Workshops

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. Though commonly referred to as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), these symptoms are not limited to this single condition, and they are often exacerbated by our complex, fast-paced, high-tech lives.

ADHD and related issues often leave people with a sense of self-doubt, shame, or unworthiness. The good news is that with mindfulness, compassion, and the application of skillful techniques, it is possible to move through life more effectively with care and wisdom.

In this workshop, through engaging in various mindfulness meditations, loving kindness and forgiveness practices and contemplative inquiry, you will discover how these challenges interrupt our functioning, how to navigate them, and how we can meet ourselves with compassion, forgiveness, and a good sense of humor.

This workshop includes an additional $100 in faculty tuition.

What if you could use your voice to feel alive and present in your body? What would it look like to discover your own voice and fulfill its unique potential? This November, join sound therapy pioneer Eileen McKusick and transformational voice leaders and international recording artists Isaac and Thorald Koren of the Brothers Koren in a workshop designed to help you find the electric power in your voice.

Eileen, Isaac, and Thorald will combine their disciplines to create an electrified, liberated, embodied experience of vocal expression and play. This program is designed for those with and without previous musical experience — useful for seasoned professionals and first-time explorers of voice.

Using the power of new awareness, breath, sounding, and tuning with interactive immersion into the innate musicality of your human instruments, you will:

• Explore the 12 tones of our sonic anatomy, the resonant zones and the emotional spectrum of your voice.
• Express the range of your emotions with sound and play with musical modes and archetypes
• Learn to use music to express and balance our feelings, bodies, and biofields.
• Learn practical, playful, simple vocal exercises to support your vitality, freedom, and sense of well-being.
• Stretch the boundaries of your expression and liberate your greatest sound healing tool, your own voice!

Leave the immersive retreat feeling recalibrated, uplifted, and sonically invigorated. Previous participants noted dramatic changes in their freedom of voice after this safe and fun experience.

No vocal ability or musical experience required!

For hundreds of thousands of years, plants have been humanity’s greatest allies, shaping culture in material and spiritual ways. Across the Northern Hemisphere, a shared cohort of plants has profoundly influenced human existence, providing sustenance, medicine, textiles, and more. Honored as wise relatives, they carry mythic and spiritual significance across diverse cultures, forming a thread of kinship connecting our ancestors across continents and histories. Though modernity has painfully estranged us from the expansive web of relationality that our ancestors shared with the more-than-human-world, we can reclaim our “inalienable belonging to the earth community,” in the words of Joanna Macy. Meeting our botanical kin with curiosity and intention is a gesture toward restoring this enchanted ecological paradigm.

Join us to meaningfully engage with the lore and lives of pan-culturally significant plants — such as oak, nettle, mint, mugwort, elder, and rose — attuning to their presence in Big Sur’s wildlands while cultivating our botanical and cultural literacy. Through hands-on collaboration and an approach of reciprocity instead of extraction, we will craft herbal medicines, natural pigments, fibers, and tools in a manner that benefits the land and plants. Ceremony will invite us to discover these plants’ archetypal dimensions, revealing their roles as teachers and healers. As guests on Esselen tribal land, we will root our explorations in respect and reverence, honoring the relational worldviews of all our land-connected ancestors. Guest faculty Ariel Johnson will offer somatic practices to help guide us into embodied kinship — grounding us in gravity, sensory awareness, and open-hearted presence with our floral relatives.

Through these efforts, we remember our belonging, and we are remembered in return. The plants know us, after all, and welcome us back into our ancient traditions of botanical kinship.

Important Notes:

This retreat will include one full-day immersion as well as two half-day hiking excursions in the Big Sur wilderness, involving hikes up to 3 miles each. Please be aware that the hiking terrain can be steep, rugged, and sometimes strenuous, including prolonged sun exposure. Participants must be able to hike and carry what they need for the day: 2 liters of water, pack lunch provided by Esalen, and sun protection. Other workshop sessions will be mostly situated outdoors on the Esalen property.

This workshops includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 for park entrance fees.

For thousands of years across many cultures, expanded states of consciousness have been used intentionally as a strategy for meaningful transformation 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 an immersive experience and personal exploration of  these unique states. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® will be our experiential modality offering a dynamic method for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence.

We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.

Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.

This workshop includes an additional $75 of faculty tuition.

Have you ever held the wind? Or been held by the wind? There is a vitality in all life that is ancient, intuitive, and always accessible. This energy, like the wind, formless yet moving in all directions, creates and sustains life. The body is the doorway through which to meet this energy of being. It is alive inside us, ever-changing, and knows its way around.  

Come home to your body to reconnect, remember, and reclaim this vitality. Embrace the knowledge that our lives are much more than a linear unfolding of accomplishments; life is an extension of nature, and our well-being blossoms when we realign with the rhythm of this ancient life force.

During our week together, we’ll slow down and move through an alchemical combination of practices to soothe the senses, quiet the mind, balance the nervous system, and become fully embodied.  

Our practices will include:

• Conscious dance and gentle yoga practice
• Crystal bowl sound healing
• Ceremonial offerings to the land
• Contemplation in nature

Let the beauty of this sacred land and the power of community restore your strength and deepen your experience of interconnectedness with everything and everyone. We are not alone. Embrace the awe and wonder of being alive so that you may return home rejuvenated and inspired to continue walking your unique life path.

Note: Please bring a journal. Jovinna invites you to detox from or minimize the use of all electronics during your stay at Esalen.

This workshop includes an additional $55 in faculty tuition.

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 on Esalen’s healing land, we will return to our hearts. We’ll be joined by incredible guest teachers and musicians, sharing their expertise, wisdom and gratitude with us.

Together, we’ll explore dynamic yoga asana, pranayama, chanting, meditation, and yoga nidra. Let’s recognize each breath as a gift, as we’re nourished by delicious organic meals, the natural hot springs, walks among the majestic redwoods, or simply curling up in an ocean-view chair. Whether you come alone or with loved ones, you are sure to return to your daily rhythm with a newfound sense of ease, inspiration, and deep gratitude for the life you’re living.

This weekend is about community connection. Opening and closing sessions will be cozy, with more spacious workshops offered on Saturday. In addition, a professional photographer will be part of this experience, and a photo set of the experience will be shared with participants.

This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

“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 stewards of this place, as we remember the awe of the natural world around us and the life force within us.

Throughout the week, we will practice giving thanks for the world around us. We’ll cultivate curiosity and wonder for the life we have here and now. We’ll begin to move our attention away from the long list of “lack” that can consume our days.

To support the cultivation of this state of being, we will include daily practices to create suppleness in mind, spirit, and body:

• Breathwork
• Meditation
• yoga asana
• Philosophy
• Journaling
• Yoga nidra

We will return to the present to reclaim and embrace ourselves in our wholeness as enough. We will attend to all the ways we are enough, give enough, get enough, and have enough so we can lay claim to the power of life pulsing through us.

Each day will be an exploration of practices and tools that can cultivate and make space for a sense of contentment —and a chance for “giving” to ripple out into the world with grace and gratitude.

This workshop includes $175 additional faculty tuition.

This Thanksgiving week, you are invited into a living inquiry of what it means to be fully, authentically human in a deeply mysterious world. In a season of reflection and gathering, we step gently beyond the familiar and into the immediacy of direct experience, meeting life as it unfolds.

In these ever-changing times, we are reminded of the impermanence of what once seemed stable and known. As the ground shifts, uncertainty naturally arises, often bringing us to the edge of what we feel ready to meet. Yet within this movement, there is an invitation — to turn toward our experience rather than away, and to discover an innate resilience, an embodied capacity to meet the unknown with presence and openness.

This workshop offers a gentle, experiential exploration of how to cultivate curiosity, courage, and compassion in relationship with life’s unfolding mystery. Mystery moves in both directions, drawing us toward awe, wonder, and the magical, while also opening us to the unsettling edges of the unknown where fear and uncertainty live. Together, we begin where we are, learning to embrace “what is” through a deepening awareness of moment-to-moment experience. As we stay present with the discomfort of not knowing, it can become an intimate source of vitality, awakening the intelligence of body, heart, and mind.

Drawing from wisdom traditions, contemplative practices, and somatic and neuropsychology, we will explore:

• How to live more fully in the presence of mystery.
• Embodied emotional and somatic intelligence.
• Practical tools for nervous system regulation, resilience, and responsive presence.
• Movement, grounding, and centering practices that support being with the unknown.
• A deepened connection to self, others, and the more-than-human world.

Embracing the great mystery of life invites a softening of our need for certainty and a willingness to make space for the unexpected. With an open heart, body, and mind, we begin to sense the deeper rhythms of interconnectedness, allowing life to live through us as we navigate an ever-changing world.

Join this grounded and spacious exploration, where we learn, gently and courageously, to join the dance — saying “yes” to life.

Recommended reading: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts

All people have an innate ability to move toward healthy, satisfying relationships. Old patterns of behavior and fixed ideas formed in early relationships may block our ability to communicate and make contact with the people in our lives.

The Gestalt approach aims to increase awareness of these patterns and our ”unfinished business” by relating in a group that meets our needs for emotional attunement and understanding, that supports us in identifying and expressing our emotions, and which is committed to creating an atmosphere of respect, kindness, acceptance and honesty. These relational experiences support energy, aliveness and good contact.

Over the course of this workshop, we will

• Seek to learn skills to improve our ability to make contact,
• Develop and track awareness of our emotions and sensations,
• Learn to express and practice communicating needs and wants effectively.

We may discover habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating the type of relationships we want, and develop new skills for relating.

The workshop will include time for gestalt awareness practices, and a mixture of didactic and experiential exercises. Each participant will have an individual “open seat” session with Dorothy, with the support of the group.

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 experience for those who wish to sustain a daily practice for the mind, body, and spirit.

Master Huang will teach easy-to-absorb, adaptive exercises and assist you through metaphors, visualization, sonic chanting, meditation, and deep circular breathing methods. Participants will hear about the great history of this ancient practice as Master Huang shares his vast wealth of knowledge.

A fun, joyful weekend for all ages and levels of practitioners! We will learn to incorporate this healthy practice as a consistent habit: Wei Wu Wei — “doing by not doing, spontaneously.”

Beginners and “advanced beginners” are welcome.

Every yoga posture embodies a story. Every story embodies a posture.

The warrior’s focused intention, the divine monkey’s formidable leap, the lotus’s sacred stillness — these are not mere ideas but encapsulations of physical practice. Encoded in each āsana is a mythic psychology: a map of consciousness, a demand on the practitioner, a doorway into the living tradition from which yoga emerges.

Drawing on Raj Balkaran’s The Stories Behind the Poses, this weekend renders myth experiential rather than informational. Participants will not study these stories from the outside; they will enter these enchanted storyworlds so that the stories, in turn, will inhabit the practitioner.

Each session moves through a thematic arc — from the qualities that make practice possible, through the tensions that deepen it, to the surrender that completes it. Stories of Śiva, Hanumān, Indra, and the great sages are the primary texts, read through breath, posture, and relational presence. Mythic narrative and physical form illuminate one another: posture becomes story enacted in the body; story becomes posture enacted in consciousness.

No background in mythology or Sanskrit required. What is needed is willingness to meet ancient India’s wisdom traditions not as history but as living tradition.

Recommended reading: The Stories Behind the Poses,  by Raj Balkaran

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 Nature, and traditional Tai Ji motifs. We will explore, improvise, and evolve to find renewed and refreshed ways to dance the open structures of this ancient wonder of movement meditation.

With more than fifty consecutive years of teaching experience at Esalen, Master Huang creates a unique Tai Ji class for practitioners at all levels. Come prepared to enjoy “Uncle Al’s” storytelling, energy practices, and qigong mastery in this creative “Living Your Tao” Tai Ji experience.

Esalen® Massage combines partner-based attentiveness with the overlaying energetic field. This workshop presents the 12-meridian system of Asian medicine, attuned to Esalen Massage’s slow-flowing strokes. The intent is to facilitate release of long-held muscle tension while providing pauses and point work to nourish and harmonize. This energetic alignment can encourage resilience, lift the heart, quell anxiety, or provide support for difficult emotions. The results bring balance and chi energy flow without loss of the personal, intuitive connection. As an added bonus, both giver and receiver can access these energetic portals for their personal self-care.

Guided by longtime Esalen practitioner, teacher, and acupuncturist Daniela Urbassek, we’ll discover how to sustain a massage session in a calm, centered state by utilizing chi-balancing movement. We’ll be joined by guest teacher Mac Murphy, who nourishes his Esalen Massage with the qigong practice he learned in China. Through lectures and PowerPoint demonstrations, students will be presented tools to easily apply the long integrative oil massage strokes following structural and meridian pathways. We’ll explore when to add detailed depth and how to stimulate 14 vital energy points, including an excellent point to close a massage.

There will be ample time for guided practice, peer feedback, self-reflection, and leisurely hot tub soaks. This smaller class is a good match for professionals seeking a new frame of reference and for newcomers, particularly those who have already experienced the joys of sharing a great massage.  CE credit pending, CAMTC transcript credit.

Grof® Breathwork, developed as “holotropic breathwork,” was born at Esalen in the 1980s by Stanislav and Christina Grof. This powerful practice offers participants the opportunity to enter

expanded states of consciousness through accelerated breathing, evocative music, and supported somatic release.

Through this practice, we “journey” using our breath, opening to the psyche’s intrinsic intelligence for emotional release, physical relaxation, stress reduction, and profound numinous experiences.

You will experience two complete Grof® Breathwork sessions — one as a breather (engaging your own deep inner work) and one as a sitter (compassionately supporting another’s journey). Sessions last approximately three hours and are preceded by a comprehensive preparation presentation on Friday night.

Integration is supported through group sharing and reflection on the transformative aspects. Between sessions, we invite you to integrate your experiences through Esalen’s movement offerings and time in the stunning natural environment.

This is an opportunity to experience Grof® Breathwork on the land where the practice originated.

Recommended reading: When the Impossible Happens, by Stan Grof, Holotropic Breathwork, by Stan Grof, Watch: The Way of the Psychonaut

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 ever taught how to explore, harness, and apply it? How many healthcare professionals have taught you evidence-based ways to use imagination to enhance healing and recovery? Have you ever been taught how negative forms of imagination can contribute to depression, anxiety, or worse?

This workshop focuses on the science, power, and magic of imagination.

• The science: You’ll learn about newly discovered territories of imagination and how it is being redefined as one of the most important skills we can cultivate. You will explore the neurodiversity of imagination and create your own imagination profile.
• The power: You’ll take away tools to implement imagination into your physical and emotional healing, your relationships, and your work to powerfully imagine the next steps in your own life’s journey.
• The magic: You’ll explore the further reaches of imagination to create an extraordinary life. Discovering how altered states of consciousness, shamanism, psychedelics, and virtual reality/AI can provide access to a wellspring of wisdom and embodied imagination. Let whimsy and wonder re-enchant your life and our world.

Imagination is the seed of every invention and every social movement. It has led to nearly every scientific discovery, every building that has been built, every piece of art, film, story, every ship that has ever sailed, and every mission to outer space. Almost every human advancement has been sparked by the question, “What if?”

Through interactive presentations, experiential practices, self-inquiry, thought experiments, and speculative dialogue, you will explore truths that emerge from art, fiction, and fantasy — and return with new knowledge, tools, and inspiration.

Cassandra will be joined by guest faculty Fabrice Guerrier who brings experience knowledge of collective worldbuilding, futurism, poetry, and creative writing. Fabrice will provide unique perspectives and engaging experiential exercises to our work (and play) with imagination.

Recommended reading: Imagination: Exploring Your Inner World for an Extraordinary Life by Cassandra Vieten

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, and evolution. Created by Esalen Institute luminaries Michael Murphy and George Leonard, ITP focuses on the interconnectedness of all aspects of the self to support the changes you want most — for yourself and the world.

This experiential journey weaves movement, writing, and sharing circles so you can listen deeply to the wisdom of your whole being, revealing who you are, who you’re becoming, and your next natural steps. Using the body as a guide for learning, we’ll engage in solo, partner, and group energy-awareness practices developed by ITP Co-Founder and Master Aikido Sensei George Leonard. We’ll also explore a revitalizing daily practice to restore balance, boost energy, and invite deep relaxation —one that can be integrated as a supportive tool for everyday life.

You are invited to:

• See life through a refreshing new lens.
• Uncover hidden insights.
• Align with your natural rhythms.
• Nurture personal autonomy for the journey ahead.

By applying the integral model of body, mind, heart, and soul — a portal to our innate wholeness — we’ll also explore the worldview that gave rise to Esalen Institute, where this transformative practice was developed. This evolutionary framework offers a pathway to our extraordinary potential, our individual connection to wholeness, which is ready to emerge.

Recommended reading: The Life we are Given, by Michael Murphy & George Leonard & Living an Extraordinary Life: The Magic of Integral Transformative Practice, by Christina Grote & Pam Kramer

In an economy predicated on capitalizing our attention, what if we apprenticed ourselves to ecological forces whose temporality refuses capture? How might sitting at the feet of a glacier, as our elder, liberate our presence?

Enter this five-day apprenticeship with the glacier as a teacher, following the glacier’s quality of time as a grammar for re-patterning our minds, bodies, attention, care, and labor as students of the earth.

Drawing on land-based practices created by the facilitators and their collaborative work in Southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay, each day will begin with storytelling from the lands we study — to cultivate a collective ethos and, in the words of Martin Shaw, “attend to a world in constant disclosure.” Guided by the earth as scripture, these transmissions will orient our practices as they are translated into embodied prompts to empower our capacity to love and protect the sacred amid ecological and social crisis.

Practices will include:

• Daily meditation: sitting in stillness to take on the posture and soul of the glacier.
• Daily movement: slow movement and wanders on the land to embody the pace of the glacier.
• Grief + praise work: How does the glacier’s rapid melting call upon our grief and worship?
• Reading the landscape through pattern recognition to pay attention to the birds, tides, bees, plants, and stones at Esalen, and ask, “What do we learn about the earth’s nervous system, and what does it teach us about our own?”
• Writing and intimate council shares: As glaciers face extinction, what stories are at risk of extinction through the endemic nature of you? What stories do these practices call forward to be shared? How does writing and speaking them in council affirm and protect your own life as something the earth desperately needs right now?

On our fourth day together, participants will be invited to a half-day of silence on the land, culminating in story-sharing around the fire and soaking. Prepare to be thrilled by, and thrill the earth, with your glacial pace.

Our oldest traditions carry the same instruction for this moment, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year: go in.

Many who have touched the sacred through mystical states, grief, love, or a profound life transition carry an unfinished question: How do I live in service to what I have seen?

This workshop is devoted to that question, approaching it through the logic of descent. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology, contemplative practice, and symbolic imagination, our time together follows the ancient pattern of the katabasis. Inanna goes down before she can return. Orpheus descends before he can bring anything back. The structure is older than any single tradition. What transforms us is rarely the encounter at the height. It is the slow, unglamorous work of sitting with what the dark has shown us and letting it rearrange how we live. The mystery traditions built their initiatory structures around descent. The solstice is the hinge. We gather here to do that work.

Together, we will:

• Work with Jungian frameworks, including shadow work, archetypes, and symbolic amplification, as the psychological ground for metabolizing what has been opened by the visionary or peak state.
• Practice anchoring insight into daily life through journaling, somatic inquiry, dreamwork, ritual, and sacred conversation.
• Examine the risks of spiritual inflation and spiritual bypass — what goes wrong when experience outpaces integration, and how humility and discipline protect what the vision opened.
• Reframe psychedelic and non-ordinary experience as one expression within a larger soul journey, asking what it means when altered states become initiatory rather than episodic.
• Return to the values that inner work produces — love, accountability, and the relational responsibility that is the fruit of any spiritual encounter.

This gathering is the winter companion to the June workshop. Whereas the June work carries the quality of ascent, of doors opening and light expanding, this workshop honors the opposite movement. The winter solstice calls us into descent: into the dark, into what the earth knows when it turns inward. Integration, understood this way, is not a summer task. It is the slow work of the long night, the composting that happens below the surface before anything can grow again.

The work is to carry what you’ve seen with honesty, with discipline, and with the kind of reverence that does not require drama to sustain itself.

Note: While this workshop explores the history and meaning of psychedelic and non-ordinary states, Esalen workshops do not involve the use, provision, or facilitation of any psychoactive substances.

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey, as we gather together and explore traditional healing wisdom and the importance of ancestral lineage, ceremonies and rituals, sacred altars, medicinal plants, and the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental/emotional, spiritual and soul bodies.

You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, and we will examine what this means in the context of our modern daily lives as we share healing wisdom and practices together. This is your opportunity to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns, and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul. You will also have the opportunity to participate in three traditional healing ceremonies.

You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage, and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you will strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.

We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love: for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, then we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.

Note: Please bring a journal to write in, and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.

Special Note on Gift Economy:  For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy 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 Erika and her ongoing work.

BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops.  For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com

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 renewed.

During this retreat, we will combine three healing practices to  revitalize the body and calm the mind in the exquisite and rejuvenating natural environment of Esalen.

Together, we will focus our attention on being by using:

• Yoga to yoke body and mind for present-moment awareness.
• Meditation to cultivate concentration and empathy.
• Chanting with bhakti yoga, the practice of the heart.

The word solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still) because the seasonal movement of the sun’s path appears to come to a stop before reversing direction at the solstices. Moving into stillness, we can return to our lives refreshed and strengthened for the new year to come.  

All levels are welcome.

This workshop includes an additional material fee $20.

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 we may examine and deeply experience ourselves and our connection to all of existence. By fully immersing yourself in your sexual experiences, there is more — more pleasure, more presence, more freedom — hiding in plain sight. In your hips. Your breath. Your belly. Your no. Your yes. Your body.

This weekend is a playful deep dive into what it means to live in a queer male body — cis or transmasculine — with curiosity, with courage, and in relation to society and one another.

Together, we’ll explore the wild terrain of gender and sexuality — not from a textbook, but from the inside out. Through guided practices, embodied rituals, and communal reflection, you’ll get to ask big, juicy questions like:

• What kind of man am I when I stop trying so hard? If I move past the “masc” persona and its acceptable coded behaviors to embrace an energy that is both boundless and de-gendered?
• How much of my desire is mine, and how much is performance?
• What would it feel like to inhabit my sexuality without apology — or choreography?

We’ll explore how shame, culture, trauma, and liberation show up in our movements, our fantasies, our ability (or inability) to receive touch. We’ll stretch out of binary thinking and into something more fluid, more alive, more you. You’ll be invited to experiment with different ways of relating, touching, and expressing — from the tender to the wild, the sacred to the silly.

This is not about being “good at sex.” It’s about being honest in our sexuality. And maybe even finding new ways to experience it as medicine, mischief, and art.

Why this, why now? Because queer men are still carrying a lot — even in all our glittering freedom. We’ve inherited both boldness and bruises. While we celebrate open sexuality in our culture, we rarely get the space to slow down and feel what it all means in our bodies. This is that space. Join us to make meaning together — with breath, touch, and truth.

Please note: This workshop, designed specifically for those who identify as queer men (cis or trans), includes partial nudity, guided touch, roleplay, and somatic exploration of gender and sexuality. All activities are optional. The space we create together centers safety, sovereignty, and presence, prioritizing your agency and comfort at every turn. Your consent leads the way. Although we will explore touch and sensuality, no sexual acts of any kind will be instructed or included in this workshop. It will not include full nudity, nor anything you do not enthusiastically consent to.

Recommended reading: Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas; The ManTantra Letters by Victor Bliss & Nathan James

How can those of us who yearn without belief or ritual find our way? Many of us have lost our connection to a mainstream faith, or maybe never had it. We long to find more, even if we are afraid that it may not be there. Some of us have experienced our worlds cracked open with dreams, visions, presences, or moments of mystical union — and may not know how to make sense of what has happened.

We’ll begin our time together with an open sharing of stories of spiritual search and spiritual experience, with an invitation for participants to speak about their frustrations and their hopes. During the weekend, you will be introduced to pathworkings — guided meditations that take those without traditional faith on a spiritual journey —  and have the opportunity to use your voice to sing through your own journey.

This workshop is designed for those who want to more deeply understand the feeling of loss, awe, and the ineffable in the absence of a mainstream faith, and anyone who wishes they could believe, finds they can’t, and still imagines the possibility of a way forward.

A consistent meditation practice lowers stress, improves health, strengthens relationships, and increases happiness. A consistent writing practice not only helps you make sense of the world, it also can make you a better, and more creative, writer.

This combination writing and meditation workshop invites writers and meditators of all levels to delve deeply into both practices.

Our daily guided meditations will nourish your creativity by encouraging you to be present to experience, establish a strong mind/body connection, and access emotion and empathy — all important tools for writing.

Our daily bursts of free writing will give you an opportunity to tap into your creative energy — without judgment — so you can do your most original and authentic writing. Both practices will be supported by discussions of writing craft to help you master the technical aspects of story-telling.

Each day, we will set aside time to share our work in a safe and supportive environment.

By the end of our time together, you will be given the tools needed to develop daily meditation and a daily writing practice and make both stick. To help you stay connected and inspired, participants will also receive a free month’s membership to Creative Caffeine Daily, an online daily writing community.

Recommended Reading: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Who will you become when you put down your phone and pick up your life?

In just two decades, technology has rapidly reshaped our psyches, relationships, and communities. The average person now spends the equivalent of 61 to 80 days a year on their smartphones. Apps increasingly frack our attention while human empathy has steadily declined.

Though living a phone-based life can be overwhelming and feel hopeless, the power is still yours . Your hands are the living hands of your ancestors. What wants to be expressed through them? This workshop invites you to recover your focus, creativity, presence, and humanity. In community, we will reckon with the impact of the digital age and remember the somatic wisdom of bodies and the intelligence of our souls.

Recent research reveals that insecure attachment styles (anxious or avoidant) make us more vulnerable to compulsive smartphone use as we seek a digital “secure base” over human connection. By rebuilding our capacity to turn toward one another, we can re-parent ourselves and repair relational ruptures from our past.

Each day will include:

• Morning meditation to connect to the inner self.
• Lectures on the psychological and relational impacts of technology.
• Guided exercises to reflect on our attachment histories and “styles.”
• Interpersonal practices to replace screen time with real connection.
• Collective ritual for going offline intentionally for 72 hours.
• Practices in poetry therapy, movement, ritual, song circle, and nature-based meditation to reignite your creative spark.
• Community gatherings to rest and restore, including Yoga Nidra for attuning to the technology of the heart.

The digital age calls for a renaissance of re-humanization. The nature found at Big Sur pulses with a wildness that can help us reawaken our souls and reclaim our power. Come make meaningful changes that honor your whole self.

Recommended reading: The Power in Your Hands: Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology by Shannon Algeo, Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Trust Your Truth by Shannon Algeo

Winter Solstice marks a sacred turning point — the threshold where darkness begins to yield to the returning light. As nature grows quiet and the earth turns inward, we are invited to slow down, listen deeply, and tend the inner flame.

Guided by the wisdom of the chakra system, this immersive retreat explores the seven chakras as flames of radiance and portals of awakening for our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives. Throughout our time together, we journey through these inner landscapes, exploring both the luminous gifts and shadow expressions held within each energy center.

Each day we weave transformative practices — meditation, kundalini kriya, asana, dance, yin and somatic movement, sound healing, writing, creativity, and seasonal ritual — designed to nourish the body, support restoration, awaken the heart, quiet the mind, and rekindle the sacred fire within.

Sound and voice also become an integral part of our exploration. Guest musician and teacher Daphne Tse joins us to share the healing practice of SoulSongs through live music, seed mantras, chakra toning, guided vocal meditation, and gentle vocal exploration. Together we’ll experience how sound moves through the body’s energy centers, awakening the flame within each chakra and giving voice to what has long lived beneath the surface.

This retreat includes:

• Dynamic and restorative chakra-inspired yoga
• Somatic movement and guided + freeform dance
• Crystal bowl sound journeys
• Live music and SoulSongs vocal immersions with guest musician Daphne Tse
• Voice activation, chakra toning, and guided vocal meditation
• Breathwork, mantra, mudra, and meditation practices
• Guided contemplations inspired by The Radiance Sutras
• Winter Solstice ritual
• Time in nature, deep rest, and the healing waters

In yogic philosophy, radiance is not something we acquire; it is something we uncover. Like a flame sheltered beneath ash, our inner light remains present even in seasons of challenge, transition, or uncertainty.

Together, we gather at Winter Solstice to honor both the darkness and the returning light, tending the sacred flames within and awakening more fully to the joy, mystery, vulnerability, and wonder of being alive.