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

Love Your Body Now: A Yoga Therapy Approach to Joyous, Full-Body Awareness as We Age

November 13–17, 2023

Tracy Lease with Guest Faculty JJ Jeffries

You deserve to feel ease and joy in your body as you age.  Movement, time in nature, breath, quiet contemplation, and “Aha!” moments all contribute to expanding happiness and delight in life. Though this is true, you may face challenges. Changes to our bodies — aches and pains, joint replacements, osteoporosis, heart issues, and other conditions — may challenge us to find new ways to understand ourselves and maintain grace of movement and attitude.

During this workshop, you’ll discover yoga therapy and embodied enquiry techniques that increase awareness, empower exploration of your unique body now, and increase your ability to take good care of yourself. Learn to feel yoga poses from the inside out, aligning them well to tune into the energy flowing through your body, and find qigong movements and yoga postures that best serve you.

We have a week together to listen to our inner wisdom and the quiet intelligence of the body. We have the space to share our ideas, fears, limiting scripts, and dreams for our futures.

Together, we will find:

  • Fluid and effortless movement in qigong.
  • Core strength and healthy alignment in yoga.
  • “Effortless effort” in movement, accompanied by acoustic guitar and singing bowls.
  • Gratitude and loving kindness in meditation.
  • Pathways to joy through embodied enquiry.
  • Clearer understanding of our bodies, our joints, and our lymph, endocrine, and nervous systems.
  • Ways to honor our unique bodies, minds, and hearts with these practices at home.

We will be joined during our week by guest faculty and musician JJ Jeffries, who will guide us in “embodied enquiry” and play lovely acoustic guitar during some of our yoga and meditation practices.

Tracy Lease

Tracy Lease, yoga therapist and director of Full Life Yoga Studio in Grass Valley, California, empowers each unique student to move toward optimal health and happiness. Tracy has spent 20 years joyfully guiding students in movement and mindfulness practices.

Full Bio

JJ Jeffries

JJ Jeffries is an elder at Esalen — Mentor, Gestalt and Embodied Awareness practitioner, musician, and memory-keeper.  Though being is his preferred state, he is intensely curious about all things doing leading to being.

Full Bio