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.

Esalen opens May 3, 2024

Visitors are now able to access Esalen as well as other businesses and trails in northern Big Sur via twice-daily convoys on Highway 1 operated by Caltrans.

Convoys run only at 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. each day. These are the only opportunities to travel into and out of Big Sur, so visitors must plan accordingly.

Learn more.

Open Classes

Open Classes

Led by a rotating roster of resident, local, and visiting teachers, Open Classes are available to all guests at Esalen. Below is a sample calendar — please check the schedule once you arrive on campus for information about specific times and offerings during your stay.

MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY











5:00 – 5:45 pm
How to Drop Into Esalen


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

‍7:30 pm
Wed Evening Program


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class











5:00 – 5:45 pm
How to Drop Into Esalen


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY


No classes on Monday


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


No classes on Sunday

4 – 5:00 pm
Restore


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore

MONDAY


5:00 – 5:45 pm
How to Drop Into Esalen

TUESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement


2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

WEDNESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement


2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class


7:30 pm
Wed Evening Program

THURSDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement


2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class



FRIDAY




5:00 – 5:45 pm
How to Drop Into Esalen

SATURDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement


2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

SUNDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement





MONDAY


No classes today

TUESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


4:00 – 5:00 pm
Expand

WEDNESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


4:00 – 5:00 pm
Expand

THURSDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


4:00 – 5:00 pm
Restore

FRIDAY


4:00 – 5:00 pm
Expand

SATURDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven


4:00 – 5:00 pm
Expand

SUNDAY


No classes today

MONDAY


5:00 – 5:45 pm
How to Drop Into Esalen

TUESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

WEDNESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

7:30 pm
Wednesday Evening Program

THURSDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

FRIDAY


5:00 – 5:45 pm
How to Drop Into Esalen

SATURDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

10:15 – 11:15 am
Morning Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
Afternoon Class

SUNDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Morning Movement

Sample Class List

Specific offerings will vary from day to day and week to week.

A Brief History of Esalen: The 60's

Join Sam for a deep-dive into Esalen's archives to explore the transformative origins of the Esalen Institute and Human Potential. Discover the roots of a movement that forever changed the landscape of personal growth and self-discovery.

Bathing Rituals of Self Renewal

Meditate with the surging energy of the waves and let tension dissolve on the ocean breeze. Adorned with flowers and local healing herbs, this unique experience at the Esalen baths blends personal inquiry, herbal education, and sensory delight. Each ritual is an emergent collaboration of sound, sensation, intention, and floral offering to the sea. Come early, class size is very limited.

Body Language

A spacious, slow-paced exploration of the body home using therapeutic yoga and other somatic modalities to make space for breath, alleviate tension, and access greater mobility and fluidity — in flesh and bones, and in life. Accessible to all levels.

Breathscapes

A transformative breathwork journey rooted in rhythm, designed to reconnect you with the innate cycles of your body and the natural world. This dynamic practice weaves together accessible breathing patterns, sound, and movement to foster deep connection, release stress, and bring you back into balance. By harmonizing your breath with the pulse of life, Breathscapes helps you heal burnout, cultivate self-love, and gain clarity, offering a profound space for transformation and embodied presence. Whether you seek renewal or reprieve, Breathscapes is a powerful gateway to inner alignment and vitality.

Cultivating Creativity with Yoga Nidra and Writing

Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation that brings you to a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping. This practice reprograms and repatterns your mind and body to prime your creativity to flow freely through you and onto your page.

Find Your Authentic Voice

Sink below the mind chatter and external layer to tap into your authentic voice and share who you truly are. Meditation, movement, and written reflections.

Healing Circle

The Healing Circle is a space where you are invited to step out of ordinary time into a safe, accepting environment in which to explore, witnessing and sharing with an open heart. Experience breath and meditation, facilitated heart sharing, ritual, and group reiki.

Holistic Yoga Flow

An all-level Hatha-inspired physical practice paired with breathwork and mindfulness to rediscover your intuition and cultivate your mind-body connection.

How to Drop Into Esalen

So, you’ve finally arrived at Esalen — welcome home! Join us in exploring Esalen’s historic, culture-shifting origins, the vision for human potential, and our core values, as we embark on another 60 years of transformational education. Prepare to learn, grow, experiment, and evolve as we shepherd you on how best to integrate into this unique community and get the most out of your time on this sacred, ancient land.

Inhabiting the Body

Reconnecting to the body’s innate wisdom and intelligence is a practice in trust, presence, and acknowledgment. With mindfulness and curiosity, we will attune to our bodies through somatic experiencing practices, guided visualization, and self regulation that release physical stagnancies to fully inhabit and enjoy living in this beautiful, physical vessel!

Intro to Gestalt Practice

Gestalt, like meditation, is an awareness practice that also provides a means for us to connect in the present moment. In this class, we will re-create and experience an Esalen style check-in, building spontaneous and intentional community. An Esalen tradition.

Making Space for the Sacred

Begin your day from a resourced place, connected with your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll greet the morning by making space to connect with a gentle flow state, utilizing meditation and the practice of Morning Pages. Bridging mind and spirit connection, we’ll then incorporate the body through an intentional practice of mindful yin and a gentle flow.

MojaFlow

MojaFlow is an experience to provoke and elevate you to discover new realms of energy and inspire you to experience the joy of going beyond barriers in your own practice and life. Class will include a somatic warm-up, breath-work, and strengthening exercises to support the body/mind connection.

Our Relationship With Water and Its Healing Magic

Esalen is a special place, a healing portal because of the four waters on the land. We will journey to meet "Mama Yaku" the spirit of water and do ceremony at the creek.

Our Relationship to Earth Magic

We will learn how to make offerings to the earth in order to develop a sacred relationship with the most important, benevolent being to humanity —"Pachamama" Mother Earth — so she can support and guide our path.

Our Relationship with Plants, Animals & Their Magic

How do we build a sacred relationship to plants and animals that can support us on our path? You will learn about "Ayni" the quechua word for: Sacred reciprocity and how to speak the language of plants.

Pranotthan Yoga

In class we contemplate spiritual/philosophical teachings, slow down and move mindfully by co-ordinating breath with movement, sustain poses to deepen focus and awareness, practice breathing exercises and meditation to hone skillfulness in listening to the inner subtle experiences.

Realignment With Life Force Energy

Life force energy runs through us, is around us, and is within us at all times. Living disconnected from source energy can leave us burned out, depleted, and disjointed. Through embodiment, intuitive, and energetic practices, like somatic experiencing, guided visualization, and energy work, we will explore and release any obstacles hindering our connection to our authentic and inherent power.

Resting for Resilience

Rest is revolutionary. When we gift ourselves the permission to slow down and simply be, we downshift and regulate our nervous system — a powerful way to recharge. Through restorative activities like deep, conscious breathing, body awareness, and restorative yoga, we’ll invite our entire selves to practice the art of resting, encouraging our body’s innate wisdom and healing to emerge.

Soul Movement Sanctuary

This is a conscious dance practice for people who love or are curious about movement. Here in the company of non-dancers and dancers, we get supple and strong, we explore expressions, we celebrate creativity, we expand empathy, we move and are moved.

Tap Into Your Intuition

Clear out your mental clutter and emotional blockages to tap into your intuition. Using a variety of healing modalities, you will connect with your higher intuitive self.

The Body Electric

Take a somatic dive into the depths of the self with an enlivening, vigorous moving meditation that borrows from a variety of modalities, incorporates ancestral movement, and culminates in seated stillness. Shake, sound, and dance your way to deepened connection with your miraculous body, and with the body of the world.

The Energetics of Emotions

Understanding the emotional-physical body connection is an incredible key to living a full life. Come take space exploring where emotions reside in the body, building emotional fluency for resilience, and developing your personal emotional lexicon to experience how feeling your emotions can unlock your potential.

Visionary Convergence: AI and the Awakening of Creative Potential

This interactive, process-based class explores the playful and generative intersections of art and artificial intelligence. Guided by the philosophy of the human potential movement, participants will become co-creators with AI, engaging in hands-on projects that transform their voices across languages, create music, and engage in philosophical conversations with AI, challenging their perceptions of art, creativity, and technology.

Morning Movement

7:30 – 8:30 am
T, W, Th, Sa, Su

Soak in the bright energy of the morning during an invigorating movement program. Class styles will vary with each teacher, so come prepared to move your body in a new and heart-opening experience.

All levels are welcome.

Afternoon Class

2:15 – 3:15 pm
T, W, Th, Sa

The content of our afternoon classes depends on the teacher, and ranges from visioning to meditation, sound healing to forest bathing, creative expression, writing, and more.

Bring your journal, pen, and open mind.

MONDAY



No classes on Monday

TUESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven
Lawn Tent


10 – 11:00 am
Expand
Lawn Tent


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore
Lawn Tent

WEDNESDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven
Lawn Tent


10 – 11:00 am
Expand
Lawn Tent


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore
Lawn Tent

THURSDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven
Lawn Tent


10 – 11:00 am
Expand
Lawn Tent


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore
Lawn Tent

FRIDAY


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore
Lawn Tent

SATURDAY


7:30 – 8:30 am
Enliven
Lawn Tent


10 – 11:00 am
Expand
Lawn Tent


4 – 5:00 pm
Restore
Lawn Tent

SUNDAY



No classes on Monday

Meet Our Teachers
Staff
Staff
:
Ongoing
Sadia Bruce
Sadia Bruce
:

Sadia Bruce (E-RYT 500, YACEP) combines her expertise in breath-based movement, her reverence for the human experience and her energetic gifts to guide you to an electrifying sense of your own embodiment. With over 20 years of teaching experience across disciplines and contexts, and over 15 years of dedicated yoga practice, Sadia endeavors to create energized, radically inclusive learning environments that are guided by breath and driven by inquiry.

Body Language

A spacious, slow-paced exploration of the body home using therapeutic yoga and other somatic modalities to make space for breath, alleviate tension, and access greater mobility and fluidity — in flesh and bones, and in life. Accessible to all levels.

Breathscapes

A transformative breathwork journey rooted in rhythm, designed to reconnect you with the innate cycles of your body and the natural world. This dynamic practice weaves together accessible breathing patterns, sound, and movement to foster deep connection, release stress, and bring you back into balance. By harmonizing your breath with the pulse of life, Breathscapes helps you heal burnout, cultivate self-love, and gain clarity, offering a profound space for transformation and embodied presence. Whether you seek renewal or reprieve, Breathscapes is a powerful gateway to inner alignment and vitality.

Megan Cassamas
Megan Cassamas
:

For nearly a decade Megan has provided a somatic-based approach to yoga. Her passion is to serve as a guide to support others in bridging meditation and motion in empowering embodiment classes. She is the founder of Moja Yoga.

MojaFlow

MojaFlow is an experience to provoke and elevate you to discover new realms of energy and inspire you to experience the joy of going beyond barriers in your own practice and life. Class will include a somatic warm-up, breath-work, and strengthening exercises to support the body/mind connection.

Jovinna Chan
Jovinna Chan
:

Jovinna Chan, E-RYT 500, YACEP, is co-founder of Shakti Initiation Yoga Leadership School and A Wild Life Sanctuary™. She is a certified Soul Motion™ and LetYourYogaDance Teacher, and co-founder of Pranotthan School of Yoga. She leads transformational programs around the world.

Soul Movement Sanctuary

This is a conscious dance practice for people who love or are curious about movement. Here in the company of non-dancers and dancers, we get supple and strong, we explore expressions, we celebrate creativity, we expand empathy, we move and are moved.

Pranotthan Yoga

In class we contemplate spiritual/philosophical teachings, slow down and move mindfully by co-ordinating breath with movement, sustain poses to deepen focus and awareness, practice breathing exercises and meditation to hone skillfulness in listening to the inner subtle experiences.

Cara Chandler
Cara Chandler
:

While at Esalen, Cara realized her path of holistic healing. Using her background in Entertainment paired with yoga, meditation, and psychology, Cara has crafted a practice to support self-expression, self-discovery and cultivate a mind-body connection.

Find Your Authentic Voice

Sink below the mind chatter and external layer to tap into your authentic voice and share who you truly are. Meditation, movement, and written reflections.

Holistic Yoga Flow

An all-level Hatha-inspired physical practice paired with breathwork and mindfulness to rediscover your intuition and cultivate your mind-body connection.

Tap Into Your Intuition

Clear out your mental clutter and emotional blockages to tap into your intuition. Using a variety of healing modalities, you will connect with your higher intuitive self.

Micha Merrick
Micha Merrick
:

Micha shares vibrational ritual and embodied herbalism as a heartfelt communion with our living ecosystem. Through personal mentorship with shamanic Lahu medicine women of Thailand and spiritual midwives in Bali, Micha currently facilitates the Herbal Clearing Ritual at Esalen, an energetic healing practice combining sound, touch, herbs, and intention. Micha offers sanctuary and grounding in connection with the earth.

Bathing Rituals of Self Renewal

Meditate with the surging energy of the waves and let tension dissolve on the ocean breeze. Adorned with flowers and local healing herbs, this unique experience at the Esalen baths blends personal inquiry, herbal education, and sensory delight. Each ritual is an emergent collaboration of sound, sensation, intention, and floral offering to the sea. Come early, class size is very limited.

Sam Stern
Sam Stern
:

Sam is the host of the Voices of Esalen podcast, a deep-dive interview program focused on Human Potential, with over 1 million downloads to date. He is a graduate of Brown University and received an MFA in Critical Studies and Integrated Media from CalArts. His greatest pleasure is spending time with his wife Candice and daughter Roxy.

A Brief History of Esalen: The 60's

Join Sam for a deep-dive into Esalen's archives to explore the transformative origins of the Esalen Institute and Human Potential. Discover the roots of a movement that forever changed the landscape of personal growth and self-discovery.

Open Classes

Please note, the schedule is subject to change. Check listings on-campus during your stay for the most current information.

Open classes are available to all registered guests on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no need to sign up in advance for open classes.