Earth, Nature & Ecology
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Reunion with the Wild Earth: Hiking and Nature Connection in Big Sur
With Fletcher Tucker
How would it feel to move into a meaningful relationship with the living world? Beyond a mere passive appreciation of nature? In the long arc of human history, people across all cultures and traditions have lived in communion with the lands they called home. Though this intrinsic connection has been largely severed in our modern […]
Being Natural: A Meditation Retreat
With Chandra Easton
During this retreat, you’ll be invited to immerse yourself in your own innate wisdom to rediscover your freedom. Through Buddhist meditation, mindful movement, and time in nature, you’ll explore the spontaneous creative essence within you. Surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, this guided retreat is an opportunity to slow down, listen deeply, and […]
A Midsummer’s Dream: Flower Baths, Sound Journeys, and Herbal Magic
With Micha Merrick
Gather with us under the waxing full moon for a weekend of embodied ritual and communal celebration. While the flowers are in full bloom, the moon is bright, and the sun reaches its highest arc in the sky, we will circle together to honor the fullness of the light with sacred ceremony, flower baths, folklore, […]
Nature and Contemplation: Cultivating Wild Mindfulness
With Steven Harper and Gary Marcoccia
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 […]
Experiencing the Esalen Farm and Garden
With Candice Isphording, James House and Becca Gallagher
Have you ever wanted to learn how to grow your own food? Experience a dynamic week in the Esalen Farm and Garden and fully participate alongside our talented and experienced staff. Local food security is a major issue facing communities worldwide. It is said that there is no greater form of activism than growing one’s […]
Encountering the Animate World: Hiking and Animism in the Big Sur Wild
With Fletcher Tucker
The Big Sur wilderness lives and breathes, listens, and speaks. Beneath ancient redwood trees, a shimmering creek journeys toward the sea. In the oak woodland, a polyphony of birds sings to the rising sun. Fog dances across chaparral bluffs, caressing sagebrush and sandstone cliffs. Every cove, meadow, and forest of this biodiverse landscape is alive […]
Simply Wild: Experiencing Nature as Nature
With Steven Harper
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, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? — Mary Oliver The week […]
Walk on the Wild Side: Exploring the Big Sur Country
With Steven Harper
"What’s the quickest way out of the city?" John Muir asked a stranger. "Where do you want to go?" the man replied. "Anywhere that is wild," said Muir. This week is simple and direct. Each day we step onto the mountain trails of Big Sur and walk into the living wild — breathing ocean air, […]
Experiencing the Esalen Farm and Garden
With Candice Isphording, James House and Becca Gallagher
Have you ever wanted to learn how to grow your own food? Experience a dynamic week in the Esalen Farm and Garden and fully participate alongside our talented and experienced staff. Local food security is a major issue facing communities worldwide. It is said that there is no greater form of activism than growing one’s […]
Awake in the Wild: Awareness in Nature as a Path of Belonging
With Mark Coleman and Lori Schwanbeck
What becomes possible when we slow down enough to truly listen to the living world? How might attentive presence become an expression of care and participation — a way of remembering our place within the larger community of life? On this retreat, we explore how mindfulness in nature is a deeply relational path, inviting intimacy, […]
Being Whole: Ritual, Respect, and Regulation
With Tracee Stanley and Elena Brower
You are invited into a practice of becoming whole through movement, stillness, and deep rest. Explore ritual, respect, and regulation as our equation for remembering and embodying wholeness within a supportive community. Each day, our sessions will blend movement, stillness, quietude, nature exploration, and time for silence and reflection. Guided meditations and yoga nidra will […]
Earth-Body: An Eco-Somatic Backpacking Journey & Retreat
With Noël Vietor and Ariel Johnson
The Earth holds us, breathes with us, moves through us. Since time immemorial, human beings have lived in deep, reciprocal relationship with landscapes—our movements shaped by terrain, our nervous systems regulated by the rhythms of seasons and tides, our sense of self inseparable from the more-than-human world. Yet, in this modern, frenetic age, we are […]
While the Veil Is Thin: Autumn Ritual With Land, Ancestry, and Spirit
With Fletcher Tucker and Micha Merrick
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 […]
Thresholds and Altars: Nature-Based Rituals for Life’s Turning Points
With Day Schildkret
Everything begins by leaving. — Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams Life invites us into change, but rarely teaches us how to move through it well. Whether it’s a relationship ending, a role dissolving, a chapter closing, or a calling emerging, you may find yourself standing at the edge of what was ... and unsure how to […]
The Plants Who Know Us: Traditions of Botanical Kinship
With Fletcher Tucker
For hundreds of thousands of years, plants have been humanity’s greatest allies, shaping culture in material and spiritual ways. Across the Northern Hemisphere, a shared cohort of plants has profoundly influenced human existence, providing sustenance, medicine, textiles, and more. Honored as wise relatives, they carry mythic and spiritual significance across diverse cultures, forming a thread […]
Sitting at the Feet of the Glacier: Land-Based Practices, Meditation, and Grief Work
With Ayana Young and Brontë Velez
In an economy predicated on capitalizing our attention, what if we apprenticed ourselves to ecological forces whose temporality refuses capture? How might sitting at the feet of a glacier, as our elder, liberate our presence? Enter this five-day apprenticeship with the glacier as a teacher, following the glacier’s quality of time as a grammar for […]