Workshops

When you are a leader, often people don’t understand all the complexities you face or the weight of your responsibilities. Being in charge can be isolating and lonely; it can feel like others are looking at a projected image instead of the real you.

Whether you’re leading an organization, managing a team, or are a coach, you know your capacity to form solid and trusting relationships is key to your success. You must become a “Relational Leader.”

As we move into higher levels of leadership and influence, we must bravely face our inner psychology to “get real” about the hidden core relational patterns holding us back.

In this workshop, we will create opportunities to shift these patterns through experiential activities, small group work, and Gestalt-based experiences. You will discover new skills to understand others, dynamic ways to build rapport quickly, and the confidence to navigate conflict and tension. Along the way, you’ll get to know a new network of like-minded leaders you can tap into for understanding and support.

• Discover your hidden relational patterns.
• Learn new skills to understand other people’s worldviews.
• Learn dynamic ways to build rapport quickly.
• Gain the confidence to navigate conflict and tension.
• Create a network of like-minded leaders you can tap into for support.

Join us for this incredible opportunity to connect, grow, and become.

This workshop includes an additional $100 in faculty tuition.

We live in times of rapid change and high stress. You are not alone if you’re experiencing the unease of increasing personal, societal, and global pressures — the pain of witnessing widespread social injustices and devastating ecological crises. These shared challenges create opportunities for us to heal from within in order to heal the world — to reconsider our relationships to our inner lives, one another, and the planet — to choose a life of peak purpose, intraconnectedness and interdependence.

A collective trauma of modern life is the portrayal of our identities as fundamentally separate. And yet, who we are is part of a tapestry of wholeness that modern culture often tells us does not exist.

Indigenous and contemplative teachings for thousands of years have offered insights into the deeply connected reality of our lives. Today science is catching up with this ancient wisdom. This gathering is a celebration and a sacred opportunity to shape cultural evolution towards a world of compassion and connection.    

Esalen Institute is excited to present a timely curation of five individual powerhouses in their fields of expertise: Dan Siegel (interpersonal neurobiology), Elissa Epel (science of stress), Rhonda V Magee (soulfulness and the inner work of social justice), Esselen Tribal Elder, Tom Little Bear Nason and Douglas Drummond (reconciliation and somatic facilitator), and powerful musicians: Sanga of the Valley, Nick Ayers, and Tihikpas. This unique synergy of leading voices across body, mind, relationships and spirit disciplines is designed to nurture connections not only with your fellow participants, with your own body/mind, but also with your own ancestors, and the ancient, sacred Esselen land that the Esalen Institute resides upon.

This weaving of the inner and the inter- can simply be named as the intraconnected nature of the wholeness of our fully integrated lives. Expect a renewed way of experiencing life, a more mindful and socially just way of connecting to other humans, and the profound feeling of the interdependence of our planet with a sense of purpose. This synergistic and immersive journey of exploration and intraconnectedness of the self links our inner lives to those of fellow humans and to all of nature — creating deeper ways to bring healing and transformation into our shared world.

The Come Together Festival of IntraConnectivity and Spirit will be guided by practices reflecting both indigenous and contemporary wisdom. You will explore deep lessons from embodied mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology, and the sacred hoop — the four directions of the sacred hoop of life.

Why do we need this? To establish, renew, and recharge our commitments to stewardship of our communities and Mother Earth in these rapidly changing and transformational times.

This campus wide festival of togetherness and intraconnection will involve deep listening, experiential activities, lectures, and discussions. Come ready to receive and to give. We will incorporate ritual, meditation, nature immersion, and movement into each day.

Come together with Tom Little Bear, Rhonda Magee, Elissa Epel, Dan Siegel and Douglas Drummond as we create new pathways to sacred connection and explore, learn, laugh, love, and bring healing to ourselves and our world.

If this invitation speaks to your heart, you are already joined with us in spirit! Join us this June to experience connecting in-person, on sacred land.

This workshop has an additional $200 of faculty tuition.

Doing personal growth work while still engaging in self-sabotaging behavior is like watering a garden full of weeds and expecting roses to bloom. Learn to overcome negative patterns and transform your pain into authentic power.

In this dynamic three-day workshop with best-selling author and teacher Justin Michael Williams, you will have the opportunity to:

• Discover your unique energy signature.
• Study a proven system to help redefine your life on your terms.
• Learn the eight hidden forms of fear and how to overcome them.
• Break beyond the hidden toxic habits that sabotage your growth.
• Create a custom “power action” that helps you overcome limitations.
• Come together and build accountability with other conscious people who are ready to create change in their lives and the world.

Learn about the practical behavioral changes you can make to help you overcome the hidden patterns standing in the way of your goals. Together, we’ll create your personal action plan and define your “next best move” so you have a ritual for change that lasts well after the retreat. This is your moment to reset, overcome fear and self-doubt, and say “yes” to the life that’s waiting for you.

This program has been designed from the ground up to welcome people of all genders, races, identities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. All meditation experience levels are welcome as well.

Recommended Reading: Stay Woke by Justin Michael Williams

What innate potential lies dormant within you? What dreams are yearning to be expressed? What does it look like to be fully alive, live an integrated and embodied life, and become an engaged part of the larger ecosystem of nature and community? It’s time to meet your future self and find out.

This workshop focuses on creating a robust, loving relationship with the best future version of you — the one who can help you pivot the direction of your life toward your heart’s vision. We will learn how to communicate with and embody that future self while mapping out the new terrain of your life in a process we call “futuremaking.” Using the sciences of imagination, transformation, and hope, you’ll chart a course for your next chapter.

Join us for a four-day workshop where we will engage in futuremaking experiences, including talks to spark insights; small and large group discussions to ground learning; guided imagery, meditation, and creative processes to connect you with your deeper wisdom; and movement and deep engagement with the beauty of Esalen to renew your spirit.

As we weave cutting-edge science with deep experiential practices and rich connection with kindred spirits, you’ll move forward — not back to “normal” or even a “new normal” — but ahead into a new extraordinary. Your future self is calling for you!

Recommended Reading: Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life by Marilyn Schiltz and Cassandra Vieten.

This workshop has an additional $30 of faculty tuition.

Join us for an enriching exploration into the transformative potential of the Enneagram and discover its profound capacity for fostering reconnection and oneness. As we commemorate the two-year anniversary of Dr. Deborah Egerton’s impactful best-seller, Know Justice Know Peace, we will explore the art of coming together through compassion, kindness, healing, and self-awareness.

For this special event, we extend an invitation for you to unlock the wisdom of the Enneagram and transcend individual boundaries to contribute to a collective vision of unity. Driven by the belief that the future of humankind hinges on the fusion of inner spiritual growth and outward social impact, this gathering promises to be a dynamic journey of self-discovery and meaningful connection.

During this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to:

• Explore each of the nine points of the Enneagram through the basic fear and basic desire, core motivation, levels of development, and the connections to the system’s other energies.
• Use the Enneagram to create an internal and external expansion opening our mind-body-spirit connection.
• Stand in love against “othering,” and explore the ways that we can heal across differences.
• Engage with presence to become more familiar with patterns that contribute to “othering” and learn how to release the underlying emotions of anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, shame, and blame.
• Share personal experiences that allow us to become aware of when we may be dropping into toxic behaviors and reactions which can provide a wake-up call to better manage our responses to challenges.
• Address complications around navigating difficult conversations in strained relationships or heated debates on social issues.

As human beings, our innate longing for connection forms the very fabric of our survival and prosperity as a species. Regrettably, internal and external divides have created wounds of bias, bigotry, and hatred within ourselves and our communities. To mend these fractures, we must embark on a journey to explore the roots of our disconnections — both within and around us — to pave the way for personal healing and, in turn, the healing of humanity.

Together, we can cultivate a world where belonging and thriving are shared experiences for all.