Pleasure is the measure of your aliveness. It is not frivolous — it is your birthright, your compass, and your healing. — Anonymous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you struggle with shyness or social anxiety? Do you feel intimidated or scared to meet new people or worry others will judge you? If so, come face your fears and discover tools to connect to people authentically!

In this workshop, you will learn how to enjoy meeting new people and interact more successfully with others. Instead of feeling drained after social interactions, you can come away feeling invigorated and refreshed. You can learn ways to become skillfully vulnerable, authentic, and playful with others.

Instead of feeling self-conscious or like you need to “perform,” find out how to relax when meeting new people and be fully present in your interactions. Emerge with more lightheartedness, authenticity, and joy. There will also be a focus on flirtation skills for those looking to meet a new special someone, enhance the romance with their current partner, or just have more fun in life!

Together, we’ll explore:

• Interpersonal exercises to increase connection.
• Rejection training to desensitize our fears of rejection.
• Flirtation training to learn how to be more flirtatious and playful.
• Movement and exercises to specifically attack shame and reduce self-consciousness.
  

If you tend to avoid social opportunities or find interactions with other people draining, this is the workshop for you! Much of life is about the quality of our relationships with others. Discover how to liberate yourself from self-consciousness and disconnection and build stronger relationships.

Revolutionary findings in neuroscience have demonstrated that we can literally re-architect the very structure of our brains. In fact, we can even rewire our neurology to be more focused, calmer, and happier.

In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro — a leading scientist studying the effects of meditation on well-being — will teach you the most powerful science-based practices for increasing the neural pathways of happiness. She’ll explain basic brain science and offer a clear roadmap for living a joyful, connected, and meaningful life. Be prepared for unexpected transformation and delight.

During this weekend workshop, we’ll learn:

• Science-based practices to increase your baseline level of happiness.
• How to cultivate greater joy, gratitude, and connection.
• To integrate these practices into our everyday lives.

Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire the Brain for Calm, Clarity + Joy and Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity + Joy by Shauna Shapiro.

This workshop includes an additional $375 faculty tuition. *For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for a tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.

How does your body transform in the vast and ever-changing tapestry of the universe? Join Tantric scholar-practitioners Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Keith Edward Cantú as we explore Tantric practices, including the cultivation of energetic bodies, that have the potential to change our internal and external environments.

Together, we will immerse ourselves in the latest research into Indic teachings and practices that challenge and reframe our conventional understandings of what Tantra was, is, and can be. Staying true to the roots of Esalen, we will also intertwine discussion with authentic South Asian folk musical performances, songs, and guided meditations for a creative, visceral experience for the mind, body, and heart. We will cast light on Tantra’s connections to a wide variety of vibrant artistic and meditative practices in an eye-opening and unforgettable way.

In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:

• Develop an embodied understanding of Tantra.
• Creatively explore your divine nature and potential.
• Enjoy the benefits of overcoming negative projections and self-generated illusions.
• Learn practical modes of meditation, including internal visualization and externalization through mandalas.

We invite both couples and individuals to join us in this workshop that blends meditation, art, and music with a holistic inquiry into Tantra’s power and therapeutic potential to unlock a happier and more fulfilling life. Bring an open mind as we explore deep questions about our bodies and minds in a safe space and nurturing environment.

Please Note: This workshop is NOT about “Tantric Sex” or experiencing enhanced sexual pleasures, although many discussions will address gender identity and sexuality.

This workshop includes $50 of additional faculty tuition.

Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.

This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.

Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.

We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.

Gestalt 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

As the splash of summer fades and days shorten, this workshop provides the time and space to quiet down and relax in a spectacular natural setting. Esalen Massage is a moving meditation, a practice in presence and mindfulness, and a loving healing art. When practiced with focused attention, massage comes from a deep, quiet place that resides inside each of us. This practice of meditation helps access the nervous system, where healing originates. As we give a massage, this healing state of mind can permeate the field that practitioner and receiver create together.

In guided sessions, we will explore the practice of sitting meditation to prepare and quiet our minds, and the fundamentals of Esalen Massage as a meditative and self-reflective practice. Special focus will be on quality of touch, breath awareness, centering, and sensitive rapport between partners. The signature long strokes will support a sense of wholeness and integration.  Instruction in detailed work for the shoulders, hips, limbs and neck will contribute to the massage experience. There will be supervised practice daily as students exchange massages, with the support of their experienced teachers.

Beginners as well as seasoned practitioners will welcome this week to explore Esalen Massage and meditation, while enjoying the natural beauty of the Esalen grounds.

This workshop is especially useful for those in the helping and healing professions in working with their clients and partners.

26 hours of NCBTMB approved continuing education provided by the faculty through the Esalen® Massage and Bodywork Association Teachers.

The Body of Belonging invites you to explore feelings of kinship, acceptance, and community on a somatic level, identifying the elements most significant to you. Through gentle yoga-inspired movement, breathwork, sound, and meditation, we will engage in self-inquiry practices within a group setting. Together, we will create a safe and brave space to experiment with accessing a sense of belonging. Drawing from ancient and Indigenous wisdom, we will work toward dismantling the individualistic ways of being that contribute to our growing sense of separateness.

Loneliness is an epidemic eroding the fabric of who we are as a collective. It is so prevalent in the United States that the surgeon general has issued an advisory to call attention to the importance of social connection for individual and community-wide health. The hyperindividualism that has been promoted as our best way of “succeeding” has left us feeling lost and alienated. In our overfocus on self, we’ve lost sight of how connection, community, and a felt sense of belonging are central to our well-being.  

Participants will be invited to connect with their individual needs as it relates to belonging. They will build skillfulness in advocating for belonging by centering and nourishing connection and community to realize the resilience that comes with healthy interdependence.

Brighten the winter solstice season and honor the turning of darkness back toward the light with this healing experience of Esalen® Massage — enhanced by the power of essential oils. In this workshop, two senior massage practitioners come together to share the foundational elements of Esalen Massage — compassionate presence, long, lengthening strokes made effortless through proper body mechanics, attentive care for muscle stress, and the joyful sense of reconnection.

By incorporating the intentional use of essential oils, we invite the powerful sense of smell to deepen the work. Scent has a unique ability to transport us into memory. When paired with massage, a potent alchemy unfolds to allow deep relaxation, open-heartedness, and the freeing of the breath.

Different aromas can promote calm, clarity, inner reflection, and deepening of the breath. Drawing from a range of essential oils, Daniela and Jessica will guide you in creating personalized blends that support your own vitality as well as the needs of others. Both workshop leaders bring a wealth of experience with therapeutic applications, the artistry of blending, and the soulful connection between aromatic essence and the spirit.

Through lectures, demonstrations, and shared peer practice with feedback, participants will be presented with the tools to re-inspire their practice. This workshop is appropriate for beginners as well as those who practice massage or healing arts and wish to develop new skills and approaches.

Participants will have plenty of time to immerse themselves in Esalen’s natural beauty and restful rhythms.

24 CE hours pending

This workshop includes a $15 materials fee.

Recommended reading: A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman