Workshops

This workshop invites you to enjoy Esalen in the fall as you gain foundational skills in our famed massage modality. Silvia and Jenny will guide you in this experience of mindful touch translated to the massage table. Through lectures, brief demonstrations, and supervised practice, they will introduce the basics: quality of touch, rapport, massage skills with “the listening hand” and effective body mechanics.

The slow-paced practice of Esalen massage sets the stage for a pleasurable natural healing process to emerge, rather than any focus on “fixing”.  You will learn how to drape and how to easily apply Esalen’s signature integrative strokes, detail,  and gentle stretches with a concluding pause. You will be encouraged to effectively share your experience. You may even enjoy giving a massage as much as receiving one.

Classroom tools include exercises designed to awaken the senses and illuminate the value of boundaries in healing work, demonstrations, and tableside guidance tailored specifically for your experience level. The class is appropriate for the new and curious as well as the professional seeking to refresh their senses and the quality of their touch.

10 hours of continuing education provided by the faculty through Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association Teachers. For more information on CE email EMBA@esalen.org.

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

“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:

• 5Rhythms moving meditation
• Mindfulness meditation
• Restorative acupressure techniques
• Women’s health practices
• Women’s counsel
• Group sharing

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:

• Learn the Harvard-backed science of authenticity and how to apply it in every situation–including at home, in friendships, romantic relationships, at work, in leadership roles, or navigating your next big move in life.
• Gain the most effective skills to boost confidence and silence inner doubts, overthinking, and anxiety.
• Discover how to stay authentic during conflict, even in high-stakes conversations.
• Understand what it means to be your truest, most authentic self and how to express it in any environment—and how to use authenticity to drive success.

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:

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

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

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

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

Please note: This workshop, designed specifically for those who identify as queer men, 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:

• 5Rhythms dance
• Seated meditation
• Sharing circles
• Discourses on mindfulness and 5Rhythms

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.

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:

• Learn Gestalt-based self-inquiry practices that deepen awareness and connection.
• Engage in breath and movement-based exercises to access embodied wisdom.
• Work in dyads and triads to practice deep listening to one another and your own soul’s unfolding wisdom.
• Participate in guided group processes that create a dynamic space for transformation.
• Some participants will also have the opportunity to engage in individual “open seat” sessions with Perry and Johanna, supported by the group’s presence.

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.

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:

• Six methods of sustaining a “conflict free zone” for 166 hours of your 168-hour week.
• A “Caring and Sharing Time” the remaining two hours by practicing six mindsets that allow you to not feel defensive when criticized.
• “Eleven Wisdoms” as a foundation for deepening your love.
• The four “depleters of love,” aka the “Four C’s” (Criticisms, Complaints, Controlling, and Complacency)
• How to use your new skills with your children, parents, work colleagues and people you differ with politically.
• How to use music and dancing to revitalize your love (to be practiced by dancing before each session)

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

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.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. — Richard Rohr

In a world in flux, where uncertainty is the norm, how do we cultivate the inner resilience to enact outer change? This workshop invites educators, social impact leaders, and business professionals to explore healing-centered learning environments as a means of building personal and collective capacity.

This guided weekend retreat experience integrates two transformational frameworks: the Healing-Centered Education Paradigm, a restorative and contemplative approach to learning and leadership, and the Archaeology of Self™ Methodology, a reflective practice of self-excavation to deepen self-awareness and disrupt biases.

During our time together, participants will engage in:

• Mindfulness-based practices — grounding techniques to navigate uncertainty and develop inner clarity.
• Somatic and embodied reflection — movement-based and sensory practices to attune to our body’s wisdom.
• Journaling and critical reflection — guided writing exercises to explore personal narratives.
• Peer-to-peer dialogue — interactive discussions to deepen connections and share insights.
• Poetry writing and storytelling — creative practices to unearth wisdom and reimagine possibilities.

This retreat is for those at the intersection of education, leadership, and community care — those committed to deepening their own growth while contributing to collective healing and systemic transformation. Participants will be given the tools to discover a renewed sense of purpose and clarity in their work to leave rejuvenated, reinvigorated, intellectually stimulated, and spiritually grounded.

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:

• Savor the nourishment of surrendering to the Earth's embrace.
• Awaken a felt sense of kinship with the natural world.
• Reconnect with your body's innate intelligence and capacity for healing.
• Taste the deepest wellspring of rest and nourishment that is always available to us.
• Remember your aliveness.
• Practice talking and listening to the Earth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

What if you could use your voice to feel alive and present in your body? What would it look like to discover your own voice and fulfill its unique potential? This November, join sound therapy pioneer Eileen McKusick and transformational voice leaders and international recording artists Isaac and Thorald Koren of the Brothers Koren in a workshop designed to help you find the electric power in your voice.

Eileen, Isaac, and Thorald will combine their disciplines to create an electrified, liberated, embodied experience of vocal expression and play. This program is designed for those with and without previous musical experience — useful for seasoned professionals and first-time explorers of voice.

Using the power of new awareness, breath, sounding, and tuning with interactive immersion into the innate musicality of your human instruments, you will:

• Explore the 12 tones of our sonic anatomy, the resonant zones and the emotional spectrum of your voice.
• Express the range of your emotions with sound and play with musical modes and archetypes
• Learn to use music to express and balance our feelings, bodies, and biofields.
• Learn practical, playful, simple vocal exercises to support your vitality, freedom, and sense of well-being.
• Stretch the boundaries of your expression and liberate your greatest sound healing tool, your own voice!

Leave the immersive retreat feeling recalibrated, uplifted, and sonically invigorated. Previous participants noted dramatic changes in their freedom of voice after this safe and fun experience.

No vocal ability or musical experience required!

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:

• Deep meditative yoga, breath awareness, and conscious dance
• Time and ceremony in nature
• Sound healing
• Contemplation on the subtle body through the lens of the chakra system

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

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

Together, we’ll explore the elements of this approach, 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

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:

• Extended periods of intentional silence and slowness.
• Morning intention setting with prayer and reflection.
• Gentle somatic movement and breath practice.
• Guided land connection and nature-based sensing.
• Evening gatherings for shared meals and heartful conversation.

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:

• Meditation and Dharma talks
• Relational mindfulness and inquiry
• Conscious movement and dance
• Embodied practices to invoke the realm of dreaming and conscious imagination and to embrace shadow and the unknown
• Reflective writing
• Deep time in nature

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

Imagine your relationship expressing the true depths of your love and commitment. If you are in love, this retreat is an opportunity to rise even higher in love. If you are in crisis, it is an opportunity for healing on the deepest level.

We all carry some degree of negative programming from our past, and there are loving and effective ways to transform this programming into a positive and vibrant celebration of our connection.

During this workshop, you and your partner will take part in guided exercises, experience therapeutic coaching from the Vissells, and connect with the support of other couples, with time set aside for sharing after each practice.

This weekend offers a collection of tools for deeper appreciation and communication building. Themes include healthy communication of feelings, seeing one’s partner as a mirror, understanding and respecting each other’s differences, navigating conflict resolution, healing past hurts, exploring sexual wellness, connecting with the inner child and inner parent, taking responsibility and developing a true inner connection. Participants are encouraged to explore how these practices might apply to their lives together, both during the retreat and beyond. For more information, visit www.SharedHeart.org.

This workshop welcomes couples of all gender and sexual orientations.

Recommended Reading: To Really Love a Man by Joyce and Barry Vissell & To Really Love a Woman by Joyce and Barry Vissell

An apology will shut a conversation down. A good repair opens one up. — Dr. Becky Kennedy

Conflict is inevitable. The health of a relationship depends not on whether conflict happens but on how skillfully we repair. The Art of REPAIR is a practical, embodied, and deeply relational process that transforms rupture into connection, clarity, and trust.

In this workshop, relationship facilitator Hazel-Grace Yates will guide you through the six-step REPAIR Process™. Grounded in an integrative approach, The Art of REPAIR blends somatic and nervous system intelligence, authentic relating and relational attunement practices, power dynamics, trauma-informed communication, interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, and restorative justice principles. This multidimensional framework helps participants approach conflict not as a threat but as a portal to deeper intimacy, collaborative problem-solving, and long-term relational health.

To integrate your learning, we will weave in movement, songs, playful connection games, guided reflection, and time in nature, supporting not only cognitive understanding but a full-bodied, lasting transformation.

Through guided practices, interactive exercises, and real-life application, you will learn to:

• Regulate your nervous system to meet conflict with clarity, presence, and care rather than reactivity.
• Create a shared reality in complex disagreements so both perspectives are heard and understood.
• Explore five actionable pathways to restore integrity, rebuilding trust and connection.
• Strengthen courage and boundaries to speak your needs without defensiveness or collapse.
• Turn conflict into connection by replacing avoidance or resentment with repair conversations that foster intimacy.

Open to individuals, couples, and groups of all kinds. Come ready to practice, play, and expand your capacity for love. You will leave with tools you can use for life and perhaps discover that conflict, when navigated well, can be one of your greatest access points to connection.

Listen as Hazel-Grace shares about the REPAIR Process in a short video, or explore a 20-minute overview for a deeper understanding of the work.

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:

• Taking action for yourself or for another, and knowing the difference.
• Understanding who is doing and who it is for, and knowing the difference.
• Noticing, trusting, and valuing both your desires and your limits, which leads to empowerment and self-responsibility.
• Defining what power is (and isn’t), making friends with it, and using it beneficially.
• Accessing parts of yourself that have been hidden away that are ready to be seen, appreciated, and healed.

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

For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Explore intimacy, love, and sensual pleasure — and learn to connect and successfully fulfill your desires. Nothing will enhance the quality of our lives more than deepening the quality of our relationships, particularly those with whom we are most closely connected. This experiential workshop provides the tools necessary to experience heightened levels of mutual fulfillment and well-being.

Together, we will recognize and embody the qualities integral to the process of creating and sustaining intimacy, such as sensitivity, authenticity, vulnerability, courageousness, and commitment. We will engage in specific practices that will promote the cultivation of these and other qualities in a safe, supportive, and inspiring learning environment. The workshop is designed to enhance your capacity for joy, passion, pleasure and spiritual fulfillment. Offering ways to harness the hidden strength and creativity that lies in your shadow. The sessions will involve group work, mindfulness practices, shadow work, open dialogue, and experiential exercises, in pairs and small groups.

By the end of our time together, you will be encouraged to integrate practices that can support a life of open-heartedness and reconnect you with the deep well-being that is your fundamental birthright.

CEU credits are available. Please see the workshop assistant for more information.

Recommended Reading: 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married, Happily Ever After… And 39 Other Myths About Love,

An End to Arguing, and Secrets of Great Relationships by Linda and Charlie Bloom

Join LaVerne McLeod and Melanie DeMore for a weekend of exploration and celebration of Black History Month as we express ourselves, connect, play, and honor humanity.

Together, we will explore what it is like to walk in another person’s shoes to understand and empathize with viewpoints that might differ from our own. We will build a safe container of trust and get curious about what might be lying beneath the surface —  while moving toward resilience and empowerment.

Using empathy, songs, visualization, and movement exercises, we will connect and relate to one another, letting go of what no longer serves us and exploring effective responses to life’s challenges.

In this workshop, LaVerne McLeod will lead the group in empathetic practices that call forth bridging gaps of separation. In celebration, Melanie DeMore, a vocal activist, will lead soulful ballads to energize spirits and exemplify the rejuvenating power of healing through music.

This workshop is highly recommended for all races, identities, gender expressions, and nationalities. It can be a creative catalyst for educators, therapists, and artists that leads to one’s own inner healing. Those in leadership roles working with diverse populations may find this workshop to be a source of empowerment. Together, let’s connect our heart centers to the path that nourishes and heals us.

‍Recommended reading: Corn Hollow, 2nd edition by LaVerne Hillis McLeod and The Crossroads of Social and Climate Justice by LaVerne Hillis McLeod.

* Locals rate available for locals who do not require overnight accommodations. Click “Register Now” for more information. Valid ID required.