Workshops

Come enjoy the beauty of Big Sur far from the fireworks. This is a perfect season to awaken touch, our forgotten language. In this introductory massage course, participants will learn to listen to each other, gain the sensory skill of initiating touch, experience the felt sense of touch and muscle release, and close with a balanced tenderness. Seasoned instructors will offer exercises, demonstrations, and at-the-table guidance during supervised practice. The simple principles of Esalen® Massage – presence, connection, attending rather than fixing, self-care, and slow, lengthening strokes encompassing the body – will build a heartfelt experience with our partner or friend and, perhaps most significantly, ourselves.

By the final session, participants will share the basics of a classical Esalen Massage. Experienced practitioners and caregivers will find it refreshing to apply the Esalen method and notice its healing effect as their pace slows and the mind becomes focused on compassionate contact rather than technique.

Touch can evoke an opening to spirit, both by our innate ability to move into healthful balance or in a broader sense of the nature surrounding us. The edgy wildness of Esalen’s grounds, canyons, hot springs, and mountain backdrop invites this deeper natural connection.

This workshop is for couples, partners, or friends registering together, as you will be bodywork partners for the duration of the program.

This course builds on your previous seven rich days of exploration in CFR® Week One. During that crucial week, you laid the foundation for releasing your childhood survival patterns and moving through life with more ease and presence physically, mentally, and emotionally.

You reorganized the stranger you once called “self” to become more objective, compassionate, curious, and hopeful, changing how you live with yourself and others.

We will continue excavating and healing old patterns that no longer serve you. You will gain more appreciation for how embodied movement can serve as a portal to your soul.  Using newly experienced body wisdom, you will uncover what has been hidden, held back, and inhibited, your fullest expression of ease, joy, and authentic self.

Bring your lingering issues, past injuries, and a desire for freedom on all levels. Leave more deeply connected to your body and present in your soul.

Please note: This is an advanced class. Participants must have taken CFR® Week 1.

Matter is Energy … Energy is Light … We are all Light Beings — Albert Einstein

Each of us walks around within our own energy halo. When two people touch, they spark an energetic exchange. This felt relationship is the heart and soul of Esalen® Massage. With a spirit of gratitude, we invite you to learn and experience the massage that we developed here at the Institute that has since spread around the world. Esalen Massage is known for its flowing integrated strokes, offered from a grounded and centered place. The slow pace and detail provide entry to states of relaxation, connection, and balance.

This course expands the massage experience by incorporating an energetic awareness, allowing us access and interaction with the energy patterns that exist around and through our bodies. Meditation enriches the journey, lighting up a connection to our own deeper patterns. Two senior massage teachers will guide the class during this informative and fun experience. Teaching methods include experiential exercises, brief lecture demonstrations, lots of supervised hands-on practice with classmates, and shared self-reflection.

All levels of experience are welcome, including practitioners and caregivers seeking a fresh focus.
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NCBTMB CE Status Pending

This workshop invites you to enjoy Esalen in the fall as you gain foundational skills in our famed massage modality. Silvia and Jenny will guide you in this experience of mindful touch translated to the massage table. Through lectures, brief demonstrations, and supervised practice, they will introduce the basics: quality of touch, rapport, massage skills with “the listening hand” and effective body mechanics.

The slow-paced practice of Esalen massage sets the stage for a pleasurable natural healing process to emerge, rather than any focus on “fixing”.  You will learn how to drape and how to easily apply Esalen’s signature integrative strokes, detail,  and gentle stretches with a concluding pause. You will be encouraged to effectively share your experience. You may even enjoy giving a massage as much as receiving one.

Classroom tools include exercises designed to awaken the senses and illuminate the value of boundaries in healing work, demonstrations, and tableside guidance tailored specifically for your experience level. The class is appropriate for the new and curious as well as the professional seeking to refresh their senses and the quality of their touch.

10 hours of continuing education provided by the faculty through Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association Teachers. For more information on CE email EMBA@esalen.org.

As the splash of summer fades and days shorten, this workshop provides the time and space to quiet down and relax in a spectacular natural setting. Esalen Massage is a moving meditation, a practice in presence and mindfulness, and a loving healing art. When practiced with focused attention, massage comes from a deep, quiet place that resides inside each of us. This practice of meditation helps access the nervous system, where healing originates. As we give a massage, this healing state of mind can permeate the field that practitioner and receiver create together.

In guided sessions, we will explore the practice of sitting meditation to prepare and quiet our minds, and the fundamentals of Esalen Massage as a meditative and self-reflective practice. Special focus will be on quality of touch, breath awareness, centering, and sensitive rapport between partners. The signature long strokes will support a sense of wholeness and integration.  Instruction in detailed work for the shoulders, hips, limbs and neck will contribute to the massage experience. There will be supervised practice daily as students exchange massages, with the support of their experienced teachers.

Beginners as well as seasoned practitioners will welcome this week to explore Esalen Massage and meditation, while enjoying the natural beauty of the Esalen grounds.

This workshop is especially useful for those in the helping and healing professions in working with their clients and partners.

26 hours of NCBTMB approved continuing education provided by the faculty through the Esalen® Massage and Bodywork Association Teachers.

This workshop is a perfect opportunity for you to enjoy the natural beauty of Esalen’s land while gaining a foundation in Esalen® Massage. Senior teachers and staff will guide you in this experience of connection and presence translated to the massage table.

Through lecture, demonstration and practice with your fellow students, you  will be introduced to the essentials, including quality of touch, rapport, a respect for our natural impulse toward healing, and mindful body mechanics. You will listen to what is felt as well as what is said. You will learn how to comfortably drape and apply the foundational long, intentional strokes and gentle stretches. You will have plenty of time for guided practice and to effectively share your experience. At the end of the weekend, you will be able to give a simple massage to friends and family back home.

Esalen massage promotes feelings of wholeness and reconnects us with our natural state of being. Teaching tools include experiential exercises to awaken the senses, demonstrations, and tableside guidance appropriate for you. The class will enjoy an optional evening in the hot tubs, birthplace of Esalen® Massage. The class is appropriate for the new and curious as well as the professional who would like to rejuvenate their senses and the quality of their touch.

Brighten the winter solstice season and honor the turning of darkness back toward the light with this healing experience of Esalen® Massage — enhanced by the power of essential oils. In this workshop, two senior massage practitioners come together to share the foundational elements of Esalen Massage — compassionate presence, long, lengthening strokes made effortless through proper body mechanics, attentive care for muscle stress, and the joyful sense of reconnection.

By incorporating the intentional use of essential oils, we invite the powerful sense of smell to deepen the work. Scent has a unique ability to transport us into memory. When paired with massage, a potent alchemy unfolds to allow deep relaxation, open-heartedness, and the freeing of the breath.

Different aromas can promote calm, clarity, inner reflection, and deepening of the breath. Drawing from a range of essential oils, Daniela and Jessica will guide you in creating personalized blends that support your own vitality as well as the needs of others. Both workshop leaders bring a wealth of experience with therapeutic applications, the artistry of blending, and the soulful connection between aromatic essence and the spirit.

Through lectures, demonstrations, and shared peer practice with feedback, participants will be presented with the tools to re-inspire their practice. This workshop is appropriate for beginners as well as those who practice massage or healing arts and wish to develop new skills and approaches.

Participants will have plenty of time to immerse themselves in Esalen’s natural beauty and restful rhythms.

24 CE hours pending

This workshop includes a $15 materials fee.

Recommended reading: A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman