Voices of Esalen

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.

Lucia Horan was born and raised at Esalen Institute. She grew up dancing with Gabrielle Roth, founder of the 5 Rhythms method. Lucia is an international teacher of 5 Rhythms and insight meditation, and leads and co-leads groups in the fields of Buddhist meditation, yoga, trauma, addiction, grief, women’s power, Motion Theater, and wild dolphins. Today, she spoke about how the coronavirus is changing our lives, and how we can most skillfully dance with our new reality.

Peter Bregman coaches CEOs and senior leaders in many of the world’s premier organizations. Ranked as a top 30 thought leader by Thinkers 50 Radar and selected as one of the top 8 thought leaders in leadership, he's also the best-selling author of "Leading with Emotional Courage: How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability, and Inspire Action on Your Most Important Work." He is also a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and his articles and commentary appear frequently in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Psychology Today, Forbes, The Financial Times , PBS, ABC, CNN and NPR. In a conversation that occurred several months ago at the Esalen Institute, before the global pandemic foisted itself upon us, we discussed authenticity in leadership, the real meaning of emotional courage, how to skillfully engage in the difficult conversations, why asking for feedback helps to build internal strength, and how to minimize the gap between what we want and what we do.

Janet Stone is a yoga and meditation teacher with a global following. We spoke on March 23, 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic that is currently dominating the news and changing most our lives. Our intention was to give Janet space to offer actionable advice on how to be calmer and more grounded in the face of the unknown.

A Voices of Esalen Archive Edition: Ram Dass speaks at the Esalen Institute on October 18th, 1987. Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert in 1931. ⁠Initially famous for being part of the Timothy Leary-led LSD revolution at Harvard in the early 1960’s, he was also well known for his book "Be Here Now," a kind of illustrated counter-cultural Bible written in 1971 which drew upon many of the transformative experiences he'd undergone during his spiritual travels in India. ⁠⠀ Ram Dass was also known for his kindness, his leadership, and the inventive foundations he started: notably, the SEVA foundation, which he speaks about in depth in this lecture - it was created in 1978 with the intention of helping to alleviate blindness in India, Nepal, and other developing countries. He also created the Dying project in 1986, aligned around the concept of a conscious shifting into another realm. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ He was an important speaker and teacher at Esalen, famous for his ability to speak extemporaneously with great wisdom, humor and compassion. ⁠⠀ In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart. In an interview about the book, he said, "Now, I’m in my 80s ... Now, I am aging. I am approaching death. I’m getting closer to the end. Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me." ⁠Ram Dass died December 22nd, 2019, leaving a kind, wild, compassionate, and fruitful legacy.

Katie Hafner is the author of the memoir "Mother, Daughter, Me," the unsettling true story of how she and her daughter took in her estranged mother for a year. She is also an accomplished journalist, having written for the New York Times since 1991, as well as for Newsweek, Esquire, Wired, and the New Republic. We talked about how her background in journalism aided her in writing a difficult memoir, and what it’s like to grapple with the truth in these disparate genres. We also went back and forth about our favorite memoirs and the writers behind them - you may want to take some notes, you’re sure to pick a few gems.

Zak Dychtwald is the author of "Young China: How the Restless Generation Will Change Their Country and the World." Zak, a second-generation Esalen thought leader, came to Big Sur as part of Esalen's Conversations on the Edge Series, where we bring together leading experts and visiting teachers to explore a pressing issue of our time. Zak is a leading expert on youth culture in China. Together we discussed many aspects of Chinese millennials, including common misconceptions on either side, how the project of childhood functions in China, how the Chinese real estate market is propped up in many ways by the marriage market, what it’s like to be young and gay in China, Chinese hip-hop, censorship, internet, the culture of dissent, how Chinese mllenials have redefined the marketplace internationally, who their sports heroes are, why Steph Curry is a more relatable NBA hero than Lebron, what Chinese millennials might think of their United States counterparts, and what the next hundred years may bring for us all.