, healing, and empowerment as we unlock the symphony of our souls and unleash our true potential.
This immersive week-long lab is for creators of all kinds––writers, inventors, filmmakers, musicians, and entrepreneurs––anyone who wishes to integrate their spirituality and creativity to tap into the deepest source of inspiration and higher intelligence as they bring guided work into the world.
In the words of Carl Jung, “People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.” By breaking down this process of allowing into three stages (Creation, Manifestation, and Transmission), we will walk together along an impactful, sacred path designed for cohesion, connection, incubation, and transformation.
We live in a world of great distraction that doesn’t encourage deep listening. We must reverse those outer-facing sensory “searchlights” and go inwards. When you dive into the field of all possibilities, ideas surprisingly find you with a very specific intention. As you attune to that purpose, you gain discernment, direction, momentum, and flow.
Over the course of five days, you’ll face the “demons” that get in the way of meaningful work, including inertia, ego, outer blocks, and inner resistance. You will discover how obstacles can be an in your process develops organic, sustainable partnerships, growth, and co-creation.
In this workshop, you’ll be guided through:
Employing timeless principles from Vedic philosophy, this class will use nonlinear brainstorming to deepen our inspiration, along with experiential exercises. You will do yoga, breathwork, meditation, and movement to tap into the matrix of your creative capacity. You’ll recalibrate intentions and goals. Every step of the lab will contain practical solutions to push through whatever is in your way.
The lab is open to creators of all levels. You can attend either as an “incubator” (with a specific project or idea that you want to workshop) or as an “observer/participant” (to glean knowledge about conscious creation by watching the process unfold and also participating). In either case, you must submit a one-page application describing your background and creative goals. If you’re bringing a project to the lab, please describe it in one paragraph, tell us where you are with it, and where you want to take it.
Recommended Reading: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
You are what you practice. Or, as the Buddha said, “Whatever you frequently reflect and ponder upon, that becomes the inclination of your mind.”
This essential observation is examined from our intertwined perspectives on contemplative practice, brain science, and music. Through interactive inquiries and guided meditations, Nikki Mirghafori will lead a journey into mindfulness and compassion cultivation. Neuroscientist Clifford Saron will take us on a voyage of discovery into the mysteries of the brain and neuroplasticity. San Francisco Symphony cellist Barbara Bogatin will inspire us with Bach and provide a rare glimpse from inside the process of musical creativity.
Each day unfolds with a thematic focus, allowing us to dive deep into the three intertwined practices and perspectives. Together, we will:
This workshop is for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of themselves and their connection to others through the lens of mindfulness, science, and creativity. Whether you’re a meditator, musician, clinician, or simply curious, you’ll find valuable tools and perspectives to enrich your personal and professional life. No previous experience in meditation, music, or brain research is necessary!
Join us for this unique exploration of how these practices can harmonize, offering paths to inner peace and more joyful engagement with the world.
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Have you ever dived into the ocean of Tantra? Join Tantric scholar-practitioners Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Keith Edward Cantú as we explore Tantric practices and perspectives on topics like freedom from external interference and self-sovereignty (Sanskrit svādhikāra), the link between physical and so-called “subtle bodies,” and the creation of physical mandalas (maṇḍala) or circles and other shapes that potentially can transform our internal and external environments.
Together, we will immerse ourselves in the latest research and ethnographic “participant observation” that challenge and reframe our conventional understandings of what Tantra was, is, and can be. Staying true to the roots of Esalen, we will also intertwine discussion with authentic South Asian folk musical performances, songs, and guided meditations for a creative, visceral experience for the mind, body, and heart. Our collective practice of these new understandings will illuminate Tantra’s connections to a wide variety of vibrant artistic and meditative practices in an eye-opening and unforgettable way.
In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:
We invite both couples and individuals to join us in this workshop that blends meditation, art, and music with a holistic inquiry into Tantra’s power and therapeutic potential to unlock a happier and more fulfilling life. Bring an open mind as we explore deep questions about our bodies and minds in a safe space and nurturing environment.
Please Note: This workshop is NOT about “Tantric Sex” and experiencing enhanced sexual pleasures, although many discussions will address gender identity and sexuality.
This workshop includes an additional $100 of faculty tuition.
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look beyond the false duality of a divided self and the destructive concept of “self versus nature” to discover how to live in harmony and balance within ourselves and the world around us.
You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine. This is your opportunity to examine what that means while sharing healing wisdom and practices. This workshop will offer the tools to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul, and to honor and heal all you have inherited from your ancestral lineage, along with the social, cultural, racial, religious, and historical energies tangled in your lives. You will learn about the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies.
Learn about the importance of ceremonies, sacred altars, and medicinal plants and participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing and “doctoring” ceremony, and a water blessing prayer ceremony.
You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.
We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.
Note: Please bring a journal to write in, and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.
Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com
“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?” –Alice Walker
How can art contribute to healing while staying centered in the creative process? What kind of art-making responds to the therapeutic experience? What does it mean to live an aesthetic life? And what is possible when we do?
In the early 1960s, a new interdisciplinary approach was developed to explore and respond to these questions: The Halprin Life/Art Process. This work influenced the worlds of dance, environmental design, theater, and psychology. This workshop will be an immersive experience in that approach to the creative process, movement, and healing art. It is aimed at those who identify as artists as well as those who are simply lovers of art seeking to open the doors of their own creativity.
We will enter into an exploration of art-making as a way to encounter and explore themes, challenges, and dreams that are informing our lives. Maps and methods will be taught that are easily accessible and applicable to personal and professional practice.
The opening welcome session will create an environment of group collaboration, including intention setting, play, and collaboration. Each day that follows will emphasize different mediums, including movement/dance, drawing, and poetry/narrative. On the fourth day, we’ll develop ritual performances for participants to present artwork dedicated to something personal and meaningful.
Participants may expect to leave with the following:
Participants must bring the following: Writing materials and a special writers journal, a box of varied and well supplied Craypas pastels/water colors if desired.
Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.
This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of activity. All participation will be voluntary at all times.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to both challenge and nurture ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.
We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.
This workshop has an additional $15 of faculty tuition.
Open to people of all backgrounds and experience levels, this workshop will explore the lessons that traditional African spirituality can teach us about creation, how the universe was brought into being, how to manifest things we want in the world, and how to fashion a life filled with divine harmony. It will first introduce the world of African ritual through a screening of Marques Redd’s highly acclaimed film Obi Mbu (The Primordial House): An Igbo Creation Myth — a fantasia of dance and theatrical performance.
From there, we will:
Transcendent and practical, traditional African rituals are an important part of our global spiritual heritage. They can help you effect transformation, cultivate vitality, and expand your consciousness. This workshop will provide you with many tools that you will be able to use to plug directly into potent spiritual energy and empower your life!
Recommended Reading: Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Some and Cosmologies by Mikael Owunna
This workshop includes $85 of additional faculty tuition.
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Join us for this unique opportunity to explore the masculine traditions of the Esselen Tribe, integrated with the fundamentals of the 5Rhythms® movement practice. Answer the call of 55000 Highway 1’s healing waters and travel with Douglas and Little Bear on a hero’s journey. Together, we will explore what it means to embody the sacred masculine in this modern world. With courage, integrity, and receptivity, we will create renewed understandings of masculinity as a group and learn how we, as men, can “walk our talk.”
Healthy and uplifting rites of passage have always been an important aspect of humanity, yet they are largely missing from modern society. People from all walks of life and religions have historically gone through different experiences and coming-of-age ceremonies to prove they were ready to move into their next stage of life. Men were traditionally taught by their fathers, grandfathers, and uncles, but this traditional upbringing is now missing for many. In order to overcome today’s accepted norms of masculinity, it is important for men to be able to find solace with one another, learn from one another, and relate at the heart level.
In this weeklong workshop, we will have the opportunity to:
The intentions for our week together are to create a sacred space for men to come together and reignite our sacred fire, as well as to build a new bridge to manhood — to gentle warriorhood.
This workshop includes an additional $110 of faculty tuition.
What if you could use your voice to feel alive and present in your body? What would it look like to discover your own voice and fulfill its unique potential? This November, join sound therapy pioneer Eileen McKusick and transformational voice leaders and international recording artists Isaac and Thorald Koren of the Brothers Koren in a workshop designed to help you find the electric power in your voice.
Eileen, Isaac, and Thorald will combine their disciplines to create an electrified, liberated, embodied experience of vocal expression and play. This program is designed for those with and without previous musical experience — useful for seasoned professionals and first-time explorers of voice.
Using the power of new awareness, breath, sounding, and tuning with interactive immersion into the innate musicality of your human instruments, you will:
Leave the immersive retreat feeling recalibrated, uplifted, and sonically invigorated. Previous participants noted dramatic changes in their freedom of voice after this safe and fun experience.
No vocal ability or musical experience required!
Join us for an extended opportunity to explore the true essence of Esalen, and find yourself in the process. Like a snapshot of all that we do here on campus, this workshop is composed of enlivening and heart-opening classes that are driven by Esalen’s founding areas of focus: Heart, Mind, Body, Spirit, and Community.
During this month-long program, a cohort of like-minded students will have the opportunity to lean into the richness and diversity of programming that has both grown up on campus and is being infused into its current culture. In addition to working in service to the running of Esalen, the workshop classes have been designed to support the process of healing, transformation, and joy.
Classes will be led by the Esalen Resident Faculty Team, each bringing something uniquely transformative to the daily experience. Practices will include:
Come experience Esalen for a heartful and healing month of service and transformation!
Somewhere inside you – buried deeply, or maybe just below the surface – there is a story you’ve been wanting to tell. Movement and mindfulness practices are carefully curated to support moving past your creative obstacles and connect you with your inner voice. We invite you to connect to that deeper authentic story and that deeper authentic You. No matter where you are on your journey, beginner or expert, there is space for you here.
During this weeklong, we will disconnect from our devices and our default-world lives and immerse ourselves in the open air of Esalen. You will be invited to move your body, find your breath, observe your mind, and fill pages with your words. Through the writing session, participants will be guided to relinquish fear and live fully in their creativity.
This workshop will include:
As educators, storytellers, and human do-ers, Darnell and Cara truly believe in growth and happiness. They invite you to lean into the symbiotic relationship between storytelling and movement and the magic that happens when they come together. This workshop intends to foster an environment that will encourage you to confidently call yourself an artist and have the opportunity to cultivate techniques and rituals that will fuel your creativity and give you the audacity to integrate it all into your daily lives.
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look at our ancestral lineage and how our ancestors continue to influence and affect our lives today.
Gratitude for our ancestors! We are the reality of their dreaming. We are the tip of the arrow of our entire ancestral lineage, which traces back to the beginning of time. You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine. This is your opportunity to examine what that means while sharing healing wisdom and practices. This workshop will offer the tools to transform and transmute ancestral trauma, as well as other forms of trauma and unhealthy life patterns.
We all inherit our ancestors’ gifts, as well as their traumas. This is true if you are of European, African, Indigenous, Asian, or Arabic origin, any other ancestry, or are multi-racial.
In this workshop, you will learn how to identify and honor all of your ancestors’ positive attributes, as well as heal the discordant or destructive energies you have inherited from your, racial, social, cultural, religious and/or historical heritage.
Together, we will examine the origins of “dis-ease” in our bodies, minds, spirits, and souls and how to heal and realign them. We will discuss the importance of ceremonies, sacred altars, and medicinal plants in this healing process. You will be offered the opportunity to participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing and “doctoring” ceremony, and a water blessing prayer ceremony.
You are invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.
Note: Please bring a journal to write in and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.
Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feelings of gratitude and value and their desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com.
Get notified about new programs.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org
