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

Embodied Writing and Spiritual Practice

July 15–19, 2024

Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Erik Davis

Part writing workshop and part tantric retreat, this unique practice week explores the relationship between personal writing and subtle body practices.

Religious historian and Tantric practitioner Sravana Borkataky-Varma will lead experiential sessions largely stemming from Hindu Goddess Tantra practices. Award-winning author and scholar Erik Davis will then guide the group in reading and writing exercises, developing skills and techniques that will help us creatively express our embodied experiences.

Exercises and opportunities will include:

  • Chakra and subtle body meditations.
  • Reading short texts to understand how writing engages subtle embodied experience.
  • Using elements of writing, including metaphor, poetry, and spontaneous  language, to capture and express your own inner work.
  • Techniques to develop an ongoing writing practice that supports a deepening engagement with meditation and embodied life.

Over the days, we will collectively cultivate a feedback loop between writing, discussion, and inner work. Through this alchemical process, participants will learn to more intimately and poetically clarify their subtle experiences, while at the same time using the power and energy of such practices to fire up and inspire their writing life.

This workshop has an additional $50 of faculty tuition.

Sravana Borkataky-Varma

Prof. Sravana Borkataky-Varma specializes in South Asian religions, with a particular emphasis on Hindu practices. Her scholarly work investigates Indian religions and delves into topics such as esoteric rituals, gender issues, and bodily concepts, especially in relation to Hindu Śākta Tantra traditions, often referred to as Goddess Tantra.

Full Bio

Erik Davis

Erik Davis, PhD, is an author, journalist, and teacher based in San Francisco. His wide-ranging work focuses on the intersection of alternative religion, media, and the popular imagination. His most recent book is High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies.

Full Bio