Workshops

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:

• Explore the areas of your life that feel most meaningful to you.
• Identify qualities and characteristics you most want to express.
• Learn how to implement and apply what you have discovered to be most important to you, both personally and professionally.
• Begin crafting a personalized plan that aligns your daily life with living a truly values based life.

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:

• Engage in guided movement and meditation to release constriction and embody expansive power.
• Use reflective journaling prompts to surface patterns of self-betrayal and write new declarations of possibility.
• Practice storytelling and peer coaching circles that mirror back wholeness, strengths, and hidden capacities.
• Enter creative play exercises to rehearse new ways of showing up boldly.
• Make commitments to sustained daily practices that anchor your dopeness as a lifestyle.

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.

To live in accord with love is to set your heart on fire. In the crucible of such an inferno all convention burns away. What’s left is an entirely new kind of existence, one full of passion, presence and infinite possibility. — Setting Your Heart on Fire

What if you could fall absolutely in love with every moment? What if you could use love’s radiance to heal your deepest wounds, break through any personal challenges, and even meet this confounding moment in the history of the world with conviction, vigor, and effective action?

All of this happens naturally when you stop trying to change life and instead learn to relax into it. This workshop is designed to meet you where you are and then call forth your very best. You’ll discover the simple, practical steps necessary to feel all emotions with willingness and compassion, uncover and transform your limiting beliefs, and create a life of greater ease, joy, and exquisite connection.

This weekend is primarily experiential. It’s designed with the recognition that your heart is already on fire; our job is to remove what’s dampening the flame. The key explorations and practices of the gathering:

• Take place solo, in dyads, and triads.
• Focus on the use of precise attention.
• Are mainly centered in the body.
• Feature movement and active imagination.
• Culminate in an “inner surfing” modality that combines vipassana, metta, and tantric approaches.

Special note: On Saturday night, our group will host a Freestyle Dance Jam, with Raphael as DJ, as a gift for ourselves and everyone at Esalen that evening. Remember to pack some loose-fitting attire and get ready to rock and roll and shake and swing and let it all go!

Recommended reading: Setting Your Heart on Fire, and The One Thing Holding You Back by Raphael Cushnir

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.

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:

• Explore the archetypes of warrior, magician, lover, king, your shadows and wounds. This illumination can help shift your mindset and break free from outdated conditioned patterns to cultivate clarity, discover your purpose, know boundaries, and encourage genuine leadership development for true freedom.
• Participate in drumming, vocalizing, and mantras, and share in a circle to nurture your emotional skills, imagination, and intuition to foster deeper connections.
• Boost your energy and back strength with functional movements from Rasa Yoga, Foundation training, and dynamic breathwork. 
• No army drills here, but you might sweat.

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

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.

Something within you already knows who you are, and now is the time to remember and awaken the genius that already dwells within.

This is a luminous, heart-centered journey guided by the Gene Keys and the embodied wisdom of the sacred land of Esalen Institute. Rooted in an eternal body of wisdom, the Gene Keys weave together ancient and contemporary sources, including Western and Eastern astrology, the Chinese I Ching, the mystical Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, and chakra meridian systems, alongside modern explorations of genetics, quantum physics, and humanity’s evolving relationship with the cosmos. This living transmission supports deep insight, integration, and authentic self-recognition, inviting us to slow down and attune to our inner knowing.

During our time together, you will engage in experiences designed to foster embodiment, clarity, and integration, including:

• Exploring the Gene Keys Activation Sequence to illuminate your life’s work, the creative contribution you are here to offer, your evolution, the challenges that catalyze growth, your radiance, the key to vitality and well-being, and your purpose — the deeper meaning and direction of your life.
• Journeying through the three frequencies of each Gene Key, learning to meet your shadows with compassion, awaken your gifts as natural and authentic expressions, and open to your siddhis, or superpowers, as embodied mastery.
• Engaging in guided self-inquiry, contemplation, and intuitive practices that deepen inner listening, clarity, and self-trust.
• Participating in embodied practices that regulate the nervous system and anchor insight into lived experience.
• Connecting with the land, the three sacred waters, and the living intelligence of nature to deepen presence, attunement, and belonging.

Participants are required to bring their exact birth date, birth time, and birth place, along with a journal.

This workshop invites a profound reorientation where your shadows become doorways to integration and insight, gifts become embodied self-expression, and superpowers emerge as the natural radiance of your true nature.

When the ground falls out from underneath us, our instinct is usually to cling fast to the beliefs, stories, relationships, and identities that give us the greatest sense of stability and comfort. But what if we viewed these moments as wondrous opportunities instead of terrifying threats? Could the experience of groundlessness offer an unexpected freedom from the constant strain of molding the world to our liking?

In this workshop, we will explore how the loss of our bearings — an inevitable and recurrent fact of life we often intensely resist — can become a spontaneous and nourishing invitation. Together, we’ll ask how we might begin to meet these uncertain moments with curiosity rather than fear. What if we could find pleasure in the ongoing evolution of our identity and greet the natural transformation of our relationships with openness rather than resistance? What might it look like to exchange our grip on control, certainty, and rigid beliefs for qualities like surrender, adaptability, and emotional ease? And how might we come to experience the thrill of groundlessness — not as a crisis to be solved, but as a profound opportunity to live more honestly in rhythm with life’s unpredictability?

We’ll explore these questions by way of a dazzling and playful journey through contemporary film and popular culture, ancient and modern spiritual philosophies, and holistic medicine and psychology. From the Zen Buddhist axiom on resisting the poison of egoic-attachment to the injunction by American Philosopher Alan Watts to live in the present moment, from psychedelic therapy and the loosening of rigid thought patterns to the trippy identity-dissolving visual experiments of recent science fiction and fantasy films — all of these and more will be our teachers.

Together, we’ll tap into a wide range of psychological and spiritual resources — many already at our fingertips yet often overlooked or dismissed in our daily pursuit of holding it together. Because in the end, life offers no absolutes, only the thrill of groundlessness and the freedom that comes when we finally surrender to its flow.

Morning sessions will focus on open group discussion and embodied practices; evening sessions will include nightly film screenings followed by collective dialogue about what we’ve watched.

Recommended Reading: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Training in Compassion: Zen Teaching on the Practice of Lojong by Mark Fischer, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts, The Feminism of Uncertainty: A Gender Diary by Anne Snitow

Revolutionary findings in neuroscience have demonstrated that we can literally re-architect the very structure of our brains. In fact, we can even rewire our neurology to be more focused, calmer, and happier.

In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro — a leading scientist studying the effects of meditation on well-being — will teach you the most powerful science-based practices for increasing the neural pathways of happiness. She’ll explain basic brain science and offer a clear roadmap for living a joyful, connected, and meaningful life. Be prepared for unexpected transformation and delight.

During this weekend workshop, we’ll learn:

• Science-based practices to increase your baseline level of happiness.
• How to cultivate greater joy, gratitude, and connection.
• To integrate these practices into our everyday lives.

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 tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.

Humanity is a transitional species, poised on a tightrope between the primate past on the one end and the coming, future “superhumans” on the other.

What is right about this image? What is wrong with it? Who, historically, has been excluded from it? Can we, should we, speak of human exceptionalism or not? And perhaps most of all: what role does language, myth, and story play in our species’ evolution? Is human evolution a matter of how we imagine ourselves and one another to be? Do mental acts have material effects? Can symbols alter reality?

This workshop will explore the historical precedents, moral anxieties, and new realities of “spiritual evolution.” We will cover a range of topics, including Darwin, Nietzsche, Aurobindo, Sylvia Wynter, psychedelics, and biology. We’ll continuously come back to the present, to Esalen itself, and ask whether we ourselves might be participating in, or even effecting, a new worldview.

The basic orientation of the workshop is to “turn around”: from believing “backwards” in someone else’s understanding of, and place in the cosmos, toward an imagined, future relationship to the universe for which no adequate language yet exists. This workshop will be about helping to create such a language — that of the superhuman.

**This seminar is part of the Super Story Series, sponsored by the Center for Theory and Research (CTR) at Esalen Institute. The series includes three thematic cycles: The Physics of Mystics, The Soul Is a UFO, and this current seminar, Biological Gods. The Super Story is a poetic and conceptual framework designed to capture the mythic and mystical narratives that have emerged over the last two centuries in deep resonance with evolving paradigms in physics, evolutionary biology, cosmology, and idealist philosophy. This project situates personal transformation within a larger cosmological and cultural re-enchantment, connecting the individual’s inner experiences to the macro-myths of science and spirit.

This workshop works with the deepest levels of ontology, before and beyond any human concepts of god. Keeping an open mind during this workshop is highly recommended.

Recommended Reading: Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal

Warmth is a connecting principle. Somehow the barriers come down when warmth is involved. — Pema Chödrön

Warmth is a powerful and essential component of human connection, prioritized by the biological brain and spiritual heart alike.

To thrive, we humans need to experience interconnectedness between ourselves and the world around us. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described this as “the pinnacle of human experience,” and former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called it “as essential to our well-being as food and water.” Yet today, nearly 40% of American adults report significant loneliness or isolation, increasing risks of depression, heart disease, dementia, and early death. In a world increasingly shaped by disconnection, how might we intentionally design for warmth, connection, and transparency?

This workshop invites you to explore how designing for warmth — in your relationships, your work, and your communities — can build stronger, healthier, and more connected individuals and communities.

Over the weekend, we’ll explore the science, philosophy, and spirituality of warmth while examining how connection is either supported or undermined by the structure of our relationships, organizations, and communities. We will explore how warmth can be designed into everyday interactions and larger social and professional contexts — supporting trust, openness, and a felt sense of being seen and valued.

We’ll balance theoretical inquiry with practical experience for both intellectual grounding and embodied insight. Together, we’ll examine how warmth is currently designed — or absent — in our lives and experiment with new ways of shaping relational environments with greater intention.

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.

Through eastern mysticism, quantum physics, psychedelics, and films like The Matrix, we are starting to catch on that “reality” may not be as it seems.

In this workshop, you’ll be guided to develop the x-ray vision needed to see beyond the concrete circumstances of your life to peer into the underlying “code” that is responsible for the tangles holding you back. Once identified, you will be empowered to shift that code through a beautiful process of quantum alchemy.

With a background in AI, neuroscience, Eastern religion, and psychology, Sam Rader has devoted the last 28 years to discovering the energetic patterns that run our lives. Often these patterns are manifestations that were programmed during the first five years of life. Understanding our source code allows us to quickly and gently get to the root of core issues, so we can shift our energy and embodiment to shift our world.

Many say discovering your source code is like a psychedelic experience— yet much more gentle and precise. With no ingestion of substances, no catharsis, no drama, and nothing overwhelming, this is a subtle yet profound journey —  a deep dive beneath our ordinary consciousness — to radically reconfigure ourselves and our reality.

In this workshop, you will be guided to dissolve and resolve anything standing in the way of becoming the fullest you and living your true expression of love, joy, and ease.