Workshops

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.

Nature does not hurry and yet everything is completed. —Lao Tzu

Anyone who has sat in deep meditation, trekked up a mountain peak, spent time immersed in play with an infant, fallen in love, or experienced the stillness of prayer has experienced time that felt limitless. The more conditioned we become, the more we develop an artificial and adversarial relationship with time. 

“Deep time” describes the spacious non-dual awareness that a meditative life makes available. This state can only be entered through a doorway beyond our conditioned beliefs. It invites us to return to a more embodied and vast presence of being.

In this age of accelerated change, let us consider the steady and unhurried wisdom that helps us savor this precious world and strengthen our resolve to care for it. Deep time helps ground us in our awe of geological time, beyond our human-focused calendars, and embrace the rhythms of the natural world, the seasons, the biosphere, and our subtle body more fully. 

Slowing down can be a revolutionary act in which we attune to our bodies, hearts, the earth, and the more-than-human realm. By looking past the dominant paradigm’s fixation with speed, busyness, and productivity, we can remember a more authentic relationship with time grounded in interdependence, emergence, and wholeness. 

We can balance stillness and action, attunement and productivity, and yin and yang for greater harmony within ourselves and in our relationships with our planet and one another. This workshop, anchored in the Zen teaching of Uji, or “being time,” includes meditation, compassionate inquiry, conscious movement/dance, dharma talks, embodied ritual, and connection with the natural world. All are welcome.

Recommended Reading: Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull and Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and the Planet by Deborah Eden Tull

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

The week is simple. We walk the wilds of Big Sur, soak in the natural mineral hot springs, share good wholesome meals, and spend unhurried time in the company of ourselves, one another, and the living world. In uncertain and complex times, we move toward simplicity — not as an escape, but as a way of reconnecting with what is most essential and alive within us. With bare awareness and wilderness as our primary teacher, we practice showing up for life as it unfolds, moment to moment. Again and again, we gently inquire into what it means to get out of our own way — doing less and being more. In cultivating silence, space, and simplicity, we come into more intimate contact with the raw beauty and mystery of this world and our place within it.

Each day, the group ventures out on hikes ranging from 4 – 8 miles, exploring the rich convergence of mountain and sea. From ocean shoreline to shaded canyon to open ridgeline, Big Sur in late summer offers a direct invitation into aliveness. Along the way, simple contemplative practices are shared — ways of paying attention, of slowing, of remembering how to be “idle and blessed.” We also open to the wonders of Big Sur’s natural history, allowing the land itself to deepen our sense of connection and belonging.

Each day’s hike begins after breakfast and returns in time to enjoy the hot springs and dinner at the Lodge. Evening gatherings are informal and spacious, offering time for sharing, reflection, and simple awareness practices — ways of integrating what we are discovering in the wild back into the rhythms of our daily lives.

Please Note: All levels are welcome; however, participants should be comfortable with moderate to vigorous physical activity. Daily hikes range from 4 – 8 miles and many include sustained elevation gain and loss, as well as occasionally rugged or steep terrain. These are not fast-paced, summit-oriented treks, but invitations into deep time in nature — walking with presence, pausing often, and allowing space for silence and reflection.

More information, along with a waiver, will be sent upon registration. For frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, please visit the FAQs page.

This workshop has $80 of additional faculty tuition and $40 for park entrance fees.

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

This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

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

Our awareness of energy both expands and becomes more subtle as we deepen into relaxation.

The ancient Chinese practice of Qigong, often translated as “cultivating Life Force”, is a system of movement that relaxes and energizes the body/mind. You will find this form “Wai Dan Gong” easy to learn and a powerful means of  experiencing Life Force in and around you. We will enjoy moving on the Earth, under the heavens, while gazing at the Pacific. Wai Dan Gong is an excellent preparation for sitting, walking and standing meditation. Two mornings will be held as a retreat, we will keep noble silence until lunch. At other times we will share with compassion and humor our experiences of riding the wild waves of the mind.

In this rejuvenating retreat we will explore:

• the 25 movements of Wai Dan Gong.
• shorter Qigong sequences for ease in daily practice.
• sitting meditation (you may sit in a chair).
• walking and standing meditations.
• gentle meridian stretches.
• a full body self massage routine.
• the six healing sounds.
• simple breath practices.

Please come ready to enjoy a deep sense of ease and an expanded sense of the energy body.

Recommended reading: The Way of Qigong by Kenneth Cohen

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. Evidence suggests reaching this state through NSDR protocols, such as yoga nidra, can reset dopamine levels, reduce cortisol, and provide numerous physical and mental health benefits — including better sleep and enhanced neuroplasticity. We will dig into this and other research during the course.

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

What if the love you’ve been searching for is already here — waiting to be remembered?

In this retreat, you’ll explore self-compassion as a lifeboat home — a steady refuge when self-criticism, striving, or overwhelm take hold.

Rather than trying to “fix” yourself, you’ll be invited to gently shift your relationship to experience, discovering the loving awareness that is already present beneath conditioned patterns that do not serve you.

Through a blend of contemplative practice and experiential inquiry, you’ll find how self-compassion can serve as a bridge — from a limited sense of self to a more spacious, connected way of being. To the heart of who you are. We’ll explore how this practice of compassion can be more than a temporary balm and can become a doorway into deeper remembrance.

During our time together, you will be invited to:

• Engage in nondual guided meditations and self-compassion practices that support emotional resilience and inner steadiness.
• Explore experiential inquiries that gently reveal patterns of self-judgment and striving.
• Learn practical ways to meet difficult emotions with warmth and clarity.
• Participate in group discussions that foster connection, insight, and shared humanity.
• Learn how to integrate self-compassion into daily life as a sustainable, embodied practice.
• Deepen your experiential understanding of nonduality.
• Find new ways to access the heart of who you are.

Throughout the week, you’ll be supported in reconnecting with a sense of wholeness. Rather than attempting to fix an illusory and limited self, our time together will support us in having a direct experience of remembering, not “improving,” who we really are.

Recommended reading: The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together, by Caverly Morgan & A Kids Book About Mindfulness by Caverly Morgan

Asanga’s Nine Stages of Staying is one of the oldest and most comprehensive systems of concentration in the Buddhist tradition. Sometimes called the Elephant Path, this approach was originated by the great Buddhist master in 506 A.D., and it is now the main method of training the mind in the Tibetan tradition.

In this weekend meditation retreat, participants will learn the stages of the Elephant Path using the body as the primary object of concentration. Students will also receive an introduction to the basic stages of ordinary insight. By the end of our time together, students will have all the instructions necessary to successfully incorporate a robust meditation practice into everyday life.

Training the mind in this way can lead to a direct experience of equanimity and can put the student in a range of practice wherein pointing out the real nature of the awakened mind is possible.

No experience with meditation is required. If you have your own preferred meditation pillow and mat, please bring them.

The Earth holds us, breathes with us, moves through us.

Since time immemorial, human beings have lived in deep, reciprocal relationship with landscapes—our movements shaped by terrain, our nervous systems regulated by the rhythms of seasons and tides, our sense of self inseparable from the more-than-human world. Yet, in this modern, frenetic age, we are conditioned to see our bodies as isolated, our healing as individual, and “nature” as separate. This retreat is an invitation to remember an older truth: to inhabit our own bodies fully is to reinhabit the living Earth.

Rooted in the Gestalt traditions of Esalen and the emergent field of eco-somatics, our four-day backpacking journey will guide us through the wilds of Big Sur—Esselen tribal territory—in an immersive exploration of belonging, awareness, and interconnection, followed by a weekend of retreat and integration at Esalen Institute.

While trekking through awe-inspiring wilderness, we will engage in somatic practices that reawaken our felt kinship with the natural world. Embracing slowness and spaciousness, we will attune to gravity, breath, and the sensuous aliveness of place. Silent hiking, intuitive movement, meditation, and earth-based ritual will dissolve the false boundary between self and landscape. Exploring embodiment as an intimate community, we will move beyond notions of individual self-care to a lived experience of healing as relational and ecological.

Through this retreat, we step into a different rhythm—one guided by the living world around and within us. As we listen with our whole bodies, we begin to sense the reciprocity woven into all things. What emerges is not just connection but remembering—a return to a relationship as ancient as our true body: the Earth.

Important Notes:

• The full experience takes place over six days, from Tuesday, October 13th to Sunday, October 18th, 2026.

• This is a partner program with Wildtender, an organization based in Big Sur exploring the embodied intersection of wilderness and wisdom traditions. Prior to registering with Esalen, you will need to register and pay tuition fees through Wildtender for the wilderness portion of the program. For more details and to register, visit wildtender.org/earthbody

Experience with backpacking is not required. Wilderness skills will be taught before and within the program, and participants will be supported in preparations. Please see Wildtender’s program page for a more detailed hiking itinerary and backpacking eligibility criteria.

For thousands of years, autumnal holidays such as Samhain, Hallowe’en, and Vetrnætr have served as ceremonial foundations — connecting pre-modern peoples to landscape, ancestors, and ritual time. Many cultures believe “the veil thins” during this time, letting enchantment flood back into our world. The time is rife with opportunities to renew sacred relationships with the Earth, ourselves, and beings seen and unseen.

As the deciduous trees draw inward to direct energy into their roots, we too may feel drawn to our deeper inner worlds. The Big Sur wilderness — Esselen Tribal territory — is a fertile habitat for mind and spirit, and a potent domain for ritual to support transformation during this liminal season. Approaching the landscape as our teacher and guide, we will engage with the natural world in an embodied ecological context and explore the mythological and psycho-spiritual dimensions of land connectedness.

Drawing from their own European earth-based kinship traditions while holding a larger frame of pancultural land relationship, facilitators Fletcher Tucker and Micha Merrick will offer daily encounters with the medicinal, ecological, and ritual dimensions of plants found across the Northern Hemisphere. Diverse practices, including sound journeywork and guided meditations, will aid us in cultivating enhanced awareness, interconnectedness, and ceremonial reverence. Rooted in the Gestalt tradition of Esalen, we will build a container of safety and heart-centered community to connect meaningfully with ourselves and one another. Over five days of presence, play, and practice on the land, we will depart from modernity’s anthropocentric paradigm and descend into the ancient, potent, animate world of kinship and enchantment.

Important notes: This retreat will include one full day of immersion in the Big Sur wilderness, with a hike up to three miles. Please be aware that the hiking terrain can be steep, rugged, and sometimes strenuous. There may be prolonged sun exposure. Participants must be able to hike and carry what they need for the day: two liters of water, a pack lunch provided by Esalen, and sun protection. Other workshop sessions will be mostly situated outdoors on the Esalen property.

This workshop includes an additional $60 for Materials and Park fees.

Join us for a deeply nourishing sound immersion where sacred resonance becomes a gateway to transformation. In this weeklong workshop, we work with alchemy crystal singing bowls — instruments of subtle energy and crystalline intelligence — to harmonize the nervous system, soften emotional residue in the biofield, and awaken a more grounded, joyful state of being.

Each day includes spacious sound journeys designed to support theta brainwave states and foster deep relaxation, subconscious clearing, and intuitive insight. As we attune to the bowls’ harmonic field, we invite a gentle re-patterning of the nervous system and access to peace, presence, and embodied vitality.

Through practices in mantra (a Sanskrit word meaning “mind tool”), movement, voice, and reflection, we’ll explore how sound can:

• Clear energetic stagnation.
• Cultivate inner calm and self-trust.
• Interrupt and rewire habitual stress loops.
• Open pathways to awe, clarity, and inspiration.

You’ll experience seven alchemy crystal bowl sound journeys, heart-opening vocal practices, and a co-creative session in the Art Barn. We’ll also share journaling, partner work, and restorative space for integration.

Held within the elemental beauty of Esalen, where ocean waves, mineral springs, and towering trees invite deep renewal, this retreat offers space to soften, realign, and reconnect with your true self.

Come as you are. Leave radiant from within.

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, as is attending all sessions, including the final morning; 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.

Life invites us into change, but rarely teaches us how to move through it well. Whether it’s a relationship ending, a role dissolving, a chapter closing, or a calling emerging, you may find yourself standing at the edge of what was … and unsure how to step into what comes next.

This immersive weekend retreat is a sacred pause for anyone navigating change. Through nature-based ritual, creative altar-making, reflective writing, and a circle of shared witnessing, you’ll learn how to tend life’s thresholds not as chaotic interruptions but as initiations into a deeper sense of purpose.

Held over Halloween weekend — a time often associated with the thinning of boundaries between past and present — we’ll also explore how moments of change can open us to a wider field of awareness. At times, this may include a felt sense of where we come from and what has shaped us.

Guided by renowned artist, author, and ritualist Day Schildkret, you’ll explore four notes of Threshold Literacy:

• Cherishing: Honoring what has been lost and what still remains
• Inventorying: Seeing clearly what is alive and what is no longer needed
• Remembering: Reconnecting with what has shaped you and continues to live within you
• Orienting: Choosing what matters most and the direction you want to move in

Using the acclaimed Morning Altars practice, you’ll forage for meaning, create ritual altars in nature, and experience the power of communal witnessing. This is not a weekend of quick fixes; it’s an invitation to slow down, tend what’s tender, and mark the sacred moment you are living through.

Whether you’re grieving a loss, stepping into a new role, or simply sensing that something is shifting within, this retreat is designed to support you in crafting your own modern rituals of change.

No prior experience with ritual, art, or nature work is necessary. Just bring your truth, your questions, and your willingness to cross the threshold.

Recommended Reading: Morning Altars: A 7-Step Practice to Nourish Your Spirit through Nature, Art, and Ritual by Day Schildkret and Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration, and Change by Day Schildkret

This workshop includes an additional $20 for workshop material.

Haruki Murakami wrote that writing a novel is like running a marathon — it requires endurance, consistency, and mental discipline over a long stretch.

In this workshop, we will look at all the ways writers, both beginning and experienced, can support themselves both creatively and physically during the novel-writing process.

Using a combination of generative exercises meant to spark creativity, meditations designed to build focus, and practical advice on how to keep going, we’ll talk about how to take a fictional project from beginning to end without losing our way. We’ll also touch on the craft of creating compelling stories and characters by looking at published works and sharing our own writing.

And, we’ll discuss ways to build your own literary community to provide emotional and creative support and make the solitary process of writing a little less solitary.

By the end of the weekend, participants will leave with a road map to finishing a novel and taking care of themselves in the process.

In this five-day workshop, we will explore how sleep, dreams, and even the process of death can become gateways to deeper awareness and freedom. We’ll draw from the Tibetan contemplative traditions of dream and sleep practice to reveal how awareness continues through all states of experience.

The retreat combines traditional teachings with insights from Western psychology and contemporary understandings of consciousness. Through meditation, reflection, and experiential practices, participants will discover ways to integrate these teachings into everyday life.

Rather than remain solely in the realm of abstract philosophy, we’ll emphasize direct experience — learning how ordinary experiences such as falling asleep, dreaming, and facing life’s transitions can become opportunities for greater clarity, compassion, and inner freedom.

Recommended reading: Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche & Sleep & Awakening the Sacred Body, by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Your Spirit Guides are speaking to you. Join the conversation.

This weeklong retreat is devoted to deepening your relationship with your spiritual team as a direct and reliable source of guidance, clarity, and transformation.

This work centers on real-time dialogue. You bring what is present in your life, and your Guides respond. The exchange reveals what is ready to be understood, addressed, and shifted. Participants learn how to stay in that dialogue long enough for it to become clear, steady, and actionable.

The retreat is anchored in Aja Daashuur’s CCCE Method™: Connect, Channel, Clear, Embody — a framework developed through years of direct work with Spirit Guides and sustained connection to the unseen.

Participants establish a grounded relationship with their spiritual team and work through their intuitive language using oracle cards, guided exercises, divination tools, invocations, meditation, and the clairs — the intuitive senses through which information is received. Seeing, hearing, feeling, and knowing. Patterns are addressed through direct engagement with Spirit. Insight is integrated into the body and carried forward through tangible change.

Throughout the retreat, Aja’s Spirit Guides lead a series of channeled journeys that move through past, present, and future. These experiences reveal how different points in your life connect and inform one another, allowing a deeper understanding of your path and your choices.

This retreat is designed for those who are ready to move beyond initial connection and begin working directly with the guidance they receive. The focus is on staying in communication, understanding what is being shown, and allowing that information to shape real movement in your life.

Discover practices for sustaining an ongoing relationship with your Guides, one that continues to offer clarity, direction, and support beyond the retreat.

This is a strong next step for those who have experienced Aja’s Spirit Bridge retreat at Esalen or for those who already recognize how their intuitive senses present within them.

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.

Breathing is one of the few functions in the human body that is both automatic and voluntary — happening unconsciously every moment of our lives, yet also available to conscious control. In the yogic traditions, this makes the breath profoundly significant: a bridge between body and mind, conscious and subconscious awareness, the autonomic and non-autonomic nervous systems, and ultimately, a gateway into meditation and expanded states of consciousness.

In this immersive weekend workshop, we will explore the ancient science and transformative art of pranayama through practices rooted in the Sivananda, Iyengar, and Ashtanga yoga traditions. Far beyond simple breathing exercises, pranayama has been cultivated for thousands of years as a methodology for regulating energy, refining attention, stabilizing the mind, and priming the “pump” to help us reach deeper states of meditation.

Together, we will investigate why breath has long been considered the “master key” within contemplative traditions. The techniques we will practice are designed to support:

• Regulation of the nervous system and cultivation of greater resilience in the face of stress, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm.
• Increased vitality, respiratory awareness, and energy through classical pranayama techniques developed over centuries.
• Improved concentration, mental clarity, and the ability to steady attention in preparation for meditation.
• A deeper understanding of the relationship between breath, consciousness, the vagus nerve, and trauma.
• Greater connection to presence, embodiment, inner stillness, and the subtle dimensions of awareness often obscured by the pace of modern life.

Practices will include diaphragmatic breathing, Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) pranayamas, ratio breathing, breath retention, cleansing techniques, subtle energetic practices, guided meditation, gentle movement, and inquiry into both the ancient philosophy and modern science of conscious breathing.

Most importantly, this retreat approaches pranayama as a practice that transcends traditional wellness goals and explores it as a doorway. A doorway into stillness. Into presence. Into deeper listening. Into meditation. And ultimately, into liberation from suffering. This weekend invites participants to slow down, breathe consciously, and reconnect with one of humanity’s oldest and most profound inner technologies.

In a time when many men are questioning the inherited roles, social pressures, and stories that have shaped what it means to be a man, this workshop is an invitation to courageously explore masculinity. Through movement, honest self-reflection, and the profound learning that becomes possible when men gather, we’ll uncover challenges, witness one another’s vulnerability, and discover new ways of belonging, relating, and being.

Held within the healing container of Esalen Institute, this five-day immersive workshop offers a powerful space to return to the body, reconnect with inner truth, and explore more conscious, relational ways of inhabiting masculinity. Through the moving meditation practice of 5Rhythms®, guided somatic inquiry, live and DJd music, and shared witnessing, we’ll generate the conditions for honest self-discovery, deep connection, and the kind of embodied leadership the world is calling for now.

This is not about fixing men or prescribing a singular model of manhood. Rather, it is an opportunity to investigate the many ways masculinity is lived, inherited, defended, softened, and transformed. Together, we’ll explore how agency, accountability, tenderness, courage, grief, power, and presence live in the body, and how conscious movement can open new pathways toward choice, responsiveness, and relational integrity.

As the week unfolds, participants are invited to:

• Explore their relationship to masculinity through movement and breath.
• Develop somatic resources for resilience, regulation, and emotional range.
• Investigate vulnerability as a source of strength and relational trust.
• Deepen accountability, self-awareness, and integrity in leadership.
• Honor the diversity of lived male experience across generations, identities, and personal histories.
• Experience the restorative support that emerges through collective presence and compassionate witnessing.

Rooted in trauma-informed principles, the workshop emphasizes agency, consent, personal choice, and respect for boundaries. It welcomes men of all backgrounds and movement experience. What is asked is simple, though not always easy: a willingness to arrive, listen deeply, move honestly, and meet yourself and one another with courage.

Together, we’ll discover what becomes possible when men move beyond performance and into presence, beyond separation into authentic connection.

This workshop includes an additional $100 of faculty tuition.

Do you face challenges with focus and time management? Do you struggle with emotional hypersensitivity or frustration tolerance? Do you find it hard to follow through on tasks or commitments? Or to be reliable and consistent? If so, you are not alone.

Millions of people suffer daily from conditions associated with these executive function challenges. Though commonly referred to as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), these symptoms are not limited to this single condition, and they are often exacerbated by our complex, fast-paced, high-tech lives.

ADHD and related issues often leave people with a sense of self-doubt, shame, or unworthiness. The good news is that with mindfulness, compassion, and the application of skillful techniques, it is possible to move through life more effectively with care and wisdom.

In this workshop, through engaging in various mindfulness meditations, loving kindness and forgiveness practices and contemplative inquiry, you will discover how these challenges interrupt our functioning, how to navigate them, and how we can meet ourselves with compassion, forgiveness, and a good sense of humor.

This workshop includes an additional $100 in faculty tuition.

What positive shift would create the most meaningful change in your life right now?

Your extraordinary potential is built into your DNA and awaits your discovery. In this enlivening workshop, experience the essence of Integral Transformative Practice® (ITP), a living platform for growth, well-being, and evolution. Created by Esalen Institute luminaries Michael Murphy and George Leonard, ITP focuses on the interconnectedness of all aspects of the self to support the changes you want most — for yourself and the world.

This experiential journey weaves movement, writing, and sharing circles so you can listen deeply to the wisdom of your whole being, revealing who you are, who you’re becoming, and your next natural steps. Using the body as a guide for learning, we’ll engage in solo, partner, and group energy-awareness practices developed by ITP Co-Founder and Master Aikido Sensei George Leonard. We’ll also explore a revitalizing daily practice to restore balance, boost energy, and invite deep relaxation —one that can be integrated as a supportive tool for everyday life.

You are invited to:

• See life through a refreshing new lens.
• Uncover hidden insights.
• Align with your natural rhythms.
• Nurture personal autonomy for the journey ahead.

By applying the integral model of body, mind, heart, and soul — a portal to our innate wholeness — we’ll also explore the worldview that gave rise to Esalen Institute, where this transformative practice was developed. This evolutionary framework offers a pathway to our extraordinary potential, our individual connection to wholeness, which is ready to emerge.

Recommended reading: The Life we are Given, by Michael Murphy & George Leonard & Living an Extraordinary Life: The Magic of Integral Transformative Practice, by Christina Grote & Pam Kramer

In an economy predicated on capitalizing our attention, what if we apprenticed ourselves to ecological forces whose temporality refuses capture? How might sitting at the feet of a glacier, as our elder, liberate our presence?

Enter this five-day apprenticeship with the glacier as a teacher, following the glacier’s quality of time as a grammar for re-patterning our minds, bodies, attention, care, and labor as students of the earth.

Drawing on land-based practices created by the facilitators and their collaborative work in Southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay, each day will begin with storytelling from the lands we study — to cultivate a collective ethos and, in the words of Martin Shaw, “attend to a world in constant disclosure.” Guided by the earth as scripture, these transmissions will orient our practices as they are translated into embodied prompts to empower our capacity to love and protect the sacred amid ecological and social crisis.

Practices will include:

• Daily meditation: sitting in stillness to take on the posture and soul of the glacier.
• Daily movement: slow movement and wanders on the land to embody the pace of the glacier.
• Grief + praise work: How does the glacier’s rapid melting call upon our grief and worship?
• Reading the landscape through pattern recognition to pay attention to the birds, tides, bees, plants, and stones at Esalen, and ask, “What do we learn about the earth’s nervous system, and what does it teach us about our own?”
• Writing and intimate council shares: As glaciers face extinction, what stories are at risk of extinction through the endemic nature of you? What stories do these practices call forward to be shared? How does writing and speaking them in council affirm and protect your own life as something the earth desperately needs right now?

On our fourth day together, participants will be invited to a half-day of silence on the land, culminating in story-sharing around the fire and soaking. Prepare to be thrilled by, and thrill the earth, with your glacial pace.

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore traditional healing wisdom and the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, spiritual and soul 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 three traditional healing ceremonies.

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

How can those of us who yearn without belief or ritual find our way? Many of us have lost our connection to a mainstream faith, or maybe never had it. We long to find more, even if we are afraid that it may not be there. Some of us have experienced our worlds cracked open with dreams, visions, presences, or moments of mystical union — and may not know how to make sense of what has happened.

We’ll begin our time together with an open sharing of stories of spiritual search and spiritual experience, with an invitation for participants to speak about their frustrations and their hopes. During the weekend, you will be introduced to pathworkings — guided meditations that take those without traditional faith on a spiritual journey —  and have the opportunity to use your voice to sing through your own journey.

This workshop is designed for those who want to more deeply understand the feeling of loss, awe, and the ineffable in the absence of a mainstream faith, and anyone who wishes they could believe, finds they can’t, and still imagines the possibility of a way forward.

What if your pleasure is the key to your liberation? What if it could be your prayer, your medicine, and your power? When was the last time you felt fully alive in your body — unapologetically?

Pleasure Alchemy is a somatic journey designed to awaken, heal, and empower you through the sacred art of sensual embodiment. By engaging all five senses through sacred touch, movement, and sound rituals, we’ll explore how to rewire shame and reclaim pleasure as a path to healing. Together, we will co-create alchemy through collective care. We invite you to experience yourself in community more fully and authentically by:  

Activating the body temple through guided somatic practices, breathwork, and movement rituals designed to reconnect to your sensual body as a source of truth, beauty, and divine intelligence.

• Rewiring shame into sovereignty by exploring the roots of erotic shame through compassionate inquiry and release practices.

• Experiencing the alchemy of touch with guided consensual touch rituals — solo and partnered — that can reawaken your pleasure pathways and open portals to healing and intimacy.

• Awakening the inner lover through mirror work, sensual self-devotion practices, and energetic cultivation to deepen your relationship with your erotic self.

• Reclaiming pleasure as medicine through sound healing, journaling, and group integration circles. With tools for integration, you can anchor the wisdom of your pleasure into your daily life as a revolutionary act of self-love and spiritual power.

Join us for an opportunity to reclaim your pleasure as a source of personal power, liberation, and deep connection in community. Pleasure is not just indulgence — it’s medicine.

Please Note: Pleasure Alchemy is best experienced somatically — in the body — and through community ritual. We invite learning through touch and presence. You are always at choice. While sensuality will be invited into the space, no overt sexual behavior will be part of the workshop.

Recommended reading: All About Love, by bell hooks, Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom

In play we can discover a curious version of ourselves, while balancing our light and shadow and laughing at our attachments. This workshop invites us to be soft, brave, and available to the moment. This is an immersive practice that explores our most vulnerable and creative self.

Using tools found in improvisation, meditation, altered states, and movement practice, we will explore clowning around as a spiritual practice. The work begins with exercises that help you drop into the body and descend from the mind to access the flow state. With the foundation of a sacred container, we will engage in primarily nonverbal, physical games and rituals that give birth to organic impulses inspired by the child within. There is no pressure to perform, but an invitation to get lost inside yourself, an openness to go beyond your comfort zone, and a willingness to play within the moment.

There is nothing to learn but rather much to uncover — to allow us to move through life in a more open state, with a greater connection to ourselves and the world. This workshop is physical, open, and accessible for diverse bodies. Come unravel the child within! Please come unprepared.

Recommended reading: Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir, Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

This workshop is for anyone feeling the need to slow down, reconnect with themselves, and step into the New Year relaxed and awake. Whether you’re navigating change, seeking greater balance, or simply wanting to deepen your relationship with yourself, this is an invitation to pause, breathe, and replenish through gentle movement, the healing sounds of crystal bowls, and stillness.

Throughout our time together, we’ll explore practices that soften the body, calm the mind, and open the heart. Each day, we’ll return to the present moment through qigong, gentle yoga, restorative movement, sound healing, meditation, and poetry — all held within a compassionate and nurturing container. These practices will allow us to feel deeply into our yoga sankalpa — our heartfelt intentions — for the New Year.

The rhythms of the week are designed to help reset the nervous system, create space for reflection, and support attunement to your own inner landscape. The healing vibrations of crystal singing bowls will support deep rest and spaciousness, offering opportunities for insight and integration.

This workshop is for anyone longing to:

• Begin the New Year with more presence, ease, and self-awareness.
• Reconnect with their body and breath through mindful movement, including qigong, gentle yoga, and restorative stretching.
• Release long-held tension and cultivate deeper rest.
• Reflect on and clarify heartfelt intentions in a supportive space.
• Experience the benefits of sound healing and meditative stillness.
• Gently replenish their energy and return to daily life with more resilience.

All levels and bodies are welcome to experience this balanced blend of movement and mindfulness. To participate fully, you’ll need to be able to move independently between standing, seated, and floor-based postures — or attend with a support person who is also registered for the workshop and can assist you throughout the week.

Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervishes to the shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain. As the old year ends and the new begins, come to sweat, honor the past, and make space for a new beginning.

Through an alchemical combination of movement, nature, and sound healing rituals, we will reconnect our bodies, minds, and hearts to gain clarity about the past year’s journey, anchor our new intentions, and intuit our way forward with confidence and curiosity.

Over the weekend, we will:

• Partake in rituals to give thanks to the new cycle of the year.
• Call in blessings for the land, communities, families, and friends.
• Cleanse from our core through our pores to free our minds.
• Listen to the body’s wisdom to inform our new directions collectively.

Allow yourself to be nourished by this sacred land, the hot spring waters, the time we share together, and the friends you make. Experience the beauty, awe, and wonder of being alive so you may return home rejuvenated and inspired for this brand new year.

Bring a journal, pen, and a piece of festive clothing.

This workshop includes an additional $35 in faculty tuition.

When we tend to and align with the cycles and seasons, we glimpse the divine. The period between the start of the calendar new year and the beginning of the lunar new year is a time of liminality. Midwinter is a time for reflection, gestation, and non-doing, while we await the birth of a new cycle. It is a beautiful phase to synchronize our minds and bodies with the phenomenal world. Within our collective work, it is an equally poignant time to mend our Western psyches to nature, tending to our disconnected and disjointed worldviews and practices.

During this five-day retreat, we will work with our minds, bodies, and nature to bring our earth-based origins and contemporary, often problematic Western psyches into greater harmony. Participants should be prepared to engage in substantial embodied practices — including meditation, taijiquan, and qigong — listen to short talks, spend time in nature, work in pairs and small groups, keep a contemplative journal, and be in respectful, compassionate community. Our work will bring the balance of the feminine water and earth as we prepare to welcome the Year of the Fire Sheep.

Participants in this workshop will experience:

• Extensive sitting, standing, and walking meditation
• Short talks that introduce key ideas and themes
• Substantial embodied practices, including taijiquan and qigong
• Interactive experiential exercises in pairs and small groups
• Time in nature
• Contemplative journal reflections

Please bring clothing layers for comfort both indoors and outdoors, comfortable flat walking shoes, and a waterproof jacket in case of rain. We also recommend bringing a journal and pen.

Recommended reading: Cultivating Qi: An Introduction to Chinese Body-Mind Energetics by Jun Wang, Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet by Jeanine M. Canty, Tao Te Ching (any version and suggest Stephen Mitchell’s New English Version)

What if joy isn’t something you chase but something you relax into?

Many of us spend our lives searching for happiness while carrying the very tension that keeps us from experiencing it. This workshop offers another possibility: that joy isn’t something we create but something we uncover — emerging naturally as the body softens, the heart opens, and awareness returns to itself.

During our time together, you’ll be guided through five elemental phases of unfolding. Water softens the nervous system into safety and trust. Earth restores a felt sense of grounding, belonging, and inherent worth. Wind frees the breath, mind, and emotions through movement and inquiry. Fire awakens vitality, creativity, and joyful aliveness. Space invites you to rest in open awareness — the quiet fullness of simply being.

Through guided meditation, gentle movement, somatic inquiry, partner exercises, and contemplative reflection, you’ll discover practical ways to release chronic tension, deepen presence, and allow joy to move more freely through your body and life.

By the end of the weekend, you may find yourself:

• Feeling more grounded, relaxed, and at home in your body.
• Discovering the difference between believing you’re enough and truly feeling it.
• Reconnecting with your natural vitality and creative aliveness.
• Resting more easily in the spacious awareness beneath the changing conditions of life.

James Baraz, co-founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, has spent decades sharing the path of loving-kindness and awakening joy. His son, Adam, brings a complementary, body-centered approach, drawing on nearly twenty years of somatic practice and dharma study with wisdom teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Together they offer an experiential exploration of the SomaWaken framework — Adam’s five-phase approach to embodied awakening — integrating somatic practice, contemplative inquiry, and Buddhist wisdom in a grounded, accessible way.

Whether you’re new to meditation or have practiced for years, this workshop offers a gentle, experiential path toward greater ease, resilience, and embodied well-being.

No prior experience is necessary. Gentle movement, seated meditation, and lying-down practices will be offered throughout. All are welcome.

Recommended Reading: Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You On The Road to Real Happiness by James Baraz

We rarely give ourselves permission to stop and ask the hard questions: Are you showing up the way you’d like? Have you created the impact you want? Are you going in the right direction?

This workshop is for anyone who knows they are at a threshold and want more aliveness and truth in the next chapter of their lives.

Our time together will unfold through a progression of experiential exercises, including movement, reflection, intimate group work, and practical frameworks for understanding where you are and what comes next. The majority of the workshop will draw on the Esalen tradition and imaginal psychology, where we will engage embodied knowing, intuition, and the wisdom of the heart to discover what calls to us at this stage of life and begin building a vision grounded in that truth. Expect real depth and real fun.

This is not a workshop you just do alongside other people. The group itself is an essential part of our work together. The witnessing, shared vulnerability, and live coaching create a container that private reflection can rarely replicate.

The environment is carefully designed — rigorous and warm, challenging yet safe — to create a space where key questions can be explored honestly, in community with others doing the same work.

If you want a more powerful and authentic life, one lived with integrity and directed by what you truly value, this is where the work begins. Active participation is warmly encouraged. Nothing is required.

Asanga’s Nine Stages of Staying is one of the oldest and most comprehensive systems of concentration in the Buddhist tradition. Sometimes called the Elephant Path, this approach was originated by the great Buddhist master in 506 A.D., and it is now the main method of training the mind in the Tibetan tradition.

In this weekend meditation retreat, participants will learn the stages of the Elephant Path using the body as the primary object of concentration. Students will also receive an introduction to the basic stages of ordinary insight. By the end of our time together, students will have all the instructions necessary to successfully incorporate a robust meditation practice into everyday life.

Training the mind in this way can lead to a direct experience of equanimity and can put the student in a range of practice wherein pointing out the real nature of the awakened mind is possible.

No experience with meditation is required. If you have your own preferred meditation pillow and mat, please bring them.

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.
• 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.
• Barridas (plant sweepings), working with medicinal herbal bundles for purification
• Empathic connection, an exploration of our intuition, revealing how to listen and connect with one another and ourselves, more deeply.
• Baños de flores (evening flowering baths) to attract blessings

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.

Midwinter invites us to slow down, listen deeply, and remember what truly nourishes us. Beneath the surface of apparent stillness, roots deepen. Seeds quietly prepare. Life is already organizing itself for spring. What if our own hearts follow this same rhythm?

Join us for a restorative week of immersive sound journeys, contemplative practices, movement, creative exploration, and time in nature designed to help you remember your place within the living intelligence that connects all things.

With a rich collection of alchemy crystal singing bowls, chimes, voice, and other resonant instruments, each sound journey becomes an invitation to settle the nervous system, attune the heart, and cultivate a deeper sense of presence, wonder, and belonging. Throughout the week, we’ll explore how vibration influences the body, mind, and heart through both timeless contemplative wisdom and emerging research into sound, resonance, coherence, nervous system regulation, and emotional well-being.
Together, we’ll explore:

• Seven immersive sound journeys that cultivate deep rest, relaxation, and inner renewal.
• Mindfulness, breath, gentle movement, and deep listening practices that can be woven into everyday life.
• Shared creativity in Esalen’s Art Barn as a pathway into presence, intuition, and joyful expression.
• The symbolic and traditional wisdom associated with the crystals, minerals, and metals of the Earth, inviting reflection on the wisdom of the natural world.
• Meaningful community, reflection, and connection in one of the world’s most inspiring natural settings.

Held during the quiet beauty of the new moon and the ancient seasonal threshold of Imbolc — a celebration of the first stirrings of light and renewal — this retreat is supported by Esalen’s healing hot springs, ocean air, rugged coastline, and expansive night skies. Together, these elements create a spacious container for rest, reflection, and renewal.

Whether you are new to sound meditation or have an established contemplative practice, you’ll leave with practical tools for cultivating greater ease, resilience, and vitality, along with a renewed sense of belonging — to yourself, to one another, and to the living intelligence that quietly connects us all.

What if play could become a path of presence?

Mindful improv brings together the liveliness of improvisational theater with the steadiness of mindfulness practice. Improv is spontaneous, expressive, and often funny; mindfulness is quiet, attentive, and still. Though they may seem like opposites at first, both invite us into openness, curiosity, acceptance, and the freedom to meet the moment as it is.

In this experiential weekend workshop, you will explore improv as a form of mindfulness that begins within and extends into connection with others. With warmth, levity, and “serious silliness,” we will use simple improv games and mindfulness practices to explore how we relate to ourselves, one another, and the unfolding moment.

During our time together, you will be invited to:

• Practice guided meditation to cultivate embodiment, steadiness, and ease.
• Engage in accessible improv games that support spontaneity, listening, and creative connection.
• Explore judgments about yourself and others with kindness, humor, and curiosity.
• Notice the roles, habits, and identities we carry — and experiment with holding them more lightly.
• Reflect individually and in community on how these practices can support flexibility and ease in daily life.

No improv experience is needed. Discover practical ways to take mindfulness off the cushion — and tune into a lighter, more responsive relationship with yourself, others and the unfolding moment.

What lies behind today’s evidence-based mind-body practices for well-being, resilience, and purpose? This three-day workshop explores the deep lineages and sacred traditions from which many modern methods arise, guided by teachers who walk both worlds of rigorous science and timeless wisdom.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center, Alejandro Chaoul pioneered programs to support patients with chronic illness through Tibetan Yoga, meditation, and integrative medicine. At UCSF, Eve Ekman developed and researched secular, evidence-based tools to strengthen emotional resilience and prevent burnout among healthcare providers.

Together, they will share cutting-edge science and evidence-based practices alongside the sacred dimensions often missing from conventional approaches to healing and renewal.

Participants will explore:

• Tibetan Yoga of Renewal through breathwork practices
• Mapping emotions underlying stress
• Sacred syllables and mantra to protect the mind
• Meditations to uplift and expand heart and mind

This workshop offers practical, research-informed tools and a sacred perspective to rekindle creativity, ease emotional distress, and reconnect with meaning and purpose — for patients, providers, seekers, or anyone on the path of healing.