A New Generation of Esalen Massage® Teachers Train in Bali

“As a sculptor uses their hands to create out of clay, the masterful Esalen Massage® practitioner sculpts the human body and uses the long stroke for connection, integration, and making contact through the skin, the largest organ in the body,” says Ellen Watson, who has been practicing Esalen Massage for nearly 35 years.

This May, Ellen along with other longstanding Esalen practitioners, will be training anew generation of Esalen teachers at the first Indo Asia Pacific Esalen Massage and Bodywork Teacher Training.

Taking place at Mimpi Menjangan on the tranquil northwest coast of Bali, the training offers three modules that culminates in the title of “provisional teacher” of Esalen Massage. Some trained as teachers of Esalen Massage.

For more than four decades, Esalen Massage has evolved as a rare integration of form, structure, energy and spirit with detailed attention to the entire body and nurturing contact. In addition to numerous massage trainings at Esalen today, the Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association (EMBA) continues to extend the study and practice of Esalen Massage worldwide.

“We are very excited to support the excellent work that our Esalen faculty have been doing for many years in sharing our Esalen Healing Arts programs with the global community,” says Douglas Drummond, Esalen’s Director of Healing Arts & Somatics.

“In an age of so much technological connectivity, we are reminded of the importance of human touch and inner-connectivity that is a core component to Esalen Healing Arts. We are being called to bring our wellness knowledge into the global arena now, more so than ever, and we are very grateful to have such a dedicated and highly trained faculty that continues to grow.”

For Ellen, the practice has always been an “art form.”

“One of the reasons Esalen Massage and the long stroke is unique is that we literally touch from stem to stern, from fingertips to the sole of the feet,” she says. “There’s a connecting quality that takes place—one body part gets connected to another. For instance, we reconnect that shoulder to that opposing hip or the knee. There’s an integration that takes place and the long stroke is used for that, reconnecting the body so that it is one integrated circuit.”

Hailing from North Carolina via Texas, Ellen first arrived at Esalen in the summer of 1984. She became a work scholar in fall of that year and later a cook in the kitchen. In 1985, in addition to preparing meals, she began studying Esalen Massage and Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms® conscious dance, Holotropic Breathwork® and yoga, all of which were just beginning to truly blossom at the time.

“I was a nonstop student, working my way through school,” Ellen recalls. “I received Esalen Massage, first as a seminarian, and then as a work scholar. I experienced peace in a somatic way—a felt sense—probably for the first time in my life. I felt my body and soul touch simultaneously. When I began to study massage, I didn’t intend to practice, I wanted to learn to share it with family and friends. I was learning for my own edification and my own healing.”

When she was invited to be on the Healing Arts staff, she joined as an alternate member before returning to Texas within a year. But something kept calling her back.

“I had been a commodities broker and was in the import/export business, but in Esalen Massage and the various somatic arts practices I certified in, I found doorways to healing body, mind and spirit, and I decided I wanted to share these gifts with others,” Ellen says. “I returned and took it one step at a time.”

She joined the kitchen staff part-time and became part of the Healing Arts staff. Ellen says the long stroke creates a massage experience unlike any other and that practitioners use the long stroke throughout a session with purposeful pauses at potent energetic points. It remains the foundation of Ellen’s practice and the teaching of Esalen Massage.

“The hands and forearms really do become a true sculpting tool,” Ellen adds. “The bodyworker moves their body so there is a lengthening quality and like an ocean wave, the first wave is strong and flowing—the first way you approach someone in massage is a strong and flowing long stroke. Not deep.

“It’s a felt presence through the hands, which allows the person you are tending to think, ‘these hands know’ and ‘I can rest.’ If we’re effective in our session, the organism—the client—has recalibrated itself during that resting state.”

The ultimate goal, then, is for the individual receiving the massage to feel restored, relaxed, revivified, renewed, rejuvenated and at peace.

With the upcoming teacher training on the horizon, Ellen says she is delighted to be among the teachers offering the Asia Indo Pacific training, particularly in support of the long-term students and practitioners of Esalen Massage who reside in Indonesia.

“Unless one has been trained in the long stroke, the results are seldom effectively delivered because it doesn’t begin at the ankle or the wrist,” Ellen says. “The flow of it begins before one’s foot is touched and after one’s fingertips are passed so there is this connection—it’s an energetic as well as a true physical contact with the aura, we could say, and the aura connects us to all that is. Mind, body, spirit—that’s why the long stroke is the foundation of Esalen Massage.”

Learn more about the Indo Asia Pacific Esalen Massage and Bodywork Teacher Training: Module 1, taking place May 15-27 in Bali, here.
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