Workshops

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Join herbalist, medicine woman, and plant spirit teacher Marysia Miernowska for a nourishing, magickal weekend journey of intimacy with the Earth to receive physical and spiritual healing from medicinal herbal infusions and awaken the energies of spring’s renewal within us and all around.

In a safe and sacred container, you will be guided in:

• Shamanic tea meditations.
• Drinking herbs for the spring.
• Entering restorative states of embodied meditation.
• Connecting to the land and elements.
• Making herbal medicine from the land and Esalen gardens to take home.
• Making flower essences.
• Plant identification of nourishing medicinal herbs, many likely growing around you.
• Earth-based rituals and journal prompts.
• Wildcrafting and gardening.

By communing with safe, healing, and nutritive wild medicine infusions, participants will flood their bodies with the restorative nourishment of the wild earth. While journaling and meeting plant spirits through shamanic tea meditations, we’ll create safety in the body and nervous system and receive insight, inspiration, energy, and replenishment for a personal awakening that mirrors the energy of spring.

By restoring the ancient knowledge of folk healing and plant medicine, we hope to heal the separation between ourselves and nature and awaken a collective passion to protect this Earth we all call home.

This workshop includes a $40 materials fee

The voice is calling me, to come home, to the river that is flowing within me. — Sophia Tuv

The voice is more than sound — it is the breath of our being made audible, the vibration of our essence moving through space. It is our most innate instrument, a direct channel between the soul and the world. When sounded with intention, the voice carries the power to heal, connect, and transform. This is an immersive experience to return to the source of your voice — your primal, dynamic sound that lives within you. Through deep sensing, visualization, somatic exploration, and playful vocal exercises, we will release the blocks that stifle expression and awaken the pleasure, power, and resonance of our true voice.

Together, we will:

• Explore vocal embodiment, using the body as a resonant chamber for sound.
• Engage in practices that dissolve tension, unblocking emotional and physical expression.
• Awaken the imagination and open new pathways of vocal creativity.
• Let breath and vibration guide us into dynamic, liberatory self-expression.
• Experience the joy of surrendering to our voice, allowing it to move through us freely.

This is an invitation to become your voice, to reclaim its raw beauty and medicine, and to honor the deep impact of speaking, singing, and sounding with love and intention. When we free our voice, we free ourselves — our capacity to express, to connect, to be fully seen and heard. This practice strengthens our confidence, deepens our relationships, and supports our ability to move through the world with clarity, presence, and truth. By attuning to the natural resonance of our voice, we cultivate authenticity, self-trust, and a profound sense of belonging within ourselves and our communities.

Awaken the voice you arrived with. Open the portal. Come home to your sound.

Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation through movement, guided meditation, and the profound practice of Yoga Nidra. This workshop is designed to restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from experiencing a state of calm, clarity, and balance.

Yoga Nidra, which translates to “yogic sleep,” guides you to that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, where you can systematically release stored physical, emotional, and mental tensions. In this state, you can let go of old beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the past and fearful of the future. With this practice, you can fully experience your emotions while knowing that there is unchanging, unshakable ground beneath you — a calm inner presence that allows you to see clearly and navigate life with greater ease.

Throughout the retreat, we will work with our bodies and minds, creating clear intentions to shift from living by unconscious, automatic programming and find a new perspective — an aware, deliberate way of being. You’ll explore how to bring this newfound awareness of your true self into your personal life, relationships, work, and moments of solitude and love.

Together, we will cultivate new tools to help us navigate when we feel lost, tired, or confused and forget who we are. These guiding instruments can help us negotiate life’s challenges, welcome them as opportunities, and remember our true nature.

This workshop is a unique opportunity to recognize your wholeness, the truth of who you are, and the inner peace that has always been within you — that unchanging, unshakable ground of being that you are. All that is being asked of you is to show up, lie down, and let go. Yoga Nidra will do the rest.

What to bring: blankets, a yoga mat, an eye pillow, and anything else you need to lie comfortably on the floor for extended periods. We’ll also have opportunities to practice outdoors, so make sure you have layers to stay comfortable in varying conditions.

Recommended Reading: Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep, by Kamini Desai; and Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation Healing, by Richard Miller

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. We all inherit our ancestors’ strength & resilience, their wisdom & their gifts, as well as their pain and trauma.

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.

This workshop offers an opportunity to explore ways of identifying and honoring 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, medicinal plants and sacred altars 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 – you honor and heal yourself, and 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 or donating to this fund, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com.

Hapé, a sacred tobacco preparation, has been used by Indigenous peoples across the Amazon as a medicine for clarity, presence, and connection for centuries. Blown gently into the nostrils, this finely ground blend of tobacco leaves and sacred ashes activates the senses in a unique way, opening inner vision and anchoring attention in the present moment. Traditionally used in ceremony, Hapé invites stillness, deepens awareness, and connects practitioners to both their inner landscape and the living forest.

Together, we will take part in a hands-on preparation of Hapé itself for an embodied practice that honors its lineage while creating a shared field of reverence. In preparing Hapé together, participants directly encounter the care, ritual, and mindfulness that go into its making, deepening our relationship to the medicine before it is received. Once prepared, we will enter into ceremony to experience Hapé as a mindfulness tool — to explore how this ancestral medicine can enhance meditation, sharpen presence, and open pathways of reverence, reciprocity, and inner reflection.

As interest in mindfulness and plant medicines grows in the Global North, this is a rare opportunity to build a bridge between ancient contemplative traditions and modern practices of meditation.

Participants will:

• Discover the cultural, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of Hapé within Indigenous traditions.
• Identify best practices for integrating Hapé mindfully and respectfully into diverse contexts.
• Experience Hapé within a contemplative framework designed to deepen meditation and self-awareness.
• Prepare Hapé using traditional methods, guided by cultural sensitivity and embodied learning.
• Participate in a Hapé ceremony.

This is an invitation to experience an ancient practice through a new lens — one that connects forest wisdom and contemporary contemplative life.

This workshop includes a $25 materials fee.

Misconceptions about Reiki place its origins anywhere from ancient Egypt to Tibet — even from angels and aliens — but we hold the truth in the palms of our hands. In this workshop, we’ll explore the roots of this Japanese practice and discover the transformative power of universal life energy through Reiki meditations and transmissions.

Over this weekend, students will have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of Reiki from both historical and experiential perspectives. We will discuss how this energy-healing technique originated in Japan, find out how it was influenced by other practices and cultures, and study how it evolved over time.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn:

• Various aspects of Reiki practice.
• Meditations taught by Reiki’s founder, Usui Mikao.
• Practices to connect to Reiki’s universal source and increase the flow of Reiki through one’s body.
• Reiki’s Japanese origins and how it is practiced and taught today

Participants will receive empowerment ceremonies called reiju or Reiki blessings. We will experience the power of Reiki self-treatments, how to give full Reiki treatments to others, and how to receive Reiki from another, all within the unique Reiki-filled space that is Esalen.  

Reiki is medicine for me — both inward and outward. When I first received Reiki, it was in an inward way. It opened me and made me feel what space is, what energy is, and what the universe is. — Shinobu Saito, a Reiki Master initiated by Hawayo Takata

In every wisdom tradition, emotions are gateways to awakening. Joy, sorrow, longing, irritation, compassion — each carries insights that open us to clarity and equanimity. Within the mandala of our inner life, nothing is left out. Every emotion holds a teaching and a wisdom quality — and because emotions are relational, this retreat emphasizes self-reflection to foster resilience and care in our relationships.

Chandra Easton and Eve Ekman, longtime friends, lovers of the dharma, and scholars of the mind, will guide a journey into the heart of emotional awareness. This five-day workshop, rooted in Tantric Buddhism, contemplative science, and embodied practice, will honor the universality of emotions and explore the wisdom each one holds. Our time together will invite intimacy with our own hearts and a quantum view of interconnection that underlies our world.

Central to our time together is the Mandala Method, a multidimensional path drawing on Buddhist psychology, sound, elemental wisdom, and somatic awareness. Through meditation, movement, art, music, and nature, participants will learn to meet emotions as trusted companions on the path of awakening.

We’ll also engage with Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB), a contemplative, science-based training Eve has taught for over 15 years. CEB offers both microscopic precision to map emotional patterns and a telescopic view to place them in the broader context of life, relationships, and mind science.

Retreat practices include:

• Guided meditations rooted in the Mandala Method and CEB
• Mapping emotional experience for clarity and meaning
• Somatic, elemental, artistic, and musical practices
• Group dialogue to uncover emotional wisdom

This workshop welcomes all who long to deepen emotional wisdom, savor joy, and rest in true equanimity. No prior meditation experience is required — only an open heart and curious spirit.

When was the last time you gave something your undivided attention? Nearly 2,500 years ago, Buddha worried we had become too distracted — and that was before paper, let alone smartphones. Today our days are filled with convenient distractions that promise happiness while mostly delivering busyness and frustration. Many of us live life in a hectic fog, working too much and noticing too little.

There is a different way. For this weekend workshop, we will disconnect, slow down, and meditate together. We will learn the ancient Zen practice of sitting still, bringing our full awareness to what is now.

Our time together will follow a gentle schedule of sitting meditation punctuated by brief lectures, group discussion, relaxing meals, and soaks in the healing baths, all while exploring the process and practice of mindful living. We’ll be listening to our own bodies, noticing the food we eat, and truly engaging with the people around us — exploring what it means to be fully present and alive.

Together we’ll discuss everything you need to start, revive, or deepen your daily meditation practice. You’ll receive instruction in traditional Zen Buddhist meditation and we’ll sit together in guided sessions, practicing what we’ve learned. We’ll work together on everything from the mechanics of sitting posture to the mental barriers we all face. We’ll discuss how to overcome common obstacles to meditation and the many ways to incorporate more mindfulness and presence into our daily lives.

Whether you’re brand new to meditation or even if you’ve been practicing for years, join us in learning how to bring meditation into your life and mindfulness to your work and home — today and every day. Come reclaim a healthier and happier way to be.

Recommended reading: Buddha’s Office, by Dan Zigmond

You are never truly alone — loving guidance has always been by your side. Your spirit guides, part of your soul family and spiritual GPS, are waiting to assist, support, play, and dance with you. In this five-day immersion, you’ll explore how to access their wisdom with patience, trust, and an open heart, and discover how to create a steady, lasting connection with the unseen love that surrounds you.

Through guided practice, instruction, and community support, you will:

• Explore ways to recognize the guides you were born with and engage with them more steadily and reliably.
• Experience meditations that quiet doubt, expand awareness, and open your intuitive channels.
• Participate in interactive exercises designed to illuminate how guidance shows up in clarity, synchronicity, and inspiration.
• Invite your guides into daily life for creativity, healing, and spiritual restoration.
• Share insights within a supportive circle of seekers, strengthening both confidence and connection.

This workshop welcomes seekers who are energetically sensitive and open to receiving support from beyond the veil. Whether you are beginning to sense intuitive guidance or already feel the presence of your guides, this framework invites you to discover how to trust these connections more deeply and access your guides more dependably. A profound journey that can change how you navigate this world’s layers — emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

This workshop includes a $40 materials fee.

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.

As organized religion begins to lose its relevance, a fast-growing community of the spiritual but not religious rises to take its place. We are thirsty for the sacred and long to experience it within the heart of our everyday lives.

In this experiential workshop, we will cultivate a mystical way of seeing to reclaim awe and wonder, not in spite of but rather through the portal of our ordinary lives. By intentionally seeking the presence of the sacred in our closest relationships, work, food, pleasure, loss, and grief, we release false notions that mystical experiences are reserved for the spiritually elite and that intimacy with the divine can only be experienced in a religious context.

Throughout the workshop, we will walk through seven gates to reveal your everyday life as a sacred landscape: intention, attention, surrender, teachers and teachings, community, feeling, and ongoing unfoldment. Teachings from Mirabai will be interwoven with writing exercises, both small and whole-group discussions, guided and silent meditation, and interspiritual chanting.

Your life itself is sacred ground. When you decide to walk the path of the mystic, the mundane shows up as miraculous, the boring becomes fascinating, and your perceived shortcomings turn out to be your greatest gifts.

Recommended Reading: Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground, by Mirabai Starr and Wild Mercy by Mirabai Starr

In this transformative workshop, you will explore Maranasati, mindfulness of death, a profound practice for embracing life’s natural cycles of birth and death with greater aliveness, presence, and fearlessness. By facing impermanence directly, you can open your heart to live with deeper intention, presence, and less fear, freeing yourself to embrace life in its fullest expression.

Guided sitting and walking meditations will be at the heart of our time together to help us anchor into the body, quiet the mind, and discover peace amid the ever-changing nature of life. We’ll create spaciousness for silence, allowing insights to emerge naturally. Contemplative practices will guide us as we reflect on powerful meditative inquiries. Reflective writing, such as crafting your own obituary, will offer deeper self-exploration. Creative exercises, like haiku writing, will provide a way to express these insights through art, transforming our contemplation into beauty.

Through small group inquiry, we will share and deeply listen to one another’s reflections, fostering a supportive community connected by our shared humanity. We’ll practice letting go, finding ease with the unknown, and addressing the heart’s unfinished business. As we cultivate metta (loving-kindness), we soften our fears and grief with compassion, gradually transforming them into equanimity and acceptance.

Join us in this exploration of mortality to see death as a wise teacher and life as an opportunity for authenticity, love, and presence. This workshop is open to anyone ready to deepen their connection with mortality and embrace life and death with an open heart.

Held by the cliffs, gardens, and vast Pacific horizon, this workshop invites you to slow down, awaken your senses, and remember your belonging to the living world. Through guided outdoor meditations and embodied awareness, you’ll reconnect with nature as teacher and mirror, discovering joy, wisdom, and wonder along the way. Come ready to breathe deeply, listen wholeheartedly, and be restored by the beauty that surrounds you.

Tibetan yoga is a powerful bridge between ancient wisdom and contemporary somatic healing. Rooted in movement, meditation, and subtle energetics, these practices engage not only the physical body but also the deeper layers of the subtle body — where trauma often lives.

In Tibetan yoga, the subtle body is composed of energetic pathways through which the vital winds flow, regulating both our physiology and consciousness. These winds influence the movement of thought, emotion, and life force. Within this energetic system, the vital essence — traditionally associated with reproductive health and immunity — is also key to stress regulation and emotional well-being.

By deeply understanding these channels, we can learn to work directly with these energies to clear blockages, release somatized distress, and cultivate new pathways for mind-body integration for healing from within.

In this workshop, you will be invited to:

• Experience traditional Tibetan yoga movement and meditation practices designed to regulate the subtle body and promote inner balance.
• Explore the energetic channels of the subtle body, including vital winds and vital essence, to better understand how stress and trauma are held and released.
• Cultivate a deeper connection between mind, body, and essence and develop tools for long-term emotional resilience and holistic well-being.

This extended weekend workshop is ideal for those seeking a deep exploration of subtle energetics, nervous system regulation, and the intersection of ancient yogic traditions with contemporary insights from Polyvagal theory and somatic practices.

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore the healing wisdom of the “Americas.” We will learn about the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies.

You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, and we will examine what this means in the context of our modern daily lives as we share healing wisdom and practices together. This is your opportunity to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul. You will also have the opportunity to participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing & “doctoring” ceremony and water blessing.

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 will 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, then 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

Immerse yourself in a restorative workshop designed specifically for male-identifying people of color. This unique experience offers a sanctuary for growth and self-discovery, fostering a supportive community where participants can connect and build meaningful relationships.

Black boys and men of color have limited opportunities to engage in mind-body healing practices, and there are not nearly enough representations of Black male wellness; this workshop provides tools for transformation, healing, and empowerment while also addressing the interconnected issues of mental health, racial disparities, and community well-being.

Danny and Darnell combine meditation, yoga, and reflective writing to create a nurturing space for participants to explore their inner selves and cultivate mindfulness. Through guided meditations and intention-setting exercises, participants will center their energy and focus on their personal growth journey.

This workshop features:

• Rejuvenating Hatha Yoga sessions, engaging participants in gentle stretches, balancing poses, and breathing exercises to promote physical and mental well-being.
• Yoga Nidra sessions to provide deep relaxation and inner exploration for a meditative state of consciousness.
• Reflective writing sessions to offer a profound opportunity for self-discovery and life visioning, guided by thoughtful prompts.
• Shadow work writing sessions to confront and integrate repressed aspects of the self for holistic healing.
• Somatic movement, breathwork, and primal movement exercises to facilitate healing and emotional release.
• Healing circles to enrich the experience, fostering support and collective healing energy.

With reflective writing and a closing circle, participants will be able to process their experiences, express gratitude, and set future intentions to carry them well beyond Esalen.

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.

Join master craftsman and musician Guillermo Martinez for an unforgettable journey into the sacred traditions of Native American instrument making and music. This immersive, hands-on workshop invites you to reconnect with the spirit of sound by crafting three profound instruments: a Native American bamboo flute, a 16″ elk-hide medicine drum, and a gourd crystal rattle.

Designed for beginners and enthusiasts alike, this workshop begins with an exploration of the Native American flute. You’ll not only learn to play this sacred instrument — with guidance on breath control, finger positioning, and melodic phrasing — but you will also craft your own Native American-style flute using bamboo. Through this experiential journey, you’ll discover the flute’s power to express emotion, foster introspection, and create a deep sense of connection.

Next, delve into the sacred art of drum making as you create a 16” elk-hide medicine drum — a profound instrument that serves as the foundation of a trilogy of sacred tools in Native traditions. Guillermo will share the cultural and spiritual significance of the medicine drum and its role as a vessel of healing, rhythm, and spiritual resonance. Using traditional techniques, you will stretch the elk hide and lace the drum by hand, crafting a one-of-a-kind instrument that carries your unique spirit and purpose.

Lastly, connect with the power of resonance as you create your own crystal rattle using ethically sourced gourds, crystals, and natural materials. By blending traditional techniques with your personal intention, you’ll craft a sacred tool for healing, ceremony, and transformation.

No prior musical experience is necessary — just an open heart and a willingness to listen deeply. All materials will be provided, including tools and components for flute, drum, and rattle making.

This workshop has a $225 material fee, which covers all materials for instrument making.

Rejuvenate the body and the mind with the deep relaxation that can be found through non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra. Whether you need a break from constant pressure, are navigating a life transition, or wish to delve deeper into your mindfulness and meditation practice, this retreat will provide space and time for contemplation and reflection.

Non-sleep deep rest, a term coined by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, refers to a waking state of deep relaxation with sustained awareness. Evidence suggests reaching this state through NSDR protocols, such as yoga nidra, can reset dopamine levels and provide numerous physical and mental health benefits — including better sleep and enhanced neuroplasticity.

Together, we’ll go on an inner journey to connect to both ourselves and our life paths — and emerge refreshed and deeply rested. This will be a large-group experience, and we will practice lying-down guided protocols throughout the weekend.

This is a beginner experiential course and does not require knowledge of yoga nidra theory or history. There will be lots of chances to journal and connect with one another as we enjoy the natural beauty of Esalen and our time together!

Recommended Reading: The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You by Kelly Boys

During this retreat, you’ll be invited to immerse yourself in your own innate wisdom to rediscover your freedom. Through Buddhist meditation, mindful movement, and time in nature, you’ll explore the spontaneous creative essence within you.

Surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, this guided retreat is an opportunity to slow down, listen deeply, and explore what it means to be truly present. By attuning to the elements and rhythms of the earth, you will have the space to cultivate a renewed sense of clarity, openness, and connection.

Explore key practices, including:

• Nature-inspired meditation: Engage in sitting practice, both indoors and outdoors, and allow the natural world to support your inner exploration.
• Mindful walking: Move with intention and cultivate presence through walking meditation, deepening your connection to the present moment.
• Elemental exploration: Experience guided meditations on the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) to reflect on their qualities within you.
• Dharma teachings: Listen to talks that weave Buddhist wisdom with metaphors from nature for perspectives on the freedom already within you.
• Mindful movement: Explore gentle yoga and embodied awareness practices that support connection with the flowing, spontaneous nature of being.

During our time together, you will be able to:

• Explore ways to let go of habitual patterns and rest in innate awareness.
• Cultivate spaciousness, clarity, and ease.
• Tap into your natural creativity and intuition.
• Develop a deeper connection with the natural world and your own true nature.

Throughout the retreat, you’ll be given tools to continue nurturing this natural approach to liberation in your daily life. Join us for this transformative exploration of being natural.

This will be a week of fun, relaxation, and rejuvenation. Whatever your spiritual path or meditation experience, you are welcome just as you are. No prior experience is required. Seated and supine meditations will be offered. All are welcome.

Peak experiences and personal revelations can be dazzling, but the deeper work of transformation is often overlooked. Many have touched something sacred through psychedelics, mystical states, grief, love, or profound life transitions, yet are left with an unfinished question: How do I live in service to what I’ve seen?

Rooted in Jungian psychology, contemplative practice, and symbolic imagination, the week is devoted to the art of integration as a lifelong discipline of becoming. We will explore the crucial difference between having an experience and being changed by one.

This workshop offers a grounded, initiatory path for those who understand that an experience alone is not enough. Ecstatic experiences are often treated as events to be had or moments to be repeated. In the West, we often do not understand how to let these extraordinary states of consciousness inform a way of life. This requires a framework for integration, one that teaches us how to metabolize these encounters symbolically, psychologically, and ethically, so they reshape how we live, love, and relate.

Together, we will explore how altered states — specifically those experienced through psychedelics — can become initiatory rather than episodic. We’ll examine how these experiences shape the nervous system, constellate archetypal material, and invite us into a more conscious relationship with imagination, psyche, and the sacred.

Participants are invited to:

• Learn how Jungian frameworks such as shadow work, archetypes, and symbolic amplification support sustained integration.
• Engage in guided practices for anchoring insight into daily life, including journaling, inner work, somatic reflection, ritual, and sacred conversation.
• Reflect on the risks of “spiritual inflation” and the necessity of humility, discipline, and reverence after awakening experiences.
• Explore the cultural myths surrounding psychedelics and reframe medicine work as one expression within a larger soul journey.
• Reconnect with the deeper values of love, kindness, accountability, and relational responsibility as the true fruits of spiritual work.

This course is not about chasing visions. It is about carrying them with integrity.

While this workshop explores the history and meaning of psychedelic and non-ordinary states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.

Do we possess only the physical body we see, or are there multiple layers to our existence?

In the Tantric tradition, it is said we are not just one body but three: the physical body (what we see and touch), the subtle or energetic body (where thoughts, emotions, and prāṇa flow), and the causal body (the deepest layer of consciousness, often linked to karma and past lives). Each plays a distinct role in shaping how we live, feel, and respond to the world around us.

This workshop invites participants to explore these three bodies through the lens of Tantric practice and wisdom. The weekend blends historical context, contemporary research, guided meditation, visualization, and ritual to examine and experience how energy, including Kundalini energy — the coiled life force at the base of the spine — can move through and activate these layers. Together, we will immerse ourselves in the latest research on teachings and practices that challenge and reshape our traditional views of Tantra — its history, current relevance, and future potential.

Designed for both new and experienced practitioners, this workshop offers a grounded framework for understanding Tantra’s view of embodiment and how it can transform our inner and outer worlds.

Please Note: This workshop is NOT about “Tantric Sex” or experiencing enhanced sexual pleasures, although many discussions will address gender identity and sexuality.

Recommended Reading: The Serpent’s Tale: Kundalini, Yoga, and the History of an Experience, Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen

Healing ourselves is a journey of return. During this weekend workshop, you will be invited to learn about the practice and traditions of “curanderisma” (folk medicine) to bring forth awareness and attune us to our individual healing journeys. Through meditative and contemplative practices, touch, prayer, plants, and natural elements, this work honors a lineage of centuries-old wisdom to bring a sense of well-being to those seeking renewal.

This workshop will include:

• Optional morning movement and meditation practice.
• The Point of Origin, a session focused on the navel and abdominal massage for somatic release and greater self-connection.
• Barridas (plant sweepings), foraging and working with plant and herb bundles to cleanse energies.
• Empathic connection, an exploration of our intuition, revealing how to listen and connect with one another and ourselves, more deeply.
• Limpia con huevo (washing with an egg), a lesson sharing the practice of clearing and divining one’s energies with the use of an egg.
• Evening moon meditation and flowering bathing.

Through Margaret and Michael’s teachings, you’re invited to connect to your own innate healing potential and discover the ability to support others with love and intention.

Join us for a celebration of sound and light at the onset of summer, when sunlight stretches to its fullest. By honoring light in its many forms — sunlight, soul light, and vibrational light — this experiential retreat invites you to align with the light found within and through seven alchemy sound journeys, designed to support deep relaxation, gentle re-patterning of the nervous system, and embodied presence.

Composed with a dynamic collection of alchemy crystal bowls — instruments of crystalline intelligence — these alchemical sound journeys can help clear and activate your energy centers (chakras). As we journey from root to crown, you’ll receive a golden thread symbolizing the sushumna nadi, your body’s central pathway of light. Day by day, you’ll mark this thread with colors, symbols, or words that arise to create a sacred artifact — a visual map of the week’s unfolding.

Each day includes creative practices, authentic movement, nature immersion, and teachings to restore connection to Self and source. Big Sur elder Penny Vieregge will join us midweek to share the mystical poetry of Hafiz and awaken your heart chakra.

You will have the opportunity to:

• Experience how sacred sound can help release chronic tension, clear energetic stagnation, and open pathways to clarity and inspiration.
• Learn the history and science of sound healing, with an opportunity to play the alchemy crystal bowls and experience their resonance firsthand.
• Co-create a collective Flower of Life mandala, woven with individual golden threads into a living pattern of light.

Held within Esalen’s wild beauty, where the land, ocean, mineral hot springs, and towering trees invite deep renewal, this solstice retreat offers space to soften, realign, and reconnect with what matters most.

The artist is essentially a channel. — Piet Mondrian

Explore the nature of creativity — what fuels it, where it comes from, and how we live with it. Is inspiration something we receive from beyond or something we shape from within? Do artists create, channel, or both?

In this workshop, we will consider the creative process not only as a soaring flight of inspiration, but also as a grounded practice of returning, refining, and working with what lands. Through meditation, movement, writing, and dialogue, we’ll explore the terrain where art, channeling, and creation intersect. We will build upon William James’ notion that our stream of consciousness alternates between flights and perchings.

Together, we will:

• Delve into the latest neuroscientific studies that explain what happens during experiences of insight and flow.
• Discuss parallels between artists and mediums — from Jack Kerouac and Zora Neale Hurston to Edgar Cayce and Helena Blavatsky.
• Investigate techniques for overcoming blocks to creativity.
• Engage in movement and meditation practices and for creativity.
• Develop our personal “creativity lotus” by sampling multisensory activities as well as expressive writing and drawing.

This workshop holds space for those curious about the origins of creativity and for those who want to engage more fully with how inspiration appears — and disappears — in the rhythm of a creative life.

Gather with us under the waxing full moon for a weekend of embodied ritual and communal celebration. While the flowers are in full bloom, the moon is bright, and the sun reaches its highest arc in the sky, we will circle together to honor the fullness of the light with sacred ceremony, flower baths, folklore, green magic, herbcraft, sound healing, communal dreaming, self-inquiry, and sensory delight.

The first full moon after the Summer Solstice is a dreamy threshold, a liminal space to tend to our dreams and visions. Drawing on ancestral practices from Celtic, Nordic, Grecian, and respectfully informed Indigenous animistic solstice practices from around the world, this gathering is a weaving of ancestral wisdom and earth-based spirituality. Celebrate the flourishing of Summer, welcoming the light into our lives, bathing in sacred springs, making wreaths of flowers and offerings of gratitude to the earth and sky.

During our time together, we will honor the Light with:

• A ceremonial flower bath in hot spring waters
• Harvesting from the garden and hands-on herbcraft
• Adornment with herbs and flowers
• Sound healing ritual and frolicking together under the waxing solstice full moon
• Offerings of gratitude to the earth, water, and sky
• Dreams and visions to rekindle your magic

This is a space for reconnecting, nourishing, and illuminating your spirit and your dreams.

This workshop includes an additional $25 for materials.

Have you ever felt, even momentarily, that all is well within and around you? How do we cultivate this sense of deep presence and start to sustain it?

This sense of presence is the foundation of awakening. The ancient practices of qigong, meditation, and breathwork open and harmonize the energy body so we might experience ourselves at ease and in connection with all that is.

In this five-day retreat, we will explore:

• Inner qigong, “where the mind goes, the energy flows,” including “the microcosmic orbit” and “the double butterfly.”
• Outer qigong, a 20-minute short form and a 40-minute full form of wai dan gong.
• Easy-to-learn and energizing movement, sound, and visualization exercises.
• Walking, standing, sitting, and supine(lying down) meditations, including “standing as a tree,” “the three treasures,” and “metta/loving-kindness.”
• Breath practices that strengthen the lungs, calm the mind, and rest the heart.
• Full-body meridian self-massage, including sequences for hands and feet.

No experience is necessary. All levels are very welcome. Please come with the intention to relax deeply and shine from the radiance that you are

Recommended Reading: The Way of Qigong, by Kenneth Cohen

Now more than ever, it is important we build practices to strengthen our internal resolve and self-resourcing amidst a dynamically shifting society. Together, we will listen to our heart’s wisdom in this rich four-day journey (Friday to Monday) through sound, ceremony, and self-discovery.

In this intimate and transformative workshop, you will have the unique opportunity to experience multiple East Forest’s live music performances. Additionally, Radha will lead us in embodiment practices of Self-Awakening Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Breathwork to create an all-levels and accessible doorway to inner insights. Through the primacy of our own heart-opening and felt experience, we can discover the inner pathways to fortitude and healing.

• Intimate live musical performances by East Forest
• Group co-creative musical process with East Forest
• Yoga and meditation practices
• Awe-inspiring time in nature
• Breathwork
• Meditation and group insight exercises
• Journaling
• Dance party

East Forest and Radha would like to offer a certain amount of scholarship to those in need. Please apply with this form. If further assistance would be helpful, you may also apply for an Esalen scholarship.

Workshop Disclaimer: While some of our workshops explore the history and potential of psychedelic tools and altered states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.

This workshop includes an additional $350 faculty tuition.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed.
— Mary Oliver

From the beginning of time, the natural world has invited humans to pause, reflect, and reconnect with life’s essence. This workshop offers an opportunity to immerse yourself in Big Sur’s awe-inspiring wilderness and the art of authentic contemplation. Together, we will deepen our awareness of the wilds within and around us, rediscovering the simple yet profound practice of being fully present and alive.

Big Sur’s stunning landscapes — rugged cliffs, ocean breezes, and ancient forests — will serve as both our setting and our teacher. Through mindful awareness and direct experience, we can awaken our inherent connection to the elemental, allowing the magnificence of this wild world to touch our bodies, minds, and spirits.

Highlights of the Week

Nature as Teacher: Direct experience of the elements — earth beneath your feet, Pacific waves crashing, fresh coastal air, and Esalen’s healing hot springs — awakening the senses and inviting relationship with an animate world.

Daily Wilderness Hikes: Explore Big Sur’s natural beauty and rich ecological diversity through daily hikes of approximately 2–6 miles across varied terrain.

Contemplative Practices: Engage in timeless and contemporary practices of mindfulness, movement, and stillness, cultivating presence, aliveness, and deeper relationship with self, others, and the wild.

Community Connection: Share nourishing meals, heartfelt conversations, and moments of silence, fostering a sense of belonging with one another and with the living world around us.

Integration and Simplicity: Discover ways to bring what touches you here into daily life, with space for reflection on how to do less, be more, and live in alignment with what matters most.

This week is an invitation to slow down, step out of habitual patterns, and show up fully for life as it unfolds, moment by moment. Whether walking, sitting, or simply being, we will cultivate space, silence, and stillness to meet the beauty and mystery of the world — within and without.

Come ready to explore the meeting places of mountain and sea, inner and outer landscapes, and the boundless wildness of existence.

Please note: This workshop will be a larger, nature-based group experience than Steven and Gary typically lead. Mornings will be spent together as a full group, either indoors or on the Esalen grounds. After lunch, we will divide into smaller groups to explore Big Sur’s wilderness trails, returning in time for dinner at Esalen.

All levels of experience are welcome; however, a moderate level of physical fitness is recommended. Expect afternoon day hikes of approximately 2–6 miles, often with elevation gain and loss on occasionally rugged or steep terrain. These are not fast-paced or goal-driven hikes, but they do require physical engagement. Participants should be comfortable with outdoor activity and open to contemplative practices, including periods of pausing, listening, stillness, and quiet reflection.

Additional information, including a waiver, will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, please visit the FAQs.

An additional $40 will be added to the workshop cost to cover permit and park entrance fees

Recommended reading: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder

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

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:

• 5Rhythms dance both indoors and outside by daylight and moonlight
• Trauma-sensitive mindfulness, including Dharma talks, sitting and walking meditations

Lucia and Douglas, the dancing duo, invite you to join them for a week of dance and celebration. Together with our team of musicians, bring you inspiration through movement and mindfulness so you can return home feeling nurtured and alive.

Leah Song of Rising Appalachia will lead a collective community song practice! Join voices and feel the collective power of unity through song and breath!

Sanga of the Valley, master drummer and living embodiment of the 5Rhythms cosmology, will be joining along with musical savant Nick Ayers.

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.

In the midst of darkness, light persists. — Mahatma Gandhi

The practice of yoga takes each of us on an interiorizing journey. Step by step we move from the outer and reactive body-mind towards the inner witnessing light of the Self. Here, we observe without judging or running away from sensations, thoughts or memories. The result is active, patient Presencing, which informs all we do and all we are.

Come for a weekend of deep, intelligent yoga surrounded by the natural beauty found at Esalen. Each practice will be a potent mix of essential alignment: body to breath, breath to energy and energy to Self. Each practitioner will be gently guided and adjusted to their own personal edge — the place where we are able to see, know, and be our truest selves. Our yoga will be strong, but infinitely adaptable to everyone’s current needs and abilities. Yoga’s strength is measured in one’s ability to stay focused and present.

Each practice will be a balance of breathwork, active and restorative asana, and meditation, blended together for a clear theme to release old patterns and awaken us to what is — like cleaning the windows to let the sunlight shine in.

10 CEUs available for SmartFlow Yoga, Yoga Alliance and AYC.

There’s a threshold where the seen and unseen meet. A bridge between this life and the spirit world — and we can learn how to access it with openness, practice, and trust.

Join AJA Daashuur, medium and spiritual guide, for this weeklong experience designed to open the veil between worlds and deepen your personal connection to Spirit.  As the creator of the CCCE Method (Connect, Channel, Clear, Embody), AJA weaves together powerful channeling, energetic healing, and soul-aligned embodiment to help you step into your highest intuitive expression.

This workshop bring you to that liminal space—a place to receive, remember, and realign. With AJA as your guide, you’ll cross into this space where messages flow, past and future selves meet, and the love of your Spirit Guides becomes undeniably real.

During your time with AJA, you will be invited to:

• Expand your intuitive gifts through grounded psychic development and practical daily rituals.
• Create and connect with your own Spirit Language, a unique channel of communication between you and your guides.
• Explore past and future life progressions to unlock insight into your soul’s path and purpose.
• Engage in supportive practice circles that foster trust, feedback, and a sense of sacred community.
• Discover energetic modalities that align with your natural frequency and deepen your spiritual toolkit.

The Spirit Bridge is more than an experience — it’s a passage back to your deepest knowing. Step across with us. Your guides are already waiting.

Please bring your favorite oracle deck and a journal to use throughout the week.

Breath matters. It is one of the few human capacities that is at once biological, cultural, and sacred. Every breath connects physiology with perception — and with our shared search for meaning. It is a physiological necessity, a regulator of attention and awareness, and a primary medium through which humans have explored consciousness across time.

Co-led by an embodiment educator and a neuroscientist–anthropologist, this five-day immersion offers a rare opportunity to engage breath through sustained inquiry, comparative reflection, and dialogue, alongside direct embodied practice. Drawing from long-standing contemplative canons and contemporary research on meditation, psychedelics, and the brain, the week examines how breath has been theorized, disciplined, ritualized, and transmitted — through text and instruction, as well as ceremony, sound, rhythm, and collective experience.

Throughout the week, participants will engage in:

• Guided breath practices, including classical yogic pranayama, paced and ratio breathing, rhythmic and circular breathing patterns, and group-based ceremonial sessions. These practices allow participants to experience firsthand how different breathing structures shape physiology, perception, and collective states.
• Structured dialogue on breath, trance, and ritual traditions, along with discussion of current research in meditation, psychedelics, and the neuroscience of breathing. Conversations situate lived experience within broader historical and scientific frameworks.
• Simple self-assessments drawn from contemplative research to build shared language and refine awareness of physiological, emotional, and attentional shifts. Tools from the laboratory become instruments for disciplined self-observation rather than external measurement.
• Yoga and movement sessions integrating breath with posture, alignment, and sensory awareness. These sessions explore how breath operates within the musculoskeletal and nervous systems in real time.
• Collective sound and rhythm practices examining entrainment and group coherence. Participants explore how synchronized breath and vocalization influence attention, affect, and social connection.
• Periods of intentional silence for integration and reflection, creating space for consolidation, insight, and embodied processing.

This offering is for those curious not only about how breath works, but how humans have studied, practiced, and transmitted it — and what becomes possible when inquiry, practice, and presence are held together in the same room.

Recommended reading: Breath, James Nestor, The Breathing Book, Donna Farhi, The Heart of Yoga, Desikachar

Many people sense a quiet but persistent inner call — a longing toward a life that feels more true, more alive, more aligned. Yet fear, doubt, and long-held habits often keep us from trusting and acting on what we know inside. This workshop offers meditation as a practical, embodied pathway for reconnecting with purpose — not as an abstract idea, but as a lived, felt experience that makes your life more meaningful.

This five-day immersive workshop is an invitation to cultivate inner joy, build grounded confidence for everyday life, and reconnect with what truly matters. Blending meditation, music, and practical teaching, this experiential journey offers both deep inner work and clear tools for real-world integration.

Drawing on neuroscience, mindfulness, and contemplative practices, participants will explore how purpose, joy, and confidence are not traits you wait for, but capacities that can be developed through practice. Through guided meditation set to music, reflective inquiry, and embodied practices, you’ll learn how to access these qualities from the inside out and step into a life that feels more joyful and meaningful.

During our time together, you will:

• Engage in guided meditations to access deeper states of clarity, intuition, and presence.
• ​​Learn the science behind purpose, joy, and confidence — and how to train the nervous system to embody them.
• Explore reflective and experiential practices to identify what brings meaning and aliveness to your life.
• Learn how the brain shapes motivation and confidence.
• Practice tools for building authentic confidence rooted in self-trust rather than performance or approval.
• Integrate insights through personal inquiry, group connection, and practical application.

This workshop is ideal for anyone seeking greater alignment, inspiration, and inner steadiness — along with a meditation practice that supports living with purpose, joy, and confidence long after the retreat ends.

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.

Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation through movement, guided meditation, and the profound practice of Yoga Nidra. This workshop is designed to restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from experiencing a state of calm, clarity, and balance.

Yoga Nidra, which translates to "yogic sleep," guides you to that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, where you can systematically release stored physical, emotional, and mental tensions. In this state, you can let go of old beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the past and fearful of the future.

With this practice, you can fully experience your emotions while knowing that there is unchanging, unshakable ground beneath you — a calm inner presence that allows you to see clearly and navigate life with greater ease.

Throughout the retreat, we will work with our bodies and minds, creating clear intentions to shift from living by unconscious, automatic programming and find a new perspective — an aware, deliberate way of being. You'll explore how to bring this newfound awareness of your true self into your personal life, relationships, work, and moments of solitude and love.

Together, we will cultivate new tools to help us navigate when we feel lost, tired, or confused and forget who we are. These guiding instruments can help us negotiate life's challenges, welcome them as opportunities, and remember our true nature.

This workshop is a unique opportunity to recognize your wholeness, the truth of who you are, and the inner peace that has always been within you — that unchanging, unshakable ground of being that you are. All that is being asked of you is to show up, lie down, and let go. Yoga Nidra will do the rest.

What to bring: blankets, a yoga mat, an eye pillow, and anything else you need to lie comfortably on the floor for extended periods. We'll also have opportunities to practice outdoors, so make sure you have layers to stay comfortable in varying conditions.

Recommended Reading: Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep, by Kamini Desai; and Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation Healing, by Richard Miller

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 weekend 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.

Recommended Reading: Thought Revolution: How to Unlock Your Inner Genius by William Donius

We’re all natural liminal dreamers. Every 24 hours, in the spaces between waking and sleep, we pass through the zones of liminal dreaming, hypnagogia and hypnopompia, where the mind meanders between daytime awareness and the depths of the dream.

Every one of us possesses the ability to maintain the crisp awareness of the waking mind while sinking into the free-associative, kaleidoscopic realms of the unconscious. It’s easy to learn to locate and linger in this unique realm of consciousness — and to plumb it for creativity, problem-solving, mental and spiritual healing, and consciousness exploration.

This workshop provides an in-depth exploration of hypnagogia and hypnopompia, integrating pioneering neuroscience with deep experiential practice. Jennifer Dumpert, author of Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep, draws on decades of work developing and teaching practices for accessing these remarkable states. Adam Haar Horowitz, neuroscientist and co-inventor of Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) and the Dormio device, presents the underlying neurophysiology of sleep onset and demonstrates how real-time sleep sensing and precisely timed auditory cues can stabilize and extend hypnagogia.

Together, Jennifer and Adam bridge empirical and contemplative approaches, guiding participants to not only experience liminal dreaming firsthand but to understand its measurable mechanisms and transformative potentials.

Note: As we will be settling into a dreamy state throughout the weekend, you are encouraged to bring any comforting items that might assist you in relaxing: special pillow, eye mask, blanket, etc.

Recommended Reading: Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep by Jennifer Dumpert

The Big Sur wilderness lives and breathes, listens, and speaks. Beneath ancient redwood trees, a shimmering creek journeys toward the sea. In the oak woodland, a polyphony of birds sings to the rising sun. Fog dances across chaparral bluffs, caressing sagebrush and sandstone cliffs. Every cove, meadow, and forest of this biodiverse landscape is alive with presences embodying agency, awareness, and beinghood.

Many of us, however, have inherited a modern Western perspective — shaped by human exceptionalism and reductionistic materialism — that dims our ability to perceive the living complexity and intelligence of our wild world. We are conditioned to see scenery instead of sentience, resource instead of relation. This objectification of the Earth has severed us from the natural world, yielding existential loneliness and environmental peril.

Animism — humanity’s foundational, pre-modern worldview — offers a different frame, regarding the cosmos and all within it as alive, awake, and irreducibly valuable. From this vantage, the world is a great family of interconnected kin, each with distinct perspectives and gifts, all possessing dignity and knowing.

Join us for five days of immersion in animism’s deeper, more ancient relational reality. Through mindful hiking on Big Sur’s trails — Esselen tribal lands — sustained time in the wild, and playful tuning of awareness, we will cultivate our attention and intuition to begin to see beyond modernity’s myopic view. Rather than approaching animism as belief, we will explore it as practice — a patient, embodied turning toward the living land as companion and teacher.

This workshop invites us to remember ourselves as kindred with all life, rooted in belonging to the Earth and our deeper-time ancestors. By encountering these older ways of being and knowing, we joyfully re-enter the enchanted, animate world.

Notes:

• Answers to frequently asked questions about the workshop can be found here.
• This workshop will consist of numerous, outdoor, physical practices and a great deal of walking, including two long-form hikes and one half-day hike. Various hiking abilities can be accommodated, bearing in mind that our long hikes are up to seven miles in length, over uneven and often steep terrain. Participants must be able to sit on the ground, practice outside in all weathers, and get a little dirty. If you have any questions about your ability to participate, please read the workshop FAQs or email info@wildtender.com.
• An additional $100 fee to cover parks permits and parking fees is included in the workshop cost.

Come with an open mind and an open heart, and allow consciousness to meet you where you are.

Across cultures and throughout history, humans have reported subtle perceptual capacities — deep intuition, nonlocal connections, and heightened sensitivity to energy and emotion — that extend beyond ordinary awareness. While such experiences were once considered natural aspects of being human, modern education and cultural conditioning have narrowed our idea of perception, privileging only what can be measured and easily explained. In the process, many people may have lost access to dimensions of awareness that remain quietly present within them.

Drawing on decades of clinical work, interdisciplinary research, and personal exploration, this experiential approach to expanded consciousness emphasizes embodiment, emotional coherence, and nervous-system regulation. Rather than relying on mental effort or concentration, participants are guided to attune deeply to body, breath, sensation, feeling, and heart, forming an integrated Body–Feeling–Mind field.

Within this unified field of awareness, intuitive and so-called “extra-ordinary” perceptions can arise spontaneously — not as special abilities to be forced or performed, but as natural expressions of coherence, presence, and connection. This workshop does not ask participants to adopt any particular belief system; instead, it invites direct experience, self-inquiry, and integration.

Through guided practices, dialogue, and gentle somatic exploration, we’ll explore how expanded awareness can be accessed safely and meaningfully — and how it may be integrated into everyday life, relationships, creativity, and service. Join us for a transformative weekend of embodied exploration, community, and remembrance of the vast potential of human consciousness.

Recommended Reading: The ESP Enigma – The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena by Diane Hennacy Powell;  Space, Time and Beyond by Bob Toben

Like flowing water, life is constantly changing, emergent, adaptable, and interconnected. With our bodies and the living process of the earth as our sacred laboratory, we will explore the dharma of fluidity. Through stillness and movement, contemplation and play, somatic inquiry and relational mindfulness, we will reawaken our cellular remembrance of flow.

While the dominant paradigm encourages mental effort and a mechanical/ reductionist approach to the body, we will explore the embodied and organic movement that emerges from an alternative approach — one of non-effort and getting out of the way.

What does the water element teach us about letting go and letting life flow? About maintaining our center amidst the dynamism and chaos of everyday life? How does deep embodied listening guide us to meet the ground of impermanence with creative and courageous response? How does the wisdom of curiosity, inquiry, playfulness, and levity support and resource us as we face the gravity and challenges of today’s world?

This workshop celebrates the nexus between Zen Buddhism, somatic inquiry, ecodharma, creativity, and conscious dance. You don’t have to be a meditator or dancer to participate. You just need to feel reverence toward water and curiosity about the water element within you.

To truly embody our “yes” to life, we must equally honor our “no.” Liberating our hearts and minds and taking responsibility for our contribution to consciousness requires cultivating ferocity alongside gentle compassion.

Drawing from the wisdom streams of Zen Buddhism, embodied change-making, somatic inquiry, earth awareness, and conscious movement/dance, we begin by learning to set conscious boundaries within our own minds and habits to affirm our authentic being and true nature. Only when we listen deeply, with devotion and attunement, to the still, small voice within can we take genuine and emergent authorship of our lives. By continually letting go of conditioned beliefs and the perceived expectations of others, we remember a wider, more life-affirming field of possibility.

This life-affirming work is an embodied, honest, heart-opening, and non-dual exploration of setting skillful, compassionate boundaries when it serves life. It is not about replacing “yes” with “no,” but fully embracing the full spectrum of our humanity and remembering the boundless love that we are. Embodied meditation teaches us how to skillfully express “yes” and “no,” yin and yang, courage and receptivity, conscious allowing and conscious protection. This workshop will empower you to cross the threshold into greater freedom and conscious response.

Recognize the body as both guide and truth-teller to deepen your attunement to your inner compass. It is about giving ourselves permission to slow down and savor that which speaks to us, somatically, invisibly, and energetically, through intuition and relational forms of knowing.

When was the last time you gave something your undivided attention? Nearly 2,500 years ago, Buddha worried we had become too distracted — and that was before paper, let alone smartphones. Today our days are filled with convenient distractions that promise happiness while mostly delivering busyness and frustration. Many of us live life in a hectic fog, working too much and noticing too little.

There is a different way. For this weekend workshop, we will disconnect, slow down, and meditate together. We will learn the ancient Zen practice of sitting still, bringing our full awareness to what is now.

Our time together will follow a gentle schedule of sitting meditation punctuated by brief lectures, group discussion, relaxing meals, and soaks in the healing baths, all while exploring the process and practice of mindful living. We’ll be listening to our own bodies, noticing the food we eat, and truly engaging with the people around us – exploring what it means to be fully present and alive.

Together we’ll discuss everything you need to start, revive, or deepen your daily meditation practice. You’ll receive instruction in traditional Zen Buddhist meditation and we’ll sit together in guided sessions, practicing what we’ve learned. We’ll work together on everything from the mechanics of sitting posture to the mental barriers we all face. We’ll discuss how to overcome common obstacles to meditation and the many ways to incorporate more mindfulness and presence into our daily lives.

Whether you’re brand new to meditation or even if you’ve been practicing for years, join us in learning how to bring meditation into your life and mindfulness to your work and home – today and every day. Come reclaim a healthier and happier way to be.

Recommended Reading: Buddha’s Office, by Dan Zigmond

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own demise or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we? This workshop offers a wide array of resources and teachings to help participants address that final unfinished business and make the most out of every moment that comes before it.

All of life is held within the context of its inevitable extinction. By acknowledging and preparing for death now, we will find ourselves living more fully and fearlessly. Join us as we celebrate the preciousness of life, and ready ourselves and others for this final journey. We will explore how to die a good death and help others pass, engaging with meditations and contemplations that prepare us for letting go. As the Buddhist tradition proclaims, “If you die before you die, then when you die, you will not die.”

With preparation, we can transcend death, turning the greatest obstacle into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and even attain enlightenment. The bardo teachings lead to the death of death. The journey through the bardos is a journey into our mind, so by exploring the bardos, we are exploring ourselves. The teachings apply to any moment that ends – which means they also relate to daily life and can help you live fully within the time you are given.

Together we’ll explore:

• Meditations that prepare you for the end of life
• Teachings that support the meditations
• Discussion groups to create a sense of community  

We hope you’ll join us for this exploration into the unknown, so that we may all return – fearless, and full of compassion for ourselves and those transitioning from this life.

Recommended Reading: Preparing to Die by Andrew Holecek

What becomes possible when we slow down enough to truly listen to the living world? How might attentive presence become an expression of care and participation — a way of remembering our place within the larger community of life? On this retreat, we explore how mindfulness in nature is a deeply relational path, inviting intimacy, reciprocity, and kinship with the more-than-human world.

Through guided meditation outdoors, nature attunement practices, and shared inquiry, we’ll explore a shift from practicing in nature to practicing with nature — allowing the land, sky, wind, and waters to become companions and teachers. We will cultivate receptive awareness and deep listening, aligning to the subtle and wordless teachings of the body, the elements, and the rhythms of the natural world.

Supported by Esalen’s extraordinary coastal landscape, we open to beauty as a doorway to presence, awe, and wonder. This intimate attunement helps open the heart and deepen our sense of loving connection.

This retreat invites you to slow down, listen deeply, and rediscover your belonging within the web of life — not as a separate observer, but as a participant in the unfolding mystery of the living earth.

Recommended Reading: Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery and A Field Guide to Nature Meditation: 52 Mindfulness Practices for Joy, Wisdom and Wonder by Mark Coleman

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, and this is your opportunity to examine what that means while sharing healing wisdom, practices & ceremonies. This workshop will offer you tools to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul, as we explore the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental-emotional and spiritual bodies.

How can we honor the gifts, and heal the wounds that we have inherited from our ancestors? How can we identify any social, cultural, racial, religious, and historical energies that may be influencing our lives? We will explore all of this, and discuss the importance of ceremonies, sacred altars, and medicinal plants.  You will have the opportunity to 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