Our workshops are designed to support you in the challenging work of self exploration, in partnership with some of the leading minds of the day. Join us in discovering the next frontiers of individual and societal transformation.
Interested in a scholarship?
Learn MoreWe are all born into a story that is already being told. It is woven into our very being, much like the DNA passed down from Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all humanity. Just as we inherit genetic traits, we also inherit stories, expectations, and emotional patterns that shape our lives. Like Eve in the garden, we may find ourselves bound by shame, longing for liberation, and searching for the courage to fully receive the gifts of life. Eve’s Domain is an invitation to step beyond these inherited limitations and embark on a powerful journey into the heart of our personal stories.
Guided by Zita, an experienced facilitator in transgenerational healing, hypnotherapy, and storytelling, you will explore inherited patterns that have shaped your life. Drawing from exercises in Systemic Constellations and the Orders of Love, you will explore the ways love, duty, and expectation have influenced your identity—and how to embrace the fullness of life with grace.
This workshop is designed to support your exploration of the story you have been born into, and help you discover how it might better serve your greater good. Love, while often a force for good, can also lead us to accept less than we deserve and mask our true selves for the sake of others. Only by finding the courage to dig deeper and ask the right questions can we uncover the jewels in the story of our hearts and souls.
Pleasure is the measure of your aliveness. It is not frivolous — it is your birthright, your compass, and your healing. — Anonymous
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.
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.
Do you struggle with shyness or social anxiety? Do you feel intimidated or scared to meet new people or worry others will judge you? If so, come face your fears and discover tools to connect to people authentically!
In this workshop, you will learn how to enjoy meeting new people and interact more successfully with others. Instead of feeling drained after social interactions, you can come away feeling invigorated and refreshed. You can learn ways to become skillfully vulnerable, authentic, and playful with others.
Instead of feeling self-conscious or like you need to “perform,” find out how to relax when meeting new people and be fully present in your interactions. Emerge with more lightheartedness, authenticity, and joy. There will also be a focus on flirtation skills for those looking to meet a new special someone, enhance the romance with their current partner, or just have more fun in life!
Together, we’ll explore:
If you tend to avoid social opportunities or find interactions with other people draining, this is the workshop for you! Much of life is about the quality of our relationships with others. Discover how to liberate yourself from self-consciousness and disconnection and build stronger relationships.
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:
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:
Recommended reading: The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent, by Betty Martin
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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:
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 a tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.
More and more, people are discovering the Enneagram as an accurate and profound map of personality. In this workshop, we’ll explore the full scope of its power to illuminate our greatest wisdom, become our truest selves, and face life’s challenges with fortitude and grace.
The nine Enneagram types are based on the three primary centers of intelligence: thinking, emotion, and instinct. However, in almost all human beings, distortions or blockages in these centers lead to a loss of connection with our essential nature and arising ego structures to compensate for this loss. Thus, while our Enneagram type, our true nature, is usually obscured with a characteristic web of defenses, discovering ourselves through the Enneagram can serve as an opening to the deeper reality of spirit.
This workshop will recognize the ways the nine Enneagram types play out in our own personalities. We’ll combine psychological insight into the inner workings of the different personality types with meditation practices and exercises designed for a more direct experience of the qualities of essence, such as presence, clarity, compassion, and joy. Conversational instruction will be added along with group meditations, small-group work, physical movements, and music to help us fully integrate the richness of the Enneagram material into our daily work and relationships.
Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.
This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.
We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.
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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, and 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
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“Wilderness, by itself, has its own way of teaching. The direct experience of wilderness can spontaneously bring wholeness back into the human community.” – Manual of Gestalt Practice in the Tradition of Dick Price
When we are present in the here and now, every moment in the natural world represents an opportunity to enrich, heal, and clarify our relationships to the Earth, ourselves, and one another. Esalen’s co-founder Dick Price spent much of his time hiking in the Big Sur wilderness, and he believed that wild nature supported wholeness and healing for himself and others. With roots in the Gestalt tradition and values Dick developed at Esalen, Relational Gestalt Practice is designed to help us live our lives with increased awareness and embodied presence — and can be powerfully explored within the natural world.
For five days, we will immerse in awareness practices and deep nature connection on the sacred grounds of the Esalen Institute and in the Big Sur wild (ancestral lands of the Esselen People). Together, we will explore our inner and outer landscapes by mindfully engaging with biodiverse wilderness and Gestalt practices under the open sky. Dorothy Charles, co-founder of Tribal Ground Circle and founder of Relational Gestalt Practice, will support the cultivation of presence, awareness, and the authentic expression of our hearts and minds. Wildtender co-founders Noël Vietor and Fletcher Tucker will guide our reconnection with the living world through a framework of kinship. A community of wild relations — redwood groves, ravens, mossy boulders, and all the beings and aspects of Big Sur — will expand our circle to include the more-than-human world.
Important Notes:
This workshop will include one full-day wilderness immersion as well as one half-day hiking excursion in the Big Sur wilderness, involving hikes up to 3 miles each. Please be aware that the hiking terrain can sometimes be steep, rugged, and strenuous, including prolonged sun exposure. Participants must be able to hike and carry what they need for the day: 2 liters of water, pack lunch provided by Esalen (for the full day outing), and sun protection. Other workshop sessions will be mostly situated outdoors on Esalen Institute grounds.
This workshop includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 park fee.
How empowered do you feel as a woman navigating this world? What is your relationship to the feminine? And to female wisdom? Join us inside the Moon Lodge, a place for exploration — for women to find tribal and ritual healing.
The 5Rhythms is a map that teaches us how energy moves. It shows us the patterns, rhythms, and cycles of life — Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness — and can be a direct path to the embodiment and empowerment many of us do not feel in a time of patriarchy.
This workshop will be about celebrating the body of Woman and the sacred feminine within us all. Through dance, meditation, massage, acupressure, and ritual baths, we will share in the Sisterhood of humanity. We will poultice our wounds and celebrate the great gifts of our ancestors.
This workshop includes:
Dr. Julie Von, a specialist in women’s health, will present the Chinese Medicine perspective on the five elements, psychosomatic process, restorative acupuncture, and self-care. She will teach us to prioritize these pillars and recognize when we are out of balance.
Lucia Horan will integrate the stillness of Buddhist mindfulness meditation with the moving meditations of the 5Rhythms®. In sitting meditation, we have the opportunity to observe the mind and body at rest through silent introspection. In the practice of the 5Rhythms, we engage in mindfulness while in motion. Together, these two polarities mirror the dance of life and open the door to peace, well-being, and balance.
This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.
What does it truly mean to show up as your authentic self at work, at home, and in all your relationships? How can true authenticity enhance your relationship with yourself and others? What does science have to say about the practice of authenticity?
The good news, research conducted at Harvard University has proven that authenticity is a skill, not a trait—which means you can learn practical methods to become more confident, express your true self, and go after your biggest goals. When you embrace your authenticity, you unlock the confidence to ask for what you truly want, the courage to step into your power, and the freedom to live a life that feels true to you. This potent music-infused workshop delivers science-backed, actionable strategies to help you bring your most powerful, authentic self into all areas of your life.
Called an “Inspirational Powerhouse,” Grammy-nominated musician and bestselling author Justin Michael Williams introduces the four skills to build true authenticity that work at every level of your life. Explore tools to enhance your personal and professional relationships, boost confidence, and help you navigate conflict without losing yourself.
In this workshop, you will be invited to:
This program has been designed from the ground up to include people of all genders, races, identities, and socioeconomic backgrounds and empower everyone to bring their full selves, build lasting connections, and create lives that reflect their deepest truths.
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:
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, 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
Through the practices of 5Rhythms dance, mindfulness meditation, and self-care, we weave together a retreat focused on healing and celebration. Looking back over the past few years, it is clear that many of us are exhausted. In times of turmoil and change, self-care and kindness are needed to connect us to the ability to recharge and renew. In order to move forward with energy, passion, and creativity, it is vital to seed these qualities in our daily life so that we may cultivate resilience.
Do you need to integrate more self-care into daily life? Would you like to be better resourced and have more energy? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, you are in perfect alignment to participate in this workshop.
The 5Rhythms is an externalization process that releases and balances the systems of the body through movement. It is a method of dance focused on presence versus performance. We pair this process with seated meditation to quiet the heart and mind, allowing for stillness and integration. Bringing both together mirrors the dance of life. We come together to create an environment that cultivates and nurtures joy, calmness, and ease.
Each session will be primarily focused on Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms moving meditation practice. We will complete each practice with a 10-15-minute seated meditation. Included will be a discourse on 5Rhythms, mindfulness, and self-care. All practices taught during this course lend to the experience and wisdom of resourcing and renewing vital life energy to send you home with skills and tools to apply to your daily life.
This workshop will include:
No experience is necessary. All workshop hours contribute to 5Rhythms® Teachers Training.
This workshop includes an additional $100 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.
In this retreat, you will get in touch with a deep relaxation to rejuvenate the body and the mind through non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra. No matter your reasons — whether you need a break from the constant pressure, are in a life transition, or just want to delve deeper into your meditation practice — this retreat will provide space and time for contemplation and reflection.
The term non-sleep deep rest, coined by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, refers to a waking state of deep relaxation that maintains awareness. Evidence suggests reaching this state through NSDR protocols such as yoga nidra can reset dopamine levels and provide other physical and mental health benefits — including better sleep and enhanced neuroplasticity.
We’ll go on an inner journey together, and the hope is we’ll emerge more connected to both ourselves and our life paths to leave feeling refreshed and deeply rested.
Together, we will:
Suggested Reading: The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You, By Kelly Boys
Gestalt is, at its heart, an awareness practice — one that invites us to be fully present with what is. This presence becomes the portal through which insight, inner guidance, and emotional regulation naturally emerge.
Gestalt practice allows us to connect with what is real and true for us — beyond old patterns, assumptions, habitual self-judgments, or the need to fix ourselves. Integrative Gestalt Practice™, developed by Perry and Johanna Holloman over the past 30 years, combines deep awareness with embodied exploration, offering practical tools to navigate life’s transitions, relationships, and inner questions with greater clarity and authenticity.
In this workshop, we’ll guide you step by step in Integrative Gestalt Practice, a deeply experiential approach that engages body, heart, and mind. Through structured inquiries, breath practices, and movement, you will explore how awareness unfolds in real time and how it can bring clarity and a deeper connection to yourself and others. Group exercises, dyadic and triadic explorations, and guided self-inquiry will provide a dynamic space for transformation.
During this workshop, you will:
By deepening your capacity for presence and authentic connection, you cultivate trust in yourself and life itself, even in the midst of uncertainty. Join us for an immersive experience to create a stronger sense of agency, clarity, and connection to your own inner wisdom.
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.
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:
Since falling in love is biologically natural, but sustaining love is biologically unnatural, Soul Mate focuses on the art and discipline of sustaining love. You begin with learning how to appreciate your partner so specifically and frequently that your partner feels fully seen and loved.
You then practice both the art and discipline of hearing your partner’s criticisms without becoming defensive. For example, so you don’t have to fear “walking on eggshells” before sharing a concern, your partner first learns how to prepare her or himself to emotionally associate your criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved.
Soul Mate is designed as the next evolutionary shift beyond active listening. Active listening allowed the criticizer to feel heard, but failed to teach the person hearing the criticism how to emotionally associate the criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved. The problem? Unless the receiver of criticism feels safe the person sharing their concern cannot feel safe.
You will learn a series of practices you may integrate into your everyday life:
To sustain your practice after the workshop, I invite you to free, ongoing, group follow-up calls to resolve stumbling blocks. If you wish to review the insights and exercises at any time, you will also have the option of purchasing a Zoom and book version of the course.
This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations. Developed over the past 30 years, the workshop is also used by many health professionals in their work with clients and patients.
Recommended Resources: Role Mate to Soul Mate by Warren Farrell (BenBella: July 2024); additional video content on warrenfarrell.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHtXyzKk6bQ&t=229s
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:
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 and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Participants must bring their own set of tune-up yoga massage balls for use during the workshop. They can be purchased here.
The Artist lives within everyone! Art can be made out of just about anything! It’s a time to leave the critic behind and allow oneself to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit. It’s also a time to enjoy the company and camaraderie of like-minded peers. Now is your time to discover the joys of art based on community and collaboration and to find out how meaningful and grand a shared, creative experience can be.
In this transformative workshop, we will use repurposed material in a whole new context of re-creation.
Come experiment with a vast array of reused materials to create mixed-media mosaics, sculptures, and collages. There will be an assortment of recycled glass, metals, wood, plastics, paper, photographs, fabrics, and old artifacts — bits and pieces of the past and present.
In a beautiful, nurturing, supportive setting, we will reclaim and shape society’s scraps and discarded objects into re-imagined meaning. Find your own inner voice of expression as you delve into the process of creating art out of different materials and mediums, and learn new skills.
Not only will you have the opportunity to explore your own expression and immerse yourself in solo creations, but we will also engage in a collaborative group project to enter the whimsical world of community-oriented magic and play.
There is a transformative joy that comes from engaging with others in the artistic process. It opens doors unseen and forges deeper bonds between people. This exciting, shared experience teaches us how beautiful it is to break down barriers and collaborate.
This workshop is geared toward anyone with the desire to create. From the beginner to the advanced, this is a time to explore new possibilities. Together, we will:
If there are any recycled materials, special mementos, poems, or photos you would like to bring and include in our creations, please feel free!
This workshop includes an additional $115 for art materials.
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We all have a story to tell. But turning your life into an engaging and meaningful narrative requires both keen self-awareness and a working knowledge of basic storytelling. This experiential workshop invites writers at all levels, from personal journalers to published authors, to cultivate the skills needed to tell the most compelling — and truest — story.
We’ll begin each day with a short burst of early morning free writing, taking advantage of what author Ruth Ozeki calls “the liminal state,” when the brain is most flexible and the internal judge is still asleep. Everyone will be invited to share their morning writing in small groups that foster a safe and supportive environment.
We’ll follow with a mix of craft talks, incorporating examples from published works, and several sessions of prompted free writing to help us sharpen our skills and access the deepest part of our own stories.
Time will be set aside every afternoon to share our writing with the group at large. Workshop participants will leave with a clear sense of where their story lies — and how to get it on the page.
The Body of Belonging invites you to explore feelings of kinship, acceptance, and community on a somatic level, identifying the elements most significant to you. Through gentle yoga-inspired movement, breathwork, sound, and meditation, we will engage in self-inquiry practices within a group setting. Together, we will create a safe and brave space to experiment with accessing a sense of belonging. Drawing from ancient and Indigenous wisdom, we will work toward dismantling the individualistic ways of being that contribute to our growing sense of separateness.
Loneliness is an epidemic eroding the fabric of who we are as a collective. It is so prevalent in the United States that the surgeon general has issued an advisory to call attention to the importance of social connection for individual and community-wide health. The hyperindividualism that has been promoted as our best way of “succeeding” has left us feeling lost and alienated. In our overfocus on self, we’ve lost sight of how connection, community, and a felt sense of belonging are central to our well-being.
Participants will be invited to connect with their individual needs as it relates to belonging. They will build skillfulness in advocating for belonging by centering and nourishing connection and community to realize the resilience that comes with healthy interdependence.
Join us to experience deep rest and renewal! You need and deserve this. So many of us are overtaxed by constant demands, burdens, and worries, especially those of us providing extra support for others through caregiving, healthcare, activism, and other service-oriented jobs.
We bring you expertise in the science, art, and practice of restoration from stress.
Immersed in the beauty of nature at Esalen, our work is well supported. We will learn and practice new ways to restore ourselves, and you will develop a toolbox of short practices that support your daily rejuvenation and sustained vitality.
Love is an ecological process. — Andreas Weber
Most of us have lost our sensual connection to our bodies and to the living world. We have become numb to the Earth's touch. This weekend workshop offers an immersive experience in the erotic ecology pathway — a space to reawaken our sensory, pleasurable, and nourishing connection to two landscapes: our bodies and the Earth. You are invited to slow down and discover how to let the Earth touch you, heal you, and love you.
Through embodied exploration, you can rediscover your birthright: an intimate relationship with the Earth as lover and healer. This kinship reminds us that, at our essence, we are not separate from the Earth — we are the Earth.
Set amongst Esalen's sacred landscape, where redwood forests meet the Pacific Ocean, we'll engage in practices that are designed to open you to ecological eros: abundant source of pleasure, aliveness, and vitality.
Together, we will:
You'll be guided to return home with the kindled flame of a love affair with the Earth — an enduring resource in an increasingly disconnected world.
Recommended Reading: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
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For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used 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.
Great leaders encourage collaboration, promote inclusion, and make others feel seen and heard. Their greatest tool? Compassion. Compassion isn’t a static trait that people either have or don’t have; we all have the ability to grow our compassion intentionally through practice. A clinical psychologist and renowned expert in compassion, Dr. Shapiro uses her scientific and clinical expertise to give us concrete strategies for compassionate leadership. You will be introduced to the surprising science behind compassion, the latest research on neuroplasticity, and the most powerful tools and practices to lead teams that are connected, collaborative, creative, and successful. You will be given a science-based roadmap to re-engineer internal states, manage stress, boost creativity, and cultivate a culture of safety and connection.
Together we will:
This workshop is appropriate for anyone curious about leadership, compassion, and how to deepen a sense of community and purpose. These practices have the power to transform our individual and collective lives. All are welcome.
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 a tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.
Our sense of soul often shows up as the feeling that we are connected to and a part of something much larger than our everyday selves. Though we may manifest the self through work, relationships, and creative endeavors, we will not be fully satisfied if that deepest expression of our soul does not have its place; we feel its absence.
What we cannot figure out cognitively is often abundantly clear through deliberate mindfulness of sensation, intuition, emotion, deep connection to others, and the beauty and pain of our world. The body, the soul’s temporary home, longs for this attention. There can be great joy when we let this mysterious part of us take the lead.
In Open Floor Movement Practice, we are open to what wants to happen through us. Our attention and curiosity allow embodied movement to unwrap us like the perfect gifts we are. Through dance, unrecognized dimensions of our being can take shape and have a voice to let us feel new possibilities in our unfolding.
Joseph Campbell reminds us, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” The nature of our soul, when embodied and acknowledged, moves us toward this birthright. Join us in discovering your soul’s unfolding.
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In the ancient Tibetan practice of Sleep Yoga, the primary goal is to enter the pure, luminous awareness — the clear light — that is the true nature of the mind. As a profound support for Dzogchen meditation, Sleep Yoga enhances clarity, awareness, and spiritual realization, even as the body rests.
In today’s fast-paced world, many suffer from chronic sleep deprivation — and the consequences ripple through their physical health, emotional balance, relationships, and spiritual development. Drawing from his groundbreaking book, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche offers guidance to help access the deep spiritual potential within sleep.
Explore the connection between sleep, meditation, and awakening, and practical steps for improving the quality of your sleep. Rinpoche will guide participants in integrating awareness and the wisdom of clear light into the experience of sleep itself.
A lineage holder of this living tradition, Rinpoche is widely known for his warmth, clarity, and ability to make profound Eastern teachings accessible and practical for Western students. With his guidance, participants are invited not only to rest more deeply but also to awaken more fully.
This retreat offers a rare opportunity to connect with the deep rest of the body, the openness of the heart, and the luminous nature of the mind. Open to all, newcomers and experienced practitioners alike.
Recommended reading: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
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.
Breathe. Move. Pay Attention. These three simple actions, natural and always available to us, provide potency to our vitality. They are the legs and wings that carry us into the three worlds within us — the physical, the subtle, and the mystical.
Join Jovinna on the sacred land Esalen Institute resides upon to slow down, reclaim the use of your time and mind, and return to that which holds the deepest meaning. Here, you can inhabit your body, refine your senses, expand your mind and heart, and rest in the simplicity of being.
During this experiential week, you will explore:
Let’s harvest and give thanks to the natural flow of life force, harmony, and magic surrounding us during our time together. And to dedicate the fruit of our time to all sentient beings and the well-being of our lands.
Please bring a journal. Jovinna invites you to detox from or minimize the use of all electronics during your stay at Esalen.
This workshop includes an additional $55 in faculty tuition.
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Imagine reaching the end of your life and realizing your biggest regret is that you never found the courage to live authentically because you lived the life others expected. In this workshop, we will embark on a transformative journey inspired by the wisdom of Human Design and the spirit of Esalen. Human Design blends ancient wisdom from astrology, the I Ching, the Mystical Kabbalah, and the Hindu-Brahmin Chakra system with modern insights from quantum physics, helping you uncover your inner guidance system and intuition to live a life aligned with who you truly are. Esalen is renowned for its focus on experiential learning, offering opportunities to experiment with new ideas and practices, creating space for connection and growth.
Through this journey, we’ll explore how to align daily decision-making with your true self, embrace your natural gifts, and connect with your life’s greater purpose. Practical applications include making wise choices, fostering growth, and building relationships rooted in who you are. To deepen our understanding, we’ll engage in embodiment practices, integration techniques, and interactive sessions designed for hands-on learning.
This workshop invites you to step into your potential. By loving yourself, trusting your intuition, and following your inner authority, you can transform your life and create a meaningful way of living.
Participants are asked to bring their birth details, including birthdate, birthplace, and time, along with a journal. Join us in exploring new ways of living true to yourself within a supportive community.
How we sit, stand, move, and respond to our inner and outer world reflects deeply ingrained patterns wired into our nervous systems since childhood. They reflect our early solutions to physical survival in our family system. Out of awareness, these beliefs and strategies can still run our adult lives, limit our choices, and prevent physical ease and emotional healing.
If you still have pain or limitations from a past injury, it is usually because many other areas in your body had to overwork to protect and avoid using the injured area while you were recovering. These unconscious compensations can create an imbalanced workload and, eventually, new issues elsewhere in our body that prevent complete healing.
Using CFR®, we slowly explore and deeply sense small, gentle movements that bring these hidden patterns into awareness. When our genius nervous system becomes aware of a habit that is no longer useful, it extinguishes it. A greater experience of self-trust and self-worth is uncovered. A new sense of self-love, which comes from paying attention to your details without judgment, usually emerges.
This workshop is for the sedentary who want to become more active, the highly active who want to avoid injury and gain a competitive edge, and the chronically tired and stressed who want to improve breathing, posture, and flexibility. It is for those who have experienced physical injury or emotional trauma and those in helping professions who wish to enhance outcomes for clients and patients.
Our intention is that you will leave equipped with simple yet effective tools for continued self-healing. Your discoveries may lead to a state of awe about what is possible in your body, your movement, and your life.
Recommended Reading: Somatics by Thomas Hanna and The Elusive Obvious by Moshe Feldenkrais
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. In 2022, our days are filled with convenient distractions that promise happiness while mostly delivering busyness and frustration. So many of us today 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.
Together we will explore everything you need to start, revive, or deepen your daily meditation practice. You will receive instruction in traditional Zen Buddhist meditation and we will 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
Practice is a seedbed of miracles. —Esalen Institute Co-Founder Michael Murphy
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:
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
Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.
This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.
We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.
Gestalt Practice at its core is an awareness practice in which we cultivate embodied, present-moment awareness of the unfolding experience 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 that cultivate awareness, we’ll learn to become increasingly aware of our habitual, reactive, behavioral and emotional patterns — especially those that may no longer be skillful — for a more deeply embodied daily life. We will exercise our emotional and somatic intelligence in parallel to support, respect, and gently turn toward what arises moment to moment — to allow more space and appreciation for silence, sensation, emotional expression, and communication.
During this workshop, we will explore the rich practices and principles of Gestalt Practice. By applying them to everyday life, we’ll begin to experience the simple yet profound potential for showing up more fully and authentically for the daily presentations of living an awake life.
Gestalt Practice cultivates curiosity, equanimity, and acceptance with greater choice for creative possibilities. Rather than focusing on fixing or achievement, this approach offers methods to encourage you to:
Together, we’ll explore the elements of this approach, primarily through experiential personal practices, interactive exercises, and Gestalt Awareness Movement. Practices and exercises will be done solo, in pairs, triads, and groups, allowing participants to grow their awareness and learn how we can deepen our relationships — to self and others. 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 while in the context of the group. To enrich our understanding, we’ll touch upon the rich history, theory, and neuroscience that supports this approach.
Through Gestalt Practice, we bear witness to ineffable mysteries that can bring us to living life more fully. Participants are invited to show up: choosing to be present, paying attention to what has heart and meaning, and open 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 — not a therapy. A welcome letter will be sent upon registration along with additional information about our time together.
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore the healing wisdom of the “Americas.” We will learn about the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual bodies.
You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, and we will examine what this means in the context of our modern daily lives as we share healing wisdom and practices together. This is your opportunity to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul. You will also have the opportunity to participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing & “doctoring” ceremony and water blessing.
You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage, and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you will strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.
We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love: for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, then we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.
Note: Please bring a journal to write in, and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.
Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com
What happens when we refuse to dismiss mystical, metaphysical, and anomalous experiences as mere fantasy, pathology, or accident? What if these moments — often brushed aside by mainstream discourse — actually reveal deeper structures of consciousness and reality?
The Soul Is a UFO offers an imaginative, grounded space to explore such questions — designed for those who seek to make meaning of their own mystical or paranormal experiences; those who wish to invite such experiences safely by using coherent metaphysical frameworks; and those simply curious about the possibilities that lie beyond the surface of conventional reality.
Drawing on Platonic Surrealism, a framework developed by Kevin Cann, we will engage in structured dialogues and experiential exercises to explore how the metaphysical can be encountered without losing contact with embodied life. The method serves as a stabilizing interface between metaphysical vision and everyday cognition — which is especially valuable for neurodivergent thinkers, seekers disillusioned with reductionist models of the self, and anyone questioning culturally prescribed limits on identity and perception.
This seminar is part of the Super Story Series, sponsored by the Center for Theory and Research (CTR) at Esalen Institute. The series includes three thematic cycles: The Physics of Mystics, Biological Gods, and this current seminar, The Soul Is a UFO. The Super Story is a poetic and conceptual framework designed to capture the mythic and mystical narratives that have emerged over the last two centuries in deep resonance with evolving paradigms in physics, evolutionary biology, cosmology, and idealist philosophy. This project situates personal transformation within a larger cosmological and cultural re-enchantment, connecting the individual’s inner experiences to the macro-myths of science and spirit.
This workshop works with the deepest levels of ontology, before and beyond any human concepts of god. Keeping an open mind during this workshop is highly recommended.
Recommended reading: How to Think Impossibly, by Jeffrey J. Kripal; Fourth Wall Phantoms, Joshua Cutchin; Why Materialism Is Baloney, by Bernardo Kastrup
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them to the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke
Imagination is the foundational ingredient in problem solving – the ones in your own life as well as problems in society. Yet how many courses in imagination did you take during your K to12 education? Were you ever taught how to explore, harness, and apply it? How many healthcare professionals have taught you evidence-based ways to use imagination to enhance healing and recovery? Have you ever been taught how negative forms of imagination can contribute to depression, anxiety, or worse?
This workshop focuses on the science, power, and magic of imagination.
Imagination is the seed of every invention and every social movement. It has led to nearly every scientific discovery, every building that has been built, every piece of art, film, story, every ship that has ever sailed, and every mission to outer space. Almost every human advancement has been sparked by the question, “What if?”
Through interactive presentations, experiential practices, self-inquiry, thought experiments, and speculative dialogue, you will explore truths that emerge from art, fiction, and fantasy — and return with new knowledge, tools, and inspiration.
Cassandra will be joined by guest faculty Fabrice Guerrier who brings experience knowledge of collective worldbuilding, futurism, poetry, and creative writing. Fabrice will provide unique perspectives and engaging experiential exercises to our work (and play) with imagination.
Whether you’re brand new to the Enneagram or have spent years exploring its insights, The Fixations Training, developed by Oscar Ichazo, offers a rare opportunity to experience the system in its original context.
Before the Enneagram became widely known as a personality typing tool, it was part of a profound inner map designed to help describe who we are and also help us transcend the habitual patterns that limit our experience of self and reality.
At the heart of Ichazo’s work is the concept of the Fixations: nine distinct ego structures that arise from early disconnection from our essential nature. Each of us is shaped by three, one from each of the body’s centers of intelligence: head, heart, and gut. Together, these form what Ichazo called the Trifix™.
Over the course of this immersive weekend, you will:
This is not about putting yourself in a box — it’s about clearly seeing the box you’ve unknowingly lived in and stepping beyond it. For those already familiar with the Enneagram, this workshop offers depth, precision, and a connection to its spiritual roots. For those new to the work, it opens a grounded and practical pathway into self-observation and growth.
Come prepared to gain insight into your personality and the deeper forces that shape your experience of mind, heart, and body.
In an era fascinated by peak experiences and personal revelations, the deeper task of transformation is often overlooked. This workshop offers a grounded path for those who have touched something sacred — through psychedelics, mystical states, or profound life transitions — and are now asking, How do I live in service to what I’ve seen?
Rooted in Jungian psychology and contemplative practice, this week at Esalen will guide participants into the art of integration — not as a checklist, but as a lifelong discipline of becoming. We will explore the difference between having an experience and being changed by one.
Participants are invited to:
This course is not about chasing visions — it is about carrying them with integrity. Come if you are ready to descend, reflect, and reshape your life in honor of what has already begun within you.
While our workshops explore the history and potential of psychedelic tools and altered states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.
Are you ready to escape the grip of everyday seriousness and soften into your own vibrant aliveness?
Join us for a soul-soothing, laughter-filled playshop designed to help you lighten up, loosen your edges, and let yourself flow. Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Big Sur and the healing spirit of Esalen, this immersive experience is an invitation to return to your playful, radiant center.
Explore the liberating power of ecstatic laughter, deep musical immersion, and somatic movement by tapping into practices that uplift the nervous system, expand breath, and release stress and emotion stored in the body. Through call-and-response chanting, guided “laughter‘cizes,” gentle somatic play, and musically guided journeys, you’ll be encouraged to drop into deep relaxation — and rise into spontaneous delight.
Throughout the week, you’ll be immersed in a celestial soundscape created by the electric zither, kalimba, iPad synths, ambient textures, gong washes, and intuitive voice that weaves seamlessly with nature sounds and percussive play. Healing vibrations invite the mind to ease and the heart to open, making space for curiosity, catharsis, and connection with your own beautiful inner terrain.
Drawing on trauma-aware, nature-rooted embodiment practices, this playshop invites you to move at the pace of presence — sensing into the body’s rhythms, shaking loose old patterns, and letting joy ripple through you in organic, unforced waves. Reconnect with the wild wisdom of your inner child and remember laughter not just as an emotion but as a movement — one that breathes, flows, and frees.
Whether you’re aching to shake off the weight of the world or just ready to laugh from your belly again, come as you are. This playshop is for anyone longing to feel more alive, attuned, and unburdened.
Come play. Come laugh. Come home to joy.
In a time of constant noise and urgency, this is an invitation to slow down and enter into a deep and quiet rhythm with the more-than-human world. Through silence, movement, prayer, and time on the land, this workshop is a space to listen to our bodies, to the Earth, and to what arises when we release the need to speak and perform.
Each morning, we will begin with a grounding conversation and prayer followed by slow, intentional movement and breathwork. Silence will be held from the start of the day until we gather to break our fast in the evening.
Afternoons will invite ecological attunement through shared time on the land. We will walk, witness, and rest with the trees, ocean, and wildlife of Esalen — receiving and remembering our belonging to the living Earth.
Evenings will be a time for warm food, shared reflection, and gentle conversation. We will gather to speak from the heart, to notice what has surfaced, and to be in community through the catharsis and insight that can emerge from stillness.
During our time together, you are warmly invited to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with your inner and outer landscapes through:
Feel more rooted in quiet presence, connect to body, land, and spirit, and be gently restored through communion with nature and each other.
All light arises from darkness, including insight, creativity, vision, joy, and possibility. The luminous darkness is the spacious presence and receptivity through which we also access light. It is the field of all potential and emergence that we sometimes forget in the context of ordinary life and habit. In this deeply restorative retreat, at the threshold of a new year, we will commune with the luminous darkness to listen deeply, renew possibility, and set conscious intentions for our lives and our world in the year ahead.
We will replace knowing with not knowing and rest in the embodied presence from which clearer seeing arises.
With compassion and curiosity as our guides, we will reflect on the past year, both harvesting lessons and releasing limiting beliefs. This regenerative and transformative process is about remembering who we really are — and stepping into possibility on behalf of our collective.
We will deepen our capacity for compassion and clear seeing through:
This workshop, inspired by Eden’s book Luminous Darkness, draws upon the wisdom streams of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, non-duality, eco dharma, somatic awareness, and conscious dance. This work is heart-opening, transformative — and also incredibly fun!
Recommended reading: Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull
Explore the dynamic connections between mind, body, and lifestyle for optimal vitality. Drawing from decades of research, this workshop weaves together the latest scientific insights in metabolic health and mindful eating with experiential practices to support greater awareness and agency in your approach to well-being.
Participants will engage in evidence-informed practices derived from clinical trials and discover the emerging research on biosensors and glucose monitors that offer real-time feedback on stress and metabolic responses.
We’ll take a closer look at how to create optimal insulin sensitivity — a foundational aspect of good metabolic health and a key factor in healthy aging. Rather than rigid rules or complex diets, we’ll focus on core principles of optimal nutrition and metabolic function to help us develop — and sustain — lifestyle choices that align with our needs and abilities.
Together, we’ll explore:
Elissa and Robert will be joined by mindfulness-based registered dietitian and nutritionist Andrea Lieberstein, who will lead mindful eating practices, including an optional guided mindful meal. Movement teacher Nichol Chase will offer embodied movement sessions throughout the weekend.
Join this compassionate, research-informed space to explore the intersections of nutrition, mindfulness, and metabolic well-being. Whether you’re managing chronic stress, curious about metabolic health, or simply seeking a more conscious relationship with food and your body, you are welcome here.
Please note: This workshop is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to treat eating disorders, will not focus on weight loss, and may not be appropriate for individuals currently experiencing a severe eating disorder. It is not intended for medical advice or treatment. Always consult your healthcare provider before making significant changes to your nutrition, movement, or health practices.
In this experiential workshop, pioneering trauma researcher and author of The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk and somatic educator and co-founder of the Trauma Research Foundation Licia Sky apply psychodrama and theater techniques to create virtual experiences of safety, belonging, and protection. While trauma treatment tends to focus on “What happened to you?” the most relevant questions for many people are most likely, “Who was there for you?” and “Why did nobody notice and protect me?” Many therapists try to provide clients with “corrective emotional experiences” to help with early life deficits. Sadly, that entails the wrong person at the wrong time and the wrong place.
In this workshop, we will collectively observe our internal maps and practice ways they can be revised through interactive movement, touch, and auditory and visual input in three-dimensional space. Psychodrama techniques based on the work of Albert Pesso and other theater interventions (described in detail in Chapter 18 of The Body Keeps the Score) can provide participants deep experiences to create new inner realities.
Participants should be prepared to help fellow workshop members by actively participating in creating new realities. This experiential workshop is limited to 25 participants. Participants will be expected to have done their own personal work.
If you are interested in joining, please fill out the following application form. Applications are due by October 1st.
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:
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
When you engage with another — whether a lover, friend, or colleague — are you doing what they want you to do or what they allow you to do? What is the difference, and why does it matter?
Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent is a groundbreaking model of relating that brings greater clarity and authenticity to our relationships in all areas of life. It creates a practice of separating out receiving and giving, which will challenge you, surprise you, and teach you a lot about yourself! As you become exquisitely aware of your desires and limits and how to communicate them, you will be free to make more embodied choices.
In this small group workshop uniquely crafted for Esalen, we will build on the somatic experience of the Wheel of Consent and its natural outgrowth of personal empowerment. We will expand our views to look more closely at our own power and how we can use it well.
This workshop will include curriculum, discussion, and practices to support participants in:
The Wheel of Consent is best experienced somatically — in the body. We will include the option to learn through touch, and, of course, you never have to experience touch you do not want — ever.
This workshop includes an additional $50 of faculty tuition.
Recommended reading: The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent, by Betty Martin
Deep in the human mind and body are vast capacities for self-transcendence, felt in experiences of awe, compassion, gratitude, and profound beauty. These emotions enable us to gain perspective on our stresses, quiet the voice of the transactional self, orient to the well-being of others, and find a commitment to all sentient beings. These emotions lie in our deepest connections with others, the arts, nature, and ethical and spiritual ideas about living the good life.
In this paradigm-shifting workshop, we will review the latest scientific understandings of these self-transcendent experiences. By engaging in evolutionary and neuroscientific approaches to the mind, and considering the cultural meanings of these states, we will begin to tease out where this feeling lives in our own minds and hearts, and how to cultivate it more deeply.
Together, we will explore a number of practices to experience this transcendent amalgam of awe, compassion, gratitude, and beauty. These practices, which will make up at least a third of our time together, will range from storytelling to slow looking at art, awe walks, and ways to encourage kindness.
During our time together, we will have the opportunity to:
Join us for this incredible opportunity to refresh your heart and mind in the breathtaking natural setting of Esalen and Big Sur.
Please bring a notebook or a journal and a pen.
Recommended reading: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner
To encounter someone, something, or someplace implies that it’s unexpected or a surprise. Encountering the moment means coming face-to-face with the unknown. In movement practice, we train ourselves to stay open, curious, centered, and responsive at the front edge of any encounter — counterbalancing those innate primal reactions to fight, flee, freeze, or please.
Rather than withdrawing, playing it safe, or tolerating things you shouldn’t, imagine being adept at staying present and standing your ground clearly and authentically. Picture a world where we are able to express opinions, feelings, discontents, and appreciations skillfully while remaining wholeheartedly open to outcome and change.
In this workshop, within a supportive and challenging environment, we will create “safe emergencies” — situations intense enough to command our attention that are managed with care and support, to help us risk moving beyond habitual self-defeating patterns. Participants can receive real feedback and gain plenty of practice making new choices in relation to others.
Recommended Reading: https://www.andreajuhan.com/content/open-floor-encounter-dance-therapy-and-transformation
20 CE credits available for full attendance of this course
For questions about CE, contact Spiritual Competency Academy at info@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.
Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.
This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.
Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.
We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.
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Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org