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 MoreGreat leaders encourage collaboration, promote inclusion, and make others feel seen and heard. Their greatest tool? Compassion. Compassion isn’t a static trait that people either have or don’t have; we all have the ability to grow our compassion intentionally through practice. A clinical psychologist and renowned expert in compassion, Dr. Shapiro uses her scientific and clinical expertise to give us concrete strategies for compassionate leadership. You will be introduced to the surprising science behind compassion, the latest research on neuroplasticity, and the most powerful tools and practices to lead teams that are connected, collaborative, creative, and successful. You will be given a science-based roadmap to re-engineer internal states, manage stress, boost creativity, and cultivate a culture of safety and connection.
Together we will:
This workshop is appropriate for anyone curious about leadership, compassion, and how to deepen a sense of community and purpose. These practices have the power to transform our individual and collective lives. All are welcome.
Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire the Brain for Calm, Clarity + Joy and Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity + Joy by Shauna Shapiro.
This workshop includes an additional $375 faculty tuition. *For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for a tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.
Imagine reaching the end of your life and realizing your biggest regret is that you never found the courage to live authentically because you lived the life others expected. In this workshop, we will embark on a transformative journey inspired by the wisdom of Human Design and the spirit of Esalen. Human Design blends ancient wisdom from astrology, the I Ching, the Mystical Kabbalah, and the Hindu-Brahmin Chakra system with modern insights from quantum physics, helping you uncover your inner guidance system and intuition to live a life aligned with who you truly are. Esalen is renowned for its focus on experiential learning, offering opportunities to experiment with new ideas and practices, creating space for connection and growth.
Through this journey, we’ll explore how to align daily decision-making with your true self, embrace your natural gifts, and connect with your life’s greater purpose. Practical applications include making wise choices, fostering growth, and building relationships rooted in who you are. To deepen our understanding, we’ll engage in embodiment practices, integration techniques, and interactive sessions designed for hands-on learning.
This workshop invites you to step into your potential. By loving yourself, trusting your intuition, and following your inner authority, you can transform your life and create a meaningful way of living.
Participants are asked to bring their birth details, including birthdate, birthplace, and time, along with a journal. Join us in exploring new ways of living true to yourself within a supportive community.
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 opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express 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.
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The Body of Belonging invites you to explore feelings of kinship, acceptance, and community on a somatic level, identifying the elements most significant to you. Through gentle yoga-inspired movement, breathwork, sound, and meditation, we will engage in self-inquiry practices within a group setting. Together, we will create a safe and brave space to experiment with accessing a sense of belonging. Drawing from ancient and Indigenous wisdom, we will work toward dismantling the individualistic ways of being that contribute to our growing sense of separateness.
Loneliness is an epidemic eroding the fabric of who we are as a collective. It is so prevalent in the United States that the surgeon general has issued an advisory to call attention to the importance of social connection for individual and community-wide health. The hyperindividualism that has been promoted as our best way of “succeeding” has left us feeling lost and alienated. In our overfocus on self, we’ve lost sight of how connection, community, and a felt sense of belonging are central to our well-being.
Participants will be invited to connect with their individual needs as it relates to belonging. They will build skillfulness in advocating for belonging by centering and nourishing connection and community to realize the resilience that comes with healthy interdependence.
Vibration Transformation is the art and practice of transforming the vibrations (or energies) of your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to align with your truest, deepest, highest self.
As Albert Einstein said, “Everything in life is vibration.” We are all vibrational beings. Everything in our universe is made up of energy and vibrations. We are constantly interacting with the people, places, and things around us through our own personal vibrational field. If we choose, we can transform our vibrations to match our most authentic selves and become capable of so much more.
By creating daily health and wellness practices, you will clear stress and tension to heal and restore yourself — shifting vibrations to consciously manifest the life you envision for yourself and the world. How we treat our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits — the way we eat, move, breathe, meditate, believe, rest, and sleep — impacts our energy in both life-affirming and life-depleting ways, affecting our overall vibrations.
In this workshop, we will explore:
By crafting your own one-of-a-kind daily health and wellness program, you’ll be able to pursue the things that matter most to you in life, raising your self-worth and creating a vibrational field that lets you meet your full potential.
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 opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express 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.
If your thoughts, decisions and actions are not being determined by your own highest values, they are certainly being determined by someone else’s. — Living a Values Based Life
Join this engaging, interactive experience designed to support the discovery, clarification, and meaningful application of your highest personal values. It’s a surprising fact of life that most people do not know — or cannot clearly articulate — what their values truly are. Guided by Robert MacPhee’s unique and accessible approach, this process is crafted to reduce confusion and enhance clarity with simple ways to bring your discoveries into your daily life.
Together, we’ll explore your values in deep, experiential (and fun!) ways that address a variety of learning styles. The journey can be relevant across all areas of life — at home, at work, in relationships, as a parent, and as a leader.
In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:
Gaining clarity around your values can become a powerful compass, gently guiding your decisions, your attention, and your time. This workshop offers a space to reconnect with what feels most authentic, purpose-driven, and meaningful for you.
Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on. — James Baldwin
Most people don’t actually fear failure; they fear their own brilliance. In this weeklong journey, we’ll explore how subtle self-sabotage, shrinking, and doubt prevent us from claiming our gifts. Through coherence coaching, embodied exercises, and radical self-honesty, you’ll discover the courage to live as the powerful being you already are.
Participants will:
When we embrace our greatness, we move beyond fear into freedom, clarity, and contribution. You’ll receive practical tools and experience a supportive community for the embodied confidence to live your dopeness with courage and joy.
What does it mean to remain human in the new age of artificial intelligence? In this immersive weekend workshop, we’ll explore this profound question together, journeying from awareness to empowerment to integration as we discover how to shape our relationship with AI while preserving what matters most.
Through hands-on AI demonstrations, creative labs, and experiential exercises, we’ll witness firsthand both the remarkable capabilities and profound implications of this technology. We’ll experiment with AI as a creative collaborator — making music, art, and even building simple apps. With somatic practices, guided meditation, and time in nature, we’ll envision the future we want, free from tech industry narratives about what’s “inevitable.”
Each session will blend practical exploration with deep reflection. Morning sessions will focus on understanding AI’s current state through live demonstrations and group discourse. Afternoons will combine creative experimentation with embodied practices. In our evening circles, we’ll integrate insights through authentic sharing and community connection.
You’ll have the opportunity to develop your personal AI Code of Practice, create conscious engagement with technology, and forge genuine connections with fellow participants. This workshop offers resources and perspectives to support you in bringing these meaningful conversations to your own communities, helping others find empowerment rather than overwhelm in our rapidly changing world.
Learn how mindfulness and self-compassion can change everything about how you feel, how you relate and how you live ― for good.
In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro ― a leading scientist studying the effects of mindfulness + compassion on well-being ― shows us that acting with compassion toward ourselves is the key. She explains basic brain science and offers powerful science-based practices to alleviate anxiety, boost creative thinking and deepen our sense of belonging and purpose. With practice, we can literally rewire our brains for greater feelings of calm, clarity, connection and joy. We will immerse ourselves in the natural beauty of Esalen, allowing the sounds of the ocean, the magnificent views and delights of the gardens to nourish and support us.
This workshop is appropriate for anyone curious about mindfulness + compassion and how to deepen our connection with the beauty and mystery of life. All are welcome.
Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Mind by Shauna Shapiro.
*For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.
This workshop includes $390 in additional faculty tuition fee.
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The wound is the place where the light enters you. – Rumi
This workshop is designed for men to help you recharge and reset your body and mind, easing the heaviness of life's challenges — whether they involve self-worth, career, or relationships.
We will focus on your future vision, cultivating intuition, trust, resilience, and confidence through movement, dynamic breathwork, guided meditation, and lighthearted yet meaningful conversations. Practice with shadow work tools to access your inner wisdom and power, aiding you in overcoming blocks like fear, doubt, rejection, or self-sabotage.
“Rasa” is Sanskrit for “essence.” So, soak your icy armor in healing hot springs, walk amidst spectacular nature and ocean air, eat nourishing food, activate, and reveal the Rasa Heart Warrior of you.
You are invited to:
Leave feeling refreshed and embodied, enriched by the camaraderie among men, with skills for resilience, emotional presence, and awareness.
This workshop is specifically designed to create a space for sacred brotherhood for participants who identify as male.
Recommended Reading: Bringing Your shadow out of the dark and To Be A Man by Robert Augustus Masters
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Get notified about new programs.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org