Don Hanlon Johnson remembers his incredible journey from Jesuit seminarian to somatics pioneer, the Esalen of the 1960s, and the genius of Ida Rolf, Fritz Perls, Carl Rogers, Moshe Feldenkrais, Charlotte Selver, Michael Murphy, and more.
In 1967, Michael invited a dear friend of mine, Paul Hillsdale, a Jesuit priest, to Esalen to take part in the first work study program. I was studying to be a Jesuit priest, and Paul invited me and another companion to come visit him. I was a celibate. I’d been a celibate for ten years. Comfortably so.
We appealed to our Jesuit superiors and said, “This is a spiritual retreat.” It was, but not in the way they understood. We got permission, and it was paid for by the Jesuit order, to go down and spend a weekend at Esalen.
Esalen, in the early days, was not quite as rigid about workshops: They had a lot of open stuff. You could go to anything. Houston Smith had just gotten back from Tibet, so he was the star of the particular train I was on. In the group were Will Schutz and Ed Maupin, who were the first two heads of the resident program, the work scholar program. There were all kinds of really fascinating people there. It was just a ferment of really interesting discussions.
To give you a sense of how strange this whole experience was, when my companion and I went down to the baths, we're sitting in the baths and this woman sitting next to him suddenly grabs his hand and puts it on her breasts. That was the end of his solitude. I was not quite as fast as he was.
Paul, the priest who invited us, was a kind of a wispy intellectual. All bent over and about forty pounds. He was brilliant, but he was just totally disembodied. But when I went to Esalen and saw him, he'd become this kind of vibrant beast. I thought, What on earth happened to him?
It turned out he’d been “Rolfed” by Ida Rolf. So I got very interested in her. I had been a very sick child. I had a terrible birth. I was a premature cesarean, and I've had a spinal pathology my whole life. I can't bend my spine. I had serious asthma. I grew up in a disembodied world.
I had been in training to be a Jesuit priest, but the thing that was missing for me was a connection to my own body. We had instructions to be in our bodies. We had instructions to pay attention to our posture, to our breathing — but I couldn't do it. I just would sit for hours. Rolfing was really revelatory for me. Rolfing opened me to what I'd been trying to get in Jesuit meditation that I couldn't. It was a revelation to me to feel the depths of embodiment. That was a really serious big thing.
In time, I felt courage. I felt a strength and vitality and courage to stand up for my beliefs and the political world. Some time passed, and I was no longer in training to be a Jesuit priest. I wound up at Yale, and I did my dissertation on changes in the body and changes in the body politic. Then I thought, Well, why am I writing about this? Why don't I do it?
A few months later, after I finished my degree, I went back out to Esalen, intending to study under Ida Rolf. She was always moaning, “Oh, you don't understand my work! It's not about fixing things. It's about changing human beings. It's about spiritual practice. It's not about fixing.” Ida was, to me, a revolutionary. She gave me the juice to get out and do these things.
She was an amazing being. I mean, just an amazing being. But she was not very psychological. Despite Ida's desire to transform human beings, she didn't really respect psychology very much. And Fritz Perls was, you know, Fritz was Fritz. I mean, he would be put in jail today if he were around. Fritz was so powerful because all of us in the 1950s were raised in this incredibly tight-lipped culture where nobody was telling the truth. So Fritz comes and says, “Tell the truth!” And the truth is not a very happy thing to tell. I think that's partly what got Esalen launched. It addressed the weirdness of the white culture in the 1950s.
Carl Rogers also had a huge impact on me. Carl Rogers didn’t call what he did “encounter” groups. They were just groups. I did three-day, 24-hours-a-day groups with Carl. We were just there for 24 hours. It was about relating to each other through listening and allowing language to emerge from listening. So it's not about getting out my feelings. I much preferred the Rogerian approach myself, because I felt it got deeper. Learning how to listen and to speak out of listening and quiet.
...
Moshe Feldenkrais really broke open any stereotypical notions of body movement and treated the body as an endlessly polymorphic system of movement. His exercises evoked a whole range of intricacy of movement. He was an interesting, brilliant guy. He and Ida were absolute polar opposites. Ida felt you had to really free up the fascial planes and the ligaments and so forth, as they restricted movements. Once the restrictions were freed, then you could move more, more intricately. And Moshe said, no, it goes the other way around. If you move differently, then that evokes a thing. Of course they're both right, but they wouldn't acknowledge that.
There was a lot of argument about who was right in those days.
All these people felt they had the truth, and they dissed everybody else. It really struck me. I just felt like these people are all just like the Catholics — all arguing about who's got the true vision. You would not believe the crazy arguments that went on. There was an argument about where the third cervical spine belongs between Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, and F.M. Alexander. They all had a different place in mind for the third cervical vertebrae. Crazy.
Charlotte Selver was one of my close friends over many, many years. She was the kind of sane mother of it all. She was very sane. She did not argue.
In some ways, her contribution to the field of somatics was the most solid, continuous, and consequential. Her work was a way of learning how to pay just careful attention to oneself without an agenda, except to become familiar with one's own breathing, one's own tasting of foods, one's own urges — to get really, really familiar with that inner world of sensation. So it's super basic. Like once, Charlotte and I were walking through the land that's now the Green Gulch Zen Center. And Charlotte said to me, “People say I am the American Zen. I am not the American Zen. Zen people have something to teach. I just ask questions.”
And it was quirky, but it was true. She had no agenda, for like, where your arm belonged. That was not an interesting question for her. It's like, are you there for your arm moving? And what happens? That's still the kind of question that motivates neuroscientists now.
Charlotte's work was not very colorful like Fritz's was. You know, you took an orange and you picked apart the orange and you smelled it and you tasted it. It wasn't exciting. It wasn’t screaming out at the ocean. I think her deep wisdom, it's kind of hidden. A lot of people really imbibed it and took it seriously. I think it can keep coming back.
...
I'm so grateful to Michael Murphy. There would be no field of somatics without Michael. Michael and I shared this monastic experience. He from the standpoint of India and myself from the Western spiritual traditions. I had this very strange teacher with the Jesuits who took quite seriously the teachings in the Bible about the immortality of the body through Christ. He believed that as Jesuits, if we did our practices and really followed the Jesuit meditations, we would end up with immortal bodies. And, of course, Michael had that angle from Sri Aurobindo. In fact, that's why he invited my Jesuit priest friend to be a work scholar, because he was very interested. He had a focus on these body practices as not just exercise, but as leading us into immortality and bliss.
I don't take it so literally. But the thing I have stood up for, and Michael stood up for, is that working with the body is not just working with the body. It's not just paying attention to my feet so I'm healthy. That's certainly a great thing. Working with the body, there's the immense opening of the being, of the self, to the immensity of the universe and the ancientness of this world and how we live within it.
“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.”
–Aaron
“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve
“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer
“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne
“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter
“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.
“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori
“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.
Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.
What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?
Don Hanlon Johnson remembers his incredible journey from Jesuit seminarian to somatics pioneer, the Esalen of the 1960s, and the genius of Ida Rolf, Fritz Perls, Carl Rogers, Moshe Feldenkrais, Charlotte Selver, Michael Murphy, and more.
In 1967, Michael invited a dear friend of mine, Paul Hillsdale, a Jesuit priest, to Esalen to take part in the first work study program. I was studying to be a Jesuit priest, and Paul invited me and another companion to come visit him. I was a celibate. I’d been a celibate for ten years. Comfortably so.
We appealed to our Jesuit superiors and said, “This is a spiritual retreat.” It was, but not in the way they understood. We got permission, and it was paid for by the Jesuit order, to go down and spend a weekend at Esalen.
Esalen, in the early days, was not quite as rigid about workshops: They had a lot of open stuff. You could go to anything. Houston Smith had just gotten back from Tibet, so he was the star of the particular train I was on. In the group were Will Schutz and Ed Maupin, who were the first two heads of the resident program, the work scholar program. There were all kinds of really fascinating people there. It was just a ferment of really interesting discussions.
To give you a sense of how strange this whole experience was, when my companion and I went down to the baths, we're sitting in the baths and this woman sitting next to him suddenly grabs his hand and puts it on her breasts. That was the end of his solitude. I was not quite as fast as he was.
Paul, the priest who invited us, was a kind of a wispy intellectual. All bent over and about forty pounds. He was brilliant, but he was just totally disembodied. But when I went to Esalen and saw him, he'd become this kind of vibrant beast. I thought, What on earth happened to him?
It turned out he’d been “Rolfed” by Ida Rolf. So I got very interested in her. I had been a very sick child. I had a terrible birth. I was a premature cesarean, and I've had a spinal pathology my whole life. I can't bend my spine. I had serious asthma. I grew up in a disembodied world.
I had been in training to be a Jesuit priest, but the thing that was missing for me was a connection to my own body. We had instructions to be in our bodies. We had instructions to pay attention to our posture, to our breathing — but I couldn't do it. I just would sit for hours. Rolfing was really revelatory for me. Rolfing opened me to what I'd been trying to get in Jesuit meditation that I couldn't. It was a revelation to me to feel the depths of embodiment. That was a really serious big thing.
In time, I felt courage. I felt a strength and vitality and courage to stand up for my beliefs and the political world. Some time passed, and I was no longer in training to be a Jesuit priest. I wound up at Yale, and I did my dissertation on changes in the body and changes in the body politic. Then I thought, Well, why am I writing about this? Why don't I do it?
A few months later, after I finished my degree, I went back out to Esalen, intending to study under Ida Rolf. She was always moaning, “Oh, you don't understand my work! It's not about fixing things. It's about changing human beings. It's about spiritual practice. It's not about fixing.” Ida was, to me, a revolutionary. She gave me the juice to get out and do these things.
She was an amazing being. I mean, just an amazing being. But she was not very psychological. Despite Ida's desire to transform human beings, she didn't really respect psychology very much. And Fritz Perls was, you know, Fritz was Fritz. I mean, he would be put in jail today if he were around. Fritz was so powerful because all of us in the 1950s were raised in this incredibly tight-lipped culture where nobody was telling the truth. So Fritz comes and says, “Tell the truth!” And the truth is not a very happy thing to tell. I think that's partly what got Esalen launched. It addressed the weirdness of the white culture in the 1950s.
Carl Rogers also had a huge impact on me. Carl Rogers didn’t call what he did “encounter” groups. They were just groups. I did three-day, 24-hours-a-day groups with Carl. We were just there for 24 hours. It was about relating to each other through listening and allowing language to emerge from listening. So it's not about getting out my feelings. I much preferred the Rogerian approach myself, because I felt it got deeper. Learning how to listen and to speak out of listening and quiet.
...
Moshe Feldenkrais really broke open any stereotypical notions of body movement and treated the body as an endlessly polymorphic system of movement. His exercises evoked a whole range of intricacy of movement. He was an interesting, brilliant guy. He and Ida were absolute polar opposites. Ida felt you had to really free up the fascial planes and the ligaments and so forth, as they restricted movements. Once the restrictions were freed, then you could move more, more intricately. And Moshe said, no, it goes the other way around. If you move differently, then that evokes a thing. Of course they're both right, but they wouldn't acknowledge that.
There was a lot of argument about who was right in those days.
All these people felt they had the truth, and they dissed everybody else. It really struck me. I just felt like these people are all just like the Catholics — all arguing about who's got the true vision. You would not believe the crazy arguments that went on. There was an argument about where the third cervical spine belongs between Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, and F.M. Alexander. They all had a different place in mind for the third cervical vertebrae. Crazy.
Charlotte Selver was one of my close friends over many, many years. She was the kind of sane mother of it all. She was very sane. She did not argue.
In some ways, her contribution to the field of somatics was the most solid, continuous, and consequential. Her work was a way of learning how to pay just careful attention to oneself without an agenda, except to become familiar with one's own breathing, one's own tasting of foods, one's own urges — to get really, really familiar with that inner world of sensation. So it's super basic. Like once, Charlotte and I were walking through the land that's now the Green Gulch Zen Center. And Charlotte said to me, “People say I am the American Zen. I am not the American Zen. Zen people have something to teach. I just ask questions.”
And it was quirky, but it was true. She had no agenda, for like, where your arm belonged. That was not an interesting question for her. It's like, are you there for your arm moving? And what happens? That's still the kind of question that motivates neuroscientists now.
Charlotte's work was not very colorful like Fritz's was. You know, you took an orange and you picked apart the orange and you smelled it and you tasted it. It wasn't exciting. It wasn’t screaming out at the ocean. I think her deep wisdom, it's kind of hidden. A lot of people really imbibed it and took it seriously. I think it can keep coming back.
...
I'm so grateful to Michael Murphy. There would be no field of somatics without Michael. Michael and I shared this monastic experience. He from the standpoint of India and myself from the Western spiritual traditions. I had this very strange teacher with the Jesuits who took quite seriously the teachings in the Bible about the immortality of the body through Christ. He believed that as Jesuits, if we did our practices and really followed the Jesuit meditations, we would end up with immortal bodies. And, of course, Michael had that angle from Sri Aurobindo. In fact, that's why he invited my Jesuit priest friend to be a work scholar, because he was very interested. He had a focus on these body practices as not just exercise, but as leading us into immortality and bliss.
I don't take it so literally. But the thing I have stood up for, and Michael stood up for, is that working with the body is not just working with the body. It's not just paying attention to my feet so I'm healthy. That's certainly a great thing. Working with the body, there's the immense opening of the being, of the self, to the immensity of the universe and the ancientness of this world and how we live within it.
“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.”
–Aaron
“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve
“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer
“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne
“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter
“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.
“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori
“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.
Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.
What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?
Don Hanlon Johnson remembers his incredible journey from Jesuit seminarian to somatics pioneer, the Esalen of the 1960s, and the genius of Ida Rolf, Fritz Perls, Carl Rogers, Moshe Feldenkrais, Charlotte Selver, Michael Murphy, and more.
In 1967, Michael invited a dear friend of mine, Paul Hillsdale, a Jesuit priest, to Esalen to take part in the first work study program. I was studying to be a Jesuit priest, and Paul invited me and another companion to come visit him. I was a celibate. I’d been a celibate for ten years. Comfortably so.
We appealed to our Jesuit superiors and said, “This is a spiritual retreat.” It was, but not in the way they understood. We got permission, and it was paid for by the Jesuit order, to go down and spend a weekend at Esalen.
Esalen, in the early days, was not quite as rigid about workshops: They had a lot of open stuff. You could go to anything. Houston Smith had just gotten back from Tibet, so he was the star of the particular train I was on. In the group were Will Schutz and Ed Maupin, who were the first two heads of the resident program, the work scholar program. There were all kinds of really fascinating people there. It was just a ferment of really interesting discussions.
To give you a sense of how strange this whole experience was, when my companion and I went down to the baths, we're sitting in the baths and this woman sitting next to him suddenly grabs his hand and puts it on her breasts. That was the end of his solitude. I was not quite as fast as he was.
Paul, the priest who invited us, was a kind of a wispy intellectual. All bent over and about forty pounds. He was brilliant, but he was just totally disembodied. But when I went to Esalen and saw him, he'd become this kind of vibrant beast. I thought, What on earth happened to him?
It turned out he’d been “Rolfed” by Ida Rolf. So I got very interested in her. I had been a very sick child. I had a terrible birth. I was a premature cesarean, and I've had a spinal pathology my whole life. I can't bend my spine. I had serious asthma. I grew up in a disembodied world.
I had been in training to be a Jesuit priest, but the thing that was missing for me was a connection to my own body. We had instructions to be in our bodies. We had instructions to pay attention to our posture, to our breathing — but I couldn't do it. I just would sit for hours. Rolfing was really revelatory for me. Rolfing opened me to what I'd been trying to get in Jesuit meditation that I couldn't. It was a revelation to me to feel the depths of embodiment. That was a really serious big thing.
In time, I felt courage. I felt a strength and vitality and courage to stand up for my beliefs and the political world. Some time passed, and I was no longer in training to be a Jesuit priest. I wound up at Yale, and I did my dissertation on changes in the body and changes in the body politic. Then I thought, Well, why am I writing about this? Why don't I do it?
A few months later, after I finished my degree, I went back out to Esalen, intending to study under Ida Rolf. She was always moaning, “Oh, you don't understand my work! It's not about fixing things. It's about changing human beings. It's about spiritual practice. It's not about fixing.” Ida was, to me, a revolutionary. She gave me the juice to get out and do these things.
She was an amazing being. I mean, just an amazing being. But she was not very psychological. Despite Ida's desire to transform human beings, she didn't really respect psychology very much. And Fritz Perls was, you know, Fritz was Fritz. I mean, he would be put in jail today if he were around. Fritz was so powerful because all of us in the 1950s were raised in this incredibly tight-lipped culture where nobody was telling the truth. So Fritz comes and says, “Tell the truth!” And the truth is not a very happy thing to tell. I think that's partly what got Esalen launched. It addressed the weirdness of the white culture in the 1950s.
Carl Rogers also had a huge impact on me. Carl Rogers didn’t call what he did “encounter” groups. They were just groups. I did three-day, 24-hours-a-day groups with Carl. We were just there for 24 hours. It was about relating to each other through listening and allowing language to emerge from listening. So it's not about getting out my feelings. I much preferred the Rogerian approach myself, because I felt it got deeper. Learning how to listen and to speak out of listening and quiet.
...
Moshe Feldenkrais really broke open any stereotypical notions of body movement and treated the body as an endlessly polymorphic system of movement. His exercises evoked a whole range of intricacy of movement. He was an interesting, brilliant guy. He and Ida were absolute polar opposites. Ida felt you had to really free up the fascial planes and the ligaments and so forth, as they restricted movements. Once the restrictions were freed, then you could move more, more intricately. And Moshe said, no, it goes the other way around. If you move differently, then that evokes a thing. Of course they're both right, but they wouldn't acknowledge that.
There was a lot of argument about who was right in those days.
All these people felt they had the truth, and they dissed everybody else. It really struck me. I just felt like these people are all just like the Catholics — all arguing about who's got the true vision. You would not believe the crazy arguments that went on. There was an argument about where the third cervical spine belongs between Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, and F.M. Alexander. They all had a different place in mind for the third cervical vertebrae. Crazy.
Charlotte Selver was one of my close friends over many, many years. She was the kind of sane mother of it all. She was very sane. She did not argue.
In some ways, her contribution to the field of somatics was the most solid, continuous, and consequential. Her work was a way of learning how to pay just careful attention to oneself without an agenda, except to become familiar with one's own breathing, one's own tasting of foods, one's own urges — to get really, really familiar with that inner world of sensation. So it's super basic. Like once, Charlotte and I were walking through the land that's now the Green Gulch Zen Center. And Charlotte said to me, “People say I am the American Zen. I am not the American Zen. Zen people have something to teach. I just ask questions.”
And it was quirky, but it was true. She had no agenda, for like, where your arm belonged. That was not an interesting question for her. It's like, are you there for your arm moving? And what happens? That's still the kind of question that motivates neuroscientists now.
Charlotte's work was not very colorful like Fritz's was. You know, you took an orange and you picked apart the orange and you smelled it and you tasted it. It wasn't exciting. It wasn’t screaming out at the ocean. I think her deep wisdom, it's kind of hidden. A lot of people really imbibed it and took it seriously. I think it can keep coming back.
...
I'm so grateful to Michael Murphy. There would be no field of somatics without Michael. Michael and I shared this monastic experience. He from the standpoint of India and myself from the Western spiritual traditions. I had this very strange teacher with the Jesuits who took quite seriously the teachings in the Bible about the immortality of the body through Christ. He believed that as Jesuits, if we did our practices and really followed the Jesuit meditations, we would end up with immortal bodies. And, of course, Michael had that angle from Sri Aurobindo. In fact, that's why he invited my Jesuit priest friend to be a work scholar, because he was very interested. He had a focus on these body practices as not just exercise, but as leading us into immortality and bliss.
I don't take it so literally. But the thing I have stood up for, and Michael stood up for, is that working with the body is not just working with the body. It's not just paying attention to my feet so I'm healthy. That's certainly a great thing. Working with the body, there's the immense opening of the being, of the self, to the immensity of the universe and the ancientness of this world and how we live within it.
“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.”
–Aaron
“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve
“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer
“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne
“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter
“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.
“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori
“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.
Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.
What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org
