Workshops

Selah is the call of grace to make art at the edge of the world. At the end of the world. — Bayo Akomolafe

We are often reminded that for social change to be transformative, it must be scaled up. It must be big, written in bold fonts across the night sky. Unambiguously clear. We are told that this is how differences come to bear; this is how the “new” shows up — with a messianic roar that rends the clouds asunder. With a splash that makes headline news.

The Selah retreats are a turning to grace. A concourse outside of the normal vicissitudes of citizenship. A tuning fork for grace. Grace is movement: finding safety in leaving safety.

The Selah retreats are an attempt to create art together – art without subjects or objects. The art we make isn’t a finished product, an imposed goal, a pre-designed fabrication, or a project for museum installations. The “art” is undefined, incomprehensible, composed of many griefs and many questions, a tracing of the slightest tremors of perception, a lingering at the material precipices of normal perception, a working with failure to craft gestures that might sensitize us to different differences.

The question at the heart of the Selah retreats is how do we become good hosts to “this monster” — to awkward grace? What could it look like to nourish the minor, to sing to it, to bring something incomprehensible into the world?

Surrounded by story, song, poetry, reading together, and crafting work, we will seek to build mbaris, an Igbo indigenous aesthetic of art, communal responsibility, and experimentation at the edges of crisis. These simultaneous streams of vocations that soften the neurotypical gaze will travel alongside the teachings and guidance of Bayo Akomolafe.

Esalen is the trailhead to one of the most spectacular mountainous coastlines in the world. With the Big Sur wilderness as the primary teacher, participants will explore the beauty of this wild coast — one of the most spectacular mountainous coastlines in the world —  which includes ancient canyons of redwoods, dramatic coastal beaches, rugged rocky mountains, and soft grassy slopes.

Drawing from nature and using various experiential awareness practices, individuals will be encouraged to open to the landscapes of both the natural world and their inner world. It is said that Big Sur is not just a place but a state of mind. This wilderness experience seeks to merge mind and place, then to embody what is learned.

Participants in this weeklong workshop will venture out into the emerging springtime magnificence of Big Sur on day-hikes between four to eight miles. Steven will draw from a wide range of contemporary and age-old wisdom traditions, borrowing from psychology, meditation, aikido, and the natural sciences to weave together a holistic experience of self and the natural world.

Each hike will begin right after breakfast and conclude in time to enjoy the hot springs and dinner at the Lodge. Evening sessions will include informal sharing and basic awareness practices with attention to incorporating what we’ve learned into our daily lives.

All levels of experience are welcome. Be prepared for the invigorating challenge of physical activity that the mountains of Big Sur require and the opportunity to simply sit still in quiet reflection. More information and a waiver will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, visit FAQs.

This workshop has $80 of additional faculty tuition and $40 for park entrance fees.

In the mountains east of Esalen, an enchanting, ecologically diverse, and psycho-spiritually fertile wilderness awaits. Over four nights and five days, we will engage in a contemporary form of pilgrimage, backpacking as reverent seekers through these ancestral lands of the Esselen Tribe, now known as the Big Sur backcountry. Our journey will conclude at the coastal grounds of Esalen Institute with a weekend of reflection and integration.

Since time immemorial, people have taken time away from the patterns and demands of daily life to walk with intention on sacred trails — pursuing embodied spiritual wisdom, expansion, and community. In our modern era of profound ecological degradation and severance from place-based ways of life, wilderness pilgrimage is a powerful practice for restoring relationship with the Earth and the depths of our shared humanity.

Each day of our wild pilgrimage, we will rise with the sun, carry only what we need, and walk with presence and curiosity to meaningfully encounter our inner and outer landscapes. As we hike and camp, we will learn foundational wilderness ethics and skills to feel at home in the wild. When night falls, we will share stories and meals by the fire and sleep beneath a blanket of stars.

Inspired by Esalen’s co-founder Dick Price, who found healing in the Big Sur wild and the Esalen community, our intimate and intergenerational cohort will embrace mutual support — engaging relational practices from Price’s Gestalt lineage to authentically connect with ourselves and one another.

Our pilgrimage community will include the more-than-human world: ancient redwoods, sandstone boulders, surging springs, playful jays, and all the countless beings of Big Sur. Through guided mythopoetic, ecological, and somatic inquiry, we will expand our literacy of wild nature, awaken our senses, and cultivate embodied awareness of our interconnection.

May the ardor and intentionality of our trek, across 30 miles of rugged terrain, wash away calcified layers from our essential selves to reveal bright resilience and aliveness. When we arrive at Esalen, we will turn our attention toward integration and service. In accord with the ancient spirit of pilgrimage, how will we carry what we’ve gathered on this journey into our lives, communities, and lands back home?

Important Notes:

• The full experience takes place over seven days, from Monday, April 28th to Sunday, May 4th, 2025.
• Experience with backpacking or Esalen/Gestalt is not required.
• This is a partner program with Wildtender, an organization working at the intersection of wilderness and wisdom traditions. Prior to registering with Esalen, you will need to register and pay tuition fees through Wildtender for the wilderness portion of the program. For more details and to register, visit wildtender.com/esalen2025

Hapé, the sacred tobacco snuff, has been derived from one of the most respected plants among Indigenous peoples of the Americas for thousands of years, traditionally prepared using dried tobacco leaves and ash from special trees from the Amazon rainforest.

By applying hapé medicine to the nostrils, users activate their senses in unique ways. The potent blend stimulates both physical sensations and inner visions, enabling individuals to explore their spirituality on a deeper level. This sensory experience often leads to profound insights and revelations about one’s purpose in life.

The Global North is now experiencing an explosion of interest in psychedelics and plant medicine, leading therapists, doctors, artists, businesses, non-profit organizations, and researchers to embrace sacred plants as tools for improving health, awakening spirituality, and enhancing creativity. In this workshop, we will talk about the therapeutic, scientific, and cultural dimensions of hapé, covering the diversity of its uses and the most appropriate and beneficial ways to consume it.

Together, we will:

• Identify key points for building good practices in diverse contexts to facilitate and integrate the use of hapé snuff.
• Discuss the complex ethical and cultural challenges associated with the use of hapé.
• Address ways to give back and cultivate reciprocity with Indigenous peoples.
• Learn scientific aspects and traditional perspectives on this plant medicine.
• Prepare the hapé medicine with our own hands, a complex and sacred process that is still largely unknown in the Global North.
• Participate in a hapé ceremony.

Though hapé is legal in the US and is spreading rapidly around the world, it is important to recognize that this is a traditional medicine with different ways of preparation, different types of blowing, and different plants that can make up each recipe. We will explore how to responsibly manage a relatively complex set of procedures and activities. Cultural sensitivity, preparation of the container, silence, music, scent, dose size, and duration are all important aspects to consider for a safe and meaningful experience.

Recommended reading: https://plantmagiccollective.org/hape-medicine-sacred-shamanic-snuff-explained/

This workshop includes a $25 material fee.

Do you love the beauty of the outdoors and delight in the wonder of nature? Do you want to learn how to meditate outdoors? Would you like practices to stay grounded, connected, and open-hearted in life? Then what better place to discover all this than in the majesty of the Big Sur coastline, where we are serenaded by the lulling sounds of the ocean, cradled by rolling hills, and uplifted by exquisite gardens?

Following ancient spiritual traditions that value the transformative power of nature, this experiential workshop will be spent entirely outdoors to explore embodied sensory practices in the natural beauty and mystery of Esalen. Whether during a sunset meditation as we listen to the soothing waves or while we sit graced by the stillness of cypress trees, we will open to the profound serenity and wisdom of nature.

You will learn about the practice of mindfulness — the capacity to be present to ourselves and our environment — and how it supports a rich, contemplative relationship with nature. You will discover how meditative time outdoors leads to beautiful states of joy, peace, wonder, and love. You will also experience greater connection with yourself, with others, and with the larger web of life.

Recommended reading: Awake in the Wild and A Field Guide to Nature Meditation by Mark Coleman

This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

The natural world – in all its arresting beauty and enchanting complexity – calls out for our presence and reverence.There are subtle currents of communion and communication happening all around us; the land and wild beings beckon us into expanded states of sensitivity, reciprocity and fellowship.

Immersed in the wilds of Big Sur, and the beautiful grounds of Esalen, we will cultivate our fundamental connection with the land. Through practices of sensate engagement, earth-based ritual, and mindfulness, we will build relationships with this place and our other-than-human kin. We will traverse physical hiking trails alongside the trails of intuition, affinity, and imagination. Following our innate curiosity, we will grow our ecological knowledge and uncover the stories of the mountains, waters, animals, plants, and fungi that live around us.

Acknowledging Big Sur to be the ancestral homeland of the Esselen tribe, we will endeavor to behave as reverent guests on sacred land. Regarding the landscape as both our teacher and relation, we will weave offerings of gratitude and respect into every practice. May these humble efforts help unsettle the anthropocentric paradigm of objectification and extraction which degrades our earth and all life.

Come wander with us, dear wild ones! Ground yourself in the peace of the soil, and feel your animal body lively and awake on the trail. Expand your awareness of the living world, and sense into a renewed state of wholeness – as we begin to relate reciprocally with the land.

Notes:

• Answers to frequently asked questions about the workshop can be found here.
• This workshop will consist of numerous, outdoor, physical practices and a great deal of walking, including two long-form hikes and one half-day hike. Various hiking abilities can be accommodated, bearing in mind that our long hikes are up to seven miles in length, over uneven and often steep terrain. Participants must be able to sit on the ground, practice outside in all weathers, and get a little dirty. If you have any questions about your ability to participate, please read the workshop FAQs or email info@wildtender.com.
• An additional $100 fee to cover parks permits and parking fees is included in the workshop cost.

Creating a profound connection to nature begins with observing and understanding the plants surrounding us, awakening to our symbiotic relationship with them. This workshop offers an opportunity to cultivate an intimate bond with a diverse selection of plants thriving in the Esalen landscape, learning their unique characteristics, stories, and the wisdom they impart. Together, we will embark on a journey to not only identify and appreciate these plants but to honor them through art by extracting their pigments and experiencing their colors in a new light.

Guided by the spirit of place, we will gather plants to create a color palette that reflects the soul of coastal California, immersing ourselves in the earthy, ocean-washed hues that define the land. This living palette will serve as both a tribute to and a recreation of Esalen’s essence, which we will channel into plein air painting — “in the open air” — around the Institute to be fully present in our surroundings and their subtle expressions. Each of the paintings will be alive with their botanical inks, changing and transforming to create a remembrance of the passage of time as they darken. As we gather plant materials for our inks, we will also gather a variety of plant material to make our unique handmade natural brushes.

Each participant will be provided with high-quality materials, including multiple sizes of Arches watercolor paper, a custom handmade porcelain palette, and ink bottles, completing their personal Esalen ink kit. This kit will become a cherished tool for you to bring the beauty and spirit of the natural world into your own art practice, enabling you to deepen your connection to both the Esalen environment and the plants that surround you in your own life. Join us on this transformative journey and embrace a holistic approach to creativity, nature, and mindful expression.

This workshop includes an additional $50 of material fees.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed. — Mary Oliver

From the beginning of time, the natural world has called humans to pause, reflect, and reconnect with life’s essence. This workshop invites you to immerse yourself in Big Sur’s awe-inspiring wilderness and the art of authentic contemplation. Together, we will deepen our awareness of the wilds within and around us, rediscovering the simple yet profound practice of being fully present and alive.

Big Sur’s stunning landscapes — rugged cliffs, ocean breezes, and ancient forests — will serve as both our setting and teacher. Through mindful awareness and direct experience, we can awaken our inherent connection to the elemental, allowing the magnificence of this wild world to touch our bodies, minds, and spirits.

Highlights of the Week:

• Nature as Teacher: Direct experience of the elements — earth beneath your feet, Pacific waves crashing, fresh coastal air, and Esalen’s healing hot springs — awakening all our senses to an animate world.
• Daily Wilderness Hikes: Venture 2–6 miles each day through diverse terrains to explore Big Sur’s natural beauty and rich ecological diversity.
• Contemplative Practices: Engage in timeless and contemporary practices of mindfulness, movement, and stillness, cultivating presence, aliveness and deeper relationships with self and the wilds.
• Community Connection: Share wholesome meals, heartfelt conversations, and moments of silence, fostering a sense of belonging with others and the eco-community of the wild natural world.
• Integration and Simplicity: Discover how to bring what you are touched by into daily life, with space for reflection on how to do less, be more, and live in alignment with what matters most.

This week is an invitation to slow down, step out of habitual patterns, and show up fully for life as it unfolds moment by moment. Whether walking, sitting, or simply being, we will cultivate space, silence, and stillness to meet the beauty and mystery of the world — within and without.

Come ready to explore the meeting places of mountain and sea, inner and outer landscapes, and the boundless wildness of existence.

Please note: This workshop will be a larger, nature-based group experience than Steven and Gary typically lead. Mornings will be spent together as a whole group, either indoors or on the Esalen grounds. After lunch, we will divide into smaller groups to explore Big Sur’s wilderness trails and be back in time for dinner at Esalen.

All levels of experience are welcome. Be prepared for the invigorating challenge of physical activity that the mountains of Big Sur require and the opportunity to simply sit still in quiet reflection. More information and a waiver will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, visit FAQs.

Recommended reading: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder‍

An additional $40 will be added to the workshop cost to cover permit and park entrance fees.

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Foraging is the antidote to our too-too-busy lives and convoluted, complex food systems. When we are out in nature, we learn to live by nature’s rules. Check the tides before heading out for clams, sea urchins, or seaweed. Notice rain patterns for optimal mushroom hunting. Learn the plants and trees that are delicious and can heal what ails you. Be very grateful to be an earthling.

What if we receive the generosity of planet Earth with reverence and pass it along? Could we then become a keystone species that improves habitat for ourselves and all other life that share this planet?  

In this immersive, experiential workshop, we’ll explore:

• Practical tips and education for foraging wild foods found in the woods, coast, and urban/suburban edges.
• Hands-on wildcrafting and techniques to preserve wild food.
• Deeply visceral (and fun) experiences in nature, following nature as a guide for healthful and seasonal eating.
• Journal prompts crafted to deepen our awareness of the natural world and open ourselves to transformation, creativity, and new culinary possibilities.

Big Sur is a spectacularly beautiful place, and gathering wild food is an intimate and fascinating way to discover it. Come spend a weekend tapping into your right brain, your animal body, your free spirit, your awe and wonder. Come fall in love with nature through wild foods.

“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”~ Alan Watts

Throughout the ages and across cultural traditions, nature has inspired the human spirit. The wilderness of Big Sur allows us to imprint the collective wisdom of this alive and wild coast in our bodies. The ancient redwood-forested canyons, dramatic meeting of earth and sea, and soft grassy hills remind us of the presence, wisdom, and deep sense of belonging that live in each of us.

This workshop will present simple yet profound practices designed to help us access our connections with the essential movement processes of life — and enhance our capacity to both participate and innovate. Along with physical practices, group discussions, and direct experience of nature, we will draw on ancient movement traditions of tai chi, aikido, and contemporary somatic practices that offer ways of centering, grounding, and knowing our belonging to the greater community of being.

During our time together, we will venture out on four to eight-mile hikes. Being immersed in the wild we are in an intimate embodied sensory dialogue that literally invites us to come to our senses. We will experience increasingly refined awareness and explore perceptual practices to enhance our sensitivity to all the wilderness offers, and reawaken the elements of wilderness within. With awakened senses, we can receive nature’s richness and beauty, inspiring a deepening relationship with grounding, centering, and embodiment.

All evenings and most meals will be at Esalen. All levels of experience are welcome, although participants should be prepared for vigorous physical activity that the mountains of Big Sur require — and the opportunity to simply sit still in quiet reflection. More information and a waiver will be sent upon registration. For an equipment list and frequently asked questions about Steven’s workshops, visit FAQs.

An additional $80 of faculty tuition and $40 to cover park fees have been added to this workshop.

In today’s unpredictable world, mastering negotiation is essential for effective leadership.

This highly interactive workshop will immerse you in real-world negotiation scenarios that mirror the complexity of today’s challenges. Using the Systemic Multi-Constituency Exercise (SMCE) method, you’ll engage in dynamic role-play simulations where competing interests, shifting alliances, and high stakes force you to think strategically, adapt quickly, and build trust in uncertain environments.

One such immersive simulation exercise, “The Coastal Crossroads,” places you in a pristine coastal region at the center of a heated development dispute. As members of a diverse coalition — including local government, Indigenous land stewards, environmental activists, fishermen, and luxury resort developers — you must negotiate land use policies, economic opportunities, and environmental protections while balancing sustainability, cultural heritage, and economic growth in the face of competing interests and escalating tensions.

Throughout the workshop, expert facilitation, peer feedback, and structured debriefs will help you refine your approach to coalition-building, resilience, and conflict navigation. You’ll explore negotiation strategies that extend beyond the bargaining table — leveraging human connection, systemic thinking, and creative problem-solving to lead with confidence in high-stakes situations. You will emerge with actionable strategies to manage complex challenges in leadership and everyday life.

Join us for an immersive experience that will transform how you think about negotiation, equipping you with practical tools to navigate chaos, crisis, and complexity with clarity and strength.

**Special Notes on Attendance:

Full Workshop Participation Strongly Encouraged.

This workshop is designed as a deeply immersive experience in which each session builds upon the last, culminating in a collective debrief and reflection on Sunday. To honor the integrity of the process and the group experience, we ask that all participants commit to full participation from Friday through Sunday.

Past workshops have shown that when participants come and go, it disrupts the flow of engagement and can diminish the experience for both the individual and the group. The immersive nature of this training relies on trust, presence, and continuity, and stepping away from key moments may limit the depth of your own learning as well as the collective insights of the group.

We invite you to fully step into this journey, embracing the challenges, breakthroughs, and transformations that emerge when you stay fully engaged from beginning to end. If you have any concerns about participation, please reach out to ntf@negotiationtaskforce.org in advance so we can support you in making the most of this experience.

To facilitate the assignment and creation of personalized roles for each participant in this immersive experience, workshop registration will close on August 8th, 2025.

This workshop includes an additional $50 for materials.

You are invited to an immersive weekend retreat where we will explore how to consciously and effectively respond to our planet’s call for regeneration. Be held by a supportive community and the wonders of the natural world as we learn ways to integrate body, mind, heart, and spirit in the regeneration of both your life and the Earth.

This retreat weaves together Raquel Santiago’s BioResilience somatic method, which restores individuals’ innate capacity for regeneration and deep rapport with nature through movement, and Manuel Maqueda’s approach to regenerative economics, which envisions wise and abundant human-Earth systems that nurture the health and renewal of the entire web of life.

Over the course of the weekend, you’ll be guided through mindfulness practices, accessible somatic and movement sessions, contemplative nature immersions, and playful community activities to illuminate your role in personal and collective regeneration during the challenging times of the Anthropocene.

Together, we will explore powerful practices that nurture both personal transformation and planetary healing. Through group discussions, we’ll consider fresh perspectives on regenerative thinking to foster a quantum leap from the traditional sustainability mindset.

Discover a renewed sense of empowerment and a deeper commitment to becoming an agent of planetary regeneration in your everyday life.

Recommended reading: Active Hope by Joanna Macy

For hundreds of thousands of years, plants have been humanity’s greatest allies, shaping culture in material and spiritual ways. Across the Northern Hemisphere, a shared cohort of plants has profoundly influenced human existence, providing sustenance, medicine, textiles, and more. Honored as wise relatives, they carry mythic and spiritual significance across diverse cultures, forming a thread of kinship connecting our ancestors across continents and histories. Though modernity has painfully estranged us from the expansive web of relationality that our ancestors shared with the more-than-human-world, we can reclaim our “inalienable belonging to the earth community,” in the words of Joanna Macy. Meeting our botanical kin with curiosity and intention is a gesture toward restoring this enchanted ecological paradigm.

Join us to meaningfully engage with the lore and lives of pan-culturally significant plants — such as oak, nettle, mint, mugwort, elder, and rose — attuning to their presence in Big Sur’s wildlands while cultivating our botanical and cultural literacy. Through hands-on collaboration and an approach of reciprocity instead of extraction, we will craft herbal medicines, natural pigments, fibers, and tools in a manner that benefits the land and plants. Ceremony will invite us to discover these plants’ archetypal dimensions, revealing their roles as teachers and healers. As guests on Esselen tribal land, we will root our explorations in respect and reverence, honoring the relational worldviews of all our land-connected ancestors. Guest faculty Ariel Johnson will offer somatic practices to help guide us into embodied kinship — grounding us in gravity, sensory awareness, and open-hearted presence with our floral relatives.

Through these efforts, we remember our belonging, and we are remembered in return. The plants know us, after all, and welcome us back into our ancient traditions of botanical kinship.

Important Notes:

This retreat will include one full-day immersion as well as two half-day hiking excursions in the Big Sur wilderness, involving hikes up to 3 miles each. Please be aware that the hiking terrain can be steep, rugged, and sometimes strenuous, including prolonged sun exposure. Participants must be able to hike and carry what they need for the day: 2 liters of water, pack lunch provided by Esalen, and sun protection. Other workshop sessions will be mostly situated outdoors on the Esalen property.

This workshops includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 for park entrance fees.