Workshops

Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation through movement, guided meditation, and the profound practice of Yoga Nidra. This workshop is designed to restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from experiencing a state of calm, clarity, and balance.

Yoga Nidra, which translates to “yogic sleep,” guides you to that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, where you can systematically release stored physical, emotional, and mental tensions. In this state, you can let go of old beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the past and fearful of the future. With this practice, you can fully experience your emotions while knowing that there is unchanging, unshakable ground beneath you — a calm inner presence that allows you to see clearly and navigate life with greater ease.

Throughout the retreat, we will work with our bodies and minds, creating clear intentions to shift from living by unconscious, automatic programming and find a new perspective — an aware, deliberate way of being. You’ll explore how to bring this newfound awareness of your true self into your personal life, relationships, work, and moments of solitude and love.

Together, we will cultivate new tools to help us navigate when we feel lost, tired, or confused and forget who we are. These guiding instruments can help us negotiate life’s challenges, welcome them as opportunities, and remember our true nature.

This workshop is a unique opportunity to recognize your wholeness, the truth of who you are, and the inner peace that has always been within you — that unchanging, unshakable ground of being that you are. All that is being asked of you is to show up, lie down, and let go. Yoga Nidra will do the rest.

What to bring: blankets, a yoga mat, an eye pillow, and anything else you need to lie comfortably on the floor for extended periods. We’ll also have opportunities to practice outdoors, so make sure you have layers to stay comfortable in varying conditions.

Recommended Reading: Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep, by Kamini Desai; and Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation Healing, by Richard Miller

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

Joseph Campbell used to celebrate his birthday at Esalen. When asked why, he’d recount how Carl Jung — wondering, “What myth am I living by?” and realizing he didn’t know — wrote, “I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks.”

“That’s what a birthday is for,” Campbell concluded, “and what Esalen is about.” In 1988, the year after Campbell died, his friends recalled his dictum — “What you do, you do with play” — and gathered at Esalen to inaugurate “Campbell Week,” a tradition that has continued annually ever since and morphed into this annual PlayShop.

Who were you? What has inspired your biographical saga? What treasures hide in your basement or attic? Who are you? What’s displayed on your refrigerator? What dangles from your rearview mirror? Who do you aspire to be? What’s on your bucket list? Dare to re-vision yourself and join our springtime rebirth rituals.

You needn’t be familiar with Campbell to relive dreams, rekindle visions, and experience mythogenesis. In this immersive experience, we will use myth-making tools — drums and dance, music and song, medicine bags, and masks. We will play D-PiCT™: The Game of Mythogenesis, and we will engage in small- and large-group activities that provide reflective and expressive opportunities for revisioning the myths that have shaped your life.

Please bring a meaningful but expendable totem, an unsung story, or an evocative song.

Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervish to the Shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain.

This five-day retreat is an invitation to come together to awaken the forgotten wild, ignite your creativity, and dance our way to wholeness. Through an alchemical combination of movement, nature, and sound healing, we’ll reconnect our bodies and minds,  digest our feelings and emotions, and open ourselves to the wisdom of our hearts. Most of all, we’ll expand our vision to include a bigger perspective on our spiritual and human interconnectedness.

The practices we’ll cultivate this week will help you:

• Release fear, inhibition, and judgment.
• Trust your body’s innate wisdom to guide you.
• Revive a sluggish nervous system.
• Clear energetic blockages.
• Step into your uniqueness and self-expression with confidence.

Allow yourself to be nourished by this sacred land, the hot spring waters, the time we share together, and the friends you’ll make. Experience the beauty, awe, and wonder of being alive so you may return home rejuvenated and inspired to continue walking your unique life path.
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This workshop includes an additional $55 in faculty tuition.

Our sense of self develops in connection with others and our experiences in early relationships. They shape our beliefs — about ourselves, other people, and what is possible for us in our lives. While we cannot change the past, we can change the parts of our lives that we find difficult or unfulfilling through new experiences of contact. When our need for understanding and emotional attunement is met, our limiting beliefs can change.

In this workshop, we will:

• Learn skills that will increase our presence and awareness.
• Improve our ability to make good contact.
• Explore how to establish healthy boundaries.
• Develop and track awareness of our physical sensations and emotions.
• Communicate our needs and wants effectively.
• Discover habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating the type of connection we long for.

This workshop includes time for basic gestalt awareness practices, a mixture of didactic and experiential exercises, and some participants will have the opportunity to experience individual “open seat” sessions with Dorothy and with the support of the group

Recommended reading: Korb et al., Gestalt Therapy: Practice and Theory; Mann, Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques

Learn how mindfulness and self-compassion can change everything about how you feel, how you relate and how you live ― for good.

In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro ― a leading scientist studying the effects of mindfulness + compassion on well-being ― shows us that acting with compassion toward ourselves is the key. She explains basic brain science and offers powerful science-based practices to alleviate anxiety, boost creative thinking, and deepen our sense of belonging and purpose. With practice, we can literally rewire our brains for greater feelings of calm, clarity, connection, and joy. We will immerse ourselves in the natural beauty of Esalen, allowing the sounds of the ocean, the magnificent views and delights of the gardens to nourish and support us.

This workshop is appropriate for anyone curious about mindfulness + compassion and how to deepen our connection with the beauty and mystery of life. All are welcome.

Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire the Brain for Calm, Clarity + Joy and Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity + Joy by Shauna Shapiro.

This workshop includes an additional $375 faculty tuition. *For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for a tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.

“A brain without a body couldn’t think.” — Moshe Feldenkrais

“We want to get you to a place where gravity is your friend, a nourishing force.” — Dr. Ida P. Rolf

Human beings are relational by nature. We are an intricate web of anatomy, energy, space, and time that takes shape through our life experiences. Our physical structure, function, and sense of self are reflected in our fascial layers and formed by our early development, by principles of self-organization, and by how we engage with our environment.

When we fall into habitual patterns, parts of ourselves become undeveloped, unseen. If our bodies are given a setting in which to relate to gravity, others, and our environment with curiosity and attunement, we can be free to move and relate with more choice and ease.

Using the grounds, waters, and spirit of Esalen as our laboratory, Kate and Kevin will use the Feldenkrais Method and Gestalt process as a guide to contact and nurture the influences of the subtle body – our relationship to ground, gravity, and the space between.

In this workshop, participants will:

• Identify the habitual relational patterns that prevent us from cultivating ease in our lives.
• Investigate how the subtle body is influenced by the principles of emotional anatomy, tensegrity, neuroplasticity, and self-organization through experiential movement.
• Be guided through Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons tailored toward the subtle body and creating more sophistication in functional movement.
• Explore sensation, weight, gravity, and relationship through movement and contact.
• Learn tools of Gestalt Relational Process to increase presence and awareness and integration of ourselves.

Recommended Reading: Feldenkrais, The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion; Gladis, Tales of a Wounded Healer: Creating Exact Moments of Healing; Bodywise: An Introduction to Hellerwork for Regaining Flexibility & Well-Being.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. – Alan Watts

In these ever-changing times, our familiar ways of being and knowing are often shaken to the core. Yet, life invites us to remember our innate capacity for resilience, an open heart, and the possibility of living intimately with the mystery of the unknown. We are called to meet uncertainty—both within and around us—with openness and a willingness to say “yes” to life. We learn to embrace life as a dance, even when we cannot see the next step.

This workshop offers a gentle experiential exploration of how to cultivate curiosity, courage, and compassion in relationship with life’s mysteries. Together, we will begin where we are and embrace "what is" with a deepening awareness of our human experience. By acknowledging and turning toward the discomfort of not knowing, we can transform it into a powerful source of energy—awakening the potential of our body, heart, and mind.

Drawing from wisdom traditions, contemplative practices, and somatic and neuropsychology, we are  invited to explore:  

• How to live more fully in the presence of mystery.
• Embodied emotional and somatic intelligence.
• Practical tools for regulating the nervous system, building resilience, and shifting into a responsive, present  state.
• Movement, grounding, and centering practices that allow being in and with the unknown.
• A deepened connection to self, others, and the more-than-human world.

Embracing the great mystery of life is a process of letting go of the need for definitive answers and allowing space for the unexpected and unfamiliar to unfold. By living with an open heart, body, and mind, we can dance into the interconnectedness of all things, allowing life to live through us as we navigate an ever-changing world.

Join us in this transformative journey of discovery, where we learn to welcome the mystery with grace and live more fully from a place of embodied presence—saying “yes" to life.

Profound relaxation and rejuvenation lie at the intersection of land and sky. In this weekend intensive, we will explore the Tibetan art of rejuvenation, also known as chulen, meaning “essence-taking.” These “rare” inner yogic methods of self-healing include meditations on the sky (space), bathing in natural springs (water), breathing (wind), and movement practices. Inner yoga, or tsalung methods, promotes longevity and life enhancement by strengthening the body’s elements, subtle channels, and vital energies.

As we are immersed in Big Sur’s natural springs and open sky, these practices will settle the body and its vital channels so that we can draw in the essence of the natural environment. Overlooking the cliffs and gazing out on the horizon will support settling into our natural awareness, stillness, and inner spaciousness, all essential for rejuvenation.

These ancient healing methods and the unique natural landscape are brought together for a rejuvenation weekend accessible to participants of all levels of experience. Classes will also include informative lectures to complement our guided meditations and yoga sessions.

When we know how to listen to the body, it will speak with great wisdom. —Tsoknyi Rinpoche

What if your body and mind were not separate entities but part of a dynamic continuum, constantly shaping your experience of the world? In this three-day retreat at Esalen, we’ll explore the interplay between body and mind as a field of research, using ancient somatic meditation practices and contemporary techniques like breathwork and movement research to uncover what lies beneath our habitual patterns of tension, thought, and emotion.

Through this immersive experience, you will:

• Practice somatic meditation, developing a deeper awareness of the subtle dialogue between body and mind.
• Participate in movement research, using the body as a tool for creative expression and inquiry.
• Engage in breathwork, exploring its role in regulating the nervous system and unlocking embodied presence.
• Explore how the body holds emotions and patterns, discovering tools to release and integrate these experiences.
• Leave with practical tools for integrating somatic awareness into daily life.

This retreat offers a grounded and experiential approach to understanding the body-mind connection. It’s an opportunity to step out of autopilot and into direct experience — curious, clear, and fully present. Some prior experience in meditation, mindfulness, and movement is desirable but not a requirement.

How can we know the future? Is it determined? How does the past, specifically past lives, influence the future? In this workshop, we will explore how our previous existences are impacting us in the present and how understanding our past lives can transform the future we are creating.

Together, we will reveal the wisdom of the past and how it relates to where we are now. We’ll participate in group past life regressions to help uncover past life memories and engage with practical tools to integrate and use the knowledge of your own past in your life today.

By understanding the idea that we are souls, not bodies —  that all of the identities we have formed during this current life are actually false identities — we can embrace the fact that we have all lived many lifetimes in different forms and bodies, with different backgrounds, races, and religions. Through this perspective, we can eradicate the concept of “other” and eliminate bias, prejudice, and hate. Accessing past life knowledge could be the key to building a future society filled with compassion, empathy, equality, and love.

During the week, we will engage in intention setting, journaling work, creative exercises, and group past life regressions, leaving plenty of time for questions and discussions. On Thursday night, we will have a fire ritual to release our past lives in order to free ourselves for a brand-new future for both ourselves and all of humanity.

This workshop is open to all. Join us and help create a future that is free of the past!

Recommended Reading: Who Do You Think You Are? An Interactive Journey Through Your Past Lives and Into Your Best Future by Michelle Brock

Discover research-backed tools to create a loving relationship. Together, we’ll engage in a comprehensive exploration of the psychological and scientific aspects of dating and healthy relationships. We’ll delve into the science of attraction, unlocking the mysteries of chemistry and creating and sustaining meaningful connections — all grounded in the latest research on relationships.

Our key focus will be the art of building deeper connections through effective communication techniques and empathetic understanding. You’ll learn how to nurture skills that foster intimacy, trust, and lasting bonds. Mastering a comprehensive framework for effective communication is essential for stronger, more resilient relationships, and you’ll learn practical ways to apply these skills in your daily interactions.

In this workshop, you’ll find out how to create a personal relationship narrative that aligns with your current life. Reflective exercises will help you identify and rewire limiting beliefs about love for healthier and more fulfilling bonds. The “Dating Funnel” framework, a structured approach that demystifies the various stages of relationship development, will provide a clear strategy for navigating the dating world, from initial contact to a committed relationship.

By the end of our time together, you will be equipped with a comprehensive set of tools to navigate your relationship journey with confidence and clarity. Understand the foundations of attraction, develop communication skills, and reshape your love narrative.

This workshop is open to all gender identities and expressions and all sexual orientations.

This workshop includes $10 additional fee for a workbook.

Recommended Reading: Breakup Bootcamp: The Science of Rewiring Your Heart by Amy Chan

Have you ever worked hard to make a change, only to find yourself slipping back into old habits? Want to supercharge your ability to stimulate behavior change in others when it comes to the issues you care about the most? Is it time to break free from old patterns and build your next chapter? This workshop is for people in the process of change and those who work as change agents with individuals, groups, and organizations and in society.

Through dialogue, experiential practice, and creative process, we will bridge the science of breakthroughs with indigenous, religious, spiritual, and secular models of transformation. You will:

• Learn what works and what doesn’t to inspire lasting change in yourself and others.
• Explore how peak experiences, a-ha! moments and awe can stimulate change.
• Examine how we and those we work with can get stuck or lost, and find ways to shake free from periods of inertia or patterns that prevent us from moving forward.
• Investigate the transformative potential of pain, hitting bottom, and post-traumatic growth.
• Delve into stories, symbols, and metaphors of transformation to guide your path.

Join us for this transformational exploration of our most deeply entrenched behaviors. Learn how to break free from the patterns that no longer serve you — and create new habits that will change your life.

Additional embodiment practices will be provided by Guest Faculty Member Nichol Chase.

Nichol’s yoga practice is informed by a vast and eclectic set of influences that blend invigorating flow with precise and insightful instruction and extensive study with a variety of innovative teachers. She is a Garrison Institute Fellow and a faculty member and teacher trainer for The Mazé Method.

Continuing education credit is available for professionals through the Spiritual Competency Academy, an approved sponsor of CE by the American Psychological Association. If you plan to apply for CE credit, please notify the Faculty during your first workshop session. Additional Continuing Education information here.

Imagine reconnecting with a part of you – the Divine Feminine – that brings you back into balance and harmony with yourself and all your relations. This transformative workshop combines social and political knowledge, energy- and earth-based practices, and embodiment exercises to help you release fears, resentment, and pain while inviting intuition, surrender, and flow to create a deeper sense of wholeness in your life. I call this Decolonial Wellness, a way of healing relationships.

At the root of social, political, and economic inequities between men and women is the patriarchal culture’s colonial denigration of femininity. This central conflict in our society is something we learn at an early age and carry in our emotional, perceptual, sensory, and physical selves. Embracing femininity benefits not only women and femmes. Femininity is a spiritual energy and quality of the universe that is necessary to balance and restore us all. The Feminine Principle includes qualities like allowing, intuition, patience, nurturing, connection, mother love, and the generative principle of life itself.  

During the workshop, you will experience:

• Heart-centered journeys to connect with the energy of Mother.
• Light movement with breath, body, earth, and trees.
• Teaching sessions for frameworks of understanding.
• Creative writing for self-reflection and expression
• Group dialogue for connection and affirmation.
• A closing ceremony and celebration to set intentions and launch a new path.

This workshop is an opportunity to see beyond the distortions of patriarchy to something truer about ourselves where our heart’s desires are not at odds with one another. To connect with the Divine Feminine can be a balm and antidote that heals the instilled resentments, hostility, and fear that divide us. The workshop is open to people of all gender identities and expressions.

What is vitality? Exuberance, vibrance, sparkle, spirit, and verve — terms rarely found in psychology textbooks. Vulnerability to depression and anxiety is widespread, and our culture traditionally emphasizes reducing symptoms with drugs that alter certain neurotransmitters, which is only part of the picture. We are living in a new era where vulnerabilities can become strengths, and what used to be stigma becomes common humanity. Good mental health is being redefined in terms of stress resilience, post-traumatic growth, and vitality.

This workshop explores evidence-based tools for living a vibrant life, even in the presence of stress, depression, anxiety, or any pain we may be carrying. We will help you build your own ecosystem of mental well-being — including new ways to foster vitality and purpose through caring for the brain, body, and gut. In this workshop, we’ll review the latest scientific findings on practices such as:

• Hot and cold exposures
• Optimal physical challenges
• Breathing techniques
• Meditation
• Embodied movement

A mental health renaissance is underway. Mental well-being is being redefined, and a range of evidence-based, whole-person approaches are gaining ground. Learn from renowned authors and cutting-edge scientists to create a flourishing ecosystem of mental well-being for yourself and your clients.

Additional embodiment practices will be provided by Guest Faculty Member Nichol Chase.

Nichol’s yoga practice is informed by a vast and eclectic set of influences that blend invigorating flow with precise and insightful instruction and extensive study with a variety of innovative teachers. She is a Garrison Institute Fellow and a faculty member and teacher trainer for The Mazé Method.

8 CE credits available for professionals through the Spiritual Competency Academy.  Additional Continuing Education information here.

Recommended reading: The Stress Prescription: Seven Days to More Joy and Ease by Elissa Epel; The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel; Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Clinical Practice: Guidelines for Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals by Cassandra Vieten; Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life by Cassandra Vieten

This workshop has an additional $30 of faculty tuition.

We are erotic primates living in culturally imposed domestication. We have the lineage and bodies of hunter-gatherers, but we exist in a modern context that is deeply afraid of Eros. Like other domesticated animal species, we have been removed from the wild to live a more settled life. For many of us, this has had the unfortunate effect of cutting ourselves off from the somatic and erotic aliveness within our own bodies, both in our relationships and from the whole of our lives.

In this modern world, we are often left wondering, Why does my sexuality feel so difficult, unsatisfying, and limited? Why do my erotic relationships seem unsustainable and challenging? How do I access my erotic aliveness? Am I sexually broken, and how do I fix…me?

You are not broken! It’s not you. It’s the domestication — the context that cuts so many of us off from our bodies and aliveness.

In this workshop, you will be invited to:

• Develop a working understanding of what it means to ReWild Eros and un-domesticate the erotic body.
• Creatively explore the foundation of somatic erotic sovereignty.
• Discover the role of internalized and social shame in interfering with erotic connection to your body.
• Understand how Grief and Eros are connected and the role of moving grief in reclaiming and liberating erotic expression.
• Use playful, connective, and experiential somatic practices to build erotic energy and aliveness.
• Learn how to integrate these practices to create erotic sustainability in your life and relationships.

Together, we’ll explore traditional, experiential, and somatic learning, including exercises with movement, consensual touch, and group interaction. Participants will have agency to modify any exercise for their boundaries and safety. Although erotic healing and growth are part of this experience, this workshop will not be supportive for people with unaddressed primary sexual or somatic trauma.

This workshop is for individuals, couples, and people of all relationship orientations. People of all sexual and gender identities are welcome and celebrated. This workshop is sex-positive and erotic-inclusive and will rest on a foundation of embodied consent and boundaries practices. Though Eros is invited into the space, no overt sexual behavior will be part of the workshop.  

You are invited to bring a couple of small items for a shared altar that we will build together. The first item could connected to your family, lineage, or ancestors and the second could be connected to your body or sexuality. All items will be returned at the end of the workshop.

Recommended Reading: Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski,  The Spirit of Intimacy, by Sobonfu Somé, The Body is Not An Apology, by Sonya Renee Taylor, Reviving Kinship and Sexual Abundance, Dr. Kim Tallbear on For the Wild podcast.

Emotional well-being is the next frontier of health and a central challenge of the 21st century, according to US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Guided by Berkeley Professor Dacher Keltner, scientific consultant on Pixar’s Inside Out and Inside Out 2, we will tour the latest science and practice of emotional well-being.  In this workshop we will consider emotions in the body and brain; emotional expression and intelligence; how emotions influence our relationships, narratives, and search for meaning; and emotional regulation, wisdom, and acceptance.

Grounded in these advances, participants will:

• Explore the power language and culture has in shaping our capacity to understand emotions in a granular and complex way.
• Gain awareness of their own core passions and how they guide their sense of identity and meaning.
• Become skilled in the practice of emotional intelligence and in expressing and seeing emotion in others clearly and with authenticity.
• Gain an understanding of the centrality of emotions to relationships and how to cultivate kindness, forgiveness, love, and play
• Learn tools for emotional regulation, how to gain perspective while experiencing hard emotions such as anger and shame, and to practice acceptance by seeing the wisdom of emotions.
• Gain insights into cultivating emotions beneficial for intimate and work relations.
• Understand the role of emotions in our personal, moral, and spiritual lives.

The right balance of emotions could make up a majority of our well-being, and this course will provide the insights, tools, and practices to move us toward greater meaning in life.

Recommended Reading: Understanding Emotions by Dacher Keltner, Keith Oatley, Jennifer Jenkins

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.

What binds your Higher Self from soaring? What untapped reservoirs of power lie dormant within you, waiting to be awakened? How can you deepen your connection with your Highest Self to access its limitless wisdom and guiding light?

Embark on a sacred four-night journey of self-discovery and spiritual elevation with renowned medium and spiritual guide AJA Daashuur and multidisciplinary hypnotherapist Laurnie Wilson. Together, AJA and Laurnie will guide you into the depths of your soul so that you can unlock the profound blueprint of your journey, forge a deeper connection with your spirit guides, and awaken the latent potential within you.

The retreat experience begins with a grounding sacred ceremony to set powerful intentions and open the gateway to divine wisdom. Each day, AJA and Laurnie will gently guide you into your subconscious and beyond the veil, helping you access transformative insights that illuminate your path.

Through gentle yoga, reflective practices, and an active exploration of your Matrix of Destiny, you’ll be invited to integrate these celestial downloads into your body and everyday life. Each evening, AJA will channel personalized messages from your spirit guides, offering clarity, support, and guidance around your personal path questions to help you realign with your soul’s purpose.

By the end of our time together, you’ll leave with the tools to decode your divine blueprint, activate a deeper relationship with your spiritual team, and bring your revelations to life.

You hold the key to your inner compass. Join us to illuminate the path to your Higher Self and embrace the boundless possibilities that await you.

This workshop is designed to support us as we open to our own goodness and learn practices to awaken love in others. Based on timeless Buddhist principles, as well as key findings in modern neuroscience, we will explore how to cultivate and sustain certain wholesome states, which, through practice, become the perspective we embody.

By awakening our hearts, we have the power to affect both ourselves and others in a profound way. With practical and accessible exercises and teachings, we will explore the full spectrum of the awakened heart. We’ll discover ways to love ourselves and extend that love into our relationships so that we can truly delight in the joy of others.

During our time together, we will:

• Study the science behind real happiness.
• Discover healthier habits and beliefs through powerful awareness practices.
• Embrace and be embraced by a supportive community.
• Learn tools for a solid mindfulness practice.

Finally, we’ll explore freely expressing our capacity for compassionate action in a spirit of contribution. In this way, our own awakening heart becomes a gift to our troubled world. Join us as we practice and explore together!

Join us for an immersive five-day experience where ancient breath practices intersect with contemporary psychology to unlock the transformational power of your breath. For millennia, diverse yogic and spiritual traditions have harmonized breathwork with mindfulness to foster psychological healing and spiritual growth. Today, science validates the profound impact of breathwork and embodied awareness on stress management and immune resilience. Visionaries like Bessel van der Kolk champion the integration of breath, movement, awareness development, and educated touch for healing trauma.

On the sacred grounds of Esalen, under the expert guidance of the Hollomans, participants will have the opportunity to experience how breath can create altered states of consciousness, supporting deep psychological and spiritual exploration. Perry and Johanna use the powerful tool of Gestalt Inquiry to integrate these experiences into a deeper understanding of who we truly are. Participants will engage in various forms of breathwork, including extended two-to-three-hour breath journeys that open expanded states of consciousness and doorways to deeper dimensions of being. We will also begin our days with shorter, 50-minute “daily-dose” breath practices, perfect for at-home use.

Perry and Johanna will create a safe and supportive environment through Integrative Gestalt Practice and group sharing, ensuring that the insights gained from breathwork support your journey of healing and self-actualization.

In this seminar, we will:

• Engage in two extended two to three hour hologenic breath meditations to explore the unconscious mind and access altered states of consciousness, complemented by shorter, 50-minute “daily dose” breath practices for ongoing use at home.
• Learn the art of self-inquiry through Integrative Gestalt to cultivate “presence-based consciousness” in daily life.
• Apply breathwork and Integrative Gestalt techniques to address trauma and restore our innate capacities for self-organization and healing.

Embark on this transformative journey designed to nurture personal healing and spiritual growth. Learn essential skills that you can practice in your daily life to continue your journey of self-healing and spiritual development. Whether you’re a professional seeking to expand your practice through the power of breath or an individual committed to deepening self-inquiry, we welcome you to join us for this exploration into expanded realms of consciousness!

Embark on an enlightening journey of self-discovery, guided by the power of intuition and creativity! In this immersive workshop, you’ll uncover your own inner wisdom through the inspiring SoulCollage® method.

Developed by the late Seena Frost, this enchanting personal practice harnesses the magic of images, imagination, and intuition as a way to excavate insight and truth. Through this meaningful, affirming process, we create simple collages representing the many facets of ourselves. With gentle guidance and just a few basic supplies — images, scissors, and glue — these collaged cards become gateways to the strength and wisdom we hold within, unlocking hidden treasures.

During this weeklong workshop, you will:

• Move toward increased self-awareness through card-making, journaling, meditation, group sharing, and other fun activities.
• Connect with your unique self through an exploration of your inner world and creative spirit.
• Leave with the beginnings of your own personal deck of collaged cards, a journal filled with your wisdom, and numerous ways to continue the practice at home.

No prior art or writing experience is necessary, and all materials will be provided. All you need is an open heart and a curious spirit!

Carl Jung said, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” Join us for an insightful, artful adventure toward empowerment and reconnecting with your inner self!

This workshop includes an additional $20 materials fee.

Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.

This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.

Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.

We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.

As life changes, we also must change — yet this isn’t guaranteed. Too many of us get stuck at our thresholds. Ritual can help us cultivate discernment, recognize gains and losses, and conjure possibility. Join us for a transformative workshop designed to provide the skills and understanding needed to create your own modern rituals. Learn to reflect, reimagine, and renew the purpose of your life’s next chapter.

Guided by award-winning author, artist, teacher, and ritualist Day Schildkret, you are invited to:

• Learn the ins and outs of this ancient technology to expertly navigate change.
• Learn the power of “symbolic action” to align your psycho-spiritual experience.
• Craft your own modern ritual to mark your personal threshold and rediscover yourself.
• Discover the 7-step Morning Altars practice to use nature, art, and ritual for understanding and meaning.
• Experience the support and witness of others also renewing their life’s purpose.
• Create custom “Threshold Wonderings” that provide reflection, refinement, and direction.
• Discover the meaning-making skills needed to step into your life thresholds with renewed grace and purpose.

This workshop is designed for anyone in a life transition who wants to renew their life’s purpose. Crafted with great care, we welcome all genders, races, identities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Threshold moments are meant to be crossed together. Join us if you feel your transition has become protracted or need greater support and attention to skillfully move to your next chapter.

This workshop include an additional $10 for materials.

The body is a portal to the numinous dimensions of the soul’s life. It can lead us to healing and wholeness far beyond simple relief of traumatic symptoms — and to increased access to our feelings and a renewed sense of soulful aliveness. Jungian and depth psychology orient to the deepest currents of the soul, where dreams and life experiences take on cohesive wisdom and unfold in a way that guides the individual. However, developmental wounds, particularly those of a traumatic nature, can interrupt the psyche’s innate thrust toward wholeness.

In this workshop, we will work with authentic movement and other somatic practices grounded in the perspective of depth psychology to learn and experience how the body can serve as a gateway to realign with those innate healing currents.

Our ancestors understood that our dreams and visions often speak not just to the individual but to the community as well. In this realm, which Jung referred to as the “Spirit of the Depths,” we can reconnect with the creative unconscious for insights that remain elusive when caught up in the groupthink typical of the “Spirit of the Times.” We will practice both indoors and outdoors, surrounded by the stunning beauty of the natural world, where the inner meets the outer, to engage with these transformative energies as they emerge.

This workshop is oriented toward therapists interested in learning how to access the somatic underpinnings of psychic life and those committed to weaving the body’s way of knowing with life’s unfolding.

Recommended reading: Holifield, B. (2025). Being with the Body in Depth Psychotherapy: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm., Menakem, Resmaa (2017) My Grandmother’s Hands. Las Vegas, Nevada: Central Recovery Press.

One of life’s great paradoxes is that we all inhabit the same world, yet no single person, living being, or object within it is exactly like anything else. Thus, difference — the sheer diversity of the world’s countless inhabitants — is arguably the most immediate fact of our shared reality.

This seminar style workshop asks: What does it take to properly apprehend the world’s diversity and respond to it with curiosity, open-heartedness, humor, and joy, rather than anxiety, fear, and violence? How can we combat rising xenophobia in our local communities and social spheres by productively engaging with, rather than denying or banishing, alternative perspectives and worldviews? In other words, how can each of us learn to “think like a multiverse”?

Drawing from literature, philosophy, and popular culture, we will consider diversity and heterogeneity not as a problem to be solved or a threat to be feared, but rather as a field of imaginative possibilities for the formation of new relationships across differences.

Each day, we will zoom in on a distinct framework for thinking about diversity and multiplicity. These include:

• Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of “mestiza consciousness,” a feminist model for thinking about the cultivation of cross-racial and cross-gender bonds.
• The Indigenous kinship worldview, a spiritual cosmology that conceives of human beings as having a relationship of mutual exchange and reciprocity with the planet.
• Cosmopolitanism and radical democracy, a political theory that centralizes the importance of negotiating vastly different points of view on the nature of the “good life.”
• Psychedelic experience, a millennia-spanning, global consciousness-raising practice intended to aid human beings in extending their imagination outward from the self to commune with a wider network of cosmic relationships.

Throughout the week, we will combine the study of key texts in these various philosophies with recent popular media and experiential exercises to practice and integrate these ideas into our everyday lives. We will write about our encounters with non-human plant life on campus, imagine and describe different versions of ourselves across a fictional multiverse, and identify and respond to differences in temperament, personality, style, and tastes within the group. Short readings will include excerpts from works by Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldúa, Michael Pollan, Jenny Slate, and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Recommended reading and viewing:

• Film Screening: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2022) [Available on Netflix]
• Film Screening: My Octopus Teacher (2020) [Available on Netflix]
• Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer

If we carry intergenerational trauma (and we do), we also carry intergenerational wisdom. It’s in our genes and in our DNA. —Kazu Haga

What if your healing journey lies within you and in the wisdom carried by your ancestral line? The Listening When Parts Speak workshop is a curated experience designed to help you access the gifts of your ancestry while transforming the burdens of personal, cultural, and intergenerational trauma. Together, we will facilitate a relationship between your parts and your internal healing resource called Self.

Through mindfulness, guided meditation, experiential exercises, and teachings from the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, you’ll deepen your connection to your internal healing resource, known as Self, and build relationships with the parts of you that carry the weight of trauma.

During this workshop, we will explore:

• Mindfulness practices to bring attention and presence to here and now experiences.
• The key concepts of the IFS model of working with trauma.
• Experiential exercises to connect with your inner parts and wise ancestors.
• Demonstrations of the healing potential of IFS and ancestor wisdom.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll be invited to explore ways to incorporate these tools into your daily life to help calm activated or triggered parts of yourself. You’ll have the opportunity to cultivate a new or deepened relationship with supportive ancestors to guide you through your daily life. Additionally, you’ll be encouraged to reflect on a greater understanding of the inner parts of others that make you less likely to personalize their behavior. Recommended Reading: Listening When Parts Speak: A Practical Guide to Healing with Internal Family Systems Therapy and Ancestor Wisdom by Tamala Floyd, LCSW

In a world that often pulls us away from ourselves — into roles, expectations, and chronic busyness — there is power in returning to the body, the breath, and the truth of who we are. This weekend workshop offers an immersive experience in embodiment — a space to inquire, move, and breathe your way back to what’s real within you.

Over the weekend, you’ll engage in somatic self-inquiry to explore and soften the internal narratives that shape your identity. Movement and stillness will be used as pathways to reconnect with your body as a compass, while breathwork will offer space for regulation, release, and presence. Relational exercises will open the door to grounded, authentic connection — both with yourself and with others.

Together, we’ll explore:

• The body as a portal — awakening sensation and intuitive knowing.
• Breathwork as a tool for emotional release, regulation, and alchemy.
• Movement as a pathway to restore flow, release held patterns, and invite curiosity.
• Sound and silence as anchors for presence and inner listening.
• Integration practices — self-inquiry and journaling — to support a return home to the self and a remembering of our innate wholeness.

You’ll be guided to reframe your inner landscape — not by fixing what’s “wrong,” but by listening deeply to what’s already whole as you reimagine what it means to feel at home in your own being. A weekend of remembering.

Relational mindfulness offers 9 principles and practices for meeting the beautiful, dynamic, and messy field of human relating as our laboratory for awakening. It offers a path for cultivating greater peace, understanding, joy, resilience, and freedom within ourselves and our world.

Sitting alone on a meditation cushion is a wholly different exercise than engaging socially, at work, in conflict, politics, or romance. Or is it? Relational mindfulness acts as a bridge, bringing the spaciousness of awareness off the cushion into every aspect of our lives.

The principles are:

• Intention
• The Sacred Pause
• Deep Embodied Listening
• Mindful Inquiry and Clear Seeing
• Transparency and Speaking from the Heart
• Turning Towards, Rather than Away
• Not Taking Personally
• Taking Responsibility
• Compassionate Action

Intimacy begins with our willingness to see ourselves and one another clearly from the heart — beyond the myth of separation. We have to remember how to “be with” the pretty and less-pretty aspects of our experience without needing to fix, solve, or change anything in order to welcome the full spectrum of our humanity into wholeness. On this restorative retreat, we’ll explore together:

• Practices for finding greater freedom and authenticity in how we relate.
• Ways to strengthen our capacity for meeting adversity, conflicts, and trauma with compassion, equanimity, and conscious response.
• Ways to resource ourselves and one another to navigate the times we are facing with resilience.
• Support for engaging in our lives with love, wholeness, and fierce compassion rather than fear, scarcity, or the myth of separation.

Join us for a transformative exploration of the personal, interpersonal, transpersonal, ecological, societal, and mystical impacts of relational mindfulness. This workshop will include embodied meditation, experiential practices, conscious movement, reflective writing, and deep time in nature. All are welcome.

Recommended Reading: Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and Our Planet by Deborah Eden Tull

The chakra system is one of the greatest gifts the ancient yogis and rishis of India shared with the world: a powerful spiritual map for our healing and the awakening of our consciousness so we can fully come alive! This week is an invitation to explore this map and unlock the unbridled joy, creative power, and freedom that lives inside of you.

The ultimate goal of yoga is to live in embodied enlightenment. It is to know and feel the current of mukti (the force of liberation that expands you in the direction of pure potentiality and higher consciousness) and to feel and celebrate bhukti (the gift of embodiment and all the pleasures and abundance of earthly reality). This workshop offers us the opportunity to bring these concepts into reality and into our living beings.

Through embodied ritual practices of yoga, live music, dance, meditation, sounding, and communion with nature, you will begin to shape an intimate connection with each of your energy centers. Together we will work to break through the blockages that keep you stuck and stagnant — preventing you from healing and experiencing the fullness of your power and life. We will dive deeply into the chakra system through accessible, dynamic, and interactive discussions and exercises.  

Each day, Cristi will guide us in her signature, dynamic chakra-based vinyasa, woven with mudra, kriyas, and pranayama, supported by the sacred rhythms and healing soundscapes of our musical guide DJ Marques Wyatt.

These practices will be enhanced by a variety of daily rituals, ranging from:

• Interactive lectures and discussions about each of the chakras.
• Movement meditations
• Transformational dance practices, including The Deep Exhale Experience and JourneyDance.
• Deeply nourishing soma practice and journaling.
• Somatic Sound Healing
• Spending time in nature to activate our chakras through the five sacred elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space.

Join us as we turn the yoga dance floor into a ritual of self-expression. You’re invited to experience every ritual as a prayer to your highest self to return you home to your body and nature, awaken pleasure, and give you permission to feel. Ignite your power. Heal your heart. Claim your vision and voice. Connect to your own divinity and celebrate this gift of life!

Recommended reading: Chakra Rituals by Cristi Christensen

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.

Join Amina Peterson on a transformative journey where you'll discover a revolutionary model of erotic communication. Immerse yourself in a safe and empowering space to cultivate deeper intimacy, pleasure, and connection. Through somatic tools, communication strategies, and boundary-building practices, you'll learn how to navigate relationships with authenticity and respect.

This intimate weekend is a unique opportunity to explore your desires, express your boundaries, and experience the joy of consensual intimacy.

• Learn to communicate desire and pleasure with tools from EroSomatic Touch.
• Use somatic movement and Resonant Boundaries to discover new ways to listen to your body, calibrate your inner compass, and honor your boundaries.
• Play with partners and in groups to experience erotically embodied consent negotiation using tools from Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent and Amina’s coaching practice.

Come dance, play, and learn from a renowned expert in erotic communication and intimacy. Share your experiences and insights, and connect with a community of like-minded individuals passionate about fostering healthy connections.

Recommended reading: Authentic Consent Workbook by Amina Peterson, Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication by Meendachi, The Art of Giving and Receiving by Betty Martin

Since falling in love is biologically natural, but sustaining love is biologically unnatural, Soul Mate focuses on the art and discipline of sustaining love. You begin with learning how to appreciate your partner so specifically and frequently that your partner feels fully seen and loved.

You then practice both the art and discipline of hearing your partner’s criticisms without becoming defensive. For example, so you don’t have to fear “walking on eggshells” before sharing a concern, your partner first learns how to prepare her or himself to emotionally associate your criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved.

Soul Mate is designed as the next evolutionary shift beyond active listening. Active listening allowed the criticizer to feel heard, but failed to teach the person hearing the criticism how to emotionally associate the criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved. The problem? Unless the receiver of criticism feels safe the person sharing their concern cannot feel safe.

You will learn a series of practices you may integrate into your everyday life:

• Six methods of sustaining a “conflict free zone” for 166 hours of your 168-hour week.
• A “Caring and Sharing Time” the remaining two hours by practicing six mindsets that allow you to not feel defensive when criticized.
• “Eleven Wisdoms” as a foundation for deepening your love.
• The four “depleters of love,” aka the “Four C’s” (Criticisms, Complaints, Controlling, and Complacency)
• How to use your new skills with your children, parents, work colleagues and people you differ with politically.
• How to use music and dancing to revitalize your love (to be practiced by dancing before each session)

To sustain your practice after the workshop, I invite you to free, ongoing, group follow-up calls to resolve stumbling blocks. If you wish to review the insights and exercises at any time, you will also have the option of purchasing a Zoom and book version of the course. This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations.  Developed over the past 30 years, the workshop is also used by many health professionals in their work with clients and patients.

Recommended Resources: Role Mate to Soul Mate by Warren Farrell (BenBella: July 2024); additional video content on warrenfarrell.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHtXyzKk6bQ&t=229s

What if your greatest vulnerability could become your greatest strength? This transformative language arts workshop is designed for anyone ready to level up by unlocking their authenticity.

The curriculum draws from the wisdom in the instructor’s critically acclaimed book, Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, which explores how shame is weaponized in our culture to keep us from knowing our worth and achieving our goals. Through reflective writing, shared stories, and guided readings, participants will explore ways to break free from shame’s grip and reclaim their power.

Through the act of writing and reading inspirational texts — along with learning about the instructor’s journey as a former sex worker and survivor of sexual exploitation and media humiliation — we will explore essential questions about the insidious role that shame plays in our modern lives. We will examine how shame hinders us and discuss effective ways to reclaim ourselves and our communities from its grasp.

Participants will be invited to:

• Learn about their unique shame triggers.
• Develop a greater awareness of how shame functions in our society.
• Cultivate vulnerability by sharing intimate stories in a safe space.
• Practice empathetic listening as others speak their uncomfortable truths.

By developing shame resilience, we can reconnect to our highest goals and purest ideals. We can embody our most authentic self, and embolden others to do the same. The workshop is open to people of all gender identities and expressions and is appropriate for professionals and laypeople alike. No prior writing experience is necessary; all levels are welcome, and all course materials will be provided.

For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used as a strategy for meaningful transformation and self-exploration — marking life’s major transitions and rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.

In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of enhanced states of consciousness. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.

Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.

Recommended Reading: Holotropic Breathwork by Stan Grof

Daydreaming is not passive; it is an embodied, living practice—a gateway to knowledge, interconnectedness, and liberation. It is where we access deep creativity, ancestral memory, and the unseen forces shaping our lives. Across time and tradition, rest, reverie, and imagination have been essential tools for visionaries, artists, and revolutionaries. Yet in a culture that prioritizes relentless output, our capacity to dream freely has been diminished, treated as frivolous or unproductive. But what if we reclaim daydreaming as an act of defiance? What if rest itself is resistance? Tricia Hersey, artist, theologian, and author of Rest is Resistance and We Will Rest, has built a framework that understands rest as a portal to a world beyond grind culture—a world where imagination and care are central to our well-being and collective liberation.

Join us for a weekend of radical rest and reclamation, where we will gather on the sacred lands of the Esselen people to explore the art and science of daydreaming as a form of rest. Through individual and collective activations, writing practices, and deep study of the works of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, and Tricia herself, we will reclaim imagination as a birthright, not a luxury. We will stretch out under the open sky in collective rest, listening to the wisdom of the land, the ocean, and the cosmos. We will slow down and wander, walking the gardens and feeling our way back to an ancient rhythm. We will engage in guided star-gazing, reflective journaling, and intentional dreaming, allowing spaciousness to show us what we have forgotten. This is not about productivity. It is not about optimization. It is about restoration. About remembering. About laying it all down so something new can emerge. You don’t need permission to dream—you just need space, stillness, and the courage to stop and receive. We will rest.

Recommended reading: Love as the Practice of Freedom by Bell Hooks, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, and selected poetry of Audre Lorde

Special Note on Gift Economy: For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Tricia embraces the practice of the gift economy, collective economics and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Tricia and her ongoing work of community care, liberation and rest.

How can we navigate life’s transitions with elegance, grace, and gratitude? This is a fundamental question for growth and transformation, no matter where we are in our stages of life. This workshop is designed for anyone pondering their aging process as well as active caretakers for those entering their third act. Using an experiential approach, we will move through concrete steps, including nine simple evidence-based practices, for achieving personal goals.

Together, we will discuss how to embrace challenges as opportunities by cultivating curiosity and a growth mindset at every stage of life. We will explore ways to engage in the practice of purposeful intention — to gain insights into how attention shapes our worldview and where our cognitive biases get in our way.

Building new skills and capacities is essential, much like training muscles, and we will discuss how to strengthen personal growth practices with trusted guidance, both from external mentors and our own inner wisdom. Additionally, we will explore ways to apply what we learn—accepting aging and the developmental stages of life, from adolescence to adulthood, to make peace with our mortality. Finally, we will consider steps to engage the world and bring this elegant aging program into our lives, work, and communities.

This workshop offers hands-on tools for aging with grace and elegance, empowering each of us with new insights and practices to embrace the fullness of our lived experiences. Please bring a journal to support and document your experience.

Recommended Reading: Living Deeply: The Art & Science of Transformation by Marilyn Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten, and Tina Amorok.

This workshop is more than a learning experience — it’s an invitation to connect deeply with yourself and others in a supportive and creative space. Together, we’ll explore the profound potential for healing and growth that arises when art and psychology converge. No artistic experience is necessary; this workshop is about creative expression, not perfection.

Integrating art therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this workshop combines two evidence-based emotional and psychological growth approaches. Creating art stimulates your brain, unlocking new pathways and possibilities. Art therapy offers a dynamic way to visually explore your thoughts and emotions, providing a unique outlet for self-expression and growth. CBT complements this process by helping you identify and challenge dysfunctional thought patterns, empowering you to shift your mindset and embrace change.

• Bring your inner monster to life through art, and then engage with it through conversation to gain clarity and understanding.
• Delve into themes of control, shifting perspectives, and transformation through the power of poetry.
• Draw your own emotional landscape and gain practical tools to continue your healing journey long after our time together.
• Compose your personal Declaration of Independence (to free yourself from what keeps you stuck) and collage your flag representing your new state of mind.

Led by a board-certified art therapist, this fully interactive workshop combines drawing, collage, painting, writing, and group dialogue. Together, we’ll explore the fears, anxieties, and barriers holding you back, empowering you with tools to create meaningful and lasting change.

From breath to sensation to emotion, this experience is an embodied approach to movement generation and artistic expression. Theatre and dance are combined with somatic and embodiment coaching to help you unlock your emotional and vocal potential, deepen your connection to your body, and develop your unique groove and movement style.

Each day begins with meditation and visualization to awaken your senses, followed by continuous improvisational exercises and instinctual games that integrate both movement and voice. You’ll explore emotional expression, finding balance between slow introspection and explosive release. Designed to deepen body-sense listening, impulse work, vocal awareness, and emotional range, these techniques create a playful, safe, and supportive environment for self-discovery and growth.

Throughout the week, you’ll work collaboratively in pairs and small groups to learn from one another and establish a sense of community. You will be invited to develop a movement vocabulary you can call your own and integrate your skills into a mini-solo piece, which you’ll have the option to perform.

Bring a notebook and pen, your curiosity, and a sense of play to uncover past limiting habits and amplify your emotional range through sound and movement.

Imagine your relationship expressing the true depths of your love and commitment. If you are in love, this retreat is an opportunity to rise even higher in love. If you are in crisis, it is an opportunity for healing on the deepest level. We all carry some degree of negative programming from our past, and there are loving and effective ways to transform this programming into a positive and vibrant celebration of our connection.

During this 5 day workshop, we will naturally dive into a deeper learning experience with much more material than we can cover in a weekend. The extra time allows for a fuller integration of all the practices. Each couple will experience exercises and practices to do with each other, therapeutic coaching by the Vissells, the support of other couples, and time for sharing after each practice.

We will share a collection of tools for deeper appreciation and communication building, including healthy communication of feelings, our partner as a mirror, understanding and respecting each other’s differences, conflict resolution, healing past hurts, sexual wellness, inner child/inner parent, taking responsibility and developing a true inner connection. Take the opportunity to explore these tools with your partner during the workshop and learn to incorporate them into everyday life as you continue to improve your relationship at home. For more information, visit www.SharedHeart.org.

This workshop welcomes couples of all gender and sexual orientations.

If your thoughts, decisions and actions are not being determined by your own highest values, they are certainly being determined by someone else’s. — Living a Values Based Life

Join this engaging, interactive experience designed to support the discovery, clarification, and meaningful application of your highest personal values. It’s a surprising fact of life that most people do not know — or cannot clearly articulate — what their values truly are. Guided by Robert MacPhee’s unique and accessible approach, this process is crafted to reduce confusion and enhance clarity with simple ways to bring your discoveries into your daily life.

Together, we’ll explore your values in deep, experiential (and fun!) ways that address a variety of learning styles. The journey can be relevant across all areas of life — at home, at work, in relationships, as a parent, and as a leader.

In this workshop, you’ll be invited to:

• Explore the areas of your life that feel most meaningful to you.
• Identify qualities and characteristics you most want to express.
• Learn how to implement and apply what you have discovered to be most important to you, both personally and professionally.
• Begin crafting a personalized plan that aligns your daily life with living a truly values based life.

Gaining clarity around your values can become a powerful compass, gently guiding your decisions, your attention, and your time. This workshop offers a space to reconnect with what feels most authentic, purpose-driven, and meaningful for you.

Our clown is the authentic, curious, and playful version of ourselves. Clowning as a life practice is the balancing of our light and shadow while laughing at our attachments. Clown is about being soft, brave, and available to the moment. This workshop is an immersion practice that explores our deepest, most vulnerable, creative self.

Using tools found in improvisation, meditation, altered states, and movement practice, we will explore clowning as a spiritual practice. The work begins with exercises that help you drop into the body and descend from the mind to access the clown state. With the foundation of a sacred container, we will engage in primarily nonverbal, physical games and rituals that give birth to organic impulses inspired by the child within. There is no pressure to perform, but an invitation to get lost inside yourself, an openness to go beyond your comfort zone, and a willingness to play within the moment.

There is nothing to learn but rather much to uncover — to allow us to move through life in a more open state, with a greater connection to ourselves and the world. This workshop is physical, open, and accessible for diverse bodies. Come unravel the clown within! Please come unprepared and ready to explore.

Recommended reading: Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir, Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

Summer is the time to take a break, step off the treadmill of modern life, take care of oneself, and refill the tanks before gearing up for the busyness of fall. What does taking care of yourself really mean—for you? What do you want and need at this moment in your life; what genuinely takes care of you?

For many women, these are questions we never ask ourselves, much less express or dare to live by. We’ve been trained to know what everyone else wants and needs but not what we want and need. We know who we are in all of our roles to and for other people, but not who we are for ourselves. We sacrifice authenticity for likability, abandoning ourselves in order to be pleasing and manage other people’s perceptions of us. But there’s a longing inside us that wants to live a more truthful and vital life—a life that’s truly ours.  

This is a workshop for that longing. Through teaching, meditation, journaling, and dyad and group dialogue, you will be invited to:

• Become aware of where and how you abandon yourself by taking care of others at the expense of yourself.
• Free yourself from the likability cage and let go of being who everyone else needs you to be.
• Make the shift from doing self-care to being self-caring, rebuild your relationship with yourself to be on your own side, and reconnect with your truth.  
• Bring your own still small voice back into the conversation and into your life.
• Build the tools (and courage) for an authentic life, tell the truth, and value a relationship with yourself as much as with others.
• Come to trust, believe, and know that you matter.

The good news is this: Once you recognize the call of your own wanting, you’re already in the process of changing and reconnecting with your inherent vitality. “What do I want?” starts showing up as a question that matters, and indeed, you start showing up as someone who knows that she matters. Join this weekend of adventure and build the real-life tools, behaviors, and choices to live this change forward and create a truthful and self-affirming life.

Recommended Reading: The Emotionally Exhausted Woman: Why You’re Feeling Depleted & How To Get What You Need By Nancy Colier

Experience five days of deep rest, reflection, and rejuvenation through movement, guided meditation, and the profound practice of Yoga Nidra. This workshop is designed to restore the body, clear the mind, and shift the habitual patterns that keep us from experiencing a state of calm, clarity, and balance.

Yoga Nidra, which translates to “yogic sleep,” guides you to that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, where you can systematically release stored physical, emotional, and mental tensions. In this state, you can let go of old beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the past and fearful of the future. With this practice, you can fully experience your emotions while knowing that there is unchanging, unshakable ground beneath you — a calm inner presence that allows you to see clearly and navigate life with greater ease.

Throughout the retreat, we will work with our bodies and minds, creating clear intentions to shift from living by unconscious, automatic programming and find a new perspective — an aware, deliberate way of being. You’ll explore how to bring this newfound awareness of your true self into your personal life, relationships, work, and moments of solitude and love.

Together, we will cultivate new tools to help us navigate when we feel lost, tired, or confused and forget who we are. These guiding instruments can help us negotiate life’s challenges, welcome them as opportunities, and remember our true nature.

This workshop is a unique opportunity to recognize your wholeness, the truth of who you are, and the inner peace that has always been within you — that unchanging, unshakable ground of being that you are. All that is being asked of you is to show up, lie down, and let go. Yoga Nidra will do the rest.

What to bring: blankets, a yoga mat, an eye pillow, and anything else you need to lie comfortably on the floor for extended periods. We’ll also have opportunities to practice outdoors, so make sure you have layers to stay comfortable in varying conditions.

Recommended Reading: Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep, by Kamini Desai; and Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation Healing, by Richard Miller

This course builds on your previous seven rich days of exploration in CFR® Week One. During that crucial week, you laid the foundation for releasing your childhood survival patterns and moving through life with more ease and presence physically, mentally, and emotionally.

You reorganized the stranger you once called “self” to become more objective, compassionate, curious, and hopeful, changing how you live with yourself and others.

We will continue excavating and healing old patterns that no longer serve you. You will gain more appreciation for how embodied movement can serve as a portal to your soul.  Using newly experienced body wisdom, you will uncover what has been hidden, held back, and inhibited, your fullest expression of ease, joy, and authentic self.

Bring your lingering issues, past injuries, and a desire for freedom on all levels. Leave more deeply connected to your body and present in your soul.

Please note: This is an advanced class. Participants must have taken CFR® Week 1.

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own demise or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we? This workshop offers a wide array of resources and teachings to help participants address that final unfinished business and make the most out of every moment that comes before it.

All of life is held within the context of its inevitable extinction. By acknowledging and preparing for death now, we will find ourselves living more fully and fearlessly. Join us as we celebrate the preciousness of life, and ready ourselves and others for this final journey. We will explore how to die a good death and help others pass, engaging with meditations and contemplations that prepare us for letting go. As the Buddhist tradition proclaims, “If you die before you die, then when you die, you will not die.”

With preparation, we can transcend death, turning the greatest obstacle into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and even attain enlightenment. The bardo teachings lead to the death of death. The journey through the bardos is a journey into our mind, so by exploring the bardos, we are exploring ourselves. The teachings apply to any moment that ends – which means they also relate to daily life and can help you live fully within the time you are given.

Together we’ll explore:

• Meditations that prepare you for the end of life
• Teachings that support the meditations
• Discussion groups to create a sense of community  

We hope you’ll join us for this exploration into the unknown, so that we may all return – fearless, and full of compassion for ourselves and those transitioning from this life.

Recommended Reading: Preparing to Die by Andrew Holecek

The latest research clearly demonstrates the powerful impact emotional experiences have on our health and longevity. While we know this to be true, we don’t always know how to be emotionally well.

During this weekend, we’ll open the door to greater emotional intelligence and perception. With a combination of lectures, interactive exercises, live music, breathwork, movement (yoga and dance), and meditation, we’ll practice understanding our feelings — and how to respond to them.

We’ll explore emotional wellness through the lens of Ayurveda, customizing our healing based on what we are experiencing in real time. This, in turn, increases our depth of connection with ourselves and others.

In this experiential workshop, we’ll be invited to learn Ayurvedic approaches to:

• Emotional wellness
• Self-assessment
• Psychospiritual healing
• Customizing healing tools

The movement session will be guided by guest faculty Sunshine Zerda, featuring a transformational dance experience with somatic release. Everyone, from beginners to advanced students of Ayurveda, is welcome.

Recommended Reading: Ayurveda for Yoga Teachers and Students by Dr. Siva Mohan (Chapter on Emotional Wellness)

Imagine reaching the end and realizing your biggest regret is that you never found the courage to live authentically because you lived the life others expected. In this workshop, we will embark on a transformative journey inspired by the wisdom of Human Design and the spirit of Esalen. Human Design blends ancient wisdom from astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, and the Hindu-Brahmin chakra system with cutting-edge insights from quantum physics to create a holistic system of self-knowledge.

We’ll explore ways to embrace our true selves, understand our inner guidance system, make wise choices, and unlock our highest potential. Practical applications will include daily decision-making, personal development, and enhancing relationships. We’ll also engage in embodiment practices, integration practices, and interactive sessions to deepen understanding.

This workshop invites you to embrace your authenticity and discover your potential. By loving your true self, following your inner authority, making wise choices, and understanding your greater purpose, you can transform your life.

Participants must bring the specifics of their birth, including their birthplace and time, along with a journal. Join us in mastering authentic living to unlock your potential within a supportive community.

Have you ever wanted to learn how to grow your own food? Experience a dynamic week in the Esalen Farm and Garden and fully participate alongside our talented and experienced staff. Local food security is a major issue facing communities worldwide. It is said that there is no greater form of activism than growing one’s own food—no greater sense of connection to the land than sowing, cultivating, and harvesting from the earth that sustains us. This is the essence of SLOW food (Sustainable, Local, Organic and in respect to the Wild).

Come into a deeper relationship with and celebration of the whole process. By working directly with the Esalen Farm and Garden crew, you will experience the joys and challenges that come with making a garden thrive.

Our days together will include:

• Hands-on experience: harvesting, composting, bed preparation, seed starting, cultivation, irrigation systems, transplanting, and other farming techniques.
• Daily curriculum sessions: diving deeper into specific topics, with space to ask questions and have discussions.
• Community and connection: working together to cultivate teamwork and meaningful relationships.

From a seed planted with intention, the world can change. Participate in the amazing cycles of the season in the garden. We will cultivate community with each other and be part of the magic in the fields of the Esalen Farm & Garden. You are invited to learn about organic and regenerative farming practices that embody our mission of human potential in harmony with nature. Join the legacy of this collaborative creative project, grow healthy, nutrient-rich foods, and become part of the next generation of growers, educators, and land stewards to build connected, thriving, and ever-strengthening communities.

During this workshop, you’ll be invited to immerse yourself in your own innate wisdom to rediscover your freedom. Through Buddhist meditation, mindful movement, and time in nature, you’ll explore the spontaneous creative essence within you.

Surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, this guided retreat is an opportunity to slow down, listen deeply, and explore what it means to be truly present. By attuning to the elements and rhythms of the earth, you will have the space to cultivate a renewed sense of clarity, openness, and connection.

Explore key practices, including:

• Nature-inspired meditation: Engage in sitting practice, both indoors and outdoors, and allow the natural world to support your inner exploration.
• Mindful walking: Move with intention and cultivate presence through walking meditation, deepening your connection to the present moment.
• Elemental exploration: Experience guided meditations on the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) to reflect on their qualities within you.
• Dharma teachings: Listen to talks that weave Buddhist wisdom with metaphors from nature for perspectives on the freedom already within you.
• Mindful movement: Explore gentle yoga and embodied awareness practices that support connection with the flowing, spontaneous nature of being.

During our time together, you will be able to:

• Explore ways to let go of habitual patterns and rest in innate awareness.
• Cultivate spaciousness, clarity, and ease.
• Tap into your natural creativity and intuition.
• Develop a deeper connection with the natural world and your own true nature.

Throughout the retreat, you’ll be given tools to continue nurturing this natural approach to liberation in your daily life. Join us for this transformative exploration of being natural.

This will be a week of fun, relaxation, and rejuvenation. Whatever your spiritual path or meditation experience, you are welcome just as you are. No prior experience is required. Seated and supine meditations will be offered. All are welcome.

Love Yourself For Everyone Else’s Sake

Mark Abramson designed the course as a deep dive into self-compassion after seeing students achieve self-kindness from work with his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at Stanford University. Thirty years of teaching have taught Dr. Abramson that bringing kindness and compassion to one’s self is truly the most altruistic of all practices.

Imagine always being able to count on your own mind being kind to you — no matter what challenges life presents. That is your birthright, and now is the time to claim it! Immerse yourself in this mindfulness-based approach to self-love and compassion.  

Mindfulness, meditation, and contemplative practices have entered all spheres of our society, including corporate settings, sports,  performance, medicine, and psychology. Science has confirmed that ancient mental and physical training systems, such as meditation practices, confer health benefits for immunity, brain architecture, and pain management, as well as mental and physical resilience.

During our time together, you are invited to:

• Learn mindfulness meditation practices.
• Connect and experience your own loving attention.
• Learn to take back control of your body/mind to create a more peaceful you.

Throughout the weekend, you will have the opportunity to unite your body, mind, and soul into a self-nourishing whole person while strengthening your ability to give love to others by first loving yourself.

Recommended Reading: Love Yourself For Everyone Else’s Sake by Mark Abramson

What will you do with your one wild and precious life? — Mary Oliver

Do you yearn to spend less time scrolling online and more time being present, creative, and embodied in your real life? In just two decades, technology has rapidly reshaped our psyches, relationships, and communities. The average person now spends the equivalent of 61 to 80 days a year on their smartphones. Apps increasingly hijack our attention while human empathy has steadily declined.

Though living a phone-based life can be overwhelming and feel hopeless, the power is in your hands. This workshop invites you to recover your focus, creativity, and humanity. In community, we will reckon with the impact of the digital age and remember the wisdom of our somatic and ensouled selves.

Psychology, attachment theory, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom all affirm the same truth: There is regenerative power when we go offline together.

New research reveals that insecure attachment styles (anxious or avoidant) make us more vulnerable to compulsive smartphone use as we seek a digital “secure base” over human connection. By rebuilding our capacity to turn toward one another, we can re-parent ourselves and repair relational ruptures from our past.

During our time together, we’ll explore how to rewire our neuropsychology and rekindle our creative potential. Your hands are the living hands of your ancestors. What wants to be expressed through you?

Each day will include:

• Morning meditation to connect to the inner self.
  
• Lectures on the psychological and relational impacts of technology.
  
• Guided exercises to reflect on our attachment histories and “styles.”
  
• Interpersonal practices to replace screen time with real connection.
  
• Collective ritual for going offline intentionally.
  
• Practices in poetry, movement, ritual, song, and nature-based meditation to re-engage and reignite the creative spark.
  
• Community gatherings to rest and restore, including Yoga Nidra for attuning to the technology of the heart.
  

The digital age calls for re-humanization. Join us to discover the tools, strategies, and community needed to make meaningful change and reclaim the whole self.

Recommended reading: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Trust Your Truth by Shannon Algeo

Asanga’s Nine Stages of Staying is one of the oldest and most comprehensive systems of concentration in the Buddhist tradition. Sometimes called the Elephant Path, this approach was originated by the great Buddhist master in 506 A.D., and it is now the main method of training the mind in the Tibetan tradition.

In this weekend meditation retreat, participants will learn the stages of the Elephant Path using the body as the primary object of concentration. Students will also receive an introduction to the basic stages of ordinary insight. By the end of our time together, students will have all the instructions necessary to successfully incorporate a robust meditation practice into everyday life.

Training the mind in this way can lead to a direct experience of equanimity and can put the student in a range of practice wherein pointing out the real nature of the awakened mind is possible.

No experience with meditation is required. If you have your own preferred meditation pillow and mat, please bring them.

Fostering close and connected relationships is one of the most important things affecting the quality of our lives. Cultivating trust and openness with a loved one, whether with an intimate partner or friend, is an essential aspect of any successful, supportive relationship.

This weekend, Perry and Johanna Holloman, intimate partners and friends for over 30 years, will share the most effective tools and practices they have developed to nurture their connection to each other.

The primary tool Perry and Johanna will share is called Gestalt Inquiry. This easy-to-learn, powerful practice provides a safe context for exploring the most meaningful and sensitive aspects of relationships. Perry and Johanna like to think of it as a practice that becomes a continuing part of any successful long-term relationship because it places high value on compassion, respect, and love of truth. As we learn to discover and safely express what is true for us, individually, as a couple, or as friends, we deepen our heart’s capacity for intimacy and connection, which leads to a more fulfilling and meaningful shared life.

During our time together, you will learn practices and resources to integrate into your everyday life, such as:

• Embodied practices involving movement, breath, meditation, and awareness to develop a sense of palpable presence as the foundation upon which your relationship can flourish.
• The Art of Conscious Communication: learning to care as much about understanding our partner and what they’re communicating as we care about being heard and understood by them.
• How to express needs, feelings, and appreciations in an attuned manner to deepen relational trust.
• Understanding the “distancing behaviors” we engage in, usually as an unconscious form of defense against vulnerability and contact.
• Learning to co-regulate each other in structured exercises, emphasizing compassion and respect so presence-based relating naturally arises.

This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations. A couple may be any two people with a history who desire a better future together, e.g., friends, partners, married or divorced spouses, parent and child, siblings, and others.

There is an inner community inside of us: a community of selves. Some have a voice, and some are quiet. Some are known through sensation, emotion, and thought. Other selves have agendas, advice, and accusations.

Each of these selves has a history, an emotional state, and a felt sense in the body. Each represents a particular aspect or part of our (mostly) Unified Self. This weekend, we’ll notice our habitual reflexes, our “go-to” responses both on and off the dance floor. We’ll learn to find our inner selves and build our capacity to access the most useful ones for any given moment.

In mindful movement, we can substantiate selves that have been hiding or cast out. We can learn to calm the selves that work overtime, find unknown selves, and embody a self we have been waiting to become.

Andrea and Kathy facilitate a dynamic, non-judgmental, well-informed dance playground embodying these inner conversations. This practice is not only fun and awakening; the creativity of movement illuminates new possibilities and choices. Exploring distinct parts of our personalities can help illuminate all that is held within.

We are all born into a story that is already being told. It is woven into our very being, much like the DNA passed down from Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all humanity. Just as we inherit genetic traits, we also inherit stories, expectations, and emotional patterns that shape our lives. Like Eve in the garden, we may find ourselves bound by shame, longing for liberation, and searching for the courage to fully receive the gifts of life. Eve’s Domain is an invitation to step beyond these inherited limitations and embark on a powerful journey into the heart of our personal stories.

Guided by Zita, an experienced facilitator in transgenerational healing, hypnotherapy, and storytelling, you will explore inherited patterns that have shaped your life. Drawing from exercises in Systemic Constellations and the Orders of Love, you will explore the ways love, duty, and expectation have influenced your identity—and how to embrace the fullness of life with grace.

This workshop is designed to support your exploration of the story you have been born into, and help you discover how it might better serve your greater good. Love, while often a force for good, can also lead us to accept less than we deserve and mask our true selves for the sake of others. Only by finding the courage to dig deeper and ask the right questions can we uncover the jewels in the story of our hearts and souls.

Pleasure is the measure of your aliveness. It is not frivolous — it is your birthright, your compass, and your healing. — Anonymous

What if your pleasure is the key to your liberation? What if it could be your prayer, your medicine, and your power? When was the last time you felt fully alive in your body — unapologetically?

Pleasure Alchemy is a somatic journey designed to awaken, heal, and empower you through the sacred art of sensual embodiment. By engaging all five senses through sacred touch, movement, and sound rituals, we’ll explore how to rewire shame and reclaim pleasure as a path to healing. Together, we will co-create alchemy through collective care. We invite you to experience yourself in community more fully and authentically by:  

Activating the body temple through guided somatic practices, breathwork, and movement rituals designed to reconnect to your sensual body as a source of truth, beauty, and divine intelligence.

• Rewiring shame into sovereignty by exploring the roots of erotic shame through compassionate inquiry and release practices.

• Experiencing the alchemy of touch with guided consensual touch rituals — solo and partnered — that can reawaken your pleasure pathways and open portals to healing and intimacy.

• Awakening the inner lover through mirror work, sensual self-devotion practices, and energetic cultivation to deepen your relationship with your erotic self.

• Reclaiming pleasure as medicine through sound healing, journaling, and group integration circles. With tools for integration, you can anchor the wisdom of your pleasure into your daily life as a revolutionary act of self-love and spiritual power.

Join us for an opportunity to reclaim your pleasure as a source of personal power, liberation, and deep connection in community. Pleasure is not just indulgence — it’s medicine.

Please Note: Pleasure Alchemy is best experienced somatically — in the body — and through community ritual. We invite learning through touch and presence. You are always at choice. While sensuality will be invited into the space, no overt sexual behavior will be part of the workshop.

Do you struggle with shyness or social anxiety? Do you feel intimidated or scared to meet new people or worry others will judge you? If so, come face your fears and discover tools to connect to people authentically!

In this workshop, you will learn how to enjoy meeting new people and interact more successfully with others. Instead of feeling drained after social interactions, you can come away feeling invigorated and refreshed. You can learn ways to become skillfully vulnerable, authentic, and playful with others.

Instead of feeling self-conscious or like you need to “perform,” find out how to relax when meeting new people and be fully present in your interactions. Emerge with more lightheartedness, authenticity, and joy. There will also be a focus on flirtation skills for those looking to meet a new special someone, enhance the romance with their current partner, or just have more fun in life!

Together, we’ll explore:

• Interpersonal exercises to increase connection.
• Rejection training to desensitize our fears of rejection.
• Flirtation training to learn how to be more flirtatious and playful.
• Movement and exercises to specifically attack shame and reduce self-consciousness.
  

If you tend to avoid social opportunities or find interactions with other people draining, this is the workshop for you! Much of life is about the quality of our relationships with others. Discover how to liberate yourself from self-consciousness and disconnection and build stronger relationships.

Revolutionary findings in neuroscience have demonstrated that we can literally re-architect the very structure of our brains. In fact, we can even rewire our neurology to be more focused, calmer, and happier.

In this workshop, Dr. Shauna Shapiro — a leading scientist studying the effects of meditation on well-being — will teach you the most powerful science-based practices for increasing the neural pathways of happiness. She’ll explain basic brain science and offer a clear roadmap for living a joyful, connected, and meaningful life. Be prepared for unexpected transformation and delight.

During this weekend workshop, we’ll learn:

• Science-based practices to increase your baseline level of happiness.
• How to cultivate greater joy, gratitude, and connection.
• To integrate these practices into our everyday lives.

Recommended Reading: Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire the Brain for Calm, Clarity + Joy and Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity + Joy by Shauna Shapiro.

This workshop includes an additional $375 faculty tuition. *For anyone facing financial hardship, Dr. Shauna Shapiro invites you to contact her directly for a tuition scholarship at slshapiro@scu.edu.

More and more, people are discovering the Enneagram as an accurate and profound map of personality. In this workshop, we’ll explore the full scope of its power to illuminate our greatest wisdom, become our truest selves, and face life’s challenges with fortitude and grace.

The nine Enneagram types are based on the three primary centers of intelligence: thinking, emotion, and instinct. However, in almost all human beings, distortions or blockages in these centers lead to a loss of connection with our essential nature and arising ego structures to compensate for this loss. Thus, while our Enneagram type, our true nature, is usually obscured with a characteristic web of defenses, discovering ourselves through the Enneagram can serve as an opening to the deeper reality of spirit.

This workshop will recognize the ways the nine Enneagram types play out in our own personalities. We’ll combine psychological insight into the inner workings of the different personality types with meditation practices and exercises designed for a more direct experience of the qualities of essence, such as presence, clarity, compassion, and joy. Conversational instruction will be added along with group meditations, small-group work, physical movements, and music to help us fully integrate the richness of the Enneagram material into our daily work and relationships.

Have you created the impact you want? Are you showing up the way you’d like? Are you going in the right direction? You have never before been where you are right now. You have never been the age you are today, never had the experiences you now possess. This is your time to pause and reflect. We rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to stop and look at what is changing — or discover what we truly need to feel fulfilled.

This very interactive workshop will include lots of experiential exercises. Though we will cover valuable theory and there will be plenty of reflection time, this will not be a series of talks/lectures. There will be movement, coaching, a little dance, and lots of opportunity to share insights. Active participation is strongly encouraged; however, participation will always be voluntary.

Our goal is to step back from our lives and renew. We will create a courageous community to challenge,nurture and express ourselves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn what brings them joy and purpose, and then cultivate a vision to serve as a foundation for both the next year and next phase of life.

We will engage in a progression of individual and group exercises focused on reflection, movement, and listening to our inner wisdom. We’ll discover how to navigate major life transitions and learn skills to access our intuition. We will uncover the behaviors that support our overall success, and reveal which ones undermine our goals and fulfillment. If you are passionate about having a more powerful and authentic impact on the world around you, this program of renewal will be especially valuable.

Join ceremonial leader and wisdom carrier Erika Gagnon on a sacred journey as we gather to look beyond the false duality of a divided self and the destructive concept of “self versus nature” to discover how to live in harmony and balance within ourselves and the world around us.

You are your greatest healer and greatest medicine, and this is your opportunity to examine what that means while sharing healing wisdom, practices & ceremonies. This workshop will offer you tools to transform trauma and unhealthy patterns and to realign your body, mind, spirit, and soul, as we explore the origins of dis-ease in our physical, mental-emotional and spiritual bodies.

How can we honor the gifts, and heal the wounds that we have inherited from our ancestors? How can we identify any social, cultural, racial, religious, and historical energies that may be influencing our lives? We will explore all of this, and discuss the importance of ceremonies, sacred altars, and medicinal plants.  You will have the opportunity to participate in a traditional South American healing ceremony, a sound healing and “doctoring” ceremony, and a water blessing prayer ceremony.

You will be invited to reconnect to your authentic wisdom and power with clarity, gratitude, and forgiveness. When you honor and heal your ancestral lineage and connect to the natural and spiritual elements of this planet, you strengthen your connection to the sacred in everyday life.

We are all interconnected in this giant web of life, and every day is a gift in the service of unconditional love for yourself, your community, humanity, and our planet. If you feel the call to be a part of a new humanity that lives in harmony and balance upon this Earth, we invite you to join us in this celebration of life.

Note: Please bring a journal to write in, and items for our altar, including photographs of loved ones and ancestors and sacred objects that have meaning for you.

Special Note on Gift Economy:  For this workshop, Esalen will not be collecting the typical leader fees. Erika embraces the tradition of the gift economy and reciprocity. The leader’s compensation will be self-determined by each attendee. At the end of the workshop, participants will offer a donation amount that reflects their feeling of gratitude, value, and desire to support Erika and her ongoing work.

BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Erika has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for her workshops.  For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact her at ErikaGagnon11@gmail.com

“Wilderness, by itself, has its own way of teaching. The direct experience of wilderness can spontaneously bring wholeness back into the human community.”  – Manual of Gestalt Practice in the Tradition of Dick Price

When we are present in the here and now, every moment in the natural world represents an opportunity to enrich, heal, and clarify our relationships to the Earth, ourselves, and one another. Esalen’s co-founder Dick Price spent much of his time hiking in the Big Sur wilderness, and he believed that wild nature supported wholeness and healing for himself and others. With roots in the Gestalt tradition and values Dick developed at Esalen, Relational Gestalt Practice is designed to help us live our lives with increased awareness and embodied presence — and can be powerfully explored within the natural world.

For five days, we will immerse in awareness practices and deep nature connection on the sacred grounds of the Esalen Institute and in the Big Sur wild (ancestral lands of the Esselen People). Together, we will explore our inner and outer landscapes by mindfully engaging with biodiverse wilderness and Gestalt practices under the open sky. Dorothy Charles, co-founder of Tribal Ground Circle and founder of Relational Gestalt Practice, will support the cultivation of presence, awareness, and the authentic expression of our hearts and minds. Wildtender co-founders Noël Vietor and Fletcher Tucker will guide our reconnection with the living world through a framework of kinship. A community of wild relations — redwood groves, ravens, mossy boulders, and all the beings and aspects of Big Sur — will expand our circle to include the more-than-human world.

• Answers to frequently asked questions about the workshop can be found here.
• Various hiking abilities can be accommodated, bearing in mind that day hikes for this workshop will be up to four miles long with rugged, uneven, and sometimes steep terrain. Participants must be able to sit on the ground for periods of time. If you have any questions about your ability to participate, please read the workshop FAQs or email info@wildtender.com.

This workshop includes an additional $60 of faculty tuition and $40 park fee.

How empowered do you feel as a woman navigating this world? What is your relationship to the feminine? And to female wisdom? Join us inside the Moon Lodge, a place for exploration — for women to find tribal and ritual healing.

The 5Rhythms is a map that teaches us how energy moves. It shows us the patterns, rhythms, and cycles of life — Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness — and can be a direct path to the embodiment and empowerment many of us do not feel in a time of patriarchy.

This workshop will be about celebrating the body of Woman and the sacred feminine within us all. Through dance, meditation, massage, acupressure, and ritual baths, we will share in the Sisterhood of humanity. We will poultice our wounds and celebrate the great gifts of our ancestors.

This workshop includes:

• 5Rhythms moving meditation
• Mindfulness meditation
• Restorative acupressure techniques
• Women’s health practices
• Women’s counsel
• Group sharing

Dr. Julie Von, a specialist in women’s health, will present the Chinese Medicine perspective on the five elements, psychosomatic process, restorative acupuncture, and self-care. She will teach us to prioritize these pillars and recognize when we are out of balance.

Lucia Horan will integrate the stillness of Buddhist mindfulness meditation with the moving meditations of the 5Rhythms®. In sitting meditation, we have the opportunity to observe the mind and body at rest through silent introspection. In the practice of the 5Rhythms, we engage in mindfulness while in motion. Together, these two polarities mirror the dance of life and open the door to peace, well-being, and balance.

This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

What does it truly mean to show up as your authentic self at work, at home, and in all your relationships? How can true authenticity enhance your relationship with yourself and others? What does science have to say about the practice of authenticity?

The good news, research conducted at Harvard University has proven that authenticity is a skill, not a trait—which means you can learn practical methods to become more confident, express your true self, and go after your biggest goals.  When you embrace your authenticity, you unlock the confidence to ask for what you truly want, the courage to step into your power, and the freedom to live a life that feels true to you.  This potent music-infused workshop delivers science-backed, actionable strategies to help you bring your most powerful, authentic self into all areas of your life.

Called an “Inspirational Powerhouse,” Grammy-nominated musician and bestselling author Justin Michael Williams introduces the four skills to build true authenticity that work at every level of your life. Explore tools to enhance your personal and professional relationships, boost confidence, and help you navigate conflict without losing yourself.

In this workshop, you will be invited to:

• Learn the Harvard-backed science of authenticity and how to apply it in every situation–including at home, in friendships, romantic relationships, at work, in leadership roles, or navigating your next big move in life.
• Gain the most effective skills to boost confidence and silence inner doubts, overthinking, and anxiety.
• Discover how to stay authentic during conflict, even in high-stakes conversations.
• Understand what it means to be your truest, most authentic self and how to express it in any environment—and how to use authenticity to drive success.

This program has been designed from the ground up to include people of all genders, races, identities, and socioeconomic backgrounds and empower everyone to bring their full selves, build lasting connections, and create lives that reflect their deepest truths.

Through the practices of 5Rhythms dance, mindfulness meditation, and self-care, we weave together a retreat focused on healing and celebration. Looking back over the past few years, it is clear that many of us are exhausted. In times of turmoil and change, self-care and kindness are needed to connect us to the ability to recharge and renew. In order to move forward with energy, passion, and creativity, it is vital to seed these qualities in our daily life so that we may cultivate resilience.

Do you need to integrate more self-care into daily life? Would you like to be better resourced and have more energy? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, you are in perfect alignment to participate in this workshop.

The 5Rhythms is an externalization process that releases and balances the systems of the body through movement. It is a method of dance focused on presence versus performance. We pair this process with seated meditation to quiet the heart and mind, allowing for stillness and integration. Bringing both together mirrors the dance of life. We come together to create an environment that cultivates and nurtures joy, calmness, and ease.

Each session will be primarily focused on Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms moving meditation practice. We will complete each practice with a 10-15-minute seated meditation. Included will be a discourse on 5Rhythms, mindfulness, and self-care. All practices taught during this course lend to the experience and wisdom of resourcing and renewing vital life energy to send you home with skills and tools to apply to your daily life.

This workshop will include:

• 5Rhythms dance
• Seated meditation
• Sharing circles
• Discourses on mindfulness and 5Rhythms

No experience is necessary. All workshop hours contribute to 5Rhythms® Teachers Training.

This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.

Do you face challenges with focus and time management? Do you struggle with emotional hypersensitivity or frustration tolerance? Do you find it hard to follow through on tasks or commitments? Or to be reliable and consistent? If so, you are not alone.

Millions of people suffer daily from conditions associated with these executive function challenges. Though commonly referred to as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), these symptoms are not limited to this single condition, and they are often exacerbated by our complex, fast-paced, high-tech lives.

ADHD and related issues often leave people with a sense of self-doubt, shame, or unworthiness. The good news is that with mindfulness, compassion, and the application of skillful techniques, it is possible to move through life more effectively with care and wisdom.

In this workshop, through engaging in various mindfulness meditations, loving kindness and forgiveness practices and contemplative inquiry, you will discover how these challenges interrupt our functioning, how to navigate them, and how we can meet ourselves with compassion, forgiveness, and a good sense of humor.

This workshop includes an additional $100 in faculty tuition.

In this retreat, you will get in touch with a deep relaxation to rejuvenate the body and the mind through non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra. No matter your reasons — whether you need a break from the constant pressure, are in a life transition, or just want to delve deeper into your meditation practice — this retreat will provide space and time for contemplation and reflection.

The term non-sleep deep rest, coined by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, refers to a waking state of deep relaxation that maintains awareness. Evidence suggests reaching this state through NSDR protocols such as yoga nidra can reset dopamine levels and provide other physical and mental health benefits — including better sleep and enhanced neuroplasticity.

We’ll go on an inner journey together, and the hope is we’ll emerge more connected to both ourselves and our life paths to leave feeling refreshed and deeply rested.

Together, we will:

• Practice yoga nidra for restoration and rejuvenation.
• Discover the connection between nondual meditation and yoga nidra for deepening our meditation practices.
• Reflect on where we are in our lives and leave with a greater sense of self-connection and clarity.
• Dialogue about meditation for connection and community.
• Learn about the link between non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and better sleep.

Suggested Reading: The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You, By Kelly Boys

This workshop includes an additional $50 faculty tuition.

Gestalt is, at its heart, an awareness practice — one that invites us to be fully present with what is. This presence becomes the portal through which insight, inner guidance, and emotional regulation naturally emerge.

Gestalt practice allows us to connect with what is real and true for us — beyond old patterns, assumptions, habitual self-judgments, or the need to fix ourselves. Integrative Gestalt Practice™, developed by Perry and Johanna Holloman over the past 30 years, combines deep awareness with embodied exploration, offering practical tools to navigate life’s transitions, relationships, and inner questions with greater clarity and authenticity.

In this immersive workshop, we’ll guide you step by step in Integrative Gestalt Practice, a deeply experiential approach that engages body, heart, and mind. Through structured inquiries, breath practices, and movement, you will explore how awareness unfolds in real time and how it can bring clarity and a deeper connection to yourself and others. Group exercises, dyadic and triadic explorations, and guided self-inquiry will provide a dynamic space for transformation.

During this workshop, you will:

• Learn Gestalt-based self-inquiry practices that deepen awareness and connection.
• Engage in breath and movement-based exercises to access embodied wisdom.
• Work in dyads and triads to practice deep listening to one another and your own soul’s unfolding wisdom.
• Participate in guided group processes that create a dynamic space for transformation.
• Some participants will also have the opportunity to engage in individual “open seat” sessions with Perry and Johanna, supported by the group’s presence.

By deepening your capacity for presence and authentic connection, you cultivate trust in yourself and life itself, even in the midst of uncertainty. Join us for an immersive experience to create a stronger sense of agency, clarity, and connection to your own inner wisdom.

Recommended Reading: Gestalt Therapy Verbatim by Frederick S. Perls and Steve Andreas and The Unfolding Now by A. H. Almaas

This workshop includes an additional $50 in faculty tuition.

The Earth holds us, breathes with us, moves through us.

Since time immemorial, human beings have lived in deep, reciprocal relationship with landscapes—our movements shaped by terrain, our nervous systems regulated by the rhythms of seasons and tides, our sense of self inseparable from the more-than-human world. Yet, in this modern, frenetic age, we are conditioned to see our bodies as isolated, our healing as individual, and “nature” as separate. This retreat is an invitation to remember an older truth: to inhabit our own bodies fully is to reinhabit the living Earth.

Rooted in the Gestalt traditions of Esalen and the emergent field of eco-somatics, our four-day backpacking journey will guide us through the wilds of Big Sur—Esselen tribal territory—in an immersive exploration of belonging, awareness, and interconnection, followed by a weekend of retreat and integration at Esalen Institute.

While trekking through awe-inspiring wilderness, we will engage in somatic practices that reawaken our felt kinship with the natural world. Embracing slowness and spaciousness, we will attune to gravity, breath, and the sensuous aliveness of place. Silent hiking, intuitive movement, meditation, and earth-based ritual will dissolve the false boundary between self and landscape. Exploring embodiment as an intimate community, we will move beyond notions of individual self-care to a lived experience of healing as relational and ecological.

Through this retreat, we step into a different rhythm—one guided by the living world around and within us. As we listen with our whole bodies, we begin to sense the reciprocity woven into all things. What emerges is not just connection but remembering—a return to a relationship as ancient as our true body: the Earth.

Important Notes:

• The full experience takes place over six days, from Tuesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 12th, 2025.

• This is a partner program with Wildtender, an organization based in Big Sur exploring the embodied 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.org/earthbody
• Experience with backpacking is not required. Wilderness skills will be taught before and within the program, and participants will be supported in preparations. Please see Wildtender’s program page for a more detailed hiking itinerary and backpacking eligibility criteria.

Since falling in love is biologically natural, but sustaining love is biologically unnatural, Soul Mate focuses on the art and discipline of sustaining love. You begin with learning how to appreciate your partner so specifically and frequently that your partner feels fully seen and loved.

You then practice both the art and discipline of hearing your partner’s criticisms without becoming defensive. For example, so you don’t have to fear “walking on eggshells” before sharing a concern, your partner first learns how to prepare her or himself to emotionally associate your criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved.

Soul Mate is designed as the next evolutionary shift beyond active listening. Active listening allowed the criticizer to feel heard, but failed to teach the person hearing the criticism how to emotionally associate the criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved. The problem? Unless the receiver of criticism feels safe the person sharing their concern cannot feel safe.

You will learn a series of practices you may integrate into your everyday life:

• Six methods of sustaining a “conflict free zone” for 166 hours of your 168-hour week.
• A “Caring and Sharing Time” the remaining two hours by practicing six mindsets that allow you to not feel defensive when criticized.
• “Eleven Wisdoms” as a foundation for deepening your love.
• The four “depleters of love,” aka the “Four C’s” (Criticisms, Complaints, Controlling, and Complacency)
• How to use your new skills with your children, parents, work colleagues and people you differ with politically.
• How to use music and dancing to revitalize your love (to be practiced by dancing before each session)

To sustain your practice after the workshop, I invite you to free, ongoing, group follow-up calls to resolve stumbling blocks. If you wish to review the insights and exercises at any time, you will also have the option of purchasing a Zoom and book version of the course.

This workshop is for couples of all genders and sexual orientations.  Developed over the past 30 years, the workshop is also used by many health professionals in their work with clients and patients.

Recommended Resources: Role Mate to Soul Mate by Warren Farrell (BenBella: July 2024); additional video content on warrenfarrell.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHtXyzKk6bQ&t=229s

I think it’s the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work and how they don’t work. —Michelle Obama

The pelvis is a powerful part of our body and is foundational to our overall health. The tissues and bones of our pelvis encompass our reproductive, eliminatory, and digestive organs. They shift and change according to stress, infection, pregnancy and birth, hormonal changes, lifestyle, and trauma. When it is in balance, we feel at ease; when out of balance, it can significantly impact the quality of our life.

This retreat will focus on pelvic health along the span of the reproductive spectrum, from preconception through menopause. A broad range of topics will be covered, including:

• Pelvic floor anatomy and self-care practices
• Menstrual health
• Sexual health
• Nutrition and the digestive system
• Plant medicine
• Mindfulness
• Mental health
• Yoga and other movement practices
• Community building and journaling activities
• Hormones and fertility
• Pelvic care across cultures and history

Our goal is to help our participants increase their knowledge, self-awareness, and literacy on the workings of their body, pelvic floor, fertility, and sexual health during different spans of their lives. Participants will discover an array of resources, a community of women to support them on their journey, lifelong education, and self-care practices that are accessible and supportive for their body and pelvic health.

Recommended Reading: Wild Feminine by Tami Lynn Kent, Dr. Sonia’s Guide to Navigating Pelvic Pain by Sonia Bahlani, Hello, Down There: A Guide to Healing Chronic Pelvic and Sexual Pain by Alexandra Milspaw and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Participants must bring their own set of tune-up yoga massage balls for use during the workshop. They can be purchased here.

The Artist lives within everyone! Art can be made out of just about anything! It’s a time to leave the critic behind and allow oneself to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit. It’s also a time to enjoy the company and camaraderie of like-minded peers. Now is your time to discover the joys of art based on community and collaboration and to find out how meaningful and grand a shared, creative experience can be.

In this transformative workshop, we will use repurposed material in a whole new context of re-creation.

Come experiment with a vast array of reused materials to create mixed-media mosaics, sculptures, and collages. There will be an assortment of recycled glass, metals, wood, plastics, paper, photographs, fabrics, and old artifacts — bits and pieces of the past and present.

In a beautiful, nurturing, supportive setting, we will reclaim and shape society’s scraps and discarded objects into re-imagined meaning. Find your own inner voice of expression as you delve into the process of creating art out of different materials and mediums,  and learn new skills.

Not only will you have the opportunity to explore your own expression and immerse yourself in solo creations, but we will also engage in a collaborative group project to enter the whimsical world of community-oriented magic and play.

There is a transformative joy that comes from engaging with others in the artistic process. It opens doors unseen and forges deeper bonds between people. This exciting, shared experience teaches us how beautiful it is to break down barriers and collaborate.

This workshop is geared toward anyone with the desire to create. From the beginner to the advanced, this is a time to explore new possibilities. Together, we will:

• Explore our own creativity and immerse ourselves in solo artistic expression.
• Engage in a collaborative group project and enter the whimsical world of community-oriented magic and play.
• Leave the critic behind and allow ourselves to play, nourish, and replenish the creative spirit.
• Discover the joys of art based on community and collaboration and how meaningful and grand a shared experience can be.

If there are any recycled materials, special mementos, poems, or photos you would like to bring and include in our creations, please feel free!

This workshop includes an additional $115 for art materials.

Join us to experience deep rest and renewal! You need and deserve this. So many of us are overtaxed by constant demands, burdens, and worries, especially those of us providing extra support for others through caregiving, healthcare, activism, and other service-oriented jobs.

We bring you expertise in the science, art, and practice of restoration from stress.

• Learn the practical and cutting-edge science of stress resilience.
• Be guided into states of deep rest and rejuvenation through meditation, yoga nidra, and restorative yoga.
• Awaken all of your senses to reconnect with your body and increase vitality through gentle yoga, expressive movement, nature immersion, and sound healing.

Immersed in the beauty of nature at Esalen, our work is well supported. We will learn and practice new ways to restore ourselves, and you will develop a toolbox of short practices that support your daily rejuvenation and sustained vitality.

For thousands of years across many cultures, enhanced states of consciousness have been used as a strategy for meaningful transformation and self-exploration — marking life’s major transitions and rites of passage and deepening one’s connection to self, community, and the natural world.

In this workshop, we will gather in the rich field of community for an immersive experience and personal exploration of enhanced states of consciousness. Our time together will include strategies for navigating, integrating, and preparing for these experiences. Holotropic Breathwork® offers language, method, and structure for turning inward and working with deeply personal material as it emerges, uniquely, from one’s own intrinsic intelligence. We will be supported by time-honored practices that are simple, yet powerful. These unique states can offer us unmediated access to the self as a deep source of healing, insight, and evolutionary potential. Participants will experience four Holotropic Breathwork sessions, with two as “breather” and two as “sitter.” Your time assisting others in “non-ordinary state” space will complement your personal exploration. Additionally, contemplative practice, movement, expressive arts, and time in community will support the integration process throughout the week.

Originating from the pioneering psychedelic researcher, Stanislav Grof, and his late wife, Christina Grof, Holotropic Breathwork is a particularly useful practice for those interested in or training to work in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

This workshop is suited for all those of heart who are curious about exploring enhanced states of consciousness and opening to an evolutionary process of unfolding. New or novice explorers/breathers are very welcome, along with experienced navigators/breathers. The fundamental urge to grow, to heal, and to be transformed in a truly authentic way drives us not outward but inward, toward the depths of our own being, toward a deep mystery within. This inward journey strengthens and nourishes our senses in a way that can revitalize our daily lives with creative and emergent energy.

All light arises from darkness, including insight, creativity, vision, joy, and possibility. The luminous darkness is the spacious presence and receptivity through which we also access light. It is the field of all potential and emergence that we sometimes forget in the context of ordinary life and habit. In this deeply restorative retreat, at the threshold of a new year, we will commune with the luminous darkness to listen deeply, renew possibility, and set conscious intentions for our lives and our world in the year ahead.

We will replace knowing with not knowing and rest in the embodied presence from which clearer seeing arises.

With compassion and curiosity as our guides, we will reflect on the past year, both harvesting lessons and releasing limiting beliefs. This regenerative and transformative process is about remembering who we really are — and stepping into possibility on behalf of our collective.

We will deepen our capacity for compassion and clear seeing  through:

• Meditation and Dharma talks
• Relational mindfulness and inquiry
• Conscious movement and dance
• Embodied practices to invoke the realm of dreaming and conscious imagination and to embrace shadow and the unknown
• Reflective writing
• Deep time in nature

This workshop, inspired by Eden’s book Luminous Darkness, draws upon the wisdom streams of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, non-duality, eco dharma, somatic awareness, and conscious dance. This work is heart-opening, transformative — and also incredibly fun!

Recommended reading: Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull