Our workshops are designed to support you in the challenging work of self exploration, in partnership with some of the leading minds of the day. Join us in discovering the next frontiers of individual and societal transformation.
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Learn MoreWe invite you to step into a powerful, immersive experience weaving the dynamic energy of 5Rhythms® movement with the deep wisdom of Indigenous traditions. Rooted in the teachings of the Esselen people, this workshop is an invitation to reconnect — with yourself, your community, and the natural world.
For millennia, rites of passage and sacred ceremonies have marked the transitions of life to foster deep connection and a sense of belonging. Today, many of these traditions have been lost or fragmented, leaving us yearning for meaning and community.. In this weeklong journey, we’ll honor the wisdom of the past while creating space for a new kind of homecoming — one that transcends gender, background, and experience.
Through guided movement, storytelling, and shared rituals, we’ll celebrate diversity and unity, embracing both what makes us unique and what brings us together. This is a space for authentic expression and deep listening, where every story and background is honored.
This workshop is a collaborative initiative as part of the healing and reconciliation process between Esalen Institute, participating faculty, and the Esselen Tribe.
No prior movement experience is needed — just a willingness to explore and connect. No choreography, no expectations, only the freedom to move, feel, connect, and express.
Come as you are. Return to One.
This workshop includes an additional $110 of faculty tuition.
Breathe. Move. Pay Attention. These three simple actions, natural and always available to us, provide potency to our vitality. They are the legs and wings that carry us into the three worlds within us — the physical, the subtle, and the mystical.
Join Jovinna on the sacred land Esalen Institute resides upon to slow down, reclaim the use of your time and mind, and return to that which holds the deepest meaning. Here, you can inhabit your body, refine your senses, expand your mind and heart, and rest in the simplicity of being.
During this experiential week, you will explore:
Let’s harvest and give thanks to the natural flow of life force, harmony, and magic surrounding us during our time together. And to dedicate the fruit of our time to all sentient beings and the well-being of our lands.
Please bring a journal. Jovinna invites you to detox from or minimize the use of all electronics during your stay at Esalen.
This workshop includes an additional $55 in faculty tuition.
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How we sit, stand, move, and respond to our inner and outer world reflects deeply ingrained patterns wired into our nervous systems since childhood. They reflect our early solutions to physical survival in our family system. Out of awareness, these beliefs and strategies can still run our adult lives, limit our choices, and prevent physical ease and emotional healing.
If you still have pain or limitations from a past injury, it is usually because many other areas in your body had to overwork to protect and avoid using the injured area while you were recovering. These unconscious compensations can create an imbalanced workload and, eventually, new issues elsewhere in our body that prevent complete healing.
Using CFR®, we slowly explore and deeply sense small, gentle movements that bring these hidden patterns into awareness. When our genius nervous system becomes aware of a habit that is no longer useful, it extinguishes it. A greater experience of self-trust and self-worth is uncovered. A new sense of self-love, which comes from paying attention to your details without judgment, usually emerges.
This workshop is for the sedentary who want to become more active, the highly active who want to avoid injury and gain a competitive edge, and the chronically tired and stressed who want to improve breathing, posture, and flexibility. It is for those who have experienced physical injury or emotional trauma and those in helping professions who wish to enhance outcomes for clients and patients.
Our intention is that you will leave equipped with simple yet effective tools for continued self-healing. Your discoveries may lead to a state of awe about what is possible in your body, your movement, and your life.
Recommended Reading: Somatics by Thomas Hanna and The Elusive Obvious by Moshe Feldenkrais
Practice is a seedbed of miracles. —Esalen Institute Co-Founder Michael Murphy
What positive shift would create the most meaningful change in your life right now?
Your extraordinary potential is built into your DNA and awaits your discovery. In this enlivening workshop, experience the essence of Integral Transformative Practice® (ITP), a living platform for growth, well-being, and evolution. Created by Esalen Institute luminaries Michael Murphy and George Leonard, ITP focuses on the interconnectedness of all aspects of the self to support the changes you want most — for yourself and the world.
This experiential journey weaves movement, writing, and sharing circles so you can listen deeply to the wisdom of your whole being, revealing who you are, who you’re becoming, and your next natural steps. Using the body as a guide for learning, we’ll engage in solo, partner, and group energy-awareness practices developed by ITP Co-Founder and Master Aikido Sensei George Leonard. We’ll also explore a revitalizing daily practice to restore balance, boost energy, and invite deep relaxation —one that can be integrated as a supportive tool for everyday life.
You are invited to:
By applying the integral model of body, mind, heart, and soul — a portal to our innate wholeness — we’ll also explore the worldview that gave rise to Esalen Institute, where this transformative practice was developed. This evolutionary framework offers a pathway to our extraordinary potential, our individual connection to wholeness, which is ready to emerge.
Recommended reading: The Life we are Given, by Michael Murphy & George Leonard & Living an Extraordinary Life: The Magic of Integral Transformative Practice, by Christina Grote & Pam Kramer
We gather on this powerful land for a weekend to remember — with our bodies, minds, and spirits — all that we have to be grateful for. Amidst all of the turmoil, we come together in community to remember that we are enough as we are. Through yoga, meditation, reflection, cliff side baths, and walking on Esalen’s healing land, we will return to our hearts. We’ll be joined by incredible guest teachers and musicians, sharing their expertise, wisdom and gratitude with us.
Together, we’ll explore dynamic yoga asana, pranayama, chanting, meditation, and yoga nidra. Let’s recognize each breath as a gift, as we’re nourished by delicious organic meals, the natural hot springs, walks among the majestic redwoods, or simply curling up in an ocean-view chair. Whether you come alone or with loved ones, you are sure to return to your daily rhythm with a newfound sense of ease, inspiration, and deep gratitude for the life you’re living.
This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.
“Enoughness” is the starting point of any journey toward gratitude. We begin to fully take in the profound gift of all that is unfolding only when we recognize that we are enough.
With Esalen as our transformative container, let’s meet during the week of Thanksgiving. Let’s honor the land and the Esselen people, the indigenous stewards of this place, as we remember the awe of the natural world around us and the life force within us.
Throughout the week, we will practice giving thanks for the world around us. We’ll cultivate curiosity and wonder for the life we have here and now. We’ll begin to move our attention away from the long list of “lack” that can consume our days.
To support the cultivation of this state of being, we will include daily practices to create suppleness in mind, spirit, and body:
We will return to the present to reclaim and embrace ourselves in our wholeness as enough. We will attend to all the ways we are enough, give enough, get enough, and have enough so we can lay claim to the power of life pulsing through us.
Each day will be an exploration of practices and tools that can cultivate and make space for a sense of contentment —and a chance for “giving” to ripple out into the world with grace and gratitude.
This workshop includes $175 additional faculty tuition.
Master Chungliang “Uncle Al” Huang, one of Esalen’s most cherished faculty members, brings 50+ years of teaching experience to welcome you into China’s ancient practice of qigong.
During this workshop, Master Huang will teach the most essential qigong exercises — guiding students through energetic practices of movement, storytelling, and subtle energy work. This is an experience for those who wish to sustain a daily practice for the mind, body, and spirit.
Master Huang will teach easy-to-absorb, adaptive exercises and assist you through metaphors, visualization, sonic chanting, meditation, and deep circular breathing methods. Participants will hear about the great history of this ancient practice as Master Huang shares his vast wealth of knowledge.
A fun, joyful weekend for all ages and levels of practitioners! We will learn to incorporate this healthy practice as a consistent habit: Wei Wu Wei — “doing by not doing, spontaneously.”
Beginners and “advanced beginners” are welcome.
To be truly creative, to let go of preconceived restrictions, is to allow yourself the freedom to flow. Taoist wisdom calls this Wu Wei — the art of not interfering with what is already happening.
During this weeklong workshop, we will playfully reinvent Tai Ji forms with ancient Tai Ji rituals, Five Moving Forces of Nature, and traditional Tai Ji motifs. We will explore, improvise, and evolve to find renewed and refreshed ways to dance the open structures of this ancient wonder of movement meditation.
With more than fifty consecutive years of teaching experience at Esalen, Master Huang creates a unique Tai Ji class for practitioners at all levels. Come prepared to enjoy “Uncle Al’s” storytelling, energy practices, and qigong mastery in this creative “Living Your Tao” Tai Ji experience.
Are you ready to escape the grip of everyday seriousness and soften into your own vibrant aliveness?
Join us for a soul-soothing, laughter-filled playshop designed to help you lighten up, loosen your edges, and let yourself flow. Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Big Sur and the healing spirit of Esalen, this immersive experience is an invitation to return to your playful, radiant center.
Explore the liberating power of ecstatic laughter, deep musical immersion, and somatic movement by tapping into practices that uplift the nervous system, expand breath, and release stress and emotion stored in the body. Through call-and-response chanting, guided “laughter‘cizes,” gentle somatic play, and musically guided journeys, you’ll be encouraged to drop into deep relaxation — and rise into spontaneous delight.
Throughout the week, you’ll be immersed in a celestial soundscape created by the electric zither, kalimba, iPad synths, ambient textures, gong washes, and intuitive voice that weaves seamlessly with nature sounds and percussive play. Healing vibrations invite the mind to ease and the heart to open, making space for curiosity, catharsis, and connection with your own beautiful inner terrain.
Drawing on trauma-aware, nature-rooted embodiment practices, this playshop invites you to move at the pace of presence — sensing into the body’s rhythms, shaking loose old patterns, and letting joy ripple through you in organic, unforced waves. Reconnect with the wild wisdom of your inner child and remember laughter not just as an emotion but as a movement — one that breathes, flows, and frees.
Whether you’re aching to shake off the weight of the world or just ready to laugh from your belly again, come as you are. This playshop is for anyone longing to feel more alive, attuned, and unburdened.
Come play. Come laugh. Come home to joy.
Now more than ever, it is important we build practices to strengthen our internal resolve and self-resourcing amidst a dynamically shifting society. Together, we will listen to our heart’s wisdom in this rich four-day journey (Friday to Monday) through sound, ceremony, and self-discovery.
In this intimate and transformative workshop, you will have the unique opportunity to experience multiple East Forest’s live music performances. Additionally, Radha will lead us in embodiment practices of Self-Awakening Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Pranayama to create an all-levels and accessible doorway to inner insights. Through the primacy of our own heart-opening and felt experience, we can discover the inner pathways to fortitude and healing.
East Forest and Radha would like to offer a certain amount of scholarship to those in need. Please apply with this form. If further assistance would be helpful, you may also apply for an Esalen scholarship.
This workshop includes an additional $290 faculty tuition.
In a time of constant noise and urgency, this is an invitation to slow down and enter into a deep and quiet rhythm with the more-than-human world. Through silence, movement, prayer, and time on the land, this workshop is a space to listen to our bodies, to the Earth, and to what arises when we release the need to speak and perform.
Each morning, we will begin with a grounding conversation and prayer followed by slow, intentional movement and breathwork. On Saturday, participants will be invited into a day of silent contemplation, concluding with an evening gathering to break our fast from speaking.
Afternoons will invite ecological attunement through shared time on the land. We will walk, witness, and rest with the trees, ocean, and wildlife of Esalen — receiving and remembering our belonging to the living Earth.
Evenings will be a time for warm food, shared reflection, and gentle conversation. We will gather to speak from the heart, to notice what has surfaced, and to be in community through the catharsis and insight that can emerge from stillness.
During our time together, you are warmly invited to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with your inner and outer landscapes through:
Feel more rooted in quiet presence, connect to body, land, and spirit, and be gently restored through communion with nature and each other.
Winter solstice is a time to reflect — to cultivate vitality and nurture ourselves. The dark days of winter are an opportune time to slow down and make space for self-care. This winter solstice yoga retreat will focus on cultivating inner awareness. By practicing in community, we build inner vitality and brightness to return home renewed.
During this retreat, we will combine three healing practices to revitalize the body and calm the mind in the exquisite and rejuvenating natural environment of Esalen.
Together, we will focus our attention on being by using:
The word solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still) because the seasonal movement of the sun’s path appears to come to a stop before reversing direction at the solstices. Moving into stillness, we can return to our lives refreshed and strengthened for the new year to come.
All levels are welcome.
This workshop includes an additional $20 material fee.
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Soul is flow. It’s an ever-changing play of sensations and feelings. It’s how the deathless presence meets and moves our finite human body. In this workshop, we will reclaim the body-in-motion as a doorway to the life unfolding just under the surface of everyday forgetting.
A formless dance form, Soul Motion® allows for passionate, full-bodied movement as well as mindful inner explorations, art-making, ritual, and luscious lounging. Together, we will integrate conscious movement, body-based inquiries of Gestalt Practice, and the stillness of nature for a process to transform body, heart, and spirit.
Soul Motion is a meeting between self and other in a dance that is deeply creative, nourishing, and transforming. It is a movement toward the dynamic stillness at the center of all things — the place of rest at the heart of sound and motion.
During this week together, we will:
Open to anybody willing to move, pause, listen, and truly relax into one timeless moment. This workshop is especially helpful for people in the healing professions who work with clients, patients, and students.
Bring in the New Year with a rejuvenating weekend of meditation, music, and gentle yoga, guided by Buddhist teacher and author Lopön Chandra. As winter invites us to slow down and turn inward, we’ll explore “wintering” — the art of embracing rest, renewal, and the quiet gifts of this time.
Enjoy meditation sessions, both indoors and outside, while gazing over the Pacific Ocean, perhaps even spotting migrating whales. Learn techniques for developing shamatha, meaning “calm abiding,” and concentration, including mindfulness of breathing and Buddhist-based awareness practices. Experience the healing benefits of mantra recitation and devotional music, along with gentle, therapeutic yoga to support deeper states of relaxation and insight.
This weekend is designed for fun, reflection, and restoration. Whether you’re new to meditation and yoga or an experienced practitioner, you’ll find accessible practices, supportive accommodations, and a welcoming community. Seated and supine meditations will be offered for all bodies and abilities.
Come as you are and leave refreshed, carrying winter’s quiet wisdom and renewed inspiration into the New Year. All are welcome.
Come to dance and be danced! Move until you are moved. Dance until the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.—Gabrielle Roth
The gateway of the body is a powerful vessel that allows us to move and be moved. Together, we will dance into and through the gateway of the new year, crossing the thresholds of past, present, and future. We will honor the darkness of this season while igniting the light of prayer and hope for the future, dancing out of distraction and into the focused space of collective movement medicine.
If we have the courage to move the body, the heart and mind can follow. Come open the gateway of your body by unlocking presence and potential. Come see what is waiting for you on the other side. The 5Rhythms®, a moving meditation practice, teaches us skills and tools to use in our everyday lives that help us facilitate the union of presence-based awareness. The rhythms — Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness — allow us to explore the true nature of who we are and how our energy moves in this world.
Seated meditation allows the space for quiet integration of the nervous system. In the 5Rhythms, we engage in mindfulness while in motion as a pathway to externalize energy. The two polarities of moving and sitting meditation together mirror the dance of life and open the door to cultivate peace, well-being, and balance.
Join us as we dance into the new year! No experience is required. All workshop hours contribute to 5Rhythms teacher training prerequisites.
This workshop includes optional sessions with Guest Artist Martha Peabody focused on the investigation of the 5Rhythms Visual Practice for personal and community ritual.This workshop includes optional sessions with Guest Artist Martha Peabody and Maya Jaguar.
Join Martha for special sessions focused on the investigation of the 5Rhythms Visual Practice for personal and community ritual.
Join Maya on the sacred threshold of the new year for a soul-stirring ritual honoring Yemayá, the Yoruba Goddess of the Ocean, mother of creation, and guardian of transformation. Rooted in Afro-Brazilian tradition and adapted with care for a diverse and inclusive community, this two-hour ceremony invites you to release what no longer serves and call in the tides of renewal.
Recommended reading: Maps to Ecstasy, Connections, & Sweat Your Prayers, by Gabrielle Roth, Dancing with the Dharma Edited by Harrison Blum, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven
This workshop includes an additional $100 of faculty tuition.
Dance is one of the world’s most ancient transformative rituals. From the whirling dervishes to the shamans, the waltz to the rave, we dance for joy, healing, and connection — guided by wisdom that transcends the thinking brain. As the old year ends and the new begins, come to sweat, honor the past, and make space for a new beginning.
Through an alchemical combination of movement, nature, and sound healing rituals, we will reconnect our bodies, minds, and hearts to gain clarity about the past year’s journey, anchor our new intentions, and intuit our way forward with confidence and curiosity.
Over the weekend, we will:
Allow yourself to be nourished by this sacred land, the hot spring waters, the time we share together, and the friends you make. Experience the beauty, awe, and wonder of being alive so you may return home rejuvenated and inspired for this brand new year.
Bring a journal, pen, and a piece of festive clothing.
This workshop includes an additional $35 in faculty tuition.
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. A deep dive into the self.
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:
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.
The Body of Belonging invites you to explore feelings of kinship, acceptance, and community on a somatic level, identifying the elements most significant to you. Through gentle yoga-inspired movement, breathwork, sound, and meditation, we will engage in self-inquiry practices within a group setting. Together, we will create a safe and brave space to experiment with accessing a sense of belonging. Drawing from ancient and Indigenous wisdom, we will work toward dismantling the individualistic ways of being that contribute to our growing sense of separateness.
Loneliness is an epidemic eroding the fabric of who we are as a collective. It is so prevalent in the United States that the surgeon general has issued an advisory to call attention to the importance of social connection for individual and community-wide health. The hyperindividualism that has been promoted as our best way of “succeeding” has left us feeling lost and alienated. In our overfocus on self, we’ve lost sight of how connection, community, and a felt sense of belonging are central to our well-being.
Participants will be invited to connect with their individual needs as it relates to belonging. They will build skillfulness in advocating for belonging by centering and nourishing connection and community to realize the resilience that comes with healthy interdependence.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
The Brahmavihārās (divine abodes) are profound practices that uncover your natural capacity to live your life easefully with love, connection, wisdom, and joy. In this experiential workshop, we’ll use daily guided meditation practices, storytelling, song, relational mindfulness practices, self-directed neuroplasticity, yoga, and somatic play to explore the classical Buddhist Heart practices known as the “boundless states” or the “four immeasurables.”
In this workshop, we will explore these four key virtues (found in the Yogic & Buddhist traditions) and ways to cultivate them, including:
Our days will follow a nourishing schedule of embodied experiences balanced harmoniously with relaxing meals, community connection, and starlit soaks in Esalen’s healing baths. Live music, nature, poetry, shadow work, journaling, breathwork, and ritual will all be artfully woven into our time together.
Whereas some spiritual practices are aimed at otherworldly enlightenment, the four divine abodes help us awaken to the beauty, clarity, and vast possibility available right here in our complex, often messy, mundane, and wholly sacred human experience. They are a pathway to unburdening ourselves of self-doubt, resentment, and regret. They guide our way home to that wellspring in our hearts from which unconditional love flows, where we contact our wholeness, discover radical acceptance, and remember our belonging in this world.
No matter who you are, where you are on your spiritual path, or what you’ve been through, discovering renewal is possible. Join us if you long for a deep, playful, tenderizing workshop that may touch your heart and leave you forever transformed.
Our ancestors explored spirit-led movement to embody ecstatic states for generations. Whether as a form of celebration, mourning, or prayer, ecstatic dance has long served as sacred medicine to heal the hearts of individuals and communities.
Join us on this sacred land for a transformative weekend of ecstatic dance ceremony — a journey to tap into the body’s ancestral wisdom, alchemize stored emotions, and liberate the spirit. Supported by live music provided by an award-winning ecstatic dance DJ, we’ll surrender to freeform movement, awaken our power, and manifest hope.
Together, we will explore:
DTO, an award-winning producer endorsed by Deepak Chopra, will share his musical gifts as part of the workshop. Blending live instruments, electronic sounds, and ancient mantras, his music creates sacred sonic experiences designed to elevate consciousness.
Let’s cultivate collective empowerment and create a fully inclusive dance community rooted in presence, reverence, and prayer to groove with the divine as an offering of love. No dance experience is required.
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.
10 CE credits available — for additional information, click here. There will be a $70 fee for CE credit, payable directly to Barbara Holifield. If interested, you can contact her at barbaraholifield1@me.com.
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.
A journey to heal oneself and awaken deeply from within. Through meditation, yoga, and time in nature, we will tap into the stories our bodies have to tell and develop skills to nourish ourselves in 2026.
This workshop focuses on the transition from one year to the next as an opportunity to purposefully cultivate a sense of renewal. During our time together, you will be guided to explore and experience what this means for you personally.
Ritual invocations of energy and the power of the Esalen grounds themselves will support your healing journey by providing an intentional space for you to reflect on all you have experienced individually and collectively within your community during the past year.
Throughout the weekend, we will share new ways of grounding and connecting to the sacred energy of nature and the elements constantly surrounding us. This supports the act of renewal, cultivates greater presence, and creates capacity to build and replenish energy throughout the coming year.
In this workshop, all participants are invited:
Vibration Transformation is the art and practice of transforming the vibrations (or energies) of your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to align with your truest, deepest, highest self.
As Albert Einstein said, “Everything in life is vibration.” We are all vibrational beings. Everything in our universe is made up of energy and vibrations. We are constantly interacting with the people, places, and things around us through our own personal vibrational field. If we choose, we can transform our vibrations to match our most authentic selves and become capable of so much more.
By creating daily health and wellness practices, you will clear stress and tension to heal and restore yourself — shifting vibrations to consciously manifest the life you envision for yourself and the world. How we treat our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits — the way we eat, move, breathe, meditate, believe, rest, and sleep — impacts our energy in both life-affirming and life-depleting ways, affecting our overall vibrations.
In this workshop, we will explore:
By crafting your own one-of-a-kind daily health and wellness program, you’ll be able to pursue the things that matter most to you in life, raising your self-worth and creating a vibrational field that lets you meet your full potential.
To encounter someone, something, or someplace implies that it’s unexpected or a surprise. Encountering the moment means coming face-to-face with the unknown. In movement practice, we train ourselves to stay open, curious, centered, and responsive at the front edge of any encounter — counterbalancing those innate primal reactions to fight, flee, freeze, or please.
Rather than withdrawing, playing it safe, or tolerating things you shouldn’t, imagine being adept at staying present and standing your ground clearly and authentically. Picture a world where we are able to express opinions, feelings, discontents, and appreciations skillfully while remaining wholeheartedly open to outcome and change.
In this workshop, within a supportive and challenging environment, we will create “safe emergencies” — situations intense enough to command our attention that are managed with care and support, to help us risk moving beyond habitual self-defeating patterns. Participants can receive real feedback and gain plenty of practice making new choices in relation to others.
Recommended Reading: https://www.andreajuhan.com/content/open-floor-encounter-dance-therapy-and-transformation
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Restore.
It can take time and great effort to move away from the ego affirming busyness of modern day life toward a reflective stillness. In this workshop we will cultivate this slowing, deepening, and going within.
In a community setting, we will allow ourselves to dive below the surface of our thoughts and identities to know ourselves more intimately and untether from the chords that hold us to old behaviors and belief structures. Our practice will include:
With the power of this land, the healing waters, strength of community, and nourishment of slowing down, we will move toward a listening, supple, healing body.
Please bring an eye pillow, and if you are driving, please also bring a bolster and sandbag.
CE Credit Available: 25 hours Continued Education credit for Registered Yoga Teachers (RYT) available through Yoga Alliance; see leader.
This workshop includes $220 in additional tuition.
Join Janet in this nourishing and revitalizing weekend, designed to replenish the nervous system and adrenals, boost the immune system, and ground our hearts and minds in simplicity. We will drop down through body-mind-spirit to find space between effort and surrender, allowing our internal systems to release toxins and integrate the powerful wellness generated by our bodies through our physical practices. Slow and fluid movement, restorative postures, meditation, pranayama (breathwork), and chanting will refill the mind, body, and spirit.
We will create space in our body for introspection and move out of the cyclical fight-or-flight response to cultivate sustainable power, rest, and healing.
We’ll practice:
Please bring an eye pillow. If you are driving, please also bring a sandbag and bolster.
CE Credit Available: 10 hours Continued Education credit for Registered Yoga Teachers (RYT) available through Yoga Alliance; see leader.
This workshop includes an additional $100 faculty tuition.
Everything I have experienced in my life, I take into my art. —Anna Halprin
What if everything you’ve experienced in your life could be danced? What if an image drawn carried a message for healing? What if a dance inspired a drawing that sparks words for a poem and the poem transforms a difficult story that needs to be told into beauty?
Grounded in the Halprin Life Art Process™, this workshop’s approach enlivens dialogues between body and imagination, life experience and art making, and creativity and healing. With creative explorations of the expressive arts — movement, drawing, and poetic writing — participants will be guided in creative encounters with the symbolic and metaphoric life of the body.
Each day begins with somatic awareness and movement to awaken and attune the physical body. From there, you’ll navigate your personal material through a model that interweaves movement/dance, visual art, poetic narrative, performative ritual, and witnessing.
Together, we’ll work with Body Part Mapping and the Self Portrait Process: visual and narrative maps to lead us into the themes, memories, and dreams that inform our lives. Individual and collective life narratives will provide material to generate encounters and inspire embodied models for change.
Participants can expect to explore:
Please make sure to bring a writer's journal and a box of varied and well-supplied Craypas pastels.
Somatic warm-ups will be guided by guest faculty Natan Dascal, with live music provided throughout the workshop by guest musician Miles Lassi.
Recommended reading: The Expressive Body in Life, Art & Therapy by Daria Halprin
Explore the spine as the body’s sensorial continuum. Engage the breath, senses, movement, sound, words (mantra), imagination, and feelings to curate somatic experience and immersion. Sensitize to the rhythms and energies of the cerebrospinal axis that hold infinite potential for growth and transformation. The spinal nerves, centers, and energies are a bridge between the body’s material and subtler immaterial dimensions. Attending and awakening to them can be a powerful tool in anyone’s spiritual path and repertoire of psychosomatic practices.
Together, we’ll play with the metaphor of the spine as an “inverted tree,” an organism with its roots “above” (the immaterial realm) and branches “below” (the material body), inviting us to initiate a new relationship with our bodies, senses, and sensorial environment.
Components include:
This workshop is designed for anyone engaged in or experimenting with some form of embodied practice, including meditation, movement, yoga, breathwork, energy work, voice work, journaling, and writing. Come ready to experiment, reflect, and connect.
Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on. — James Baldwin
Most people don’t actually fear failure; they fear their own brilliance. In this weeklong journey, we’ll explore how subtle self-sabotage, shrinking, and doubt prevent us from claiming our gifts. Through coherence coaching, embodied exercises, and radical self-honesty, you’ll discover the courage to live as the powerful being you already are.
Participants will:
When we embrace our greatness, we move beyond fear into freedom, clarity, and contribution. You’ll receive practical tools and experience a supportive community for the embodied confidence to live your dopeness with courage and joy.
At the very heart of “belonging” is the word “long.” To be-long to something is to stay with it for the long haul. It is an active choice we make to a relationship, to a place, to our body, to a life because we value it. Even knowing that it may not be all that we hope it to be, we are keeping the long view of what is possible, and our life becomes an offering to making it so. ― Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
There is an irony in living in a world with so many “things” to pursue and so many of us feeling a deep sense of disconnection and alienation. Our fierce individualism often leaves us separate from our bodies, one another, and the Earth. “Belonging” is always an integral strand in our many deeply woven threads to self, our communities, and the Earth. We long to belong, and we are created for connection. Building places of belonging begins with the self, trickles out to our wider circles, and ultimately connects us to the entire world.
This five-day workshop will dive into the dynamics of separation and belonging across these many dimensions, utilizing a mix of teachings, dialogue, and embodied experiences. We will draw on the richness of ecopsychology and the playfulness of the 5Rhythms® moving meditation, and we’ll engage in restorative time in contemplation in the natural landscape of Esalen.
Participants in this workshop will experience:
Participants should be prepared to work with challenging material, to encounter difficult and joyful emotions, to engage in experiential practices, including the 5Rhythms movement meditation, and to play within a respectful, compassionate community. We will investigate the ways in which we form connections with others and our various communities, and we will experience the deep fulfillment that comes from greater connectivity.
Recommended Reading: Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet by Jeanine M. Canty, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner, The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong by john. a.powell, Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth
Perimenopausal and menopausal transitions are more than biological phases to endure; they are sacred passages that forge a woman into her fullest expression — as a truth-bearer, a pathfinder, a beauty maker, and a new creation.
When the monthly cycles end, you’ll undergo tremendous transformations in your body, mind, emotions, and psyche. Crossing this monumental threshold awakens your inner sage, a wild knowing sacredly woven from deep intuition and your soul’s language.
Join Jovinna as she weaves a web of story, nature, movement, and community to capture the magic of this time of life. Anchor the new story for yourself and future generations, infusing meaning and sacredness into this wild and inspired time.
Over the weekend, there will be:
Let this be a time of celebration with reverence and levity as you unfold in the field of endless possibilities without your old roles, identities, and patterns.
Please bring a journal, a small piece of cloth that represents your old self, and an article of clothing that you’d like to wear for the ceremony of renewal.
This workshop includes an additional $35 faculty tuition.
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
The March equinox, a time of transition and harmony, is a wonderful opportunity to deepen our practice of yoga. The light is returning from the dark days of winter, and balance is our theme — both on the yoga mat and for our emotional and spiritual selves. Just as the plants are beginning to bud, our own dreams, visions, and creativity are emerging from their winter gestation. The fertile and dynamic land of Esalen is a perfect setting to hold us for this exploration of Spring.
During this retreat, we will combine three healing practices to revitalize the body and calm the mind in the exquisite and rejuvenating natural environment of Esalen. Together, we will focus our attention on the practices of:
This immersive weekend will leave us balanced, revitalized, and ready for the full and active days of Spring and Summer.
This workshop includes an additional $20 fee for workshop materials.
Immerse yourself in the eros of creation. Enter the divine dance between consciousness and form to explore the generative relationship between Shiva, the principle of pure awareness, and Shakti, the principle of creation and form. As these energies are engaged in the body, new layers of intimacy with self and the living world may be revealed.
This workshop calls to seekers, artists, healers, those in transition, and anyone longing to feel more deeply resourced, creatively sparked, or attuned to the rhythms of life. It offers a field for exploration rather than performance — a space where the mystical meets the embodied.
Throughout our week together, an intentionally curated arc of practices will open pathways into this inquiry. We’ll explore movement, somatic and subtle energy explorations, process art, journaling, meditation, relational play, ritual, and land-based practices to create a living tapestry of experience. Each thread is designed to engage different dimensions of being — body, mind, spirit, and relationship — while weaving greater collective coherence.
This workshop is best experienced as a complete journey, with each session building upon the last. Participants are invited to attend fully and remain open to the mysteries of the teachings as they unfold, sometimes in ways that may feel tender or uncomfortable, often holding unexpected gifts.
Out of a sea of spaciousness (Shiva) arises radiant light (Shakti). To enter this mystery is to rediscover life as it is — wild, tender, and whole. Embark a love affair with creation itself and walk away with practices to nourish you beyond our time together.
This workshop includes a $15 material fee.
Be inspired by the flame / where everything shines as it disappears. – Rainer Maria Rilke
What part of your life could use some breath, space, movement, flow, and a sprinkle of humor? Where in your work or relationships are you called toward a more passionate participation — or a deeper letting go?
What if you had ways to show up when faced with change, impermanence, loss, and the whole everyday mess of the human condition while remaining in touch with the deathless presence in which everything dances?
Join us in a leading-edge exploration integrating conscious movement, somatic inquiries of embodied gestalt, and the stillness of nature for a transformative process that touches body, heart, and spirit.
In this workshop, we will:
By relating to one another in real time in the presence of the natural world, we can not only return to a semblance of sanity but also find ourselves healed and held in the great heart of belonging. This workshop is open to everybody willing to move, pause, listen, and relax, relax, relax one timeless movement at a time.
Zuza Engler is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) to sponsor continuing education programs for LMFT, LCSW, and LPCC. This workshop offers 10 CE credits for therapists and social workers. Please email angel@zuzaengler.com for more details about CE credits. There will be a $25 fee for the certificate.
Revamp, reinvigorate, and polish your luminous self this season with innovative yoga practices for body, mind, and spirit! This yoga renewal workshop includes energizing movement, flow yoga, core activations, meridian sequencing, tapping, rejuvenating holds, and cleansing rituals based on the five elements.
Yoga for the skin sloughs off the old with a potent five-step cleansing ritual. Revitalizing and fluid yoga sequences stimulate the body before thoughtfully weaving muscles and mind together into a recreated and radiant being. We will even take advantage of the potent Esalen springs with a specific bathing ritual. The daily practices of the sparkling Yoga Spring Renewal workshop will be fresh, fun, and rejuvenating — and will leave you feeling the same!
Certified in Anusara Yoga and the Halprin Life Art Process, Ulrika blends holistic practices of yoga, somatic movement therapy, and Swedish skin rituals with the elements of nature for movement medicine. The many layers and systems of the body are addressed, with balanced attention given to the physical and the energetic, the form and the formless, the unique individual and the collective universal patterns.
Participants should bring a dry brush, coconut oil, and a facial clay mask.
Know from the rivers in clefts and in crevices: those in small channels flow noisily, the great flow silent. Whatever’s not full makes noise. Whatever is full is quiet. — Buddha
We treasure this life, and yet we rarely can hear ourselves think. We are constantly being bombarded and absorbing information at a dizzying pace. In the 21st century, where stillness and silence are scarce, fast-paced living keeps us bouncing from one task to the next. What might happen if you simply sat and allowed yourself to be? What would arise in the spaces between your thoughts, your breath, and your heartbeat?
Join internationally celebrated teacher, author, and documentary filmmaker Hawah Kasat to explore the depths of silence and solitude. Hawah will guide you with a culturally sensitive soft touch and a compassionate heart toward the bounty of silence. Participants will be guided through silent meditation practices, pranayama (breathwork), asana (movement), and dharma talks, to support the following process:
This workshop is suitable for those who have never taken a vow of silence and want to explore what it feels like to observe noble silence in small doses, as well as veteran silent retreaters who want to refine their senses of awareness and perception.
NOTE: For small portions of this workshop, participants will be encouraged to take a vow of silence — during which there will be no writing, reading, or talking.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP: Hawah has established a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) scholarship for his workshops. For more information on receiving one to participate, please contact him at Everlutionary@gmail.com.
This workshop includes a material fee of $4.50.
A weekend of transformative exploration to bridge physical movement with the subtle layers of internal flow, connecting body, energy, and perception. This retreat goes beyond traditional practices and invites participants to discover the intelligence and freedom inherent in all forms of movement, not only in the body’s gestures but also in its inner energy and shifting perspectives.
Together, we’ll blend imaginative, expressive movement (Bohemian) with grounding, introspective practices (Gravity) to create a holistic and adaptable approach accessible to anyone, regardless of age or experience. Through a fusion of yoga, somatic therapy, dance and movement meditation, we will explore both dynamic and deeply relaxing states, accompanied by carefully curated ethnic, electronic, and instrumental music that supports our journey.
The experience fuses a diverse array of techniques, including:
Led by Czech-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Yemi A.D., founder of Moonshot Platform, these sessions are designed to awaken awareness and align the head, heart, and gut. Participants often experience the release of long-held tension rooted in unconscious patterns, creating space for greater creativity, joy, and inner freedom.
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When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence? —Gabrielle Roth
Your life is not simply a task to be managed but a mythopoetic mystery to be lived. Take a break from the mundane and let yourself be enchanted again. This workshop offers a profound opportunity to commune with the deeper aspects of Self through movement, inquiry, and mythology. To dream. To play. To feel alive.
Since the beginning, humans have looked to stories to make meaning of our lives. Revered mythologist and 1960s Esalen faculty Joseph Campbell wrote, “Mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words.” On this retreat, we’ll engage with daily stories that have the power to help us make sense of our lives, nourish, teach, inspire, empower, and heal us.
Experiential practices include:
Music, nature, poetry, connection, and ritual are exquisitely curated for your hero/heroine’s journey. Our nourishing schedule is balanced harmoniously with relaxing meals, community care, and soaks in Esalen’s healing baths.
Whether you’re searching for renewed meaning in life, navigating life’s complex transitions, or simply enjoy being enchanted, this workshop will help awaken your spirit to courage, gladden your heart, calm your mind, and widen your perspective to vast possibilities. You might just fall in love with existence again.
Grace awaits.
The wound is the place where the light enters you. – Rumi
This workshop is designed for men to help you recharge and reset your body and mind, easing the heaviness of life's challenges — whether they involve self-worth, career, or relationships.
We will focus on your future vision, cultivating intuition, trust, resilience, and confidence through movement, dynamic breathwork, guided meditation, and lighthearted yet meaningful conversations. Practice with shadow work tools to access your inner wisdom and power, aiding you in overcoming blocks like fear, doubt, rejection, or self-sabotage.
“Rasa” is Sanskrit for “essence.” So, soak your icy armor in healing hot springs, walk amidst spectacular nature and ocean air, eat nourishing food, activate, and reveal the Rasa Heart Warrior of you.
You are invited to:
Leave feeling refreshed and embodied, enriched by the camaraderie among men, with skills for resilience, emotional presence, and awareness.
This workshop is specifically designed to create a space for sacred brotherhood for participants who identify as male.
Recommended Reading: Bringing Your shadow out of the dark and To Be A Man by Robert Augustus Masters
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Get notified about new programs.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org