Voices of Esalen

Karena Montag and Claire Whitmer are the co-founders of Stronghold, an organization that stewards sustainable shifts in systems and cultures towards equity and liberation through strategic consulting and restorative practices. Karena Montag has worked at the intersection of mental health and social justice for nearly twenty years in multi-stressed communities, with an emphasis the past ten on the impact of harm, accountability, and restorative practices in carceral settings. Karena, a Black woman, is a founding member of and serves on the Leadership Team for the Transformative Prison workgroup (TPW), a statewide coalition of individuals and organizations that believes in the transformative and healing power of in-prison programs to break isolation, share ideas, and build political power. Claire Whitmer is a racial justice trainer and facilitator, and as a white, cis woman, Claire has been (un)learning and working in the field of racial justice for over a decade.  Claire lives her commitment to collective liberation by supporting white-led organizations and communities to explore their privilege, power & unexamined racism. Her facilitation emphasizes the personal and collective work of cultivating antiracist consciousness and leveraging unearned white privilege in service of greater dignity and safety for people of color. Visit them on the web at https://www.wearestronghold.org/

Charles Eisenstein is an American intellectual and author of the books "Sacred Economics" and "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible," as well as recently the essay "The Coronation," which deals with America’s societal and governmental response to the coronavirus. Much of Charles Eisenstein’s work deals his thesis that global culture is immersed in a destructive story of separation - and part of his mission is to present an alternative path of interbeing. We spoke in late June of 2020 about his essay, The Coronation, which is available at his website, charleseisenstein.org.

Jasmine Star Horan is the author of “The Gazebo Learning Project: A Legacy of Experiential & Experimental Early Childhood Education at Esalen.” The Gazebo School is a somewhat legendary institution, encapsulated with the Esalen institute, founded in the mid-1970's by Janet Lederman, one of the early outdoor preschools. Jasmine Horan was born at Esalen - she is the daughter of foundational massage teacher Peggy Horan and sister of Lucia Horan, noted 5 Rhythms teacher. Jasmine attended the Gazebo preschool as a child, where she grew up in an environment where the opportunity for free play and free choice was constant. Child-centered learning was encouraged through an exploratory and inquiry-based environment. The Gazebo Park, located on the north side of the Esalen Institute, is an outdoor classroom with very few toys or play structures with prescribed uses, though the park overflows with abundant gardens, animals, plants, trees, a pony shed, a greenhouse, Pottyville, snacks, cubbies, first-aid material and more. During our conversation, Jasmine describes her journey in documenting the cultural legacy of a unique school that has touched so many lives. Go to Silver Peak press.com to buy your copy of “The Gazebo Learning Project: A Legacy of Experiential & Experimental Early Childhood Education at Esalen," and learn the history and pedagogy of this unique school.

Kat Vellos is an author, speaker, a user experience designer, coach, facilitator, and founder of Bay Area Black Designers, Silicon Valley’s largest unofficial employee resource for Black design talent. Her new book, "We Should Get Together," is a meditation on adult friendships and how to meaningfully cultivate them. Kat spoke about her work, her writing, and about racism in contemporary society. She recommended a host of actionable steps that would-be allies can take to be part of the solution. To find her on the web, go to http://www.katvellos.com. To read her powerful essay, "How to Help your Black and non-Black Friends Right Now" : https://weshouldgettogether.com/blog/how-to-help-your-black-and-nonblack-friends-right-now

Eldra Jackson III is the co-Executive Director of Inside Circle, a support group that helps incarcerated men heal trauma and take responsibility for their choices. Eldra was featured in The Work, an 2017 documentary film taking place within New Folsom Prison in California, which follows a group healing intensive between members of the public and incarcerated men. It's a remarkable project, one of the best non-fiction films of the last five years, and winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Prize in 2018. Eldra spent 24 years as an inmate at New Folsom Prison, where he found Inside Circle and began a personal journey of self-awareness and transformation that not only led to being granted freedom from a life sentence, but also to a current leadership role within the organization. He is a living example of successful rehabilitation and re-entry, and his current life’s work – as a facilitator, trainer and mentor – includes actively supporting others, both within and outside of prison, in overcoming their limiting beliefs.

Ashanti Branch, M.Ed, was born and raised by a single mother on welfare in Oakland, California. He took the road less traveled to get out of the ghetto and attended one of California’s premier engineering colleges, California Polytechnic - San Luis Obispo, where he studied Civil Engineering and worked as a construction project manager. But after tutoring struggling students and realizing his true passion was teaching, Mr. Branch changed careers. In 2004, as a first-year teacher, Ashanti started The Ever Forward Club to provide a support group for African American and Latino males who were not achieving to the level of their potential. Since then, The Ever Forward Club has grown to serve both young men and women and become a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Ever Forward Club has helped 100% of its members graduate high school and 93% of them have gone on to attend college. With over 19 years mentoring youth and 10 of those years as a math teacher educating inner city youth, Ashanti was awarded with a Fulbright Exchange Fellowship to India, a Rotary Club Cultural Ambassadorial Fellowship to Mexico and a 2010 Teacher of the Year Award from the Alameda-Contra Costa County Math Educators. Today he spoke to Esalen’s Greg Archer about his life, what it has been like to be a black male in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and the 100K Mask challenge.

Dr. Emily Silverman is a physician located in San Francisco. She is also the host of the Nocturnists, a podcast dedicated to the project of humanizing health care professionals. We talked about the new tactic of storytelling she’s employed for this season of the Nocturnists, which entails curating audio diaries sent in by more than 250 health care workers around the country, as they report their own personal accounts of dealing with the pandemic.

Adam Smiley Poswolsky, bestselling author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough and the Breakthrough Speaker, speaks widely about millennials, employee engagement, and intergenerational collaboration. His writing has been published in The Washington Post, Fast Company, Time, and Business Insider, and his work has been featured in USA Today, Mashable, Forbes, VICE, CNN, CNBC, Cosmopolitan, and the World Economic Forum, among others. Poswolsky is well known for his thinking around responsible and balanced engagement with technology, and together we discussed how amidst the current crisis that has displaced many workers from their regular offices and placed them in front of their own computers and screens for longer periods of time, one can craft their own balanced way of interacting with tech, and with people.

Archive Edition: Today we're pleased to bring you an interview conducted on August 5th, 1985, with the godfather of psychedelic psychotherapy, Stanislav Grof. At this point, Grof had been a scholar-in-residence at Esalen for more than ten years. The interview was conducted at Esalen by a young Perry Holloman, now a well-known figure at Esalen himself, having become over the course of his career an accomplished bodyworker and beloved Gestalt therapist. During this recording, he and Stan investigate the emergent tendencies of transpersonal psychology, and the context from which they emerged out of Abraham Maslow's and Tony Suttich's Humanistic psychology, touching upon the non-ordinary states of consciousness which Grof is known for as well as Jungian archetypes and the concept of synchronicity. They also go into the profound connection between Freudianism and Newtonian thinking, and chat about how new discoveries in quantum physics have affected most other scientific disciplines, including psychology. It’s a superb discussion conducted by two very smart people. By its end, if you're listening closely, you will have an enhanced understanding of why transpersonal psychology became an appropriate container for psychedelic psychotherapy - and indeed any therapy that seeks to go beyond personal biography and delve into the realm of the spiritual and the mystic. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Johnsmith is an acclaimed folk singer and songwriter, as well as a longtime teacher of songwriting at the Esalen Institute, where he’s helped thousands of students across the years to access their creativity and their personal depths to manifest meaningful and joyful work. In an interview we recorded in early March 2020, B.P., (Before Pandemic), we chatted about his past, his process, what songs are the hardest for him to write, and how inner work changed him.