Esalen News

In 1995, I had just sold my first company and needed to recharge and renew myself. I decided to attend a workshop at Esalen with Dr. Joan Borysenko, the noted brain scientist. The first evening of her workshop, Joan asked each of us to state our intention for the weekend.

Summer Lall is a board certified music therapist who works at Optimist Youth Homes and Family Services in Los Angeles. She is also the founder of the organization Rhythm & Truth Music Therapy which seeks to empower at-risk youth. We recently spoke to Summer about what her Esalen experience has meant to her and how scholarship made it possible for her to be at Esalen.

More than 20 years ago, Mary Anne Will came to Esalen as a work scholar and has remained a vibrant member of the community ever since. This month marks Mary Anne’s – or MAW as she is known to many – departure from Esalen, though she plans to continue to facilitate groups and open seats.

This December marks a significant milestone in the Campus Renewal efforts as Esalen opens the doors to the new Huxley meeting room. Now located on the new second floor addition to the Lodge, Huxley offers a number of thoughtful features to welcome seminarians and guests including geo-thermally warmed bamboo flooring and a skylight that casts light on the north wall every day at solar noon. Materials from the original Huxley meeting room have been incorporated in ongoing construction throughout the Lodge.

Esalen is a place where diverse elements come together to create something new. And much like a mosaic, at any given moment it’s more than the sum of its parts. A new workshop in February 2016, led by artists Wilma Wyss and Carol Bevilacqua, will use mosaic as a creative celebration of Esalen’s Campus Renewal project by inviting seminarians to co-create a large-scale mosaic mural to be placed in the Lodge’s downstairs restroom.

Jeremy Tarcher, founder of one of the first publishing companies solely dedicated to topics related to human evolution and potential, died on September 20, 2015, at the age of 83.

The EcoFarm Conference is a revered winter tradition for thousands of farmers—one of few good excuses to leave the lonely farm behind and join the larger community of allies in sustainable agriculture. This year’s conference, in January 2015, marked EcoFarm’s 35th year of bringing together farmers, ranchers, educators, researchers, and other food system stakeholders for education, networking and celebration.