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

Return to Human: Touching Our Hearts, Liberating Our Bodies

April 22–24, 2022

with Madeline Lam and Bri Boertman

Within your body lives the intersection of trauma and resilience. It is here we can heal and create the more beautiful world that we know is possible. Our current culture of interlocking systems oppresses and severs our connection to the inherent beauty of belonging on this planet. For each of us to return to being fully human, we need to come home to ourselves. As Frantz Fanon writes, “Superiority? Inferiority? Why not simply touch the other, feel the other, discover each other?” We need to come home to our bodies to heal from lovelessness that perpetuates injustices.

Over the weekend, return to your human mind, body, and breath while reimagining and practicing new ways of being in the world.

  • Co-create a community rooted in rest, trust, authentic expression, support, and justice.
  • Unpack and analyze how interlocking systems of oppression impact our interpersonal lives and bodies.
  • Experience somatic tools to heal the lovelessness we all experience such as joy, connection, and pleasure.
  • Confront and rewrite violent social narratives about self and others that have become internalized beliefs.

In this workshop, we will experience our body as a source of wisdom and a site of empowerment and healing. It is here where lived experiences, memories, breath, and emotions are doorways to embodied ways of knowing. We will learn and experience how rest, play, and pleasure have the potential to create a world where all people have access to well-being. Join this workshop to imagine new ways of being and experience the healing capacity of creative expression, authentic connection, and sacred community.

Madeline Lam

Maddie Lam is a body-based practitioner and somatic activist who focuses on using practices of embodiment as liberation to answer the question: how do we all get free? Using yoga and meditation as pathways to deeper self-exploration, Maddie creates spaces for joy, self-intimacy, and connection to the greater collective.

Full Bio

Bri Boertman

Bri Boertman, MEd, 500 E-RYT, has facilitated therapeutic yoga, art, and adventure experiences for nearly 20 years. Bri coaches people from all walks toward transformation and healing through emBodied yoga practices, connection to wild spaces, and creative self-expression.

Full Bio