Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
Learn More.

Learn more.

Due to road closures along Highway 1 to our north and south, Esalen is closed through April 11.
Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
past workshop

Discovering your Body Wisdom for Healthier Relationships

December 18–22, 2023

Marlon A. Guarino and Lorenia Parada Ampudia

Do you yearn to feel more pleasure, joy, and belonging? Do you long to recover the connection between your mind, body, and spirit?  

Come re-learn the strength and wisdom held within and expressed through your body. We will walk a path into your authentic core being, becoming more conscious and reconnecting with our natural essential resources, others, and nature.

In a safe group setting, this workshop will provide time and space to inhabit and discover our bodies more fully. With enhanced awareness, we’ll gain a greater understanding of our internal states, our ability to affect them, and how they impact our relationships.

Each day, we will focus on different developmental rights — the right to see, to speak, to feel, and more — and explore sections of our bodies with breath, sensations, emotions, and thoughts using contemplation, slow body movement, bio-energetic exercises, and group dynamics. We will listen to our inner wisdom through individual and group exercises to awaken the mutual intelligence that promotes collective transformation.

In this workshop, we’ll discover:

  • How our body consciousness influences our processes, reactions, and responses to everyday life.
  • Greater access to our body’s intelligence and body wisdom.
  • Tools to self-regulate our emotional states.
  • Valuable skills to communicate with more integrity, both verbally and non-verbally

These practices are organized according to birthing and developmental stages, exploring the body armoring — physical protective reactions to life experiences — that separate us from our biological origin as a liberated, healthy body.

Marlon Guarino

Marlon A. Guarino's unique approach to healing is deeply rooted in the mind-body-spirit-nature connection. He facilitates resolving issues using body-mind-spirit centered (somatic) experiential psychotherapies and integrating contemplative traditions and Indigenous practices. 

Full Bio

Lorenia Parada Ampudia

From her experience as a psychologist and social activist, Lorenia Parada Ampudia offers different mindful awareness practices as basic tools for learning about our body-mind relationships for self-discovery, self-regulation, and self-leadership. Identifying and finding clarity in understanding the context and dynamics of our own birth, early relationships with caregivers, and our body expression language are of great support for any transformation toward cultivating a healthy mind, healthy sexuality, and embodied harmonious relationships.

Full Bio