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

Package Dates

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

Package Dates

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. […]

Community of Selves

With Andrea Juhan and Kathy Altman

August 25 - 29, 2025

There is an inner community inside of us: a community of selves. Some have a voice, and some are quiet. Some are known through sensation, emotion, and thought. Other selves have agendas, advice, and accusations. Each of these selves has a history, an emotional state, and a felt sense in the body. Each represents a […]

Eve's Domain: Rewriting Our Inherited Stories

With Zita Tulyahikayo

August 29 - 31, 2025

We are all born into a story that is already being told. It is woven into our very being, much like the DNA passed down from Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all humanity. Just as we inherit genetic traits, we also inherit stories, expectations, and emotional patterns that shape our lives. Like Eve in the […]

Pleasure Alchemy: Deepening Emotional Intelligence Through Rituals and Sensual Somatics

With Leah Diamond, Tony Holmes and shiloh burton

September 1 - 5, 2025

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 […]

Finding Humans Less Scary

With Jacob Towery

September 8 - 12, 2025

Do you struggle with shyness or social anxiety? Do you feel intimidated or scared to meet new people or worry others will judge you? If so, come face your fears and discover tools to connect to people authentically! In this workshop, you will learn how to enjoy meeting new people and interact more successfully with […]

Lessons in Liberation: Power, Surrender, and Choice

With Betty Martin and Marcia Baczynski

September 8 - 12, 2025

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 […]

Hardwiring Happiness: Rewire Your Mind for Calm, Clarity, and Joy

With Shauna Shapiro

September 12 - 14, 2025

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 […]

The Transformational Enneagram: Mindfulness, Insight and Experience

With Russ Hudson

September 14 - 19, 2025

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 […]

Designing the Life We Want: Self Renewal at Summer’s End

With Mark Nicolson

September 19 - 21, 2025

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 […]

Wild Presence: Relational Gestalt Practice in Nature

With Dorothy Charles, Noël Vietor and Fletcher Tucker

September 22 - 26, 2025

“Wilderness, by itself, has its own way of teaching. The direct experience of wilderness can spontaneously bring wholeness back into the human community.”  – Manual of Gestalt Practice in the Tradition of Dick Price When we are present in the here and now, every moment in the natural world represents an opportunity to enrich, heal, […]

Moon Lodge: Honoring the Sacred Feminine

With Lucia Horan and Dr. Julie Von

September 26 - 28, 2025

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 […]

Elements of Desire: An Erotic Lab for Queer Men

With Finn Deerhart

September 26 - 28, 2025

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 […]

Resource and Renew: 5Rhythms and Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness

With Lucia Horan

September 29 - October 3, 2025

Through the practices of 5Rhythms dance, mindfulness meditation, and self-care, we weave together a retreat focused on healing and celebration. Looking back over the past few years, it is clear that many of us are exhausted. In times of turmoil and change, self-care and kindness are needed to connect us to the ability to recharge […]

You Are Not Your Fault: Meeting ADHD with Mindfulness Wisdom and Compassion

With Mark Coleman

October 3 - 5, 2025

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. […]

Integrative Gestalt Practice™: Presence, Authentic Connection, and Trust in Times of Change

With Perry Holloman and Johanna Holloman

October 6 - 10, 2025

Gestalt is, at its heart, an awareness practice — one that invites us to be fully present with what is. This presence becomes the portal through which insight, inner guidance, and emotional regulation naturally emerge. Gestalt practice allows us to connect with what is real and true for us — beyond old patterns, assumptions, habitual […]

Earth-Body: An Eco-Somatic Backpacking Journey & Retreat

With Noël Vietor and Ariel Johnson

October 10 - 12, 2025

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 […]

Pelvic Health Self-Care Retreat: Exploring the Pelvis Through Anatomy, Nutrition, and the Nervous System

With Anietie Ukpe-Wallace and Krishna Dholakia

October 10 - 12, 2025

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 […]

​​Write Your Deepest Story: Memoir, Autobiography, and the Personal Essay

With Janis Cooke Newman

October 13 - 17, 2025

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 […]

Beyond the “Revolving Door”: Gestalt Relational Constellations

With Nancy Lunney-Wheeler and Gordon Wheeler

October 20 - 24, 2025

Gestalt Relational Constellations (GRC) takes an in-depth look at the hidden dynamics of any human system we belong to and care about. Using Gestalt themes of embodied experience, desire, experimentation, and “right-brain” image-based learning, we can move beyond the familiar stories we are carrying about our issues to find new supports and options in our […]

Deep Rest, Recovery, and Renewal: From Burnout to Vitality

With Elissa Epel and Nichol Chase

October 24 - 27, 2025

Join us to experience deep rest and renewal! You need and deserve this. So many of us are overtaxed by constant demands, burdens, and worries, especially those of us providing extra support for others through caregiving, healthcare, activism, and other service-oriented jobs. We bring you expertise in the science, art, and practice of restoration from […]

Erotic Ecology: Awakening the Senses and Healing through Nature

With Lindsay Branham

October 24 - 26, 2025

Love is an ecological process.  — Andreas Weber  Most of us have lost our sensual connection to our bodies and to the living world. We have become numb to the Earth's touch. This weekend workshop offers an immersive experience in the erotic ecology pathway — a space to reawaken our sensory, pleasurable, and nourishing connection […]

Holotropic Breathwork®: Expanded States of Consciousness

With Stacia Butterfield

October 27 - 31, 2025

For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used 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 for […]

Compassionate Leadership

With Shauna Shapiro

October 31 - November 2, 2025

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

November 3 - 7, 2025

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

November 3 - 7, 2025

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

November 3 - 7, 2025

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

November 10 - 14, 2025

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

November 10 - 14, 2025

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

November 14 - 16, 2025

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

November 14 - 21, 2025

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

November 24 - 28, 2025

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

December 5 - 7, 2025

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

December 5 - 7, 2025

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

December 5 - 7, 2025

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

December 8 - 12, 2025

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

December 12 - 14, 2025

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

December 22 - 26, 2025

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 […]

Working in Three-Dimensional Space: Psychodrama for What Was Missing

With Bessel van der Kolk and Licia Sky

January 19 - 23, 2026

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

January 23 - 25, 2026

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 — […]

Awe, Compassion, Gratitude, and Beauty: The Science and Practice of Self-Transcendence

With Dacher Keltner

February 9 - 13, 2026

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

February 16 - 20, 2026

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

February 16 - 20, 2026

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

February 22 - 27, 2026

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 […]