Yoga & Movement
Website program category as of 2022
Altered States: Pathways to Expansion | Day Pass
With Sravana Borkataky-Varma, Lucia Horan, Xochitl Ashe, East Forest and Marisa Radha Weppner
You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. —Terence McKenna Since time immemorial, we humans have been curious […]
Flowing Through Transition: A Sacred Autumn Pause
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. […]
American Detox: How to Heal in a Toxic World
With Kerri Kelly
We are living through a polycrisis — a time of profound unraveling and emergence. Old systems and structures are collapsing while new possibilities stir beneath the surface. This shift isn’t just happening “out there.” It is alive within each of us, inviting us to transform inherited stories into new ways of being, relating, and belonging. […]
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 […]
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, […]
Healing Waters: Return to One
With Douglas Drummond and Little Bear Tom Nason
We invite you to step into a powerful, immersive experience weaving the dynamic energy of 5Rhythms® movement with the deep wisdom of Indigenous traditions. Rooted in the teachings of the Esselen people, this workshop is an invitation to reconnect — with yourself, your community, and the natural world. For millennia, rites of passage and sacred […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
Laughter, Sound, and Consciousness
With LARAAJI and Arji OceAnanda
Are you ready to escape the grip of everyday seriousness and soften into your own vibrant aliveness? Join us for a soul-soothing, laughter-filled playshop designed to help you lighten up, loosen your edges, and let yourself flow. Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Big Sur and the healing spirit of Esalen, this immersive experience is […]
Journey Space: Music, Movement, & 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Soul Motion®: Tenderness at the Heart of the Dance
With Scott Engler and Zuza 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 […]
Wintering Within: Meditation, Music, and Gentle Yoga for the New Year
With Chandra Easton
Bring in the New Year with a rejuvenating weekend 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 time. Enjoy meditation sessions, both indoors […]
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. Together, we will dance into and through the gateway of the new year, crossing the thresholds […]
Into the Field of Possibility: Welcome the New Year With Dance and Ritual
With Jovinna Chan
Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervishes to the shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain. As the old year ends and the new begins, come to sweat, honor the past, and make […]
The Self, Reframed: Exploration Through Somatic Self-Inquiry
With Lihi Benisty
In a world that often pulls us away from ourselves — into roles, expectations, and chronic busyness — there is power in returning to the body, the breath, and the truth of who we are. This weekend workshop offers an immersive experience in embodiment — a space to inquire, move, and breathe your way back […]
The Body of Belonging: An Exploration of Community and Connection
With Rahshaana Green
The Body of Belonging invites you to explore feelings of kinship, acceptance, and community on a somatic level, identifying the elements most significant to you. Through gentle yoga-inspired movement, breathwork, sound, and meditation, we will engage in self-inquiry practices within a group setting. Together, we will create a safe and brave space to experiment with […]
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 […]
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 to heal the hearts of individuals and communities. Join us on this sacred land for a transformative weekend of ecstatic dance ceremony — a journey to tap […]
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, […]
Winter Renewal: Transitioning into the New Year with Ritual, Yoga and Time in Nature
With Toni Cupal
A journey to heal oneself and awaken deeply from within. Through meditation, yoga, and time in nature, we will tap into the stories our bodies have to tell and develop skills to nourish ourselves in 2026. This workshop focuses on the transition from one year to the next as an opportunity to purposefully cultivate a […]
Vibration Transformation: Cultivating Daily Health and Wellness Practices to Raise Your Vibration
With Anne Van de Water
Vibration Transformation is the art and practice of transforming the vibrations (or energies) of your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to align with your truest, deepest, highest self. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything in life is vibration.” We are all vibrational beings. Everything in our universe is made up of energy and vibrations. We […]
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 […]
Moving into Stillness
With Janet Stone
Restore. It can take time and great effort to move away from the ego affirming busyness of modern day life toward a reflective stillness. In this workshop we will cultivate this slowing, deepening, and going within. In a community setting, we will allow ourselves to dive below the surface of our thoughts and identities to […]
Nourish
With Janet Stone
Join Janet in this nourishing and revitalizing weekend, designed to replenish the nervous system and adrenals, boost the immune system, and ground our hearts and minds in simplicity. We will drop down through body-mind-spirit to find space between effort and surrender, allowing our internal systems to release toxins and integrate the powerful wellness generated by […]
Movement as a Metaphor in Life and Art
With Daria Halprin
Everything I have experienced in my life, I take into my art. —Anna Halprin What if everything you’ve experienced in your life could be danced? What if an image drawn carried a message for healing? What if a dance inspired a drawing that sparks words for a poem and the poem transforms a difficult story […]
The Inverted Tree: Living from the Spine Through Movement, Meditation and Mantra
With Dhruv Raj Nagar
Explore the spine as the body’s sensorial continuum. Engage the breath, senses, movement, sound, words (mantra), imagination, and feelings to curate somatic experience and immersion. Sensitize to the rhythms and energies of the cerebrospinal axis that hold infinite potential for growth and transformation. The spinal nerves, centers, and energies are a bridge between the body’s […]
Fear of Dopeness: Surrendering to Your Own Greatness
With Didier Sylvain
Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on. — James Baldwin Most people don’t actually fear failure; they fear their own brilliance. In this weeklong journey, we’ll explore how subtle self-sabotage, shrinking, and doubt prevent us from claiming our gifts. Through coherence coaching, embodied exercises, and […]
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 […]
Shedding the Old to Enter the Magnificent Wild: A Women’s Third Rite of Passage
With Jovinna Chan
Perimenopausal and menopausal transitions are more than biological phases to endure; they are sacred passages that forge a woman into her fullest expression — as a truth-bearer, a pathfinder, a beauty maker, and a new creation. When the monthly cycles end, you'll undergo tremendous transformations in your body, mind, emotions, and psyche. Crossing this monumental […]
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," […]
Spring Equinox Yoga Retreat
With Sarana Miller
The March equinox, a time of transition and harmony, is a wonderful opportunity to deepen our practice of yoga. The light is returning from the dark days of winter, and balance is our theme — both on the yoga mat and for our emotional and spiritual selves. Just as the plants are beginning to bud, […]
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 […]
Moving Like the Ocean, Sitting Like a Mountain: Soul Motion® and Embodied Gestalt
With Zuza Engler and Scott Engler
Be inspired by the flame / where everything shines as it disappears. – Rainer Maria Rilke What part of your life could use some breath, space, movement, flow, and a sprinkle of humor? Where in your work or relationships are you called toward a more passionate participation — or a deeper letting go? What if […]
Luminous Yoga Spring Renewal
With Ulrika Engman
Revamp, reinvigorate, and polish your luminous self this season with innovative yoga practices for body, mind, and spirit! This yoga renewal workshop includes energizing movement, flow yoga, core activations, meridian sequencing, tapping, rejuvenating holds, and cleansing rituals based on the five elements. Yoga for the skin sloughs off the old with a potent five-step cleansing […]
Inward Bound: Exploring Silence, Movement, and Meditation
With Hawah Kasat
Know from the rivers in clefts and in crevices: those in small channels flow noisily, the great flow silent. Whatever’s not full makes noise. Whatever is full is quiet. — Buddha We treasure this life, and yet we rarely can hear ourselves think. We are constantly being bombarded and absorbing information at a dizzying pace. […]
Mythology, Yoga, and Falling in Love with Existence at the Edge of the World
With Hannah Muse
When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence? —Gabrielle Roth Your life is not simply a task to be managed but a mythopoetic mystery to be lived. Take a break from the mundane and let yourself be enchanted […]