Go Within: An Esalen Wintering Series, Weekend of December 22

Winter is coming…

Falling on the heels of the hibernal solstice, WITHIN is an invitation to turn inward — an opportunity to go deeper within ourselves in order to create new and to enhance existing practices that enliven creativity and curiosity burning within.

Traditional yogic wisdom speaks of pratyahara, which is best understood as “going to the source of the senses.” We are embracing the idea that cocooning toward generative ends leads to better connection and relationships, heightened synergies to cultivate our creative impulses, and nurturance of the self and of others. Winter solstice celebrations are steeped in meaningful symbolic dualities: fire and light, life and death, the rising and setting sun and moon.

Go Within is a campus-wide winter festival, for all who seek the light that inspirationally pours through the darkness. Like our brother and sister wild animals, when we are drawn into the earth, into our bodies, we can welcome sleep to search and discover the cavernous parts within us. Through the embrace of the arts and our own creativity, we unleash the pulsating, reverberating inner curiosity that fuels imagination and sparks innovation.

To create and turn things outward, we must first look inward to explore with a greater heightened sense the great depths of what our hidden potentials hold. Winter is our mysterious season— she can be kind and soft. Rather than fear and avoid her, let’s celebrate her (and our own) complexity. To find and uncover our light, let’s together and individually embrace the dark, far reaches and prepare to launch into a new year ever more illuminated.

What to expect over this metamorphosing week:

• An artful juxtapositioning of nurture-inward and blossom-outward programming — along with the ever-present invitation to commune with yourself, and with the land.
• Embodiment and presencing practices, personal reflection, community-building, land-based inquiry, intuitive art making, and play.
• Deeply restful contemplative experiences, an exploration of dreamwork and dream medicine, wildcrafting and art making for actionable inspiration, transformative breathwork, and meditation.
• For all we nurture within and inwardly, we then need the space for release; to that end, you’ll enjoy nightly howls up into the big open starry sky, fireside music jams, site-specific sonic journeys, and dance parties designed to ignite the mind, body, and soul.

We hope you’ll join us.