A travel advisory is in effect for Highway 1 to our north. Learn more about repairs at the baths.
Learn More.

Learn more.

Due to road closures along Highway 1 to our north and south, Esalen is closed through April 11.
Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
past workshop

Erotic Ecology: Awakening the Senses and Healing Through Nature

May 11–15, 2026

Lindsay Branham

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 week-long workshop offers an immersive, slow, and sensual experience in the erotic ecology pathway — a space to reawaken our sensory, pleasurable, and nourishing connection to two landscapes: our bodies and nature. You are invited to slow down to let the Earth touch you, heal you, and love you.

Through embodied exploration, you can rediscover your birthright: an intimate relationship with the natural world 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 forest meets the Pacific Ocean, we’ll engage in practices designed to open you to ecological eros: the ever-living and abundant source of pleasure, aliveness, and vitality.

During our time together, you are invited to:

  • Learn and practice the eight stages of interoceptive awareness, our body’s portal to sensing the Earth.
  • Attune to the pace of nature and move at the rhythm of our surroundings.
  • Remember, feel, and embody your own aliveness.
  • Awaken a felt sense of kinship with the natural world.
  • Reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom and capacity for healing.
  • Expand in playful connection to nature through poetry, mandala-making, and dance.
  • Savor the nourishment of surrendering to the Earth’s embrace.
  • Practice consent in relationship to self, others, and nature.
  • Taste the deepest wellspring of rest and nourishment that is always available to us.
  • Learn how to speak the language of the Earth.
  • Connect your own erotic vitality to collective liberation and ecological justice.

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: Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees by Lindsay Branham and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Lindsay Branham

Dr Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist and Buddhist eco-doula. She is the author of Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees. Her life’s prayer is to serve the collective remembrance of an erotic and embodied relationship with nature.

Full Bio