Workshops

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 (the deepest layer of consciousness, often linked to karma and past lives). Each plays a distinct role in shaping how we live, feel, and respond to the world around us.

This workshop invites participants to explore these three bodies through the lens of Tantric practice and wisdom. The weekend blends historical context, contemporary research, guided meditation, visualization, and ritual to examine and experience how energy, including Kundalini energy — the coiled life force at the base of the spine — can move through and activate these layers. Together, we will immerse ourselves in the latest research on teachings and practices that challenge and reshape our traditional views of Tantra — its history, current relevance, and future potential.

Designed for both new and experienced practitioners, this workshop offers a grounded framework for understanding Tantra’s view of embodiment and how it can transform our inner and outer worlds.

Please Note: This workshop is NOT about “Tantric Sex” or experiencing enhanced sexual pleasures, although many discussions will address gender identity and sexuality.

Recommended Reading: The Serpent’s Tale: Kundalini, Yoga, and the History of an Experience, Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen

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 centuries-old wisdom to bring a sense of well-being to those seeking renewal.

This workshop will include:

• Optional morning movement and meditation practice.
• The Point of Origin, a session focused on the navel and abdominal massage for somatic release and greater self-connection.
• Barridas (plant sweepings), foraging and working with plant and herb bundles to cleanse energies.
• Empathic connection, an exploration of our intuition, revealing how to listen and connect with one another and ourselves, more deeply.
• Limpia con huevo (washing with an egg), a lesson sharing the practice of clearing and divining one’s energies with the use of an egg.
• Evening moon meditation and flowering bathing.

Through Margaret and Michael’s teachings, you’re invited to connect to your own innate healing potential and discover the ability to support others with love and intention.

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 the body’s ancestral wisdom, alchemize stored emotions, and liberate the spirit. Supported by live music provided by an award-winning ecstatic dance DJ, we’ll surrender to freeform movement, awaken our power, and manifest hope.

Together, we will explore:

• Ecstatic dance journeys created by a live DJ.
• Grounding prayers to root into the spirit and awaken ancestral wisdom.
• Partner games that spark joy, connection, and embodied trust.
• Mirroring and witnessing practices that deepen attunement and compassion.

Bloomurian, a world-renowned music producer and ecstatic dance DJ, will create genre-fluid soundscapes designed to support our heart-healing and spirit-awakening dance journeys.

Let’s cultivate collective empowerment and create a fully inclusive dance community rooted in presence, reverence, and prayer to groove with the divine as an offering of love. No dance experience is required.

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 support deep relaxation, gentle re-patterning of the nervous system, and embodied presence.

Composed with a dynamic collection of alchemy crystal bowls — instruments of crystalline intelligence — these alchemical sound journeys can help clear and activate your energy centers (chakras). As we journey from root to crown, you’ll receive a golden thread symbolizing the sushumna nadi, your body’s central pathway of light. Day by day, you’ll mark this thread with colors, symbols, or words that arise to create a sacred artifact — a visual map of the week’s unfolding.

Each day includes creative practices, authentic movement, nature immersion, and teachings to restore connection to Self and source. Big Sur elder Penny Vieregge will join us midweek to share the mystical poetry of Hafiz and awaken your heart chakra.

You will have the opportunity to:

• Experience how sacred sound can help release chronic tension, clear energetic stagnation, and open pathways to clarity and inspiration.
• Learn the history and science of sound healing, with an opportunity to play the alchemy crystal bowls and experience their resonance firsthand.
• Co-create a collective Flower of Life mandala, woven with individual golden threads into a living pattern of light.

Held within Esalen’s wild beauty, where the land, ocean, mineral hot springs, and towering trees invite deep renewal, this solstice retreat offers space to soften, realign, and reconnect with what matters most.

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 of your life, but the ember remains — steady, luminous, and ready to rise.

Soulstice Soulfire is a full-body creative awakening with yoga, dance, chakra activation, sound, and ritual that both ignites and nourishes your inner fire. These practices awaken your inner light and reconnect you with the sacred healing intelligence that lives within your body.

Throughout the week, you’ll engage in:

• Dynamic somatic movement, including daily yoga practices, Kundalini kriyas, and transformational dance experiences such as Deep Exhale.
• Immersive musical guidance, with every session powered by Marques Wyatt’s live DJ soundscapes, crafted to uplift, energize, and deepen your movement.
• Supportive sonic healing, including crystal alchemy bowls integrated into yin, soma, and meditation practices for grounding, deep restoration, and amplifying your solstice vision.
• Chakra and subtle-body teachings to explore the chakras as seven flames of consciousness and to dissolve the malas, the veils that obscure inner light.
• Ritual and reflections, including Summer Solstice Vision Setting, guided journaling, contemplation, and simple practices you can bring into your daily life.
• An evening sound journey at the Esalen baths, where movement yields to stillness and sound opens portals of release, clarity, and renewal.

Allow a continuous sonic field — Marques’ hypnotic soundscapes paired with Cristi’s bowls — to carry you through activation, integration, and awakening.

This retreat welcomes all levels and all bodies. Come as you are; leave more awake, more alive, and more connected to the light within. By the end of our time together, you are invited to awaken and balance your chakra energy; reclaim your vitality, clarity, and creative flow; experience deeper embodiment, expression, and self-trust; feel nourished, inspired, and connected to inner illumination; and return home with an inner fire that sets your soul alight, along with simple, powerful tools to sustain that illumination.

Recommended Reading: Chakra Rituals by Cristi Christensen

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 in family images.
• Patterns of belonging, loss, resilience, and connection.
• How family roles are expressed visually.
• The stories we inherited and the ones we are ready to update.
• Moments of beauty, ambiguity, and mystery that live in our lineage.

In this workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to gain new insights, renewed compassion for your family system, and an expanded sense of your own narrative. No artistic or Gestalt experience is required.

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 process not only as a soaring flight of inspiration, but also as a grounded practice of returning, refining, and working with what lands. Through meditation, movement, writing, and dialogue, we’ll explore the terrain where art, channeling, and creation intersect. We will build upon William James’ notion that our stream of consciousness alternates between flights and perchings.

Together, we will:

• Delve into the latest neuroscientific studies that explain what happens during experiences of insight and flow.
• Discuss parallels between artists and mediums — from Jack Kerouac and Zora Neale Hurston to Edgar Cayce and Helena Blavatsky.
• Investigate techniques for overcoming blocks to creativity.
• Engage in movement and meditation practices and for creativity.
• Develop our personal “creativity lotus” by sampling multisensory activities as well as expressive writing and drawing.

This workshop holds space for those curious about the origins of creativity and for those who want to engage more fully with how inspiration appears — and disappears — in the rhythm of a creative life.

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, green magic, herbcraft, sound healing, communal dreaming, self-inquiry, and sensory delight.

The first full moon after the Summer Solstice is a dreamy threshold, a liminal space to tend to our dreams and visions. Drawing on ancestral practices from Celtic, Nordic, Grecian, and respectfully informed Indigenous animistic solstice practices from around the world, this gathering is a weaving of ancestral wisdom and earth-based spirituality. Celebrate the flourishing of Summer, welcoming the light into our lives, bathing in sacred springs, making wreaths of flowers and offerings of gratitude to the earth and sky.

During our time together, we will honor the Light with:

• A ceremonial flower bath in hot spring waters
• Harvesting from the garden and hands-on herbcraft
• Adornment with herbs and flowers
• Sound healing ritual and frolicking together under the waxing solstice full moon
• Offerings of gratitude to the earth, water, and sky
• Dreams and visions to rekindle your magic

This is a space for reconnecting, nourishing, and illuminating your spirit and your dreams.

This workshop includes an additional $25 for materials.

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 seemingly dormant ground after a long winter. It’s the instinct that calls the baby bird to launch from the nest. It’s the aliveness that guides us to our deepest truth, the illuminator of the precious present and our truest path. When we follow its call, life begins to move through us with greater clarity, courage, and purpose.

If you’ve ever longed to feel more alive, more aligned, or simply more you, this workshop offers a space to rediscover the spark that lives within. Through a blend of writing, reflection, and somatic practices, weaving together aikido, meditation, and psychology, you’ll be guided back into a deep connection with yourself.  

In the company of a supportive community, your truth will be witnessed — gently, openly, and without judgment. These accessible practices are designed for every body and ability to help you come into direct contact with your aliveness, center into your body’s wisdom, and build the embodied presence that allows life to lead.

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 ourselves at ease and in connection with all that is.

In this five-day retreat, we will explore:

• Inner qigong, “where the mind goes, the energy flows,” including “the microcosmic orbit” and “the double butterfly.”
• Outer qigong, a 20-minute short form and a 40-minute full form of wai dan gong.
• Easy-to-learn and energizing movement, sound, and visualization exercises.
• Walking, standing, sitting, and supine(lying down) meditations, including “standing as a tree,” “the three treasures,” and “metta/loving-kindness.”
• Breath practices that strengthen the lungs, calm the mind, and rest the heart.
• Full-body meridian self-massage, including sequences for hands and feet.

No experience is necessary. All levels are very welcome. Please come with the intention to relax deeply and shine from the radiance that you are

Recommended Reading: The Way of Qigong, by Kenneth Cohen

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 — story.

We’ll begin each day with a short burst of early morning free writing, taking advantage of what author Ruth Ozeki calls “the liminal state,” when the brain is most flexible and the internal judge is still asleep. Everyone will be invited to share their morning writing in small groups that foster a safe and supportive environment.

We’ll follow with a mix of craft talks, incorporating examples from published works, and several sessions of prompted free writing to help us sharpen our skills and access the deepest part of our own stories.

Time will be set aside every afternoon to share our writing with the group at large. Workshop participants will leave with a clear sense of where their story lies — and how to get it on the page.

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, in the redwoods, on the mat, and in the heart. In this divisive time, let’s lean into the power of connection through community.

10 hours of Continuing Education hours are available with Yoga Alliance; See leader.

‍This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

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 to experience multiple East Forest’s live music performances. Additionally, Radha will lead us in embodiment practices of Self-Awakening Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Breathwork to create an all-levels and accessible doorway to inner insights. Through the primacy of our own heart-opening and felt experience, we can discover the inner pathways to fortitude and healing.

• Intimate live musical performances by East Forest
• Group co-creative musical process with East Forest
• Yoga and meditation practices
• Awe-inspiring time in nature
• Breathwork
• Meditation and group insight exercises
• Journaling
• Dance party

East Forest and Radha would like to offer a certain amount of scholarship to those in need. Please apply with this form. If further assistance would be helpful, you may also apply for an Esalen scholarship.

Workshop Disclaimer: While some of our workshops explore the history and potential of psychedelic tools and altered states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.

This workshop includes an additional $350 faculty tuition.

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 to the waves, and let the natural beauty of this place remind us what it means to belong.

Guided by Janet Stone and DJ Drez, our days will weave strong and soulful yoga practice with music, mantra, mythology, and moments of stillness. We’ll sing, move, dance, rest, and remember — creating space to reaffirm intention, soften the nervous system, and reconnect with what matters most.

At the edge of the continent, we’ll turn both inward and outward to honor cycles of light and shadow, effort and surrender, solitude and community. This is a gathering designed to be felt as much as practiced.

Come as you are. Bring your mat, your voice, your curiosity, and your willingness to be moved by the land, by the music, and by the bonds we will form together.

This workshop includes an additional $175

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 immerse yourself in Big Sur’s awe-inspiring wilderness and the art of authentic contemplation. Together, we will deepen our awareness of the wilds within and around us, rediscovering the simple yet profound practice of being fully present and alive.

Big Sur’s stunning landscapes — rugged cliffs, ocean breezes, and ancient forests — will serve as both our setting and our teacher. Through mindful awareness and direct experience, we can awaken our inherent connection to the elemental, allowing the magnificence of this wild world to touch our bodies, minds, and spirits.

Highlights of the Week

Nature as Teacher: Direct experience of the elements — earth beneath your feet, Pacific waves crashing, fresh coastal air, and Esalen’s healing hot springs — awakening the senses and inviting relationship with an animate world.

Daily Wilderness Hikes: Explore Big Sur’s natural beauty and rich ecological diversity through daily hikes of approximately 2–6 miles across varied terrain.

Contemplative Practices: Engage in timeless and contemporary practices of mindfulness, movement, and stillness, cultivating presence, aliveness, and deeper relationship with self, others, and the wild.

Community Connection: Share nourishing meals, heartfelt conversations, and moments of silence, fostering a sense of belonging with one another and with the living world around us.

Integration and Simplicity: Discover ways to bring what touches you here into daily life, with space for reflection on how to do less, be more, and live in alignment with what matters most.

This week is an invitation to slow down, step out of habitual patterns, and show up fully for life as it unfolds, moment by moment. Whether walking, sitting, or simply being, we will cultivate space, silence, and stillness to meet the beauty and mystery of the world — within and without.

Come ready to explore the meeting places of mountain and sea, inner and outer landscapes, and the boundless wildness of existence.

Please note: This workshop will be a larger, nature-based group experience than Steven and Gary typically lead. Mornings will be spent together as a full group, either indoors or on the Esalen grounds. After lunch, we will divide into smaller groups to explore Big Sur’s wilderness trails, returning in time for dinner at Esalen.

All levels of experience are welcome; however, a moderate level of physical fitness is recommended. Expect afternoon day hikes of approximately 2–6 miles, often with elevation gain and loss on occasionally rugged or steep terrain. These are not fast-paced or goal-driven hikes, but they do require physical engagement. Participants should be comfortable with outdoor activity and open to contemplative practices, including periods of pausing, listening, stillness, and quiet reflection.

Additional information, including a waiver, will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, please visit the FAQs.

An additional $40 will be added to the workshop cost to cover permit and park entrance fees

Recommended reading: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder

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 the patterns, rhythms, and cycles of life — Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness — and can be a direct path to the embodiment and empowerment many of us do not feel in a time of patriarchy.

This workshop will be about celebrating the body of Woman and the sacred feminine within us all. Through dance, meditation, massage, acupressure, and ritual baths, we will share in the Sisterhood of humanity. We will poultice our wounds and celebrate the great gifts of our ancestors.

This workshop includes:

• 5Rhythms moving meditation
• Mindfulness meditation
• Restorative acupressure techniques
• Women’s health practices
• Women’s counsel
• Group sharing

Julie Von, a specialist in women’s health, will present the Chinese Medicine perspective on the five elements, psychosomatic process, restorative acupuncture, and self-care. She will teach us to prioritize these pillars and recognize when we are out of balance.

Lucia Horan will integrate the stillness of Buddhist mindfulness meditation with the moving meditations of the 5Rhythms®. In sitting meditation, we have the opportunity to observe the mind and body at rest through silent introspection. In the practice of the 5Rhythms, we engage in mindfulness while in motion. Together, these two polarities mirror the dance of life and open the door to peace, well-being, and balance.

Recommended reading: Spiritual Fertility, by Julie Von; Dancing with the Dharma: Essays on Movement and Dance in Western Buddhism, edited by Harrison Blum; Sweat Your Prayers, by Gabrielle Roth

This workshop includes an additional $100 in faculty tuition.

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 most of all: what role does language, myth, and story play in our species’ evolution? Is human evolution a matter of how we imagine ourselves and one another to be? Do mental acts have material effects? Can symbols alter reality?

This workshop will explore the historical precedents, moral anxieties, and new realities of “spiritual evolution.” We will cover a range of topics, including Darwin, Nietzsche, Aurobindo, Sylvia Wynter, psychedelics, and biology. We’ll continuously come back to the present, to Esalen itself, and ask whether we ourselves might be participating in, or even effecting, a new worldview.

The basic orientation of the workshop is to “turn around”: from believing “backwards” in someone else’s understanding of, and place in the cosmos, toward an imagined, future relationship to the universe for which no adequate language yet exists. This workshop will be about helping to create such a language — that of the superhuman.

**This seminar is part of the Super Story Series, sponsored by the Center for Theory and Research (CTR) at Esalen Institute. The series includes three thematic cycles: The Physics of Mystics, The Soul Is a UFO, and this current seminar, Biological Gods. The Super Story is a poetic and conceptual framework designed to capture the mythic and mystical narratives that have emerged over the last two centuries in deep resonance with evolving paradigms in physics, evolutionary biology, cosmology, and idealist philosophy. This project situates personal transformation within a larger cosmological and cultural re-enchantment, connecting the individual’s inner experiences to the macro-myths of science and spirit.

This workshop works with the deepest levels of ontology, before and beyond any human concepts of god. Keeping an open mind during this workshop is highly recommended.

Recommended Reading: Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal

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. This workshop is designed for all who want to discover these possibilities for entering altered states in a natural way.

“I want to take you to a place of pure magic … It’s the place athletes call ‘the zone.’ Buddhists call ‘satori’ and ravers call ‘trance.’ I call it the Silver Desert. It’s a place of pure light that holds the dark within it. It’s a place of pure rhythm,” wrote Gabrielle Roth. Her dance and somatic meditation can assist you in navigating your way out of resistance and into ecstasy and help you build a skill set that supports balance, ease, and joy. If you have been looking to increase appreciation, gratitude, and happiness, now is a perfect time to celebrate being alive in the wild, wondrous, natural beauty of Esalen.

This course will include:

• 5Rhythms dance both indoors and outside by daylight and moonlight
• Trauma-sensitive mindfulness, including Dharma talks, sitting and walking meditations

Lucia and Douglas, the dancing duo, invite you to join them for a week of dance and celebration. Together with our team of musicians, bring you inspiration through movement and mindfulness so you can return home feeling nurtured and alive.

Leah Song of Rising Appalachia will lead a collective community song practice! Join voices and feel the collective power of unity through song and breath!

Sanga of the Valley, master drummer and living embodiment of the 5Rhythms cosmology, will be joining along with musical savant Nick Ayers.

Recommended Reading: Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy by Gabrielle Roth, Connections by Gabrielle Roth, Dancing with the Dharma edited by Harrison Blum

This workshop has an additional $100 of faculty tuition.

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 result is active, patient Presencing, which informs all we do and all we are.

Come for a weekend of deep, intelligent yoga surrounded by the natural beauty found at Esalen. Each practice will be a potent mix of essential alignment: body to breath, breath to energy and energy to Self. Each practitioner will be gently guided and adjusted to their own personal edge — the place where we are able to see, know, and be our truest selves. Our yoga will be strong, but infinitely adaptable to everyone’s current needs and abilities. Yoga’s strength is measured in one’s ability to stay focused and present.

Each practice will be a balance of breathwork, active and restorative asana, and meditation, blended together for a clear theme to release old patterns and awaken us to what is — like cleaning the windows to let the sunlight shine in.

10 CEUs available for SmartFlow Yoga, Yoga Alliance and AYC.

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 this as “the pinnacle of human experience,” and former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called it “as essential to our well-being as food and water.” Yet today, nearly 40% of American adults report significant loneliness or isolation, increasing risks of depression, heart disease, dementia, and early death. In a world increasingly shaped by disconnection, how might we intentionally design for warmth, connection, and transparency?

This workshop invites you to explore how designing for warmth — in your relationships, your work, and your communities — can build stronger, healthier, and more connected individuals and communities.

Over the weekend, we’ll explore the science, philosophy, and spirituality of warmth while examining how connection is either supported or undermined by the structure of our relationships, organizations, and communities. We will explore how warmth can be designed into everyday interactions and larger social and professional contexts — supporting trust, openness, and a felt sense of being seen and valued.

We’ll balance theoretical inquiry with practical experience for both intellectual grounding and embodied insight. Together, we’ll examine how warmth is currently designed — or absent — in our lives and experiment with new ways of shaping relational environments with greater intention.

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 relentless output, our capacity to dream freely has been diminished, treated as frivolous or unproductive. But what if we reclaim daydreaming as an act of defiance? What if rest itself is resistance? Tricia Hersey, artist, theologian, and author of Rest is Resistance and We Will Rest, has built a framework that understands rest as a portal to a world beyond grind culture—a world where imagination and care are central to our well-being and collective liberation.

Join us for a weekend of radical rest and reclamation, where we will gather on the sacred lands of the Esselen people to explore the art and science of daydreaming as a form of rest. Through individual and collective activations, writing practices, and deep study of the works of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, and Tricia herself, we will reclaim imagination as a birthright, not a luxury. We will stretch out under the open sky in collective rest, listening to the wisdom of the land, the ocean, and the cosmos. We will slow down and wander, walking the gardens and feeling our way back to an ancient rhythm. We will engage in guided star-gazing, reflective journaling, and intentional dreaming, allowing spaciousness to show us what we have forgotten. This is not about productivity. It is not about optimization. It is about restoration. About remembering. About laying it all down so something new can emerge. You don’t need permission to dream—you just need space, stillness, and the courage to stop and receive. We will rest.

Recommended reading: Love as the Practice of Freedom by Bell Hooks, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, and selected poetry of Audre Lorde

Special Note on Gift Economy:  For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Tricia embraces the practice of the gift economy, collective economics and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Tricia and her ongoing work of community care, liberation and rest.

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” as correlated with life satisfaction. Through seminal films in which characters experience beauty as a path to resilient well-being — masterpieces directed by Jean Renoir, Satyajit Ray, Martin Scorsese, Agnès Varda, David Lean, Sydney Pollack, and more — participants will enter deep contemplative experiences. By mindfully viewing these films, we will engage with beauty, much like the protagonists, figures, heroes, and heroines portrayed on screen.

This workshop employs methods developed over the course of 28 film seminars at Esalen co-led by Francis Lu and Brother David Steindl-Rast: mindful film viewing, contemplative reflection, and group interaction focused on the participant’s unique experience of carefully curated cinema. In the words of Joseph Campbell, “the images of myths are reflections of the spiritual and depth potentialities of every one of us….Through contemplating those, we evoke their powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves.” The viewing experience is supported by 4K Blu-ray projection on a large screen and surround sound delivered through six loudspeakers.

5.5 CE Credits for Health Professionals are available for an additional $35 fee payable to the workshop leader. Click here for details. For further information about the workshop, please contact Francis Lu, MD, at francislumd@gmail.com

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 to Spirit.  As the creator of the CCCE Method (Connect, Channel, Clear, Embody), AJA weaves together powerful channeling, energetic healing, and soul-aligned embodiment to help you step into your highest intuitive expression.

This workshop bring you to that liminal space—a place to receive, remember, and realign. With AJA as your guide, you’ll cross into this space where messages flow, past and future selves meet, and the love of your Spirit Guides becomes undeniably real.

During your time with AJA, you will be invited to:

• Expand your intuitive gifts through grounded psychic development and practical daily rituals.
• Create and connect with your own Spirit Language, a unique channel of communication between you and your guides.
• Explore past and future life progressions to unlock insight into your soul’s path and purpose.
• Engage in supportive practice circles that foster trust, feedback, and a sense of sacred community.
• Discover energetic modalities that align with your natural frequency and deepen your spiritual toolkit.

The Spirit Bridge is more than an experience — it’s a passage back to your deepest knowing. Step across with us. Your guides are already waiting.

Please bring your favorite oracle deck and a journal to use throughout the week.

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, corrugation, and more. We will find and refine mineral paints from the landscape and make our yucca brushes to design and paint our pots with our own artistic expressions. Finally, we’ll prepare a kiln to fire the pots and go over several different methods for firing earthenware pottery.

Together, we’ll enjoy daily discussions about the metaphysical nature  of pottery, working with the clay, and balancing the elements. We will slow the process down to see what lessons emerge and what energy and opportunities the materials draw from us, both as individuals and as a group — an opportunity for personal growth and team building through the creation process!

While seated on the grounds of Esalen, we will connect to and draw inspiration from the landscape and the ancient ones who came before us and may have also made pots for function and beauty with the same materials long ago.

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.

Co-led by an embodiment educator and a neuroscientist–anthropologist, this five-day immersion offers a rare opportunity to engage breath through sustained inquiry, comparative reflection, and dialogue, alongside direct embodied practice. Drawing from long-standing contemplative canons and contemporary research on meditation, psychedelics, and the brain, the week examines how breath has been theorized, disciplined, ritualized, and transmitted — through text and instruction, as well as ceremony, sound, rhythm, and collective experience.

Throughout the week, participants will engage in:

• Guided breath practices, including classical yogic pranayama, paced and ratio breathing, rhythmic and circular breathing patterns, and group-based ceremonial sessions. These practices allow participants to experience firsthand how different breathing structures shape physiology, perception, and collective states.
• Structured dialogue on breath, trance, and ritual traditions, along with discussion of current research in meditation, psychedelics, and the neuroscience of breathing. Conversations situate lived experience within broader historical and scientific frameworks.
• Simple self-assessments drawn from contemplative research to build shared language and refine awareness of physiological, emotional, and attentional shifts. Tools from the laboratory become instruments for disciplined self-observation rather than external measurement.
• Yoga and movement sessions integrating breath with posture, alignment, and sensory awareness. These sessions explore how breath operates within the musculoskeletal and nervous systems in real time.
• Collective sound and rhythm practices examining entrainment and group coherence. Participants explore how synchronized breath and vocalization influence attention, affect, and social connection.
• Periods of intentional silence for integration and reflection, creating space for consolidation, insight, and embodied processing.

This offering is for those curious not only about how breath works, but how humans have studied, practiced, and transmitted it — and what becomes possible when inquiry, practice, and presence are held together in the same room.

Recommended reading: Breath, James Nestor, The Breathing Book, Donna Farhi, The Heart of Yoga, Desikachar