Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the alternate route directions.
Please note: On Wednesday September 20, online registration may be unavailable for up to 15 minutes while system maintenance is performed. If the 'Register Now' page does not load, please wait about 15 minutes and try again.
America in the late 60s occupied a period of major social transformation. Esalen Institute amplified that feeling, capturing that energy with a wild, unbridled sense of curiosity and openness to explore and pioneer big ideas. There was the music! The art! The literature! The call for change! Human potential personified!
This June we are looking back on what was good and magical about the late 60s while applying some deeply reflective and vulnerable wisdom of 2023 to launch some very special summer programming. Esalen’s own thoughtfully curated social phenomenon.
Real talk: The last few years have been depleting for many. Esalen is all about collective potential, collective fullness. So, to help you refill your love tank, we present to you our Summer Groove Series! Together we will fill up and get mindfull, heartfull, and soulfull in community. Let’s amaze and delight, get expansive and be inclusive!
With Esalen’s first ever foray into a summer series, we are curating the playfull with the joyfull. Throwback meets future forward: floating flower mandalas and flower crowns in the Art Barn, mass metta meditations on the lawn and in hidden corners of the property. Evening soul shakedowns with summer loving dance parties and an Afrobeat homage to Babatunde. Together we will honor the sacred indigenous land we co-steward through cacao ceremony, share circles, and more. Esalen’s own faculty will be joined by very special guests to add amazing and delightful programming to each uniquely different week and weekend!
Imagine the halcyon elements of the Big Sur Folk Festival and Summer of Love — from live music, dance, poetry, painting and throwback crafting, to the tech embrace of silent DJ-led discos and music-driven experiential altered state parties.
But let’s also get real vulnerable and transparent right there with you — about our past and who we want to be for everyone. While much of the late 60s messaging was about love and peace, access to the sentiment was not a reality for everyone. The Summer of Love wasn’t all love for all people. Across the country it was a “Long, Hot Summer” as riots erupted in cities nationwide in response to a serious lack of equity and equality that disproportionately affected Black and Brown citizens — which our society continues to face today.
The parallels between the harsh realities of yesteryear and the present are far too numerous. Today we face them with more self-awareness, more knowledge, a greater capacity for change, and a deepened commitment to making Esalen, and the world, a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all. Now 60 years in operation, Esalen continues to embrace much of the 60s glow and afterglow, retaining the gold and transmuting the rest.
It’s happening right now, Baby!
Learn more about the requirements to receive continuing education credit.
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Michael Murphy is co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Board of Esalen Institute. He is the author of four novels including Golf in the Kingdom and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons. His nonfiction works include The Life We Are Given (with George Leonard) and The Future of the Body. During his involvement in the human potential movement, Murphy and his work have been profiled in the New Yorker and featured in magazines and journals worldwide.
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Sanga of the Valley has played African drums from an early age. Sanga moved to New York City in 1970 from Trinidad, where he met Babatunde Olatunji and became one of Olatunji’s students. Sanga went on to be one of Olatunji’s lead djembe players and spent 25 years as a member of Olatunji’s Drums of Passion. Sanga of the Valley has worked with artists such as Carlos Santana, Nina Simone, The Grateful Dead, the Neville Brothers, and Stanley Jordan.
Read More
Erika Gagnon is a ceremonial leader, wisdom carrier, and healer who helps others heal themselves. She has walked a medicine path and Red Road for 30 years, working with Indigenous elders from North and South America and their ceremonies, altars, and medicinal plants. She is honored to receive her Indigenous elders’ blessings to continue their traditions through healing ceremonies and personal healing sessions.
Read More
Summer Groovers will experience Esalen in a format similar to our Self Guided Explorations workshops. Each Summer Groove week or weekend will open and close with a circle, and be filled with festive, nostalgic activities that harken back to those days of yore.
More activities can be found on our open class schedule.
See general schedule information including arrival, departure and meal times.
Click Register Now to view availability of accommodations and all-inclusive, program-specific tuition. Please note that not all accommodation levels are available for every workshop and additional faculty fees may apply.
We offer scholarship funds for those with financial need. Learn more.
Please note: On Wednesday September 20, online registration may be unavailable for up to 15 minutes while system maintenance is performed. If the 'Register Now' page does not load, please wait about 15 minutes and try again.
Click Register Now to view availability of accommodations and all-inclusive tuition that includes lodging, three meals per day, access to the baths, and all activities on the Summer Groove schedule.
We offer scholarship funds for those with financial need. Learn more.
For this workshop, you will register and pay for accommodations and tuition in two separate steps.
Second, click Book Accommodations from this page and enter the password to complete your reservation to stay at Esalen.
Prices for accommodations include your lodging, meals, open classes, and use of the baths and other facilities. View partner program accommodations pricing.
As of June 30, 2023 we no longer require a negative COVID test at the time of check in. Please read our current COVID safety guidelines for complete details prior to booking your stay.
All guests and faculty must provide proof of negative test results at time of check-in. Please read our current COVID safety guidelines for complete details prior to booking your stay.
In addition to proof of vaccination, all guests and faculty must provide proof of negative test results at time of check-in. Please read our current COVID safety guidelines for complete details prior to booking your stay.
Effective January 7, 2022 in response to the rapid spread of the new Omicron variant, all guests and faculty will provide proof of negative PCR, NAAT, or antigen test results at time of check-in. The test must be taken within 72 hours nd results must come from a laboratory or healthcare provider.Please read our updated COVID safety guidelines prior to booking your stay.
Effective December 15 in accordance with new guidance from Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Health, all guests, students, staff, residents, and faculty are required to wear masks in all indoor public settings, irrespective of vaccine status, for the next four weeks (December 15, 2021 through January 15, 2022). Please read our updated COVID safety guidelines prior to booking your stay.
Effective November 19, 2021, in accordance with new guidance from the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, all guests, students, staff, residents, and faculty are no longer required to wear masks indoors on campus. Please read our updated COVID safety guidelines prior to booking your stay.
Starting November 5, 2021, due to substantial levels of COVID-19 transmission in Monterey County, a mask mandate established by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors will go into effect. Please read our COVID safety guidelines prior to booking your stay.
All guests will be required to provide proof of vaccination upon arrival starting September 3, 2021. Please read our COVID safety guidelines prior to booking your stay.
Masks are no longer mandated indoors or outdoors, except during massage sessions. Guests are not required to provide testing or vaccination verification before arriving on campus. Please read our COVID safety guidelines prior to booking your stay.
America in the late 60s occupied a period of major social transformation. Esalen Institute amplified that feeling, capturing that energy with a wild, unbridled sense of curiosity and openness to explore and pioneer big ideas. There was the music! The art! The literature! The call for change! Human potential personified!
This June we are looking back on what was good and magical about the late 60s while applying some deeply reflective and vulnerable wisdom of 2023 to launch some very special summer programming. Esalen’s own thoughtfully curated social phenomenon.
Real talk: The last few years have been depleting for many. Esalen is all about collective potential, collective fullness. So, to help you refill your love tank, we present to you our Summer Groove Series! Together we will fill up and get mindfull, heartfull, and soulfull in community. Let’s amaze and delight, get expansive and be inclusive!
With Esalen’s first ever foray into a summer series, we are curating the playfull with the joyfull. Throwback meets future forward: floating flower mandalas and flower crowns in the Art Barn, mass metta meditations on the lawn and in hidden corners of the property. Evening soul shakedowns with summer loving dance parties and an Afrobeat homage to Babatunde. Together we will honor the sacred indigenous land we co-steward through cacao ceremony, share circles, and more. Esalen’s own faculty will be joined by very special guests to add amazing and delightful programming to each uniquely different week and weekend!
Imagine the halcyon elements of the Big Sur Folk Festival and Summer of Love — from live music, dance, poetry, painting and throwback crafting, to the tech embrace of silent DJ-led discos and music-driven experiential altered state parties.
But let’s also get real vulnerable and transparent right there with you — about our past and who we want to be for everyone. While much of the late 60s messaging was about love and peace, access to the sentiment was not a reality for everyone. The Summer of Love wasn’t all love for all people. Across the country it was a “Long, Hot Summer” as riots erupted in cities nationwide in response to a serious lack of equity and equality that disproportionately affected Black and Brown citizens — which our society continues to face today.
The parallels between the harsh realities of yesteryear and the present are far too numerous. Today we face them with more self-awareness, more knowledge, a greater capacity for change, and a deepened commitment to making Esalen, and the world, a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all. Now 60 years in operation, Esalen continues to embrace much of the 60s glow and afterglow, retaining the gold and transmuting the rest.
It’s happening right now, Baby!
Learn more about the requirements to receive continuing education credit.
Michael Murphy is co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Board of Esalen Institute. He is the author of four novels including Golf in the Kingdom and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons. His nonfiction works include The Life We Are Given (with George Leonard) and The Future of the Body. During his involvement in the human potential movement, Murphy and his work have been profiled in the New Yorker and featured in magazines and journals worldwide.
Sanga of the Valley has played African drums from an early age. Sanga moved to New York City in 1970 from Trinidad, where he met Babatunde Olatunji and became one of Olatunji’s students. Sanga went on to be one of Olatunji’s lead djembe players and spent 25 years as a member of Olatunji’s Drums of Passion. Sanga of the Valley has worked with artists such as Carlos Santana, Nina Simone, The Grateful Dead, the Neville Brothers, and Stanley Jordan.
Erika Gagnon is a ceremonial leader, wisdom carrier, and healer who helps others heal themselves. She has walked a medicine path and Red Road for 30 years, working with Indigenous elders from North and South America and their ceremonies, altars, and medicinal plants. She is honored to receive her Indigenous elders’ blessings to continue their traditions through healing ceremonies and personal healing sessions.
June 12–16, 2023
This program is full. Find another.
Applications are closed.
Applications are closed.
America in the late 60s occupied a period of major social transformation. Esalen Institute amplified that feeling, capturing that energy with a wild, unbridled sense of curiosity and openness to explore and pioneer big ideas. There was the music! The art! The literature! The call for change! Human potential personified!
This June we are looking back on what was good and magical about the late 60s while applying some deeply reflective and vulnerable wisdom of 2023 to launch some very special summer programming. Esalen’s own thoughtfully curated social phenomenon.
Real talk: The last few years have been depleting for many. Esalen is all about collective potential, collective fullness. So, to help you refill your love tank, we present to you our Summer Groove Series! Together we will fill up and get mindfull, heartfull, and soulfull in community. Let’s amaze and delight, get expansive and be inclusive!
With Esalen’s first ever foray into a summer series, we are curating the playfull with the joyfull. Throwback meets future forward: floating flower mandalas and flower crowns in the Art Barn, mass metta meditations on the lawn and in hidden corners of the property. Evening soul shakedowns with summer loving dance parties and an Afrobeat homage to Babatunde. Together we will honor the sacred indigenous land we co-steward through cacao ceremony, share circles, and more. Esalen’s own faculty will be joined by very special guests to add amazing and delightful programming to each uniquely different week and weekend!
Imagine the halcyon elements of the Big Sur Folk Festival and Summer of Love — from live music, dance, poetry, painting and throwback crafting, to the tech embrace of silent DJ-led discos and music-driven experiential altered state parties.
But let’s also get real vulnerable and transparent right there with you — about our past and who we want to be for everyone. While much of the late 60s messaging was about love and peace, access to the sentiment was not a reality for everyone. The Summer of Love wasn’t all love for all people. Across the country it was a “Long, Hot Summer” as riots erupted in cities nationwide in response to a serious lack of equity and equality that disproportionately affected Black and Brown citizens — which our society continues to face today.
The parallels between the harsh realities of yesteryear and the present are far too numerous. Today we face them with more self-awareness, more knowledge, a greater capacity for change, and a deepened commitment to making Esalen, and the world, a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all. Now 60 years in operation, Esalen continues to embrace much of the 60s glow and afterglow, retaining the gold and transmuting the rest.
It’s happening right now, Baby!
Learn more about the requirements to receive continuing education credit.
Michael Murphy is co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Board of Esalen Institute. He is the author of four novels including Golf in the Kingdom and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons. His nonfiction works include The Life We Are Given (with George Leonard) and The Future of the Body. During his involvement in the human potential movement, Murphy and his work have been profiled in the New Yorker and featured in magazines and journals worldwide.
Sanga of the Valley has played African drums from an early age. Sanga moved to New York City in 1970 from Trinidad, where he met Babatunde Olatunji and became one of Olatunji’s students. Sanga went on to be one of Olatunji’s lead djembe players and spent 25 years as a member of Olatunji’s Drums of Passion. Sanga of the Valley has worked with artists such as Carlos Santana, Nina Simone, The Grateful Dead, the Neville Brothers, and Stanley Jordan.
Erika Gagnon is a ceremonial leader, wisdom carrier, and healer who helps others heal themselves. She has walked a medicine path and Red Road for 30 years, working with Indigenous elders from North and South America and their ceremonies, altars, and medicinal plants. She is honored to receive her Indigenous elders’ blessings to continue their traditions through healing ceremonies and personal healing sessions.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org