Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
Learn More.

Learn more.

Due to road closures along Highway 1 to our north and south, Esalen is closed through April 11.
Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
past workshop

Wild Eros in a Fragmented World: Soulcraft as Radical Participation

February 28 – March 4, 2022

with Geneen Marie Haugen

In this turbulent time, how can you offer radical vitality to our world? What ignites your imagination? When do you erupt into awe?

What if your deepest longings and heartaches suggest something about your unique expression of the wild eros of the world? Eros is much more than sexual desire: it’s a deeply embodied, imaginative, mystical, soulful participation with the animate, intelligent Earth.

In Wild Eros, we’ll approach the waters, forest, gardens, and creatures (human and other) as a lover, awakening the wild body and mythopoetic imagination where everything is alive and intelligent. Our soulcraft practices will include ceremony, deep imagery, dreamwork, trance drumming, dancing, and solo wandering. We’ll live the question: If Earth is alluring us for her own purposes — very much the way the nectar lust of bees serves the desires of flowers — what wild child, what honey, will we create from this joining?

Geneen Marie Haugen and Guest Faculty Palika Rewilding will guide you through this weeklong exploration of…

  • Solo wanderings in nature with practices intended to help open wilder or mystical perception
  • Deep Imagery Journeys to explore the depths of wild psyche
  • Dreamwork with the intention of letting the dream do its work on the ego, rather than the ego working on the dream
  • Small group sharing of solo experiences with reflection and suggestions from the guides

Wild Eros is a way of falling into the deep mystery of soul as well as nourishing radical intimacy with other-than-human beings. It’s a way of embodied participation that amplifies our experience of Earth as sacred, and may reveal seeds of vision for our troubled, tender world — potent seeds for artisans of cultural renaissance: change agents, tricksters, artists, poets, therapists, activists, and true leaders.  

Geneen Marie Haugen

Geneen Marie Haugen, PhD, grew up a little wild, with a run amok imagination. A content creator and guide to the intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche with the Animas Valley Institute, she has been on the faculty of the Esalen Institute and Schumacher College. Her writing has appeared in Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth, and many others.

Full Bio