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Mythic Yoga Flow®: A Full Moon Retreat
With Sianna Sherman and Masood Ali Khan
Be inspired and transform your yoga practice with the stories of yoga and the power of myth. Awaken the hero’s journey within you as you explore the legends, lore, and archetypes of the yoga tradition. Deepen your love of yoga, elevate your creativity, and infuse your practice with mythic codes that support your purpose in […]
How We Change and Why We Don't: The Art and Science of Transformation
With Cassandra Vieten
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 […]
Advanced Cortical Field Reeducation® (CFR) Five More Powerful Days for Deeper Healing
With Judy Greenman, Melissa Krikorian and Kim Blue Flavey
This course builds on your previous seven rich days of exploration in CFR® Week One. During that crucial week, you laid the foundation for releasing your childhood survival patterns and moving through life with more ease and presence physically, mentally, and emotionally. In CFR® Week 1, you reorganized the stranger you once called “self” to […]
Cancelled | Cultivating Vitality in Body, Mind, and Spirit: The Ecosystem of Mental Well-Being
With Cassandra Vieten and Elissa Epel
What is vitality? Exuberance, vibrance, sparkle, spirit, and verve — terms rarely found in psychology textbooks. Vulnerability to depression and anxiety is widespread, and our culture traditionally emphasizes reducing symptoms with drugs that alter certain neurotransmitters, which is only part of the picture. We are living in a new era where vulnerabilities can become strengths, […]
Bare Bones: The Architecture of Embodiment
With Andrea Juhan
All knowledge / until it's in the body / is still a rumour. — Anonymous In a world that constantly pulls us away from ourselves, this is an invitation to return to the living intelligence of the body. Through movement, awareness, and curiosity, we’ll explore the physical architecture of embodiment: the foundation upon which all […]
The Next You: The Art of Futuremaking
With Cassandra Vieten and Bristol Baughan
What innate potential lies dormant within you? What dreams are yearning to be expressed? What does it look like to be fully alive, live an integrated and embodied life, and become an engaged part of the larger ecosystem of nature and community? It’s time to meet your future self and find out. This workshop focuses […]
Healing Wisdom for Modern Times: You Are Your Greatest Healer
With Erika Gagnon
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 […]
The Thrill of Groundlessness: Flowing Through Life Without Absolutes
With Ramzi Fawaz
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 […]
The Shared Heart Summer Couples Retreat
With Barry Vissell and Joyce Vissell
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 […]
Hardwire Happiness: Rewire Your Mind for Calm, Clarity, and Joy
With Shauna Shapiro
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 […]
Cancelled | Healing, Rest, & Embodied Liberation for Men of Color
With Danny Fluker and Darnell Lamont Walker
Immerse yourself in a restorative workshop designed specifically for male-identifying people of color. This unique experience offers a sanctuary for growth and self-discovery, fostering a supportive community where participants can connect and build meaningful relationships. Black boys and men of color have limited opportunities to engage in mind-body healing practices, and there are not nearly […]
Transpersonal Breath Practices: Hologenic Breathwork™ and Integrative Gestalt™
With Perry Holloman and Johanna Holloman
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 […]
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 […]
Esalen® Massage and Meditation
With Dean Marson and Brita Ostrom
Esalen Massage is a moving meditation, a practice in presence and mindfulness, and a sensory healing art. When practiced with focused attention, massage comes from a deep, quiet place that resides inside each of us. This practice of meditation also helps access our parasympathetic nervous system, where healing originates. As we give a massage, this […]
Crafting the Sacred Trilogy of Native American Instruments: Flute, Drum, and Rattle
With Guillermo Martinez
Join master craftsman and musician Guillermo Martinez for an unforgettable journey into the sacred traditions of Native American instrument making and music. This immersive, hands-on workshop invites you to reconnect with the spirit of sound by crafting three profound instruments: a Native American bamboo flute, a 16" elk-hide medicine drum, and a gourd crystal rattle. […]
Embodied Voice
With The Brothers Koren
Come home to your whole body instrument and rediscover your unique sound. For over 20 years, Isaac and Thorald Koren have been guiding people back to their voices through a groundbreaking, embodied approach that invites courage, freedom, and transformation. They believe singing and speaking are radical acts of self-expression — and science agrees. Research shows […]
The Art of Non-Sleep Deep Rest
With Kelly Boys
Rejuvenate the body and the mind with the deep relaxation that can be found through non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra. Whether you need a break from constant pressure, are navigating a life transition, or wish to delve deeper into your mindfulness and meditation practice, this retreat will provide space and time for contemplation […]
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 […]
The Alphabet of Everything: Art, Attention, and the Ineffable
With Corey Pressman
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 […]
Source to Screen: Accessing, Manifesting, and Transmitting Great Ideas
With Paola di Florio and Peter Rader
In the words of Carl Jung, “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.” This immersive week-long lab is for creators of all kinds—writers, inventors, filmmakers, musicians, and entrepreneurs—anyone who wishes to integrate their spirituality and creativity to tap into the deepest source of inspiration and higher intelligence as they bring guided work into the world. […]
The Depths of Vision: Jung, Psychedelics, and the Practice of Integration
With John W. Price
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, […]
Natural Healing: A Spiritual Journey of Return
With Michael Ventura and Margaret Harrsen
Healing ourselves is a journey of return. During this weekend workshop, you will be invited to learn about the practice and traditions of “curanderisma” (folk medicine) to bring forth awareness and attune us to our individual healing journeys. Through meditative and contemplative practices, touch, prayer, plants, and natural elements, this work honors a lineage of […]
The Power of Three: Tantra and the Energetic Body
With Sravana Borkataky-Varma
Do we possess only the physical body we see, or are there multiple layers to our existence? In the Tantric tradition, it is said we are not just one body but three: the physical body (what we see and touch), the subtle or energetic body (where thoughts, emotions, and prāṇa flow), and the causal body […]
Sacred Groove: An Ecstatic Dance Ceremony
With Adam Clark
Our ancestors explored spirit-led movement to embody ecstatic states for generations. Whether as a form of celebration, mourning, or prayer, ecstatic dance has long served as sacred medicine, healing the hearts of individuals and communities. Join us on this sacred land for a transformative weekend of ecstatic dance ceremony — a journey to tap into […]
Photo Gestalt: Exploring Self Through Family Photographs
With Dorothy Charles
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 […]
Soulstice Soulfire: Embodied Awakening Through Yoga, Dance, and Sound
With Cristi Christensen
The Summer Solstice is the moment when light lingers longest — a turning point of illumination, expansion, and renewal. Just after the longest day of the year, we’ll gather on the wild cliffs of Esalen to remember this truth: The spark of your soul has never gone out. It may have flickered through the seasons […]
A Solstice Ritual: Alchemy Singing Bowls and the Living Pattern of Light
With Deva Munay
Join us for a celebration of sound and light at the onset of summer, when sunlight stretches to its fullest. By honoring light in its many forms — sunlight, soul light, and vibrational light — this experiential retreat invites you to align with the light found within and through seven alchemy sound journeys, designed to […]
Channel Your Creative Life: From Flights to Perchings
With Erin Prophet
The artist is essentially a channel. — Piet Mondrian Explore the nature of creativity — what fuels it, where it comes from, and how we live with it. Is inspiration something we receive from beyond or something we shape from within? Do artists create, channel, or both? In this workshop, we will consider the creative […]
Let Life Lead: An Embodied Journey to Spark Your Truth
With Wendy Haines
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 […]
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, […]
Resting Into Radiance: Qigong, Breath, and Meditation
With Jim Gallas
Have you ever felt, even momentarily, that all is well within and around you? How do we cultivate this sense of deep presence and start to sustain it? This sense of presence is the foundation of awakening. The ancient practices of qigong, meditation, and breathwork open and harmonize the energy body so we might experience […]
Write Your Deepest Story: Memoir, Autobiography, and the Personal Essay
With Janis Cooke Newman
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 […]
In(ter)dependence Weekend
With Janet Stone
Through yoga and intentional music crafted from ancient beats, we’re thrilled to gather for our annual celebration of our inter-dependence. We’ll dive into meditation, pranayama, chanting, yoga asana, dance, hot baths, lovingly prepared food, open time, and space for connection, creativity and collaboration. Meet us at sacred Esalen on the cliffs, in the hot baths, […]
Journey Space: Music, Movement and Ceremony
With East Forest and Marisa Radha Weppner
Now more than ever, it is important we build practices to strengthen our internal resolve and self-resourcing amidst a dynamically shifting society. Together, we will listen to our heart’s wisdom in this rich four-day journey (Friday to Monday) through sound, ceremony, and self-discovery. In this intimate and transformative workshop, you will have the unique opportunity […]
Bhakti Yoga Summer Gathering
With Janet Stone
Join us at Esalen — where land, sky, and sea meet — and gather at the height of summer in devotion to movement, music, and one another. This retreat is a celebration of bhakti: the yoga of love made tangible through asana, chanting, rhythm, story, and shared presence. Together, we’ll practice beneath the sun, listen […]
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 […]
Moon Lodge: Honoring the Sacred Feminine
With Lucia Horan and Dr. Julie Von
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 […]
Biological Gods: Evolution and the Coming Superhumans
With Jeffrey J. Kripal and John Allison
Humanity is a transitional species, poised on a tightrope between the primate past on the one end and the coming, future “superhumans” on the other. What is right about this image? What is wrong with it? Who, historically, has been excluded from it? Can we, should we, speak of human exceptionalism or not? And perhaps […]
Maps to Ecstasy: A 5Rhythms® Mindfulness Celebration
With Douglas Drummond and Lucia Horan
When we experience moments of ecstasy, we taste what life is meant to be. — Gabrielle Roth The 5Rhythms® maps hold all the information required to lead us where we want to go. What is your destination? There is a science to achieving ecstatic states, and this is the mastery we have come to share. […]
Evolving the Inner Witness: Yoga Practices to Open the Window to the Self
With Annie Carpenter
In the midst of darkness, light persists. — Mahatma Gandhi The practice of yoga takes each of us on an interiorizing journey. Step by step we move from the outer and reactive body-mind towards the inner witnessing light of the Self. Here, we observe without judging or running away from sensations, thoughts or memories. The […]
Freedom Dreaming: How Daydreaming and Imagination Open a Portal for a Liberated Life
With Tricia Hersey
Daydreaming is not passive; it is an embodied, living practice—a gateway to knowledge, interconnectedness, and liberation. It is where we access deep creativity, ancestral memory, and the unseen forces shaping our lives. Across time and tradition, rest, reverie, and imagination have been essential tools for visionaries, artists, and revolutionaries. Yet in a culture that prioritizes […]
Designing Warmth: A Human-Centered Approach to Connection and Collective Well-Being
With Daniel Gloyd
Warmth is a connecting principle. Somehow the barriers come down when warmth is involved. — Pema Chödrön Warmth is a powerful and essential component of human connection, prioritized by the biological brain and spiritual heart alike. To thrive, we humans need to experience interconnectedness between ourselves and the world around us. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described […]
Engaging with Beauty as a Pathway to Resilience Through the Mindful Viewing of Film
With Francis Lu
Through mindful viewing of eight memorable feature films, participants will engage with cinematic beauty to open their hearts for a pathway to resilience. Recent studies from neuroaesthetics have shown that experiencing beauty can activate the brain’s emotional processing centers, which are critical for resilience; research in positive psychology has identified “appreciation of beauty and excellence” […]
Cancelled | Embodied Writing and Spiritual Practice
With Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Erik Davis
Part writing workshop and part tantric retreat, this unique practice week explores the relationship between personal writing and subtle body practices. Religious historian and Tantric practitioner Sravana Borkataky-Varma will lead experiential sessions largely stemming from Hindu Goddess Tantra practices. Award-winning author and scholar Erik Davis will then guide the group in reading and writing exercises, […]
The Spirit Bridge: A Portal Between Realms
With Aja Daashuur
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 […]
Your Brain on Breath: Ancestral Technology for Healing and Transformation
With Sadia Bruce and Josh Brahinsky
Breath matters. It is one of the few human capacities that is at once biological, cultural, and sacred. Every breath connects physiology with perception — and with our shared search for meaning. It is a physiological necessity, a regulator of attention and awareness, and a primary medium through which humans have explored consciousness across time. […]
Elemental Ceramics
With "Kayenta" Kelly Magleby
Join us for this weeklong wild clay pottery intensive. As a group, we will go through the process of making pottery from the wild, including processing clay, mixing wild clays, and finding and testing clay in the field. We’ll learn how to hand-build pots using various techniques, including pinch pots, slab work, coil and scrape, […]
Discovering the Beauty of Color/Music/Dance Through the Mindful Viewing of Film
With Francis Lu
Through mindful viewing of four classic motion pictures filled with color/music/dance, participants will open their hearts to profound cinematic beauty. This seminar offers an enhanced mindfulness experience through films directed by Jacques Demy, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger filled with cinematic beauty involving color/music/dance. These films are presented for […]
Body Poetic and The Life/Art Process®
With Daria Halprin
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, […]
Introduction to Esalen® Massage: The Art of Healing Touch
With Silvia Guersenzvaig and Lori Lewis
This workshop invites you to enjoy Esalen in the summertime as you practice foundational skills in our famed massage modality. Silvia and Lori 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 […]
Cancelled | Meditation for Purpose, Joy, and Confidence
With Justin Michael Williams
Many people sense a quiet but persistent inner call — a longing toward a life that feels more true, more alive, more aligned. Yet fear, doubt, and long-held habits often keep us from trusting and acting on what we know inside. This workshop offers meditation as a practical, embodied pathway for reconnecting with purpose — […]
Designing The Life We Want: Self Renewal in the Summer
With Mark Nicolson
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 […]
Lessons in Liberation: Power, Surrender, and Choice
With Betty Martin and Marcia Baczynski
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 […]
Living Authentically: A Journey with Human Design
With Anne Van de Water
Imagine reaching the end and realizing your biggest regret is that you never found the courage to live authentically because you lived the life others expected. In this workshop, we will embark on a transformative journey inspired by the wisdom of Human Design and the spirit of Esalen. Human Design blends ancient wisdom from astrology, […]
Ayurveda and Emotional Wellness
With Siva Raakhi Mohan
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, […]
Moving Beyond Codependency: Honoring the Sovereign Self in Relationship
With Dené Logan
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. […]
Recoding the Matrix of Your Reality in the Quantum Age
With Sam Rader
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 […]
Yoga Nidra Retreat: Rest, Restore, and Remember Who You Are
With John Vosler
Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation through movement, guided meditation, and the profound practice of Yoga Nidra. This workshop is designed to restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from experiencing a state of calm, clarity, and balance. Yoga Nidra, which translates to "yogic sleep," […]
Heal Yourself with Ayurveda
With Siva Raakhi Mohan
The body doesn't need to be forced into healing — it needs the interference removed and the conditions restored. Most of us have been taught to approach health one symptom at a time. But what if there's a deeper order — a way to work with your body's systems that cultivates relief and lasting change? […]
Embracing the Divine Feminine: A Mystical Approach
With Elizabeth Philipose
Imagine reconnecting with a part of you – the Divine Feminine – that brings you back into balance and harmony with yourself and all your relations. This transformative workshop combines social and political knowledge, energy- and earth-based practices, and embodiment exercises to help you release fears, resentment, and pain while inviting intuition, surrender, and flow […]
From Practice to Freedom: Let Your Inner Lion Roar
With Jovinna Chan
Are you ready to listen to the calling of your courageous heart? This weekend yoga retreat invites you to slow down and relax into a deep knowing of your heart’s wisdom. Tap into the astrological event known as The Lion’s Gate Portal, in which Sirius, the brightest star, aligns with the Sun during our time […]
Unlock Your Intuitive Mind: Tap Into Your Higher Consciousness
With William Donius
Learn to call on your spirit guides and tap into your intuitive mind. Join us in a transformative workshop combining scientifically proven brain-enhancing techniques with intuitive guidance to help you break free from self-limiting patterns and create the life you desire. This workshop brings together two powerful approaches to help you develop tools for personal […]
Magnitude, Mayhem, and Monstrosity
With Andrea Juhan and Vic Cooper
These are not gentle times. The world presses hard, fast, and loud, and many of us are carrying more than we know how to hold. Rage, fear, grief, and urgency — energies that don’t easily soothe or settle — have worn hope thin. This workshop is an invitation to move with what feels big, unruly, […]
Accessing the Genius Within: Healing Physical and Emotional Injury With Cortical Field Re-Education® and Feldenkrais®
With Judy Greenman, Melissa Krikorian and Tomas Prietto
How we sit, stand, move, and respond to our inner and outer world reflects deeply ingrained patterns wired into our nervous systems since childhood. They reflect our early solutions to physical survival in our family system. Out of awareness, these beliefs and strategies can still run our adult lives, limit our choices, and prevent physical […]
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 […]
Unmute: Your Story Matters
With Ann Randolph
What would happen if you stopped editing yourself before you began? This embodied writing workshop is designed to get you out of your head and into your body — where the stories that refuse to stay quiet live. Through writing, movement, and deep listening, participants access material often buried beneath politeness and perfection. This is […]
Exploring the Mind Through Liminal Dreaming
With Jennifer Dumpert and Adam Haar Horowitz
We’re all natural liminal dreamers. Every 24 hours, in the spaces between waking and sleep, we pass through the zones of liminal dreaming, hypnagogia and hypnopompia, where the mind meanders between daytime awareness and the depths of the dream. Every one of us possesses the ability to maintain the crisp awareness of the waking mind […]
Unmute: Your Story Matters
With Ann Randolph
What would happen if you stopped editing yourself before you began? This embodied writing workshop is designed to get you out of your head and into your body — where the stories that refuse to stay quiet live. Through writing, movement, and deep listening, participants access material often buried beneath politeness and perfection. This is […]
Metta and the Divine Abodes: Meditation, Yoga, and Wisdom to Live a Better Life
With Hannah Muse
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?—Mary Oliver The Brahmavihārās (divine abodes) are profound practices that uncover your natural capacity to live your life easefully with love, connection, wisdom, and joy. In this experiential workshop, we’ll use daily guided meditation practices, storytelling, song, relational mindfulness practices, […]
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 […]
Holotropic Breathwork®: Expanded States of Consciousness
With Stacia Butterfield
For thousands of years across many cultures, expanded states of consciousness have been used intentionally 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 […]
Fluidity in Motion: Presence, Play, and Spontaneous Awareness
With Deborah Eden Tull
Like flowing water, life is constantly changing, emergent, adaptable, and interconnected. With our bodies and the living process of the earth as our sacred laboratory, we will explore the dharma of fluidity. Through stillness and movement, contemplation and play, somatic inquiry and relational mindfulness, we will reawaken our cellular remembrance of flow. While the dominant […]
Elements of Desire: An Erotic Lab for Queer Men
With Finn Deerhart
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 […]
Expanding the Nature of Your Being: Embodied Consciousness, Intuition, and the Remembering of Human Potential
With Diane Hennacy and Siegmar Gerken
Come with an open mind and an open heart, and allow consciousness to meet you where you are. Across cultures and throughout history, humans have reported subtle perceptual capacities — deep intuition, nonlocal connections, and heightened sensitivity to energy and emotion — that extend beyond ordinary awareness. While such experiences were once considered natural aspects […]
Deep Time: Slowing Down as a Revolutionary Act
With Deborah Eden Tull
Nature does not hurry and yet everything is completed. —Lao Tzu Anyone who has sat in deep meditation, trekked up a mountain peak, spent time immersed in play with an infant, fallen in love, or experienced the stillness of prayer has experienced time that felt limitless. The more conditioned we become, the more we develop […]
The Inner Atlas: Mapping the Self through Somatic Self-Inquiry
With Lihi Benisty
Take a week-long journey into the cartography of self — mapping the terrains that live beneath language — where breath meets bone, memory lives in muscle, story shapes identity, and the future self waits patiently to be remembered. Through breathwork, somatic movement, writing, sound, and relational mirrors, we’ll explore distinct layers of being. Each day […]
Fundamentals of Esalen® Massage
With Vicki Topp and Jenny Pareno
The summer stars and sun-sparkled ocean waves—with glimpses of whale flumes—form a striking backdrop for exploring the renowned Esalen® Massage at its place of origin. This workshop offers an introduction to the foundational concepts and flow of the Esalen approach through a blend of experiential exercises, lecture-demonstrations, guided hands-on practice, and personal reflection. Participants engage […]
The Heart of Relationship: A Weekend of Gestalt Inquiry for Couples and Friends
With Johanna Holloman and Perry Holloman
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 […]
Meditation and Modern Life: A Zen Meditation Retreat
With Dan Zigmond
When was the last time you gave something your undivided attention? Nearly 2,500 years ago, Buddha worried we had become too distracted — and that was before paper, let alone smartphones. Today our days are filled with convenient distractions that promise happiness while mostly delivering busyness and frustration. Many of us live life in a […]
Graceful Exit: Preparing for a Good Death
With Andrew Holecek
We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own demise or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we? This workshop offers a wide array of resources and teachings to help participants address that final unfinished business and make the most out of every […]
Cancelled | Follow Your Tao: Embodying the Five Spirits Through Qigong and the Elements
With Stephanie Nosco
This weeklong immersion explores the Five Spirits of Chinese medicine — Shen, Hun, Yi, Po, and Zhi — as a living map of body, emotion, and destiny. Through qigong, meditation, meridian stretching, healing sounds, and reflection, participants are invited to follow the current of their own Tao — the natural unfolding of life within and […]
Healing Through Creativity: Merging Art and Psychology for Personal Growth and Change
With Pamela Hayes Malkoff
This workshop is more than a learning experience — it’s an invitation to connect deeply with yourself and others in a supportive and creative space. Together, we’ll explore the profound potential for healing and growth that arises when art and psychology converge. No artistic experience is necessary; this workshop is about creative expression, not perfection. […]
Free the Resonant Voice: A Vocal Embodiment Journey to Remember the Soul of Your Sound
With Odeya Nini
The voice is calling me, to come home, to the river that is flowing within me. — Sophia Tuv The voice is more than sound — it is the breath of our being made audible, the vibration of our essence moving through space. It is our most innate instrument, a direct channel between the soul […]
Stop Holding Yourself Back
With Justin Michael Williams
This workshop will give you the tools to help you stop holding yourself back. Whether you have a desire to lose 20 pounds, write a book, launch a business, start a side hustle, open your heart to love, shift your relationship with money, or figure out your next chapter — whatever goal you set — […]
On the Altar: A Creative Response Lab for a World Turned Upside Down
With Sorah Nutting and Karisha Longaker
In an unraveling world, our senses help keep us grounded and connected. This workshop explores how embodied creative practice can open new pathways for personal and collective resilience. Whether you're new to creative work or an experienced artist, you’re invited to join us in a creative response lab dedicated to our shared well-being. During our […]
Pulse and Presence: A Somatic Rite of Passage to Freedom
With Danielle Rubio
Enter the innate intelligence of your body — a space to soften the pressures of daily life, unwind habitual stress patterns, and reconnect with the subtle language of sensation, movement, and presence. Across ten hours of experiential somatic practice, you’ll be led through a blend of nervous system regulation practice, intuitive movement, memory reprocessing, dance […]
Love Your Body Now: A Therapeutic Yoga Approach to Joyous, Full-Body Awareness as We Age
With Tracy Lease
You deserve to feel ease and joy in your body as you age. Movement, time in nature, breath, quiet contemplation, and “Aha!” moments all contribute to expanding happiness and delight in life. Though this is true, you may face challenges. Changes to our bodies — aches and pains, joint replacements, osteoporosis, heart issues, and other […]
Relational Gestalt Practice: Presence, Contact and Communication
With Dorothy Charles
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 […]
Into the Field of Possibility: Meeting Your Essence Through Dance
With Jovinna Chan
Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervish to the Shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain. This five-day retreat is an invitation to come together to awaken the forgotten wild, ignite your creativity, […]
The Power of Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
With Shauna Shapiro
Learn how mindfulness and self-compassion can change everything about how you feel, how you relate, and how you live — for good. In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro — a leading scientist studying the effects of mindfulness and compassion on well-being — shows us that acting with compassion toward ourselves is the key. She explains […]
The Rewilding of Eros: Un-Domesticating the Erotic Body and Reclaiming Erotic Sovereignty
With Victor Warring
We are erotic primates living in culturally imposed domestication. We have the lineage and bodies of hunter-gatherers, but we exist in a modern context that is deeply afraid of Eros. Like other domesticated animal species, we have been removed from the wild to live a more settled life. For many of us, this has had […]
Being With the Body in Depth Psychology: Trauma and its Transformation in the Unspoken Realm
With Barbara Holifield
The body is a portal to the numinous dimensions of the soul’s life. It can lead us to healing and wholeness far beyond simple relief of traumatic symptoms — and to increased access to our feelings and a renewed sense of soulful aliveness. Jungian and depth psychology orient to the deepest currents of the soul, […]
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 […]
The Buddha, the Brain, and Bach: Exploring Practice in Mind, Music, and Life
With Barbara Bogatin, Nikki Mirghafori and Clifford Saron
You are what you practice! The Buddha’s teachings meet modern brain science in this interactive workshop exploring meditation, musical performances, and neuroplasticity. Join us to discover how these practices can harmonize with one another to offer paths for inner peace and more joyful engagement with the world. Leading deep inquiry and guided meditations, senior teacher […]
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, […]
The Embodied Compass: Resilience Through Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness and 5Rhythms®
With Lucia Horan and David Treleaven
This retreat invites you into a rich, integrative journey of embodiment, where movement and mindfulness come together to deepen emotional resilience and self-awareness. Embodiment is not just a conceptual idea but a lived practice — an ongoing conversation between the body, emotions, and mind. By blending the dynamic, fluid language of 5Rhythms® with the grounded, […]
The Path of the Wounded Healer: 5Rhythms® Heartbeat & Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
With Lucia Horan
The healing path has a trajectory. Gabrielle Roth called this, The Path of The Wounded Healer. It is here that we look closely at our healing process. We mark both where we are and where we want to be. We dance through the five stages of healing in relationship to victim, survivor, healer, transformer and […]
RITUAL: Harvest Moon Women's Retreat
With Sianna Sherman
Alchemize your life with ritual, earth ceremony and the wisdom of the 13 moons. This is a spirited call to soul sisters, magic makers, and wise women of all ages. If you feel called to awaken and amplify your magic, this is for you. Women throughout the ages have gathered under the light of the […]
Beyond Duality: Healing Wisdom and Ceremony for Personal Health and Well-being
With Erika Gagnon
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 […]
Clown Church: Mindfulness, Healing, and Your Deepest Self
With Jet Eveleth
Our clown is the authentic, curious, and playful version of ourselves. Clowning as a life practice is the balancing of our light and shadow while laughing at our attachments. Clown is about being soft, brave, and available to the moment. This workshop is an immersion practice that explores our deepest, most vulnerable, creative self. Using […]
Pelvic Health Self-Care Retreat: Exploring the Pelvis Through Anatomy, Nutrition, and the Nervous System
With Anietie Ukpe-Wallace and Krishna Dholakia
I think it’s the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work and how they don’t work. —Michelle Obama The pelvis is a powerful part of our body and is foundational to our overall health. The tissues and bones of our pelvis […]
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 […]
Esalen® Massage in the Side-Lying Position
With Nora Matten
Explore foundational Esalen® Massage principles reimagined in the side-lying position — quality of touch and presence, long integrative strokes, and passive joint movement, all adapted to offer a new perspective and experience. When limited to prone and supine options, practitioners and students often miss ways to effectively work with those who would benefit from alternatives. […]
Vibrant Silence: Qigong, Breath and Meditation
With Jim Gallas
Our awareness of energy both expands and becomes more subtle as we deepen into relaxation. The ancient Chinese practice of Qigong, often translated as “cultivating Life Force”, is a system of movement that relaxes and energizes the body/mind. You will find this form “Wai Dan Gong” easy to learn and a powerful means of experiencing […]
Role Mate to Soul Mate: The Art and Discipline of Love
With Warren Farrell
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 […]
Integrative Gestalt Practice™: Embodied Presence, Connection, and Inner Guidance
With Perry Holloman and Johanna Holloman
Gestalt is, at its heart, an awareness practice. It invites us to be present with what is. From that presence, insight, emotional regulation, and inner guidance begin to emerge. Gestalt practice helps us connect with what is real and true for us, beyond old patterns, habitual self-judgment, or the impulse to fix ourselves. In a […]
Shake Loose: Fall Release With Yoga and Foam Rollers
With Ulrika Engman
Embody the power of fall by exploring the many ways to let go and let loose. Discover how to be at ease this season through yoga, soft foam rollers, movement, and stillness. Surprise yourself with a fresh and creative way to move into release. Autumn is a natural time to liberate old energy and go […]
Self-Compassion as a Lifeboat Home: Remembering the Heart of Who We Are
With Caverly Morgan
What if the love you’ve been searching for is already here — waiting to be remembered? In this retreat, you’ll explore self-compassion as a lifeboat home — a steady refuge when self-criticism, striving, or overwhelm take hold. Rather than trying to “fix” yourself, you’ll be invited to gently shift your relationship to experience, discovering the […]
The Turning Season: Aligning with Autumn’s Sacred Rhythms
With Jillian Pransky
Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. —Chinese Proverb Join us for deep release and renewal as we pause to align with autumn, acknowledge the sacred cycle of life, and move gracefully through this transitory season. Autumn is a time of letting go and accepting the impermanence of things. […]
Wise Effort: Reclaim Your Energy and Realign Your Life
With Diana Hill
Many of us are overextended yet underfulfilled. In this highly experiential workshop, you’ll be guided through the Wise Effort Method, a powerful, ACT- and wisdom traditions-informed process to reclaim your energy and direct it toward what matters most. Through values mapping, group work, and real-life behavior experiments, you’ll be invited to identify what’s draining you, […]
Transforming the Shame Triangle: From Shame to Love Using Parts Work
With Jessica Fern and David Cooley
The Shame Triangle is an inner dynamic of parts that many of us carry without even realizing. It includes three primary roles: an Inner Critic that attacks, a Shame Part that absorbs the blow, and an Inner Escaper that tries to avoid pain while showing up in many forms: overfunctioning, perfectionism, and overachieving on one […]
Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create
With Elissa Altman
Who are we to tell our stories? How can we grant ourselves permission to write the truths we’re compelled after being told we shouldn’t? Designed for creatives of every stripe and at every level, this workshop is a generative and inspiring experience that empowers participants to unpack their right to tell the stories that make […]
The Mythical Body
With Kerri Kelly
The myths that built this world — the ones that tell us who belongs, who leads, and who is worthy of care — are losing their hold, and the body knows it. Long before the mind catches up, the body has been carrying the weight of these stories: in the armor we wear, the patterns […]
Creative Catalyst: The Transformative Power of Making Art
With Dana Albany and Michael "Flash" Hopkins
The Artist lives within everyone! Art can be made out of just about anything! It’s a time to leave the critic behind and allow oneself to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit. It’s also a time to enjoy the company and camaraderie of like-minded peers. Now is your time to discover the joys of […]
Stages of Tranquility and Insight
With Dustin DiPerna
Asanga’s Nine Stages of Staying is one of the oldest and most comprehensive systems of concentration in the Buddhist tradition. Sometimes called the Elephant Path, this approach was originated by the great Buddhist master in 506 A.D., and it is now the main method of training the mind in the Tibetan tradition. In this weekend […]
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 […]
The Three Instincts of the Enneagram: A Practical Exploration
With Russ Hudson
Our instinctual nature shapes how we move through life — how we seek safety, connection, and passion. Yet this powerful aspect of us is often misunderstood or overlooked, even in spiritual work. In the Enneagram tradition, our instincts are seen as three fundamental drives — Self-Preservation, Sexual (Attraction), and Social (Adaptation) — that influence how […]
Contacting the Space Between: Gestalt, Feldenkrais, and the Subtle Body
With Kate Flore and Dwight Pargee
“A brain without a body couldn’t think.” — Moshe Feldenkrais “To feel is to heal. To contact is to awaken.” — Dick Price Human beings are relational by nature. We are an intricate web of anatomy, energy, space, and time that takes shape through our life experiences. Our physical structure, function, and sense of self […]
Crafting the Sacred Trilogy of Native American Instruments: Flute, Drum, and Rattle
With Guillermo Martinez
Join master craftsman and musician Guillermo Martinez for an unforgettable journey into the sacred traditions of Native American instrument making and music. This immersive, hands-on workshop invites you to reconnect with the spirit of sound by crafting three profound instruments: a Native American bamboo flute, a 16" elk-hide medicine drum, and a gourd crystal rattle. […]
The Future We Choose: Human Empowerment in the AI Age
With Sam Stern and Cecilia Callas
What does it mean to remain human in the new age of artificial intelligence? In this immersive weekend workshop, we’ll explore this profound question together, journeying from awareness to empowerment to integration as we discover how to shape our relationship with AI while preserving what matters most. Through hands-on AI demonstrations, creative labs, and experiential […]
Soma & Soul: Come Home to Self Through Somatic Wisdom and Embodied Relating
With Ash Ryzen Witham
What if personal power isn’t something you earn by doing more, but something you reclaim by being more fully yourself? How might your life and relationships shift if you could lead from your truth? What if your body became your inner compass, a steady and trustworthy guide through life? This is an invitation into the […]
Breakbeats, Breath, and Becoming
With Didier Sylvain
In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself. — Frantz Fanon Most people are not stuck because they lack insight. They are stuck because inherited rhythms still live in the body. Rhythms of culture, survival, and belonging that have shaped what felt safe, possible, or forbidden. Join this transformative weekend workshop […]
Designing The Life We Want: Self Renewal in the Fall
With Mark Nicolson
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 […]
The Medicine of Song, the Land, and Community
With Johnsmith
If your life were a song, what would it be? If you told the story of your heart, what tale would you tell? This workshop invites participants to discover their authentic singing and songwriting voice through creative exercises, prompts, and assignments. We will focus on opening the creative heart and bringing forth the music and […]
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 […]
Your Brain on Sound: Rewiring Through Resonance, Mantra and Alchemy Singing Bowls
With Deva Munay
Join us for a deeply nourishing sound immersion where sacred resonance becomes a gateway to transformation. In this weeklong workshop, we work with alchemy crystal singing bowls — instruments of subtle energy and crystalline intelligence — to harmonize the nervous system, soften emotional residue in the biofield, and awaken a more grounded, joyful state of […]
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 […]
Esalen® Massage: Couples, Partners & Friends
With Peggy Horan and Rob Wilks
This is a perfect season to awaken touch, our forgotten language. In this introductory massage course, participants will learn to listen to each other, gain the sensory skill of initiating touch, experience the felt sense of touch and muscle release, and close with a balanced tenderness. Seasoned instructors will offer exercises, demonstrations, and at-the-table guidance […]
Advanced Cortical Field Reeducation® (CFR) Five More Powerful Days for Deeper Healing
With Judy Greenman, Melissa Krikorian and Tomas Prietto
This course builds on your previous seven rich days of exploration in CFR® Week One. During that crucial week, you laid the foundation for releasing your childhood survival patterns and moving through life with more ease and presence physically, mentally, and emotionally. In CFR® Week 1, you reorganized the stranger you once called “self” to […]
Sleep, Dream, Death, and Liberation: Exploring the Continuity of Awareness
With Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
In this five-day workshop, we will explore how sleep, dreams, and even the process of death can become gateways to deeper awareness and freedom. We’ll draw from the Tibetan contemplative traditions of dream and sleep practice to reveal how awareness continues through all states of experience. The retreat combines traditional teachings with insights from Western […]
When Spirit Speaks: Personal Evolution Through Spirit Connection
With Aja Daashuur
Your Spirit Guides are speaking to you. Join the conversation. This weeklong retreat is devoted to deepening your relationship with your spiritual team as a direct and reliable source of guidance, clarity, and transformation. This work centers on real-time dialogue. You bring what is present in your life, and your Guides respond. The exchange reveals […]
Hardwire Happiness: Rewire Your Mind for Calm, Clarity, and Joy
With Shauna Shapiro
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 […]
Transformative Negotiation: Reimagining Conflict Through Narration and Dream Work
With Aimee Breslow and Sarah Federman
Conflict is no longer something happening “out there.” It lives in our conversations, our communities, and often within ourselves, shaping what feels possible and what feels stuck. In a time of rapid change and deepening division, many of us find ourselves caught inside stories that harden perspectives, narrow imagination, and limit our capacity to respond. […]
Breath: The Master Key
With Hawah Kasat
Breathing is one of the few functions in the human body that is both automatic and voluntary — happening unconsciously every moment of our lives, yet also available to conscious control. In the yogic traditions, this makes the breath profoundly significant: a bridge between body and mind, conscious and subconscious awareness, the autonomic and non-autonomic […]
Moving Men: An Embodied Inquiry
With Douglas Drummond
In a time when many men are questioning the inherited roles, social pressures, and stories that have shaped what it means to be a man, this workshop is an invitation to courageously explore masculinity. Through movement, honest self-reflection, and the profound learning that becomes possible when men gather, we’ll uncover challenges, witness one another’s vulnerability, […]
Primordial Qigong: Vibrant Health, Harmony with the Tao
With Kenneth Cohen
Primordial Qigong is meditation in motion and includes the two most famous forms of Taoist Meditation: the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Energy Circulation, in which the solar (yang) and lunar (yin) energies flow in harmony, an essential key to vitality and longevity. You will also be given the tools on how to recharge the three dan […]
Wild Color: A Week of Natural Dye and Creative Renewal
With Kristin Arzt
Discover the art of creating color sourced directly from the land. In this immersive workshop, participants explore plant-based dyeing through mindful foraging, wildcrafting, and creative practice inspired by Esalen’s gardens and landscape. Each day begins with a grounding meditation to connect with the earth and awaken creative flow. Through hands-on exploration of resist techniques, surface […]
You Are Not Your Fault - Meeting ADHD with mindfulness wisdom and compassion
With Mark Coleman
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. […]
The Healing Voice: Exploring the Sonic Anatomy
With The Brothers Koren and Eileen McKusick
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 […]
The Wild Embrace: A Journey to Vitality
With Jovinna Chan
Have you ever held the wind? Or been held by the wind? There is a vitality in all life that is ancient, intuitive, and always accessible. This energy, like the wind, formless yet moving in all directions, creates and sustains life. The body is the doorway through which to meet this energy of being. It […]
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 […]
Holotropic Breathwork®: Expanded States of Consciousness
With Stacia Butterfield
For thousands of years across many cultures, expanded states of consciousness have been used intentionally as a strategy for meaningful transformation 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 these unique states. […]
Gratitude Retreat
With Janet Stone
We gather on this powerful land for a weekend to remember — with our bodies, minds, and spirits — all that we have to be grateful for. Amidst all of the turmoil, we come together in community to remember that we are enough as we are. Through yoga, meditation, reflection, cliff side baths, and walking […]
Giving Thanks: A Yoga Retreat
With Janet Stone
“Enoughness” is the starting point of any journey toward gratitude. We begin to fully take in the profound gift of all that is unfolding only when we recognize that we are enough. With Esalen as our transformative container, let’s meet during the week of Thanksgiving. Let’s honor the land and the Esselen people, the indigenous […]
The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Cultivating Presence, Resilience & Wonder in an Uncertain World
With Steven Harper
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. – Alan Watts This Thanksgiving week, you are invited into a living inquiry of what it means to be fully, authentically human in a deeply mysterious world. In a season of reflection and gathering, […]
Relational Gestalt Practice: Open Seat Intensive
With Dorothy Charles
All people have an innate ability to move toward healthy, satisfying relationships. Old patterns of behavior and fixed ideas formed in early relationships may block our ability to communicate and make contact with the people in our lives. The Gestalt approach aims to increase awareness of these patterns and our ”unfinished business” by relating in […]
The Essential Qigong of China: The Energy, the Movement, and the Stories
With Chungliang Al Huang
Master Chungliang “Uncle Al” Huang, one of Esalen’s most cherished faculty members, brings 50+ years of teaching experience to welcome you into China’s ancient practice of qigong. During this workshop, Master Huang will teach the most essential qigong exercises — guiding students through energetic practices of movement, storytelling, and subtle energy work. This is an […]
The Stories Behind the Poses: Mythology in Motion
With Raj Balkaran
Every yoga posture embodies a story. Every story embodies a posture. The warrior's focused intention, the divine monkey's formidable leap, the lotus's sacred stillness — these are not mere ideas but encapsulations of physical practice. Encoded in each āsana is a mythic psychology: a map of consciousness, a demand on the practitioner, a doorway into […]
Creative Tai Ji Experience: Change, Transformation, Metamorphosis
With Chungliang Al Huang
To be truly creative, to let go of preconceived restrictions, is to allow yourself the freedom to flow. Taoist wisdom calls this Wu Wei — the art of not interfering with what is already happening. During this weeklong workshop, we will playfully reinvent Tai Ji forms with ancient Tai Ji rituals, Five Moving Forces of […]
Esalen® Massage and Meridian Work
With Daniela Urbassek
Esalen® Massage combines partner-based attentiveness with the overlaying energetic field. This workshop presents the 12-meridian system of Asian medicine, attuned to Esalen Massage’s slow-flowing strokes. The intent is to facilitate release of long-held muscle tension while providing pauses and point work to nourish and harmonize. This energetic alignment can encourage resilience, lift the heart, quell […]
Grof® Breathwork: Homecoming
With Marianne Murray
Grof® Breathwork, developed as “holotropic breathwork,” was born at Esalen in the 1980s by Stanislav and Christina Grof. This powerful practice offers participants the opportunity to enter expanded states of consciousness through accelerated breathing, evocative music, and supported somatic release. Through this practice, we “journey” using our breath, opening to the psyche’s intrinsic intelligence for […]
Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination
With Cassandra Vieten
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them to the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke Imagination is the foundational ingredient in problem solving – the ones in your own life as well as problems in society. Yet how many courses in imagination did you take […]
Awaken Your Extraordinary Potential with Integral Transformative Practice® (ITP)
With Pam Kramer and Max Gaenslen
Practice is a seedbed of miracles. —Esalen Institute Co-Founder Michael Murphy What positive shift would create the most meaningful change in your life right now? Your extraordinary potential is built into your DNA and awaits your discovery. In this enlivening workshop, experience the essence of Integral Transformative Practice® (ITP), a living platform for growth, well-being, […]
Healing Wisdom for Modern Times: You Are Your Greatest Healer
With Erika Gagnon
Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore traditional healing wisdom and the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, spiritual and soul bodies. You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, […]
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 […]
The Depths of Vision: Jung, Psychedelics, and the Practice of Integration
With John W. Price
Our oldest traditions carry the same instruction for this moment, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year: go in. Many who have touched the sacred through mystical states, grief, love, or a profound life transition carry an unfinished question: How do I live in service to what I have seen? This workshop is […]
Aligning with Nature: A Winter Solstice Yoga Retreat
With Sarana Miller
Winter solstice is a time to reflect — to cultivate vitality and nurture ourselves. The dark days of winter are an opportune time to slow down and make space for self-care. This winter solstice yoga retreat will focus on cultivating inner awareness. By practicing in community, we build inner vitality and brightness to return home […]
Spiritual Yearning
With Tanya Luhrmann and Nancy Lunney-Wheeler
How can those of us who yearn without belief or ritual find our way? Many of us have lost our connection to a mainstream faith, or maybe never had it. We long to find more, even if we are afraid that it may not be there. Some of us have experienced our worlds cracked open […]
Elements of Desire: An Erotic Lab for Queer Men
With Finn Deerhart
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 […]
The Seven Flames: Winter Solstice Ritual Retreat
With Cristi Christensen
Winter Solstice marks a sacred turning point — the threshold where darkness begins to yield to the returning light. As nature grows quiet and the earth turns inward, we are invited to slow down, listen deeply, and tend the inner flame. Guided by the wisdom of the chakra system, this immersive retreat explores the seven […]
The Power in Your Hands: Turning from Screens to Souls
With Shannon Algeo
Who will you become when you put down your phone and pick up your life? In just two decades, technology has rapidly reshaped our psyches, relationships, and communities. The average person now spends the equivalent of 61 to 80 days a year on their smartphones. Apps increasingly frack our attention while human empathy has steadily […]
Journey Space: Music, Movement and Ceremony
With East Forest and Marisa Radha Weppner
Now more than ever, it is important we build practices to strengthen our internal resolve and self-resourcing amidst a dynamically shifting society. Together, we will listen to our heart’s wisdom in this rich four-day journey (Friday to Monday) through sound, ceremony, and self-discovery. In this intimate and transformative workshop, you will have the unique opportunity […]
Imagine, Explore, Envision: An Enchanting Weekend of SoulCollage® and Self-Discovery
With Kimberly Lee
The hands will often solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. — Carl Jung Sometimes the wisest part of you speaks through images. Inspired by the work of Carl Jung, SoulCollage® is a powerful expressive arts method that invites your authentic inner voice to come forward. Through this accessible yet profound […]
Pleasure Alchemy: Deepening Emotional Intelligence Through Rituals and Sensual Somatics
With Leah Diamond, Tony Holmes and shiloh burton
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 […]
Soul Motion®: Tenderness at the Heart of the Dance
With Zuza Engler and Scott Engler
Soul is flow. It’s an ever-changing play of sensations and feelings. It’s how the deathless presence meets and moves our finite human body. In this workshop, we will reclaim the body-in-motion as a doorway to the life unfolding just under the surface of everyday forgetting. A formless dance form, Soul Motion® allows for passionate, full-bodied […]
Ground Control: Cultivating Steadiness in Wild Times
With Sadia Bruce
We are living at speeds the nervous system was never designed to sustain. In a culture organized around acceleration, optimization, and constant responsiveness, the present moment increasingly becomes something to manage rather than inhabit. Over time, this accumulates in the body as urgency, fragmentation, exhaustion, and the persistent feeling of being unable to fully arrive […]
Gateways: A 5Rhythms® Movement & Mindfulness Retreat
With Lucia Horan and Douglas Drummond
Come to dance and be danced! Move until you are moved. Dance until the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. —Gabrielle Roth The gateway of the body is a powerful vessel that allows us to move and be moved. During this unique seven day retreat, we will dance into and through the gateway of […]
Wintering Within: Meditation, Music, and Gentle Yoga for the New Year
With Chandra Easton
Bring in the New Year with a rejuvenating week of meditation, music, and gentle yoga, guided by Buddhist teacher and author Lopön Chandra. As winter invites us to slow down and turn inward, we’ll explore “wintering” — the art of embracing rest, renewal, and the quiet gifts of this season. Enjoy meditation sessions, both indoors […]