Workshops

What if reincarnation is not a mere cultural belief or spiritual metaphor, but an emergent data set pointing toward a deeper structure of reality?

For over sixty years, researchers at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies have compiled more than 2,000 rigorously documented cases of young children who recall past lives — often with startling specificity, sometimes including verifiable names, places, and details. These memories, neither the product of hypnosis nor suggestion, challenge dominant paradigms in psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind.

With guidance from psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker, former director of the Division and heir to the pioneering work of Ian Stevenson, and clinical psychologist Christine McDowell Tucker, you will explore a body of evidence that many believe constitutes the most empirically grounded research into reincarnation available today.

This seminar invites participants into a contemplative and critical inquiry of the following questions:

• How do these children’s memories reframe our concepts of self and soul?
• What continuity, if any, carries from one life to the next — and how might this shape our purpose?
• Can we hold reincarnation as a hypothesis within both empirical and spiritual frameworks?
• What might these accounts tell us about the liminal space “between lives”?
• What becomes of death if it is no longer the final end?

This workshop is part of a growing constellation of Esalen offerings that blend scientific courage, spiritual imagination, and the audacity to rethink the very nature of human experience. It is designed to include those who are skeptical yet open, grounded yet curious — who sense that the future of knowledge may lie in the integration of multiple ways of knowing. Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy will join to offer brief introductory reflections, grounding the inquiry in the Institute’s long-standing commitment to exploring the frontiers of human consciousness.

This is not a workshop about belief. It is a gathering of intelligent hearts and minds, exploring whether a child’s remembered life might just be the beginning of a new story for us all.

NOTE: Our time together will combine lectures, dialogue, and guided inner inquiry. While no hypnotic regressions or active channeling will be included, we will engage in reflective and meditative exercises intended to support philosophical, psychological, and soulful integration of these ideas.

What if personal power is not harnessed by doing more but reclaimed by coming home to your body? How might your relationships shift if you could speak your truth in the moment? What if your body became your inner compass — a trustworthy guide through life?

Somatic research affirms what embodied traditions have long known: The body holds the key to authenticity, presence, and sustainable change. By attuning to inner signals, noticing patterns, and staying rooted in connection, space opens for truth, choice, and relational ease. This is not about performing; it’s about becoming available for connection.

Through trauma-informed facilitation, participants will engage in solo reflection, paired explorations, small-group practice, and collective experiences. Grounded in somatics, Authentic Relating, and expressive embodiment, these teachings move into direct practice where learning is explored experientially and through the body.

Over the course of the immersion, we’ll explore:

• Somatic practices for emotional tracking and inner listening.
• Solo and relational exercises rooted in the body’s wisdom.
• Centering to navigate challenges with resilience.
• Relational agility through authentic expression and attunement.
• Mindful vulnerability to bring depth and meaning to connection.

We’ll blend seated, standing, and movement practices, adaptable for all bodies, identities, abilities, and lived experiences. Come home to the wisdom of your body. Everything you need is already within.

At the heart of Gestalt Practice lies the understanding that we can grow into greater wholeness and interconnectedness, both inside and out. Gestalt is an awareness practice that invites us to focus on the present moment as a path toward authentic growth, resilience, embodiment, and aliveness.

Its core principles are:

• Cultivating embodied presence and awareness
• Growing responsiveness, resilience, and choice
• Trusting the organism’s inherent capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation

In this workshop, we will focus on trusting the wisdom of our organismic self-regulation and highlight the role of somatic intelligence — our body’s innate ability to sense, respond, and adapt. We will explore how our emotional, mental, and physical well-being is shaped not only by our inner processes but also by our relationships with others, the more-than-human world, and the ecological systems we inhabit. Through embodied awareness practices and somatic inquiry, we’ll engage with natural regulation and balance, exploring vagal nerve and movement-based techniques that support emotional and physiological health.

The concept of an ecology of being invites us to recognize ourselves as living ecosystems within larger ecosystems. Just as nature thrives through balance and interdependence, we, too, rely on the rhythms of self-regulation, co-regulation, and our relationship with the earth. In this light, the boundaries of a “separate self” soften, and we enter an integrated ecology of being where inside and outside meet as one living process.

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

To live in accord with love is to set your heart on fire. In the crucible of such an inferno all convention burns away. What’s left is an entirely new kind of existence, one full of passion, presence and infinite possibility. — Setting Your Heart on Fire

What if you could fall absolutely in love with every moment? What if you could use love’s radiance to heal your deepest wounds, break through any personal challenges, and even meet this confounding moment in the history of the world with conviction, vigor, and effective action?

All of this happens naturally when you stop trying to change life and instead learn to relax into it. This workshop is designed to meet you where you are and then call forth your very best. You’ll discover the simple, practical steps necessary to feel all emotions with willingness and compassion, uncover and transform your limiting beliefs, and create a life of greater ease, joy, and exquisite connection.

This weekend is primarily experiential. It’s designed with the recognition that your heart is already on fire; our job is to remove what’s dampening the flame. The key explorations and practices of the gathering:

• Take place solo, in dyads, and triads.
• Focus on the use of precise attention.
• Are mainly centered in the body.
• Feature movement and active imagination.
• Culminate in an “inner surfing” modality that combines vipassana, metta, and tantric approaches.

Special note: On Saturday night, our group will host a Freestyle Dance Jam, with Raphael as DJ, as a gift for ourselves and everyone at Esalen that evening. Remember to pack some loose-fitting attire and get ready to rock and roll and shake and swing and let it all go!

Recommended reading: Setting Your Heart on Fire, and The One Thing Holding You Back by Raphael Cushnir

What if sleep could be more than just crashing into your pillow at the end of a long day? What if it could be a portal to transformation and self-discovery? In this workshop, we’ll dive into the ancient Daoist art of sleep alchemy, where the Wudang Hibernating Dragon and Five Dragons Sleeping methods teach you how to transform snoozing into a practice of subtle awareness and metaphysical transformation.

Rooted in the Wudang Daoist Sanfeng lineage, these techniques harmonize body and soul, turning your nightly shut-eye into a discipline of deep peace. The cosmic journey would be incomplete without Daoist stories like Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream and Lü Dongbin’s Yellow Millet Dream, classic tales of metaphysical gaslighting that explore just how slippery the boundaries of reality and illusion can be.

We’ll also talk about practicalities within a Daoist framework, like how your food choices, lifestyle, and daily habits can affect your sleep quality. Expect to walk away with tools for cultivating transcendent rest, resilience, and an appreciation for Daoist cosmology. Along the way, we’ll keep it relaxed — the Dao is at ease. Sleeping in class is encouraged, though snoring will be punished with five hundred years in Daoist hell.  

Participants will practice introductory Wudang sleeping methods to enter, sustain, and deepen sleep states. By the end of the workshop, you will be intimately familiar with practical techniques to deepen sleep, enhance well-being, and dream the dream of life more deeply and lucidly.

In the mountains east of Esalen, an enchanting, ecologically diverse, and psycho-spiritually fertile wilderness awaits. Over four nights and five days, we will engage in a contemporary form of pilgrimage, backpacking as reverent seekers through these ancestral lands of the Esselen Tribe, now known as Big Sur’s Ventana Wilderness. Our journey concludes at the coastal grounds of Esalen Institute with a weekend of reflection and integration.

Since time immemorial, people have taken time away from the demands of daily life to walk with intention on sacred trails — pursuing embodied spiritual wisdom, expansion, and community. Wilderness pilgrimage is a powerful practice for restoring connection with ourselves, the Earth, and the depths of our shared humanity.

Each day of our wild pilgrimage, we will walk with presence and curiosity to meaningfully encounter our inner and outer landscapes. As we hike and camp, we will learn foundational wilderness ethics and skills to feel at home in the wild. When night falls, we will share stories and meals by the fire and sleep beneath a blanket of stars.

Inspired by Esalen’s co-founder Dick Price, who found healing in the Big Sur wild and the Esalen community, our intimate and intergenerational cohort will embrace mutual support – engaging relational practices from Price’s Gestalt lineage to authentically connect with ourselves and one another.

Our pilgrimage community will include the more-than-human world: ancient redwoods, mossy boulders, surging springs, morning bird-song, and all the countless beings and aspects of Big Sur. Through guided mythopoetic, ecological, and somatic inquiry, we will cultivate kinship with the wild, awaken our senses, and expand embodied awareness of our interconnection.

May the ardor and intentionality of our trek, across 30 miles of extraordinary terrain, wash away calcified layers from our essential selves to reveal bright resilience and aliveness. At Esalen, we will turn our attention toward integration and service: how will we carry what we’ve gathered on this journey into our lives, communities, and lands back home?

Important Notes:

• The full experience takes place over seven days, from Monday, April 20th to Sunday, April 26, 2026.
• Experience with backpacking or Esalen/Gestalt is not required.
• This is a partner program with Wildtender, a non-profit organization working at the 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. Scholarship funds are potentially available. For more details and to register, visit wildtender.com/esalen2026

The wound is the place where the light enters you. – Rumi

This workshop is designed for men to help you recharge and reset your body and mind, easing the heaviness of life's challenges — whether they involve self-worth, career, or relationships.

We will focus on your future vision, cultivating intuition, trust, resilience, and confidence through movement, dynamic breathwork, guided meditation, and lighthearted yet meaningful conversations. Practice with shadow work tools to access your inner wisdom and power, aiding you in overcoming blocks like fear, doubt, rejection, or self-sabotage.

“Rasa” is Sanskrit for “essence.” So, soak your icy armor in healing hot springs, walk amidst spectacular nature and ocean air, eat nourishing food, activate, and reveal the Rasa Heart Warrior of you.

You are invited to:

• Explore the archetypes of warrior, magician, lover, king, your shadows and wounds. This illumination can help shift your mindset and break free from outdated conditioned patterns to cultivate clarity, discover your purpose, know boundaries, and encourage genuine leadership development for true freedom.
• Participate in drumming, vocalizing, and mantras, and share in a circle to nurture your emotional skills, imagination, and intuition to foster deeper connections.
• Boost your energy and back strength with functional movements from Rasa Yoga, Foundation training, and dynamic breathwork. 
• No army drills here, but you might sweat.

Leave feeling refreshed and embodied, enriched by the camaraderie among men, with skills for resilience, emotional presence, and awareness. 

This workshop is specifically designed to create a space for sacred brotherhood for participants who identify as male. 

Recommended Reading: Bringing Your shadow out of the dark and To Be A Man by Robert Augustus Masters

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.

Esalen is the trailhead to one of the most spectacular mountainous coastlines in the world. With the Big Sur wilderness as the primary teacher, participants will explore the beauty of this wild coast which includes ancient canyons of redwoods, dramatic coastal beaches, rugged rocky mountains, and soft grassy slopes.

Drawing from nature and guided by experiential awareness practices, individuals will be encouraged to open to the landscapes of both the natural world and their inner world. It is said that Big Sur is not just a place but a state of mind. This wilderness experience seeks to merge mind and place, then to embody what is discovered.

Participants in this weeklong workshop will venture out into the emerging springtime magnificence of Big Sur. Steven will draw from a wide range of contemporary and age-old wisdom traditions, borrowing from psychology, meditation, aikido, and the natural sciences to weave together a holistic experience of self and the natural world.

Each hike will begin after breakfast and conclude in time to enjoy the hot springs and dinner at the Lodge. Evening sessions will include informal sharing and basic awareness practices with attention to incorporating what we’ve learned into our daily lives.

Please Note: All levels are welcome, and a moderate level of fitness is recommended. Expect 4–8 mile day hikes, most with elevation gain and loss on occasionally rugged or steep terrain. These are not fast-paced, summit-driven treks. They are for those drawn to deep time in nature, comfortable with extended physical outdoor activity, open to inner exploration, and appreciative of time to pause, listen, and rest in quiet reflection. More information and a waiver will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, visit the FAQs page.

Recommended Reading: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder

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

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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.

This workshop includes an additional $75 of faculty tuition.

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 in faculty tuition.

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

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

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

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

The body is a dense and visible aspect of a unified field. It can’t be separated from the field in which it lives. The whole body accepts. — Stephen Schwartz

If you have ever danced, you know the power of movement to unlock the hidden places within — the shortcut faster than years of talk therapy. In its elegant way, dance lets us be with what needs attention and love inside.

Rediscover the magic of life through the miracle of conscious movement and the healing power of embodied presence. Drop into your body, reconnect with what most matters to you, and feel alive again in your messy, mysterious, and magnificent human body.

Inspired by a wide range of music and the great sound of silence, supported by the elemental presence of nature, we will travel together across the landscapes of relating — to self, other, the world, and the great mystery that we also are.

During our week together, using the practice of Soul Motion® and the body-based explorations of Gestalt, we will:

• Awaken each day with movement, breath, and sensory awareness.
• Explore our inner landscape through solo and guided movement journeys.
• Connect deeply with others in paired- and small-group practices to be seen and heard.
• Move outdoors, drawing presence and inspiration from nature.
• Reflect and integrate through circles of sharing and silence.
• Include time for teaching and discussion, though most of the program is experiential.

In the process of waking up together — sometimes glorious, sometimes clumsy — we will deepen our skills for empathy and relational fluidity and find ourselves held in effortless belonging.

Zuza Engler is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) to sponsor continuing education programs for LMFT, LCSW, and LPCC. This workshop offers 18 CE credits for therapists and social workers. Please email angel@zuzaengler.com for more details about CE credits. There will be a $25 fee for the certificate.

Recommended Reading: Body Process: A Gestalt Approach to Working with the Body in Psychotherapy by James Kepner, Spirituality of the Body: Bioenergetics for Grace and Harmony by Alexander Lowen and The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness by Pema Chödrön

Have you ever worked hard to make a change, only to find yourself slipping back into old habits? Want to supercharge your ability to stimulate behavior change in others when it comes to the issues you care about the most? Is it time to break free from old patterns and build your next chapter? This workshop is for people in the process of change and those who work as change agents with individuals, groups, and organizations and in society.

Through dialogue, experiential practice, and creative process, we will bridge the science of breakthroughs with indigenous, religious, spiritual, and secular models of transformation. You will:

• Learn what works and what doesn’t to inspire lasting change in yourself and others.
• Explore how peak experiences, a-ha! moments and awe can stimulate change.
• Examine how we and those we work with can get stuck or lost, and find ways to shake free from periods of inertia or patterns that prevent us from moving forward.
• Investigate the transformative potential of pain, hitting bottom, and post-traumatic growth.
• Delve into stories, symbols, and metaphors of transformation to guide your path.

Join us for this transformational exploration of our most deeply entrenched behaviors. Learn how to break free from the patterns that no longer serve you — and create new habits that will change your life.

Additional embodiment practices will be provided by Guest Faculty Member Nichol Chase.

Nichol’s yoga practice is informed by a vast and eclectic set of influences that blend invigorating flow with precise and insightful instruction and extensive study with a variety of innovative teachers. She is a Garrison Institute Fellow and a faculty member and teacher trainer for The Mazé Method.

Recommended Reading: Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life by Marilyn Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten, and Tina Amorok

When the ground falls out from underneath us, our instinct is usually to cling fast 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 strain 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 identity and greet the natural transformation of our relationships with openness rather than resistance? What might it look like to exchange our grip on control, certainty, and rigid beliefs for qualities like surrender, adaptability, and emotional ease? And how might we come 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 American Philosopher Alan Watts to live in the present moment, from psychedelic therapy and the 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; evening sessions will include nightly 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, The Feminism of Uncertainty: A Gender Diary by Anne Snitow

Join us for an immersive five-day experience where ancient breath practices intersect with contemporary psychology to unlock the transformational power of your breath. For millennia, diverse yogic and spiritual traditions have harmonized breathwork with mindfulness to foster psychological healing and spiritual growth. Today, science validates the profound impact of breathwork and embodied awareness on stress management and immune resilience. Visionaries like Bessel van der Kolk champion the integration of breath, movement, awareness development, and educated touch for healing trauma.

On the sacred grounds of Esalen, under the expert guidance of the Hollomans, participants will have the opportunity to experience how breath can create altered states of consciousness, supporting deep psychological and spiritual exploration. Perry and Johanna use the powerful tool of Gestalt Inquiry to integrate these experiences into a deeper understanding of who we truly are. Participants will engage in various forms of breathwork, including extended two-to-three-hour breath journeys that open expanded states of consciousness and doorways to deeper dimensions of being. We will also begin our days with shorter, 50-minute “daily-dose” breath practices, perfect for at-home use.

Perry and Johanna will create a safe and supportive environment through Integrative Gestalt Practice and group sharing, ensuring that the insights gained from breathwork support your journey of healing and self-actualization.

In this workshop, you are invited to:

• Engage in two extended two to three hour Hologenic breath meditations to explore the unconscious mind and access altered states of consciousness, complemented by shorter, 50-minute “daily dose” breath practices for ongoing use at home.
• Learn the art of self-inquiry through Integrative Gestalt to cultivate “presence-based consciousness” in daily life.
• Apply breathwork and Integrative Gestalt techniques to address trauma and restore our innate capacities for self-organization and healing.

Embark on this transformative journey designed to nurture personal healing and spiritual growth. Learn essential skills that you can practice in your daily life to continue your journey of self-healing and spiritual development. Whether you’re a professional seeking to expand your practice through the power of breath or an individual committed to deepening self-inquiry, we welcome you to join us for this exploration into expanded realms of consciousness!

Recommended Reading: Breath by James Nestor

This workshop includes an additional $50 material fee.

Disclaimer: Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances. Breath practice can be catalyzing. Individuals with any significant medical concerns, including a history of stroke, seizures, or cardiac issues, should consult with their physician prior to participation. If you are pregnant, or think you might be, please consult your physician.

We live in a world richer than description. Language reveals only by leaving out, and when words fall short — when grief overtakes us, when beauty stills us — we do not fall silent. We reach. We shape. We art.

This workshop is an invitation into the space beyond language. Guided by The Alphabet of Everything, an approach to abstraction that requires deep attention, we will explore how every mark, shape, and gesture can be seen as part of a shared, primordial visual language — a living alphabet sourced from cracks in pavement, lichen on stone, diagrams, dreams, bones, shadows, and myth.

During this week of guided creative exploration, you will:

• Discover waxed powder painting, a meditative art form developed by the instructor that employs powdered pigments and beeswax to create richly layered, textured surfaces.
  
• Work with fieldwalks, somatic prompts, and imagination-rewilding practices—all designed to complement your studio work, loosen the grip of overthinking, and awaken fresh ways of perceiving.
• Engage with the consciousness continuum and explore how different states — attention, reverie, dream, silence, awe — can serve as portals to deeper knowledge.

Our shared space will be gentle, reverent, and non-performative — no prior art experience is needed. The focus will be on presence and process rather than critique or outcomes. The studio will act as a threshold, not a factory, especially supportive for those at personal or creative crossroads.

Anyone drawn to mystery, meaning, and the quiet hum beneath the visible — whether you identify as an artist, a seeker, or simply someone ready to listen more deeply — will find practices here that nourish creativity and restore intuitive capacity. Come with open hands and eyes. Come ready to shape what cannot be said.

This workshop includes an additional $20 material fee.

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

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

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

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

Participants are invited to:

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

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

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

Family photographs carry stories, both spoken and unspoken, about where we come from and who we have become. In this experiential workshop, participants will use personal family photos as catalysts for reflection, emotional awareness, and a deeper understanding of identity.

Through guided exercises, gentle inquiry, and shared witnessing, you will explore:

• The emotional signatures carried in family images.
• Patterns of belonging, loss, resilience, and connection.
• How family roles are expressed visually.
• The stories we inherited and the ones we are ready to update.
• Moments of beauty, ambiguity, and mystery that live in our lineage.

In this workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to gain new insights, renewed compassion for your family system, and an expanded sense of your own narrative. No artistic or Gestalt experience is required.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. — Howard Thurman

There is a vital force in the universe — the spark of life itself.  It’s in the blade of grass bursting forth from seemingly dormant ground after a long winter. It’s the instinct that calls the baby bird to launch from the nest. It’s the aliveness that guides us to our deepest truth, the illuminator of the precious present and our truest path. When we follow its call, life begins to move through us with greater clarity, courage, and purpose.

If you’ve ever longed to feel more alive, more aligned, or simply more you, this workshop offers a space to rediscover the spark that lives within. Through a blend of writing, reflection, and somatic practices, weaving together aikido, meditation, and psychology, you’ll be guided back into a deep connection with yourself.  

In the company of a supportive community, your truth will be witnessed — gently, openly, and without judgment. These accessible practices are designed for every body and ability to help you come into direct contact with your aliveness, center into your body’s wisdom, and build the embodied presence that allows life to lead.

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

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

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

Highlights of the Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommended reading: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder

Imagine that your body has a voice. What would it say?

The body speaks through movement, where each breath, feeling, and memory becomes a metaphor — a living story longing to be heard and danced. Begin by digging, fearlessly and with tenderness, into the fertile soil of soft skin. Touch bone. Listen to the heart, fluttering its wings against the ribs. Pluck your veins as if they were strings on a violin, playing an ancient universal rhythm.

This workshop is an invitation to return to the wisdom of the body. To listen, to express, to transform. Rooted in the Life/Art Process® developed by Anna and Daria Halprin, we will journey through movement, drawing, poetic narrative, and improvisation as pathways toward personal meaning, healing, and creative renewal.

Each day will unfold as a ritual: breath becomes rhythm, movement becomes story. We will explore what moves through us, both individually and collectively. Held within the wild beauty of Esalen, and accompanied by the live music of guest musician Miles Lassi, we will explore deeply, play wildly, and harvest what we find. No prior experience in dance or art is needed, only a willingness to express, feel, and listen.

Originating in the 1950s, the Halprin work has played a pivotal role in the groundbreaking human potential, postmodern dance, and healing arts movements, and has been offered at Esalen since the 1960s.

Recommended Reading: The Expressive Body in Life, Art & Therapy by Daria Halprin; Dances That Matter by Anna Halprin with Rachel Kaplan.

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

Longstanding relationship structures are now being questioned in ways that are both liberating and disorienting. As inherited models rooted in codependency, people-pleasing, and rigid roles lose their authority, many of us find ourselves at a threshold, no longer willing to sacrifice sovereignty for belonging, yet unsure how to relate outside of familiar and societal patterns. This moment invites a deeper inquiry: How do we stay connected without losing ourselves? What new forms of intimacy, partnership, and community might emerge when relationships are no longer organized around survival?

During this weekend intensive, we will explore how societal conditioning has shaped our ideas of partnership — including the belief that we are incomplete without one, or that a relationship’s end signals failure. We will consider what becomes possible as codependent patterns, limiting beliefs, and outdated gender roles are released, and examine the challenges that arise when attachment is prioritized over individuality. Together, we will explore how relationships of all kinds can be approached as a reciprocal space of healing rooted in sovereignty.

This workshop will support you in:

• Recognizing and moving past societal conditioning toward authentic intimacy.
• Balancing the need for belonging and self sovereignty, while releasing fear-based relating.
• Integrating the masculine (structural) and feminine (aliveness) energetics existing within all of us, regardless of how we identify in terms of gender.
• Showing up to your community and relationships with a deeper sense of sovereignty.

If you find yourself standing at a relational threshold — ready to release old patterns yet uncertain about what may come next — join us for an exploration of connection grounded in clarity and self-authorship and discover an expansive framework rooted in the space of sovereignty.

Recommended Reading: Sovereign Love: A Guide to Healing Relationships by Reclaiming the Masculine and Feminine Within by Dené Logan

Through eastern mysticism, quantum physics, psychedelics, and films like The Matrix, we are starting to catch on that “reality” may not be as it seems.

In this workshop, you’ll be guided to develop the x-ray vision needed to see beyond the concrete circumstances of your life to peer into the underlying “code” that is responsible for the tangles holding you back. Once identified, you will be empowered to shift that code through a beautiful process of quantum alchemy.

With a background in AI, neuroscience, Eastern religion, and psychology, Sam Rader has devoted the last 28 years to discovering the energetic patterns that run our lives. Often these patterns are manifestations that were programmed during the first five years of life. Understanding our source code allows us to quickly and gently get to the root of core issues, so we can shift our energy and embodiment to shift our world.

Many say discovering your source code is like a psychedelic experience— yet much more gentle and precise. With no ingestion of substances, no catharsis, no drama, and nothing overwhelming, this is a subtle yet profound journey —  a deep dive beneath our ordinary consciousness — to radically reconfigure ourselves and our reality.

In this workshop, you will be guided to dissolve and resolve anything standing in the way of becoming the fullest you and living your true expression of love, joy, and ease.

The latest research clearly demonstrates the powerful impact emotional experiences have on our health and longevity. While we know this to be true, we don’t always know how to be emotionally well.

During this weekend, we’ll open the door to greater emotional intelligence and perception. With a combination of lectures, interactive exercises, live music, breathwork, movement (yoga and dance), and meditation, we’ll practice understanding our feelings — and how to respond to them.

We’ll explore emotional wellness through the lens of Ayurveda, customizing our healing based on what we are experiencing in real time. This, in turn, increases our depth of connection with ourselves and others.

In this experiential workshop, we’ll be invited to learn Ayurvedic approaches to:

• Emotional wellness
• Self-assessment
• Psychospiritual healing
• Customizing healing tools

The music and movement will be guided by guest faculty Sunshine Zerda and QVLN, featuring a transformational dance experience with somatic release. Everyone, from beginners to advanced students of Ayurveda, is welcome.

Recommended Reading: Ayurveda for Yoga Teachers and Students by Dr. Siva Mohan (Chapter on Emotional Wellness)