Workshops

What would happen if you stopped editing yourself before you began?

This embodied writing workshop is designed to get you out of your head and into your body — where the stories that refuse to stay quiet live. Through writing, movement, and deep listening, participants access material often buried beneath politeness and perfection. This is where the censoring mind loosens, and something truer emerges. The stories we avoid are often the ones most worth telling.

Writers and non-writers alike are welcome. No experience is required, and sharing is always optional. Presence — not perfection — is the practice.

During this workshop, participants will:

• Learn to access their voice through guided writing exercises before the censoring mind takes over.
• Use gentle movement and experiential exercises to unlock insight held in the body.
• Explore irreverence and reverence side by side, creating safety for vulnerable material.
• Practice deep listening to self and others, cultivating trust and creative permission.

Leave emboldened, with trust in your own voice and a renewed sense of boundless creative expression. Come as you are. This is where you unmute it.

Recommended Reading: War of Art by Steven Pressfield

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

For thousands of years across many cultures, expanded states of consciousness have been used intentionally as a strategy for meaningful transformation and self-exploration — marking life’s major transitions and rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.

In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of enhanced states of consciousness. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.

Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.

This workshop includes an additional $75 of faculty tuition.

Let’s be real — queer men are already masters of reinvention. We’ve learned to shapeshift, decode signals, seduce with a glance, armor up when needed, and sometimes dissociate in the name of survival. Our sexuality has been a battlefield and a playground — sometimes both in the same night. Sexuality offers a lens through which we may examine and deeply experience ourselves and our connection to all of existence. By fully immersing yourself in your sexual experiences, there is more — more pleasure, more presence, more freedom — hiding in plain sight. In your hips. Your breath. Your belly. Your no. Your yes. Your body.

This weekend is a playful deep dive into what it means to live in a queer male body — cis or transmasculine — with curiosity, with courage, and in relation to society and one another.

Together, we’ll explore the wild terrain of gender and sexuality — not from a textbook, but from the inside out. Through guided practices, embodied rituals, and communal reflection, you’ll get to ask big, juicy questions like:

• What kind of man am I when I stop trying so hard? If I move past the “masc” persona and its acceptable coded behaviors to embrace an energy that is both boundless and de-gendered?
• How much of my desire is mine, and how much is performance?
• What would it feel like to inhabit my sexuality without apology — or choreography?

We’ll explore how shame, culture, trauma, and liberation show up in our movements, our fantasies, our ability (or inability) to receive touch. We’ll stretch out of binary thinking and into something more fluid, more alive, more you. You’ll be invited to experiment with different ways of relating, touching, and expressing — from the tender to the wild, the sacred to the silly.

This is not about being “good at sex.” It’s about being honest in our sexuality. And maybe even finding new ways to experience it as medicine, mischief, and art.

Why this, why now? Because queer men are still carrying a lot — even in all our glittering freedom. We’ve inherited both boldness and bruises. While we celebrate open sexuality in our culture, we rarely get the space to slow down and feel what it all means in our bodies. This is that space. Join us to make meaning together — with breath, touch, and truth.

Please note: This workshop, designed specifically for those who identify as queer men (cis or trans), includes partial nudity, guided touch, roleplay, and somatic exploration of gender and sexuality. All activities are optional. The space we create together centers safety, sovereignty, and presence, prioritizing your agency and comfort at every turn. Your consent leads the way. Although we will explore touch and sensuality, no sexual acts of any kind will be instructed or included in this workshop. It will not include full nudity, nor anything you do not enthusiastically consent to.

Recommended Reading: Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas; The ManTantra Letters by Victor Bliss & Nathan James

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

Fostering close and connected relationships is one of the most important things affecting the quality of our lives. Cultivating trust and openness with a loved one, whether with an intimate partner or friend, is an essential aspect of any successful, supportive relationship.

This weekend, Perry and Johanna Holloman, intimate partners and friends for over 30 years, will share the most effective tools and practices they have developed to nurture their connection to each other.

The primary tool Perry and Johanna will share is called Gestalt Inquiry. This easy-to-learn, powerful practice provides a safe context for exploring the most meaningful and sensitive aspects of relationships. Perry and Johanna like to think of it as a practice that becomes a continuing part of any successful long-term relationship because it places high value on compassion, respect, and love of truth. As we learn to discover and safely express what is true for us, individually, as a couple, or as friends, we deepen our heart’s capacity for intimacy and connection, which leads to a more fulfilling and meaningful shared life.

During our time together, you will learn practices and resources to integrate into your everyday life, such as:

• Embodied practices involving movement, breath, meditation, and awareness to develop a sense of palpable presence as the foundation upon which your relationship can flourish.
• The Art of Conscious Communication: learning to care as much about understanding our partner and what they’re communicating as we care about being heard and understood by them.
• How to express needs, feelings, and appreciations in an attuned manner to deepen relational trust.
• Understanding the “distancing behaviors” we engage in, usually as an unconscious form of defense against vulnerability and contact.
• Learning to co-regulate each other in structured exercises, emphasizing compassion and respect so presence-based relating naturally arises.

This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations. A couple may be any two people with a history who desire a better future together, e.g., friends, partners, married or divorced spouses, parent and child, siblings, and others.

This workshop includes an additional $50 for faculty tuition.

This workshop is more than a learning experience — it’s an invitation to connect deeply with yourself and others in a supportive and creative space. Together, we’ll explore the profound potential for healing and growth that arises when art and psychology converge. No artistic experience is necessary; this workshop is about creative expression, not perfection.

Integrating art therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this workshop combines two evidence-based emotional and psychological growth approaches. Creating art stimulates your brain, unlocking new pathways and possibilities. Art therapy offers a dynamic way to visually explore your thoughts and emotions, providing a unique outlet for self-expression and growth. CBT complements this process by helping you identify and challenge dysfunctional thought patterns, empowering you to shift your mindset and embrace change.

• Bring your inner monster to life through art, and then engage with it through conversation to gain clarity and understanding.
• Delve into themes of control, shifting perspectives, and transformation through the power of poetry.
• Draw your own emotional landscape and gain practical tools to continue your healing journey long after our time together.
• Compose your personal Declaration of Independence (to free yourself from what keeps you stuck).

Led by a board-certified art therapist, this fully interactive workshop combines drawing, collage, painting, writing, and group dialogue. Together, we’ll explore the fears, anxieties, and barriers holding you back, empowering you with tools to create meaningful and lasting change.

Please note this is not a traditional art class or open studio experience. This is a guided and supportive creative process designed to help participants explore emotions through art making rather than focusing on artistic skill or creating “perfect” artwork.

Participants are asked to bring their own sketchbook so all of your retreat artwork stays in one place as a keepsake. Recommended options: 8.5″ x 8.5″ or 7.6″ x 5.3″ Watercolor paints will be provided, but you’re welcome to bring your own if you’d prefer not to share (optional). Recommended sets: Full set or Travel set

All other supplies will be provided—brushes, paper, pens, colored paper, glue, pastels, and more. A materials fee of $17.50 is included in the registration cost to cover shared materials.

This workshop will give you the tools to help you stop holding yourself back. Whether you have a desire to lose 20 pounds, write a book, launch a business, start a side hustle, open your heart to love, shift your relationship with money, or figure out your next chapter — whatever goal you set — this workshop will help you get out of your own way.

Through the powerful lens of shadow work, you can uncover the hidden forces that drive you and how to break through them.

During our time together, we will dive deep to:

• Set better and healthier boundaries.
• Get clear about what you really want next for your life.
• Have greater accountability.
• Leave with clear action steps to walk toward your goals.

Using a practical, evidence-based approach, Justin Michael Williams will help you understand and fully embrace your shadow so you can overcome your self-limiting patterns and step into the life you really want.

Build confidence. Break through your patterns. Let go of old stories. Shift your relationship with your inner voice. Live a life of greater authenticity and truth — with tools and a plan for action that can last well after the retreat is over.

This is your moment to reset, overcome fear and self-doubt, and say “yes” to the life that’s waiting for you.

Recommended Reading: Stay Woke, Justin Michael Williams

In 1938, researchers at Harvard University began a 75-year study that addressed life’s fundamental question: What makes a good life? The Grant Study, also known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development, found strong relationships to be the clearest predictor of life satisfaction.

In Relational Gestalt practice, direct and response-able communication is essential for creating intimacy and strengthening our bonds to others. The benefits that flow from solid relationships with partners, relatives, and friends, can be a source of connection and great joy in our lives.

Sometimes, the ways we’ve learned to communicate in relationship creates more distance rather than contact with the people who are important to us.

In this workshop, you’ll have an opportunity to become aware of the ways you communicate; you’ll have the chance to learn, unlearn, and practice ways of communicating to enhance your connection to others. Together, we will explore how the past may be keeping you from making use of the contact that is available in the here and now.

Over the course of the weekend, we will use dyads, repeating questions and open seat sessions designed to facilitate communication and understanding.

We are erotic primates living in culturally imposed domestication. We have the lineage and bodies of hunter-gatherers, but we exist in a modern context that is deeply afraid of Eros. Like other domesticated animal species, we have been removed from the wild to live a more settled life. For many of us, this has had the unfortunate effect of cutting ourselves off from the somatic and erotic aliveness within our own bodies, both in our relationships and from the whole of our lives.

In this modern world, we are often left wondering, Why does my sexuality feel so difficult, unsatisfying, and limited? Why do my erotic relationships seem unsustainable and challenging? How do I access my erotic aliveness? Am I sexually broken, and how do I fix…me?

You are not broken! It’s not you. It’s the domestication — the context that cuts so many of us off from our bodies and aliveness.

In this workshop, you will be invited to:

• Develop a working understanding of what it means to ReWild Eros and un-domesticate the erotic body.
• Creatively explore the foundation of somatic erotic sovereignty.
• Discover the role of internalized and social shame in interfering with erotic connection to your body.
• Understand how Grief and Eros are connected and the role of moving grief in reclaiming and liberating erotic expression.
• Use playful, connective, and experiential somatic practices to build erotic energy and aliveness.
• Learn how to integrate these practices to create erotic sustainability in your life and relationships.

Together, we’ll explore traditional, experiential, and somatic learning, including exercises with movement, consensual touch, and group interaction. Participants will have agency to modify any exercise for their boundaries and safety. Although erotic healing and growth are part of this experience, this workshop will not be supportive for people with unaddressed primary sexual or somatic trauma.

This workshop is for individuals, couples, and people of all relationship orientations. People of all sexual and gender identities are welcome and celebrated. This workshop is sex-positive and erotic-inclusive and will rest on a foundation of embodied consent and boundaries practices. Though Eros is invited into the space, no overt sexual behavior will be part of the workshop.  

You are invited to bring a couple of small items for a shared altar that we will build together. The first item could connected to your family, lineage, or ancestors and the second could be connected to your body or sexuality. All items will be returned at the end of the workshop.

Recommended Reading: Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski,  The Spirit of Intimacy, by Sobonfu Somé, The Body is Not An Apology, by Sonya Renee Taylor, Reviving Kinship and Sexual Abundance, Dr. Kim Tallbear on For the Wild podcast

The body is a portal to the numinous dimensions of the soul’s life. It can lead us to healing and wholeness far beyond simple relief of traumatic symptoms — and to increased access to our feelings and a renewed sense of soulful aliveness. Jungian and depth psychology orient to the deepest currents of the soul, where dreams and life experiences take on cohesive wisdom and unfold in a way that guides the individual. However, developmental wounds, particularly those of a traumatic nature, can interrupt the psyche’s innate thrust toward wholeness.

In this workshop, we will work with authentic movement and other somatic practices grounded in the perspective of depth psychology to learn and experience how the body can serve as a gateway to realign with those innate healing currents.

Our ancestors understood that our dreams and visions often speak not just to the individual but to the community as well. In this realm, which Jung referred to as the “Spirit of the Depths,” we can reconnect with the creative unconscious for insights that remain elusive when caught up in the groupthink typical of the “Spirit of the Times.” We will practice both indoors and outdoors, surrounded by the stunning beauty of the natural world, where the inner meets the outer, to engage with these transformative energies as they emerge.

This workshop is oriented toward therapists interested in learning how to access the somatic underpinnings of psychic life and those committed to weaving the body’s way of knowing with life’s unfolding.

10 CE credits available — for additional information, click here. There will be a $90 fee for CE credit, payable directly to Barbara Holifield. If interested, you can contact her at barbaraholifield1@me.com.

Recommended reading: Holifield, B. (2025). Being with the Body in Depth Psychotherapy: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm., Menakem, Resmaa (2017) My Grandmother’s Hands. Las Vegas, Nevada: Central Recovery Press.

If we carry intergenerational trauma (and we do), we also carry intergenerational wisdom. It’s in our genes and in our DNA. —Kazu Haga

What if your healing journey lies within you and in the wisdom carried by your ancestral line? The Listening When Parts Speak workshop is a curated experience designed to help you access the gifts of your ancestry while transforming the burdens of personal, cultural, and intergenerational trauma. Together, we will facilitate a relationship between your parts and your internal healing resource called Self.

Through mindfulness, guided meditation, experiential exercises, and teachings from the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, you’ll deepen your connection to your internal healing resource, known as Self, and build relationships with the parts of you that carry the weight of trauma.

During this workshop, we will explore:

• Mindfulness practices to bring attention and presence to here and now experiences.
• The key concepts of the IFS model of working with trauma.
• Experiential exercises to connect with your inner parts and wise ancestors.
• Demonstrations of the healing potential of IFS and ancestor wisdom.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll be invited to explore ways to incorporate these tools into your daily life to help calm activated or triggered parts of yourself. You’ll have the opportunity to cultivate a new or deepened relationship with supportive ancestors to guide you through your daily life. Additionally, you’ll be encouraged to reflect on a greater understanding of the inner parts of others that make you less likely to personalize their behavior.

20 IFS-CE credits are available to those who are IFS Level 1 trained and may be applied toward IFS certification or recertification. A completion certificate will only be offered to participants who attend all 20 hours of this retreat. If, for any reason you cannot attend the full 20 hours, you will not be issued with a completion certificate. Please see faculty for details.

Recommended Reading: Listening When Parts Speak: A Practical Guide to Healing with Internal Family Systems Therapy and Ancestor Wisdom by Tamala Floyd, LCSW

You are what you practice! The Buddha’s teachings meet modern brain science in this interactive workshop exploring meditation, musical performances, and neuroplasticity. Join us to discover how these practices can harmonize with one another to offer paths for inner peace and more joyful engagement with the world.

Leading deep inquiry and guided meditations, senior teacher Nikki Mirghafori mentors us on a journey into mindfulness and the cultivation of compassion. Neuroscientist Clifford Saron delves into the mysteries of the brain and shares the latest research from his field. San Francisco Symphony cellist Barbara Bogatin inspires us with the music of J.S.Bach and offers a rare glimpse into the process of musical creativity from the inside. Each day unfolds with a thematic focus, allowing us to dive deep into these three intertwined perspectives.

Together, we will be invited to:

• Meditate on the themes of samatha (concentration), vipassana (insight), and metta (loving kindness), and their application to daily life.
• Discover how scientists understand the impact of musical and meditative practice on our brains and bodies.
• Understand how mindfulness practice enhances musical craft and expression.
• Get to know each other as we share learning in group discussions.
• Exult in the joy of music through live cello performances!

This workshop is for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of themselves and their connection to others through the lens of mindfulness, science, and art. Whether you’re a meditator, musician, clinician, or simply curious, you’ll find valuable tools and ideas to enrich your personal and professional life. No previous experience in meditation, music, or brain research is necessary!

Qualified participants can receive 18 CE credits via the Spiritual Competency Academy. Click HERE to learn more.

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

The healing path has a trajectory. Gabrielle Roth called this, The Path of The Wounded Healer. It is here that we look closely at our healing process. We mark both where we are and where we want to be. We dance through the five stages of healing in relationship to victim, survivor, healer, transformer and eventually the one who rests in compassionate service.

It is my belief that our sacred task in life is to transform the most difficult things we have been through, into our greatest strengths. These are the stories of our resiliency, vulnerability and strength. It is here one may learn how to move with what is and transform it to what we want it to be.

In Gabrielle Roth’s  Heartbeat Map, we investigate what is moving through the emotional territory of the heart. By understanding the relationship of emotional polarities we can come to respect and appreciate what we have been through. Without fear, we do not experience courage. Without anger, we cannot experience forgiveness. Without love, we cannot experience grief. Without loss we cannot experience or appreciate the full spectrum of joy. Without all of these qualities, we cannot know the true nature of compassion.

You are invited to join this journey of movement and awareness, focused on how emotions transform the heart. This map is Gabrielle Roth’s living wisdom. I am here to pass this gift on to you to be carried in your own bones and blood.

Each session will be primarily focused on the 5Rhythms® moving meditation (dance practice). We will integrate each movement session with a seated meditation practice, focused on one of the Buddhist Heart Practices (Brahma viharas) which are equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion and joy. Included in the group will be optional sharing and a question and answer period.

Recommended Reading: Dancing with Dharma: Essays on Movement and Dance in Western Buddhism by Harrison Blum, Maps to Ecstasy by Gabrielle Roth, Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth, Connections By Gabrielle Roth, and Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven.

This workshop includes an additional $100 in additional tuition.

I think it’s the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work and how they don’t work. —Michelle Obama

The pelvis is a powerful part of our body and is foundational to our overall health. The tissues and bones of our pelvis encompass our reproductive, eliminatory, and digestive organs. They shift and change according to stress, infection, pregnancy and birth, hormonal changes, lifestyle, and trauma. When it is in balance, we feel at ease; when out of balance, it can significantly impact the quality of our life.

This retreat will focus on pelvic health along the span of the reproductive spectrum, from preconception through menopause. A broad range of topics will be covered, including:

• Pelvic floor anatomy and self-care practices
• Menstrual health
• Sexual health
• Nutrition and the digestive system
• Mindfulness
• Mental health
• Yoga and other movement practices
• Community building and journaling activities
• Hormones and fertility

Our goal is to help our participants increase their knowledge, self-awareness, and literacy on the workings of their body, pelvic floor, fertility, and sexual health during different spans of their lives. Participants will discover an array of resources, a community of women to support them on their journey, lifelong education, and self-care practices that are accessible and supportive for their body and pelvic health.

Recommended Reading: Wild Feminine by Tami Lynn Kent, Dr. Sonia’s Guide to Navigating Pelvic Pain by Sonia Bahlani, Hello, Down There: A Guide to Healing Chronic Pelvic and Sexual Pain by Alexandra Milspaw, Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams and Tending to Your Womb by Anietie Ukpe-Wallace

Participants must bring their own set of tune-up yoga massage balls for use during the workshop. They can be purchased here.

Gestalt is, at its heart, an awareness practice. It invites us to be present with what is. From that presence, insight, emotional regulation, and inner guidance begin to emerge.

Gestalt practice helps us connect with what is real and true for us, beyond old patterns, habitual self-judgment, or the impulse to fix ourselves. In a field of shared inquiry where judgment softens, authenticity has space to reveal itself. Integrative Gestalt Practice™, developed by Perry and Johanna Holloman over the past 30 years, combines deep awareness with embodied exploration. It offers practical tools for navigating relationships, life transitions, and meaningful inner questions with clarity and integrity.

During this workshop, you will:

• Learn Gestalt-based self-inquiry practices that deepen awareness and authentic connection.
• Engage in breath and movement-based exercises to access embodied wisdom.
• Strengthen your ability to recognize and follow your own inner guidance.
• Work in dyads and triads to practice deep listening to one another and your own soul’s unfolding wisdom.
• Participate in group processes that foster presence and genuine community.

Several participants will also have the opportunity to engage in individual “open seat” sessions — live, facilitated personal inquiry processes with Perry and Johanna, supported by the attentive presence of the group. Witnessing and participating in one another’s work are often powerful catalysts for insight, as shared themes and human experiences resonate across the group field.

Join us for a week of embodied inquiry, meaningful connection, and renewed contact with your agency and inner guidance.

Recommended Reading: Gestalt Therapy Verbatim by Frederick S. Perls and Steve Andreas and The Unfolding Now by A. H. Almaas

This workshop includes an additional $50 in faculty tuition.

Many of us are overextended yet underfulfilled. In this highly experiential workshop, you’ll be guided through the Wise Effort Method, a powerful, ACT- and wisdom traditions-informed process to reclaim your energy and direct it toward what matters most. Through values mapping, group work, and real-life behavior experiments, you’ll be invited to identify what’s draining you, strengthen what sustains you, and design wiser ways of showing up in your life, relationships, and work.

Explore three Wise Effort practices designed to help you reconnect with what truly matters. We’ll begin by getting curious and gently mapping where your energy is actually going right now, noticing what may be keeping you stuck, and discovering what truly matters to you. From there, you’ll open up, practicing radical acceptance of what is so you can open up to more of who you are. Finally, you’ll focus your energy, designing and committing to a life that reflects your values in key areas such as work, relationships, health, and creativity.

This retreat centers on interactive practices: partner and small-group exercises, live coaching demonstrations, and gently guided reflection time.

Participants will be invited to:

• Explore three ways of relating to the world that keep us stuck in unwise effort.
• Clarify core values.
• Learn and practice skills to open up and focus your energy on what matters most to you.

Recommended reading: Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Energy on What Matters Most by Dr. Diana Hill

The Shame Triangle is an inner dynamic of parts that many of us carry without even realizing. It includes three primary roles: an Inner Critic that attacks, a Shame Part that absorbs the blow, and an Inner Escaper that tries to avoid pain while showing up in many forms: overfunctioning, perfectionism, and overachieving on one end, and dissociating, zoning out, using substances, or lashing out on the other. Together, these parts form a closed loop that keeps us stuck in survival strategies, disconnected from others and our deeper truth, and unable to fully access the Self.

Rooted in Internal Family Systems (IFS), narrative therapy, and the transformative power of Parts Work, this workshop guides participants to access Self-energy — the calm, clear presence within that can witness and transform our inner dynamics. We’ll explore how the Shame Triangle forms, how it functions internally, and how it is shaped by larger social, cultural, and intergenerational influences.

As the Shame Triangle softens, it gives rise to what we call the Inner Love Triangle, where the Inner Critic becomes an Inner Coach, Shame opens into Raw Experience, and the Escaper evolves into an Inner Nurturer — a dynamic grounded in support, truth, and clarity, where previously conflictual parts become powerful allies.

The workshop includes:

• Guided parts work.
• Somatic practices and narrative inquiry.
• Relational exercises in pairs and small groups.
• Live demonstrations of working with parts.
• IFS sculpting, a dynamic group process similar to Family Constellations that makes internal parts visible and experiential.
• Legacy unburdening for the aspects of the Shame Triangle that are inherited rather than personally acquired.

Discover a clear map of how shame operates within, where it originates — both personally and collectively — and how to transform this inner structure to support lasting change and self-leadership.

Note: Familiarity with Internal Family Systems, parts work, or somatic practices is helpful but not required. Participants at all levels can find meaningful entry points into this work. Those currently in crisis, in early trauma recovery, or without access to adequate support are encouraged to consider whether the timing is right for this work

Recommended reading: Transforming the Shame Triangle: From Shame to Love Using Parts Work by Jessica Fern & David Cooley

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.

Our instinctual nature shapes how we move through life — how we seek safety, connection, and passion. Yet this powerful aspect of us is often misunderstood or overlooked, even in spiritual work. In the Enneagram tradition, our instincts are seen as three fundamental drives — Self-Preservation, Sexual (Attraction), and Social (Adaptation) — that influence how our type expresses itself. Each of these is further divided into three zones for practical understanding and clarity.

The Instincts are not just an overlay to your Type; they are the engine of your personality. They determine how you engage with the world, how you seek safety, and how you love. Without understanding the Instincts — the biological and physical zones of our being — we are trying to navigate the Enneagram without the foundation. They are the core of our relationship with self and others.

Each of us relies more heavily on one instinct, while the others tend to be underdeveloped or neglected. The “instinctual stack” profoundly affects our attention, relationships, and personal growth. Learning to recognize these patterns brings greater balance and presence to our daily lives.

In this workshop, we will clarify and deepen our understanding of the Instincts, seeing them at work in our personal experiences. Through experiential exercises, movement, and meditation, we will observe how the instincts show up in real time — how they support, limit, and shape our awareness — and practice engaging them with curiosity rather than resistance.

Open to both newcomers and longtime students of the Enneagram, this is an accessible and grounded approach to understanding how our most basic drives can become allies in living with greater awareness and authenticity.

Recommended reading: Wisdom of the Enneagram by Russ Hudson & Don Riso ;
The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram by John Luckovich

“To feel is to heal. To contact is to awaken.” — Dick Price

Human beings are relational by nature. We are an intricate web of anatomy, energy, space, and time that takes shape through our life experiences. Our physical structure, function, and sense of self are reflected in our fascial layers and formed by our early development, by principles of self-organization, and by how we engage with our environment.

When we fall into habitual patterns, parts of ourselves become undeveloped, unseen. If our bodies are given a setting in which to relate to gravity, others, and our environment with curiosity and attunement, we can be free to move and relate with more choice and ease.

Using the grounds, waters, and spirit of Esalen as our laboratory, Kate and Dwight will use the Feldenkrais Method and Gestalt process as a guide to contact and nurture the influences of the subtle body – our relationship to ground, gravity, and the space between.

In this workshop, participants will:

Identify the habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating ease in our lives.

Investigate how the subtle body is influenced by the principles of emotional anatomy, tensegrity, neuroplasticity, and self-organization through experiential movement.

Be guided through Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons tailored toward the subtle body and creating more sophistication in functional movement.

Explore sensation, weight, gravity, and relationship through movement and contact.

Learn tools of Gestalt Relational Process to increase presence and awareness and integration of ourselves.

Recommended Reading: Feldenkrais, The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion; Gladis, Tales of a Wounded Healer: Creating Exact Moments of Healing; Bodywise: An Introduction to Hellerwork for Regaining Flexibility & Well-Being.

What if personal power isn’t something you earn by doing more, but something you reclaim by being more fully yourself? How might your life and relationships shift if you could lead from your truth? What if your body became your inner compass, a steady and trustworthy guide through life?

This is an invitation into the wisdom of the body.

Somatic research affirms what embodied traditions have long known: the body holds the keys to authenticity, presence, and lasting change. By attuning to inner signals, noticing patterns, and returning to center, space opens for truth, choice, and alignment. This is not about pathologizing. It is about becoming.

Through trauma-informed facilitation, participants will engage in solo reflection, partnered exploration, small group practice, and collective experience. Grounded in somatics, embodied and Authentic Relating, breathwork, vocal activation, and expressive movement, this work moves beyond concept into direct experience, where insight can be felt, practiced, and integrated in real time.

Over the course of the immersion, we will explore:

• Somatic theory and practice for emotional tracking, inner listening, and aligned action
• Solo and relational practices rooted in the body’s wisdom
• Centering and resourcing tools to meet challenge and pressure with greater resilience and ease
• Expression through voice, movement, and the language of the body

We’ll blend seated, standing, and movement practices, adaptable for all bodies, identities, abilities, and lived experiences.

Conflict is no longer something happening “out there.” It lives in our conversations, our communities, and often within ourselves, shaping what feels possible and what feels stuck. In a time of rapid change and deepening division, many of us find ourselves caught inside stories that harden perspectives, narrow imagination, and limit our capacity to respond. The key to surviving and thriving at this moment is finding ways to negotiate change and transform the rising conflict around us.

Together, we will explore a different way of meeting conflict — one that begins with curiosity. We will listen for the narratives that shape our experience and engage the imagination as a resource for transformation, exploring how conflict can be approached not only as a story we tell, but as a waking dream. In this integrated approach, narration and dreamwork move together to reveal how meaning is made, how it can shift, and how new pathways can emerge if we loosen our grip on a single way of seeing.

Topics include:

• Conflict Narration and Transformation, to view conflict through a narrative lens and articulate what’s happening around us —  identifying stories and exploring how people can draw different meanings from the same moment. This approach allows us to discover what differing stories tell us about what we (and “they”) might do next and what feels possible.
• Peace Work as Dream WorkTM, which uses projective group dreamwork to analyze conflicts (from the interpersonal to the international) as waking dreams to break the rules of waking life, imagine new possibilities, and create new approaches for conflict transformation.  

Together, these practices invite a spacious and creative relationship to conflict that can be lived and applied across the many domains of our lives. At the intersection of spirit and praxis, this workshop takes a dignity-centered approach and unfolds through a blend of lectures and experiential group work, providing concrete tools for personal and professional use.

Recommended reading: Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures by Sarah Federman

For thousands of years across many cultures, expanded states of consciousness have been used intentionally as a strategy for meaningful transformation and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.

In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of  these unique states. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® will be our experiential modality offering a dynamic method for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence.

We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.

Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.

This workshop includes an additional $75 of faculty tuition.

This Thanksgiving week, you are invited into a living inquiry of what it means to be fully, authentically human in a deeply mysterious world. In a season of reflection and gathering, we step gently beyond the familiar and into the immediacy of direct experience, meeting life as it unfolds.

In these ever-changing times, we are reminded of the impermanence of what once seemed stable and known. As the ground shifts, uncertainty naturally arises, often bringing us to the edge of what we feel ready to meet. Yet within this movement, there is an invitation — to turn toward our experience rather than away, and to discover an innate resilience, an embodied capacity to meet the unknown with presence and openness.

This workshop offers a gentle, experiential exploration of how to cultivate curiosity, courage, and compassion in relationship with life’s unfolding mystery. Mystery moves in both directions, drawing us toward awe, wonder, and the magical, while also opening us to the unsettling edges of the unknown where fear and uncertainty live. Together, we begin where we are, learning to embrace “what is” through a deepening awareness of moment-to-moment experience. As we stay present with the discomfort of not knowing, it can become an intimate source of vitality, awakening the intelligence of body, heart, and mind.

Drawing from wisdom traditions, contemplative practices, and somatic and neuropsychology, we will explore:

• How to live more fully in the presence of mystery.
• Embodied emotional and somatic intelligence.
• Practical tools for nervous system regulation, resilience, and responsive presence.
• Movement, grounding, and centering practices that support being with the unknown.
• A deepened connection to self, others, and the more-than-human world.

Embracing the great mystery of life invites a softening of our need for certainty and a willingness to make space for the unexpected. With an open heart, body, and mind, we begin to sense the deeper rhythms of interconnectedness, allowing life to live through us as we navigate an ever-changing world.

Join this grounded and spacious exploration, where we learn, gently and courageously, to join the dance — saying “yes” to life.

Recommended reading: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts

All people have an innate ability to move toward healthy, satisfying relationships. Old patterns of behavior and fixed ideas formed in early relationships may block our ability to communicate and make contact with the people in our lives.

The Gestalt approach aims to increase awareness of these patterns and our ”unfinished business” by relating in a group that meets our needs for emotional attunement and understanding, that supports us in identifying and expressing our emotions, and which is committed to creating an atmosphere of respect, kindness, acceptance and honesty. These relational experiences support energy, aliveness and good contact.

Over the course of this workshop, we will

• Seek to learn skills to improve our ability to make contact,
• Develop and track awareness of our emotions and sensations,
• Learn to express and practice communicating needs and wants effectively.

We may discover habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating the type of relationships we want, and develop new skills for relating.

The workshop will include time for gestalt awareness practices, and a mixture of didactic and experiential exercises. Each participant will have an individual “open seat” session with Dorothy, with the support of the group.

Grof® Breathwork, developed as “holotropic breathwork,” was born at Esalen in the 1980s by Stanislav and Christina Grof. This powerful practice offers participants the opportunity to enter

expanded states of consciousness through accelerated breathing, evocative music, and supported somatic release.

Through this practice, we “journey” using our breath, opening to the psyche’s intrinsic intelligence for emotional release, physical relaxation, stress reduction, and profound numinous experiences.

You will experience two complete Grof® Breathwork sessions — one as a breather (engaging your own deep inner work) and one as a sitter (compassionately supporting another’s journey). Sessions last approximately three hours and are preceded by a comprehensive preparation presentation on Friday night.

Integration is supported through group sharing and reflection on the transformative aspects. Between sessions, we invite you to integrate your experiences through Esalen’s movement offerings and time in the stunning natural environment.

This is an opportunity to experience Grof® Breathwork on the land where the practice originated.

Recommended reading: When the Impossible Happens, by Stan Grof, Holotropic Breathwork, by Stan Grof, Watch: The Way of the Psychonaut

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

Let’s be real — queer men are already masters of reinvention. We’ve learned to shapeshift, decode signals, seduce with a glance, armor up when needed, and sometimes dissociate in the name of survival. Our sexuality has been a battlefield and a playground — sometimes both in the same night. Sexuality offers a lens through which we may examine and deeply experience ourselves and our connection to all of existence. By fully immersing yourself in your sexual experiences, there is more — more pleasure, more presence, more freedom — hiding in plain sight. In your hips. Your breath. Your belly. Your no. Your yes. Your body.

This weekend is a playful deep dive into what it means to live in a queer male body — cis or transmasculine — with curiosity, with courage, and in relation to society and one another.

Together, we’ll explore the wild terrain of gender and sexuality — not from a textbook, but from the inside out. Through guided practices, embodied rituals, and communal reflection, you’ll get to ask big, juicy questions like:

• What kind of man am I when I stop trying so hard? If I move past the “masc” persona and its acceptable coded behaviors to embrace an energy that is both boundless and de-gendered?
• How much of my desire is mine, and how much is performance?
• What would it feel like to inhabit my sexuality without apology — or choreography?

We’ll explore how shame, culture, trauma, and liberation show up in our movements, our fantasies, our ability (or inability) to receive touch. We’ll stretch out of binary thinking and into something more fluid, more alive, more you. You’ll be invited to experiment with different ways of relating, touching, and expressing — from the tender to the wild, the sacred to the silly.

This is not about being “good at sex.” It’s about being honest in our sexuality. And maybe even finding new ways to experience it as medicine, mischief, and art.

Why this, why now? Because queer men are still carrying a lot — even in all our glittering freedom. We’ve inherited both boldness and bruises. While we celebrate open sexuality in our culture, we rarely get the space to slow down and feel what it all means in our bodies. This is that space. Join us to make meaning together — with breath, touch, and truth.

Please note: This workshop, designed specifically for those who identify as queer men (cis or trans), includes partial nudity, guided touch, roleplay, and somatic exploration of gender and sexuality. All activities are optional. The space we create together centers safety, sovereignty, and presence, prioritizing your agency and comfort at every turn. Your consent leads the way. Although we will explore touch and sensuality, no sexual acts of any kind will be instructed or included in this workshop. It will not include full nudity, nor anything you do not enthusiastically consent to.

Recommended reading: Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas; The ManTantra Letters by Victor Bliss & Nathan James

Who will you become when you put down your phone and pick up your life?

In just two decades, technology has rapidly reshaped our psyches, relationships, and communities. The average person now spends the equivalent of 61 to 80 days a year on their smartphones. Apps increasingly frack our attention while human empathy has steadily declined.

Though living a phone-based life can be overwhelming and feel hopeless, the power is still yours . Your hands are the living hands of your ancestors. What wants to be expressed through them? This workshop invites you to recover your focus, creativity, presence, and humanity. In community, we will reckon with the impact of the digital age and remember the somatic wisdom of bodies and the intelligence of our souls.

Recent research reveals that insecure attachment styles (anxious or avoidant) make us more vulnerable to compulsive smartphone use as we seek a digital “secure base” over human connection. By rebuilding our capacity to turn toward one another, we can re-parent ourselves and repair relational ruptures from our past.

Each day will include:

• Morning meditation to connect to the inner self.
• Lectures on the psychological and relational impacts of technology.
• Guided exercises to reflect on our attachment histories and “styles.”
• Interpersonal practices to replace screen time with real connection.
• Collective ritual for going offline intentionally for 72 hours.
• Practices in poetry therapy, movement, ritual, song circle, and nature-based meditation to reignite your creative spark.
• Community gatherings to rest and restore, including Yoga Nidra for attuning to the technology of the heart.

The digital age calls for a renaissance of re-humanization. The nature found at Big Sur pulses with a wildness that can help us reawaken our souls and reclaim our power. Come make meaningful changes that honor your whole self.

Recommended reading: The Power in Your Hands: Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology by Shannon Algeo, Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Trust Your Truth by Shannon Algeo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommended reading: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Training in Compassion: Zen Teaching on the Practice of Lojong by Mark Fischer, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa

This workshop includes an additional $10 material fee.

Join this engaging, interactive experience designed to support the discovery, clarification, and meaningful application of your highest personal values. It’s a surprising fact of life that most people do not know — or cannot clearly articulate — what their values truly are. Guided by Robert MacPhee’s unique and accessible approach, this process is crafted to reduce confusion and enhance clarity with simple ways to bring your discoveries into your daily life.

Together, we’ll explore your values in deep, experiential (and fun!) ways that address a variety of learning styles. The journey can be relevant across all areas of life — at home, at work, in relationships, as a parent, and as a leader.

In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:

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

Gaining clarity around your values can become a powerful compass, gently guiding your decisions, your attention, and your time. This workshop offers a space to reconnect with what feels most authentic, purpose-driven, and meaningful for you.

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.

What does it mean to be fully, authentically human? Gestalt Practice offers an invitation to pause, to sense, and to come into direct contact with the unfolding experience of our lives. At its core, it is an awareness practice in which we cultivate embodied, present-moment awareness of the here and now on a journey toward authentic growth, wholeness, and aliveness.

Drawing from the foundations of Gestalt Practice, wisdom traditions, and contemporary approaches to awareness, we learn to become increasingly aware of our habitual, reactive, behavioral, and emotional patterns—especially those that may no longer be skillful—in support of a more deeply embodied daily life. Together we cultivate emotional and somatic awareness as we learn to support, respect, and gently turn toward whatever arises from moment to moment, allowing more space for silence, sensation, emotional expression, and authentic communication.

During this workshop, we explore the rich practices and principles of Gestalt Practice. Applying them to everyday life invites the simple yet profound possibility of showing up more fully and authentically for the daily presentations of living an awake life.  This practice invites us into a more intimate relationship with who we already are and with the life that is already unfolding.

Gestalt Practice cultivates curiosity, equanimity, and acceptance, expanding our capacity for choice and creative possibilities. Rather than focusing on fixing or achievement, this approach invites you to:

• Cultivate awareness and embodied presence.
  • Grow responsiveness, resilience, and choice.
  • Trust in your organism’s inherent capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation.

Together, we’ll explore the elements of this approach through experiential practices, interactive exercises, and Gestalt Awareness Movement. Practices and exercises will be done solo, in pairs, triads, and groups, allowing us to deepen our awareness and discover how to enrich our relationships — to ourselves, others, and the unfolding circumstances of our lives. There will be time for some participants to experience classic one-to-one Open Seat practice sessions with Steven in the roles of Initiator and Reflector within the supportive context of the group. To enrich our understanding, we’ll touch lightly on the rich history, theory, and neuroscience that inform this approach.

Through Gestalt Practice, we bear witness to the ineffable mysteries of experience, opening to living life more fully. Participants are invited to show up, choosing to be present, paying attention to what has heart and meaning, and opening to what life presents—letting life live through us.

The workshop is appropriate for all levels of experience, with the understanding that participants are exploring a model of an awareness gym or lab for living—not a therapy. A welcome letter will be sent upon registration, along with additional information about our time together.

Power without surrender is force. Surrender without power is collapse. True freedom comes from knowing how to embody both.

BDSM is often misunderstood as only rough sex or kink, but at its core, it’s the consensual exploration of power dynamics. It can include play with dominance and submission, sensation, and restraint — but ultimately, it’s about trust, communication, and the courage to feel deeply.

In this experiential workshop, we’ll explore power and surrender as embodied states, not just ideas. Using the Wheel of Consent® as our foundation, we’ll uncover how these dynamics show up in our desires, boundaries, and interactions. Through guided exercises, movement, and deep noticing, you’ll gain tools to navigate these energies with clarity and confidence — in erotic and everyday contexts.

You’ll be invited to:

• Engage in structured practices to embody power, surrender, and choice.
• Explore the emotions, sensations, and meanings behind these states.
• Use breath, sound, and movement to expand your awareness.
• Practice dynamics like take/allow, serve/accept, and lead/follow.
• Discover how power and surrender can bring connection, agency, and pleasure.
• Develop a deeper trust in yourself — unafraid of power, unafraid of surrender, and ready to claim both.

This workshop is somatic and participatory, with options to learn through touch and simple props like rope or blindfolds. All participation is optional — your consent always leads the way.

Please Note: This workshop will not include:

• Nudity
• Sexual activity
• BDSM technique tutorials
• Anything you do not enthusiastically consent to

This workshop includes an additional $50 of faculty tuition.

Recommended reading: The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent, by Betty Martin

Our sense of self develops in connection with others and our experiences in early relationships. They shape our beliefs — about ourselves, other people, and what is possible for us in our lives. While we cannot change the past, we can change the parts of our lives that we find difficult or unfulfilling through new experiences of contact. When our need for understanding and emotional attunement is met, our limiting beliefs can change.

In this workshop, we will have the opportunity to:

• Learn skills that will increase our presence and awareness.
• Improve our ability to make good contact.
• Explore how to establish healthy boundaries.
• Develop and track awareness of our physical sensations and emotions.
• Communicate our needs and wants effectively.
• Discover habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating the type of connection we long for.

This workshop includes time for basic gestalt awareness practices, a mixture of didactic and experiential exercises, and some participants will have the opportunity to experience individual “open seat” sessions with Dorothy and with the support of the group

Recommended reading: Korb et al., Gestalt Therapy: Practice and Theory; Mann, Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques

For thousands of years across many cultures, expanded states of consciousness have been used intentionally as a strategy for meaningful transformation and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.

In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of  these unique states. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® will be our experiential modality offering a dynamic method for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence.

We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.

Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.

This workshop includes an additional $75 of faculty tuition.

Have you noticed the painful effects of self-judgment? Do you feel tormented by negative critical self-talk and the harsh words of the inner critic?  Are you prone to judging everything you do as not good enough, not quite right, or not up to some impossibly high standard? Do you find yourself harshly judging your meditation, your practice, or your other spiritual practices?

If you wish to be free from the influence of the inner critic, this workshop offers tried-and-tested methods for overcoming the challenges of self-judgment.

During this course, you will be shown:

• How to recognize judging thoughts.  
• To deal effectively with inner critic attacks.
• How to distinguish between negative judgment and wise discernment.
• The importance of self-acceptance, self-compassion, and  love as antidotes to the critic.
• The need and role of humor in helping us with the critic.
• To cultivate forgiveness in response to judgment.

The course will be a combination of talks, interactive exercises, mindfulness, self-compassion, loving kindness techniques, and meditations. This will be a practical and experiential course taught with lightness, compassion, humor, and the need to not take ourselves too seriously.

Recommended reading: Make Peace with your Mind – How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Help Free You from the Inner Critic, by Mark Coleman

This workshop includes an additional $100 in faculty tuition.