Psychology & Self-Awareness
Website program category as of 2022
COME TOGETHER! A Festival of IntraConnectivity and Spirit | Day Pass
With Daniel Siegel, Elissa Epel, Little Bear Tom Nason, Rhonda V. Magee and Douglas Drummond
We live in times of high existential stress with both ever-increasing personal, societal, and global pressures and the constant pain of witnessing ecological crises and widespread social injustices. These challenges also create opportunities to reconsider our relationships to self, one another, and the planet — and to choose a life of peak purpose and interconnectedness. […]
COME TOGETHER! A Festival of IntraConnectivity and Spirit | ETMC Day Pass
With Daniel Siegel, Elissa Epel, Little Bear Tom Nason, Rhonda V. Magee and Douglas Drummond
We live in times of high existential stress with both ever-increasing personal, societal, and global pressures and the constant pain of witnessing ecological crises and widespread social injustices. These challenges also create opportunities to reconsider our relationships to self, one another, and the planet — and to choose a life of peak purpose and interconnectedness. […]
Compassionate Leadership
With Shauna Shapiro
Great leaders encourage collaboration, promote inclusion, and make others feel seen and heard. Their greatest tool? Compassion. Compassion isn’t a static trait that people either have or don’t have; we all have the ability to grow our compassion intentionally through practice. A clinical psychologist and renowned expert in compassion, Dr. Shapiro uses her scientific and […]
Sleep Yoga: The Sleep of Clear Light
With Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
In the ancient Tibetan practice of Sleep Yoga, the primary goal is to enter the pure, luminous awareness — the clear light — that is the true nature of the mind. As a profound support for Dzogchen meditation, Sleep Yoga enhances clarity, awareness, and spiritual realization, even as the body rests. In today’s fast-paced world, […]
Souls Unfolding
With Andrea Juhan
Our sense of soul often shows up as the feeling that we are connected to and a part of something much larger than our everyday selves. Though we may manifest the self through work, relationships, and creative endeavors, we will not be fully satisfied if that deepest expression of our soul does not have its […]
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 […]
The Beauty of Simplicity
With Jovinna Chan
Breathe. Move. Pay Attention. These three simple actions, natural and always available to us, provide potency to our vitality. They are the legs and wings that carry us into the three worlds within us — the physical, the subtle, and the mystical. Join Jovinna on the sacred land Esalen Institute resides upon to slow down, […]
Living Authentically: A Journey with Human Design
With Anne Van de Water
Imagine reaching the end of your life 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 […]
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, […]
Accessing the Genius Within: Healing Physical and Emotional Injury With Cortical Field Re-Education®
With Judy Greenman, Tomas Prietto and Melissa Krikorian
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 […]
Gestalt Practice and Principles: Cultivating Embodied Wholeness in Daily Life
With Steven Harper
Gestalt Practice at its core is an awareness practice in which we cultivate embodied, present-moment awareness of the unfolding experience of the here and now on a journey toward authentic growth, wholeness, and aliveness. Drawing from the foundations of Gestalt Practice, wisdom traditions, and contemporary approaches that cultivate awareness, we’ll learn to become increasingly aware […]
Imagination: Exploring Your Inner World for an Extraordinary Life
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 during your K to12 education? Were you […]
The Source of the Enneagram Revealed: Oscar Ichazo’s Fixations Training
With Roger Zim and Sascha von Meier
Whether you’re brand new to the Enneagram or have spent years exploring its insights, The Fixations Training, developed by Oscar Ichazo, offers a rare opportunity to experience the system in its original context. Before the Enneagram became widely known as a personality typing tool, it was part of a profound inner map designed to help […]
The Soul is a UFO: Understanding and Embracing Transcendence
With Jeffrey J. Kripal and Kevin Cann
What happens when we refuse to dismiss mystical, metaphysical, and anomalous experiences as mere fantasy, pathology, or accident? What if these moments — often brushed aside by mainstream discourse — actually reveal deeper structures of consciousness and reality? The Soul Is a UFO offers an imaginative, grounded space to explore such questions — designed for […]
The Depths of Vision: Jung, Psychedelics, and the Practice of Integration
With John W. Price
In an era fascinated by peak experiences and personal revelations, the deeper task of transformation is often overlooked. This workshop offers a grounded path for those who have touched something sacred — through psychedelics, mystical states, or profound life transitions — and are now asking, How do I live in service to what I’ve seen? […]
The Practice of Slowing Down
With Ayana Young and Brontë Velez
In a time of constant noise and urgency, this is an invitation to slow down and enter into a deep and quiet rhythm with the more-than-human world. Through silence, movement, prayer, and time on the land, this workshop is a space to listen to our bodies, to the Earth, and to what arises when we […]
The Luminous Darkness: Imagination, Possibility, and Conscious Intentions for 2025
With Deborah Eden Tull
All light arises from darkness, including insight, creativity, vision, joy, and possibility. The luminous darkness is the spacious presence and receptivity through which we also access light. It is the field of all potential and emergence that we sometimes forget in the context of ordinary life and habit. In this deeply restorative retreat, at the […]
Mindfulness, Metabolism, and Mitochondria: Improve Your Vitality, Nutrition, and Metabolic Control
With Elissa Epel and Robert Lustig
Explore the dynamic connections between mind, body, and lifestyle for optimal vitality. Drawing from decades of research, this workshop weaves together the latest scientific insights in metabolic health and mindful eating with experiential practices to support greater awareness and agency in your approach to well-being. Participants will engage in evidence-informed practices derived from clinical trials […]
Luminous Coherence: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, Lasting Freedom
With Rod Stryker
Even after years — even decades — of practice, many of us still find ourselves caught in loops of fear, self-criticism, or reactivity. Old wounds and unconscious triggers live in the body and mind, silently shaping our perception and choices. In a world increasingly defined by disconnection, distraction, and overwhelm, the need for practices that […]
Working in Three-Dimensional Space: Psychodrama for What Was Missing
With Bessel van der Kolk and Licia Sky
In this experiential workshop, pioneering trauma researcher and author of The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk and somatic educator and co-founder of the Trauma Research Foundation Licia Sky apply psychodrama and theater techniques to create virtual experiences of safety, belonging, and protection. While trauma treatment tends to focus on “What happened to […]
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 — […]
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, […]
Personal Empowerment Through the Wheel of Consent®
With Betty Martin and Marcia Baczynski
When you engage with another — whether a lover, friend, or colleague — are you doing what they want you to do or what they allow you to do? What is the difference, and why does it matter? Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent is a groundbreaking model of relating that brings greater clarity and authenticity […]
Awe, Compassion, Gratitude, and Beauty: The Science and Practice of Self-Transcendence
With Dacher Keltner
Deep in the human mind and body are vast capacities for self-transcendence, felt in experiences of awe, compassion, gratitude, and profound beauty. These emotions enable us to gain perspective on our stresses, quiet the voice of the transactional self, orient to the well-being of others, and find a commitment to all sentient beings. These emotions […]
Designing the Life We Want: Self Renewal in the Winter
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 […]
Encounter: Meeting the Moment
With Andrea Juhan
To encounter someone, something, or someplace implies that it’s unexpected or a surprise. Encountering the moment means coming face-to-face with the unknown. In movement practice, we train ourselves to stay open, curious, centered, and responsive at the front edge of any encounter — counterbalancing those innate primal reactions to fight, flee, freeze, or please. Rather […]
Trauma, Memory and the Restoration of One’s Self
With Bessel van der Kolk and Licia Sky
This workshop explores ways of representing and befriending our inner experience. Therapies that work all start from a basic sense of calm and safety. The calmer we are, the more we can allow ourselves to know what we know, and to feel what we feel. Trauma changes the way the brain processes information and the […]
Relational Gestalt Practice: The Transformative Power of Emotion
With Dorothy Charles
Our sense of self develops in connection with others and our experiences in early relationships. They shape our beliefs — about ourselves, other people, and what is possible for us in our lives. While we cannot change the past, we can change the parts of our lives that we find difficult or unfulfilling through new […]
Past Lives and Present Questions: What Can Children’s Past Life Memories Tell Us About Human Existence
With Jim B. Tucker and Christine McDowell Tucker
What if reincarnation is not a mere cultural belief or spiritual metaphor, but an emergent data set pointing toward a deeper structure of reality? For over sixty years, researchers at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies have compiled more than 2,000 rigorously documented cases of young children who recall past lives — often […]
Soma and Soul: Come Home to Self Through Somatic Wisdom and Embodied Relating
With Ash Witham
What if personal power is not harnessed by doing more but reclaimed by coming home to your body? How might your relationships shift if you could speak your truth in the moment? What if your body became your inner compass — a trustworthy guide through life? Somatic research affirms what embodied traditions have long known: […]
Embodied Belonging: Weaving Together Self, Community, and Earth through 5Rhythms and Ecopsychology
With Douglas Drummond and Jeanine M. Canty
At the very heart of “belonging” is the word “long.” To be-long to something is to stay with it for the long haul. It is an active choice we make to a relationship, to a place, to our body, to a life because we value it. Even knowing that it may not be all that […]
The Ecology of Being: Gestalt Practice, Somatic Intelligence, and Embodied Awareness
With Steven Harper
At the heart of Gestalt Practice lies the understanding that we can grow into greater wholeness and interconnectedness, both inside and out. Gestalt is an awareness practice that invites us to focus on the present moment as a path toward authentic growth, resilience, embodiment, and aliveness. Its core principles are: Cultivating embodied presence and awareness […]
The Dance Between Consciousness and Form: An Experiential Journey in Non-Duality
With Gitanjali D'Costa
Immerse yourself in the eros of creation. Enter the divine dance between consciousness and form to explore the generative relationship between Shiva, the principle of pure awareness, and Shakti, the principle of creation and form. As these energies are engaged in the body, new layers of intimacy with self and the living world may be […]
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. […]
Sleep Alchemy: Secrets of Daoist Sleep Practices for Inner Peace and Renewal
With Simon Cox
What if sleep could be more than just crashing into your pillow at the end of a long day? What if it could be a portal to transformation and self-discovery? In this workshop, we’ll dive into the ancient Daoist art of sleep alchemy, where the Wudang Hibernating Dragon and Five Dragons Sleeping methods teach you […]
Wild Pilgrimage: Backpacking Journey to Esalen
With Fletcher Tucker and Mike Smith
In the mountains east of Esalen, an enchanting, ecologically diverse, and psycho-spiritually fertile wilderness awaits. Over four nights and five days, we will engage in a contemporary form of pilgrimage, backpacking as reverent seekers through these ancestral lands of the Esselen Tribe, now known as Big Sur’s Ventana Wilderness. Our journey concludes at the coastal […]
Rasa Heart Warrior: Embodiment and Reset for Men
With Masood Ali Khan
The wound is the place where the light enters you. – Rumi “Rasa” is Sanskrit for essence or “full flavor of life.” This workshop offers a weekend to recharge and explore your inner wisdom, power, and shadows. To know your amazing self and build trust, resilience, and confidence through movement, breathwork, conversations, and laughter within […]
The Transformational Enneagram: Mindfulness, Insight and Experience
With Russ Hudson
More and more, people are discovering the Enneagram as an accurate and profound map of personality. In this workshop, we’ll explore the full scope of its power to illuminate our greatest wisdom, become our truest selves, and face life’s challenges with fortitude and grace. The nine Enneagram types are based on the three primary centers […]