Voices of Esalen

Darnell Walker is Esalen's artist in residence for Spring 2021. Darnell is a writer and creator of children’s media, as well as a powerful documentary filmmaker - his efforts include 2015’s Seeking Asylum, which explored Black Americans’ desires to escape American tyranny and widespread police violence for safer lands, Outside the House, which focuses on Black mental health, and Set Yourself on Fire, a film about sexual violence, . His work investigates education and revolution, with a strong first-person point of view informed by an inspiring DIY ethic. Together we explored his body of work, modes of creativity, and the kind of change he hopes to affect in the world. And a new offering from Esalen Institute: Are you looking for support in navigating the unique challenges that middle age brings when it comes to navigating relationships, career, finances and health? On June 5th, Modern Elder Academy begins an 8-week online Transitions course on navigating profound life changes in middle age and beyond. You’ll be part of a small, Esalen-only cohort learning from home, doing one-on-one calls with other group members, and tapping into MEA’s pool of thought leaders. Learn more at modernelderacademy.com, and use the coupon code “Esalen” when you enroll to save 10%. Also: Explore powerful, practical techniques to identify and heal unresolved traumas blocking the energy of the sacred feminine with Esalen Healing Arts Presents: Moon Lodge Honoring the Sacred Feminine Sisterhood, June 18th to June 20th in Big Sur. Holistic doctor Julie Von and Master Teacher of Buddhist Dharma Lucia Horan will support participants in unlocking  rituals to support  their empowerment, inner balance, and well-being during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This workshop is open to all those who identify as women. Learn more at esalen.org/workshops.

Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia as well as the author of the excellent new memoir, “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.” Suzanne is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; she’s been hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. Together, we discussed her scientific findings, the dangers of deforestation, how her literary and scientific proclivities intertwine, and what it’s like to have a character in a pulitzer prize winning novel based on her (Richard Powers' "The Overstory"). She's a rather amazing person, passionate about the future of the planet and our shared existence with old-growth forests. Coming up soon at Esalen: Our sense of self develops in connection with others, and our experience in early relationships shapes our beliefs — about ourselves, other people and what is possible for us in our lives. Join long-time Esalen instructor Dorothy Charles for Relational Gestalt Practice: The Transformative Power of Emotion, in which you’ll learn basic gestalt awareness practices to help you recognize limiting relational patterns and enhance your ability to have positive connections with others. This workshop takes place July 26th to July 30th in Big Sur. Find out more or enroll now: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/relational-gestalt-practice-the-transformative-power-of-emotion Did you know that Esalen has a scholarship program? We believe that money should never stand in the way of human potential. Esalen offers a generous student scholarship program that features: Awards of up to 90% of workshop tuition and accommodation Scholarship for qualifying travel A convenient, online application process A mission-driven goal to increase diversity Apply today at http://www.esalen.org/scholarshipFall20 for more information. A growing number of people are aware of the Enneagram as an accurate and profound map of personality. The nine Enneagram types are based on the three primary centers of intelligence: thinking, emotion and instinct. The Transformational Enneagram: Mindfulness, Insight and Experience, a new workshop led by Russ Hudson will emphasize recognizing the ways that each of the nine types plays out in our own personalities. It will combine psychological insight into the inner workings of the types with meditation practices and exercises to lead you toward a more direct experience of qualities of essence such as presence, clarity, compassion and joy. Conversational instruction will be combined with group meditations, small-group work, physical movements and music so that you can more fully integrate the richness of the Enneagram material into their daily work and relationships. The workshop will run from August 8-13 at Esalen in Big Sur. Register now: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/the-transformational-enneagram-mindfulness-insight-and-experience

Laura Mae Northrup is a somatic psychotherapist, educator, podcaster, and author. Laura has been a guest on this show before, in 2020, when we discussed her podcast "Inside Eyes", a one-season tour de force that focuses on people using entheogens and psychedelics to heal from sexual trauma. She is now the author of a new book, "Radical Healership: How to Build a Values-driven Healing Practice in a Profit-Driven World." Northrup views healing work and healing practitioners through a spiritual and political lens, as they do battle with the forces of capitalism while attempting to heal their clients and take care of themselves, all at the same time. Find Laura on the web at https://www.lauramaenorthrup.com/ Check out Radical Healership : https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/radical-healership/

Jeff Kripal is a historian of religions - his work includes the study of comparative erotics and ethics in mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religions, and the history of Western esotericism from gnosticism to New Age religions. He’s also the author of the book "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion" - a must read for anyone interested in unpacking the conditions of history surrounding Esalen’s birth in the early sixties. This interview was originally published in 2016. Coming up at Esalen: The Embodied Life™: Presencing and Re-Visioning. December 10 to 12th 2021, with Russell Delman and Linda Evans Delman. Connect present moment awareness with your intentions and dreams for the future to create a truthful and meaningful life. Experience embodied mediation, guided inquiry, and embodied movement practices like Feldenkrais, a set of neurologically based motor sequences that invite a deepening of body awareness. Sign up at: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/the-embodied-life-tm-presencing-and-re-visioning Gestalt Practice & Principles: Cultivating Embodied Wholeness in Daily Life. December 13 -17 , 2021 During this workshop we will explore the rich practices and principles of Gestalt Practice, apply them to daily life, and begin to experience the simple yet profound potential for growth towards authentic wholeness and radical aliveness. Gestalt Practice cultivates curiosity, equanimity, and acceptance with greater choice for creative possibilities. Rather than focusing on “fixing”, a “cure”, or seeking “accomplishment”, this approach offers methods to aid you in: Cultivating awareness and embodied presence; Growing responsiveness, resilience, and choice; Trusting in your organism’s inherent capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation. Sign up at: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/gestalt-practice-principles-cultivating-embodied-wholeness-in-daily-life Esalen End of Year Campaign - Help Us Make 300 New Friends Last year, Friends of Esalen helped us to survive closures due to the pandemic, fires and mudslides. We're here today because of our friends. When you become a Friend of Esalen with a donation, your contribution helps us finance our day to day operations in Big Sur-from staff to infrastructure. This year, our goal is to raise 450K and make 300 new friends so that we can continue to keep our doors open for generations to come. Become A Friend Now: https://www.esalen.org/give

Today we celebrate Bicycle Day, a modern semi-holiday (unrecognized by official governmental agencies yet observed by psychedelic enthusiasts across the globe) that commemorates Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman’s bike ride home from his lab on April 19th, 1943, after ingesting 250 micrograms of lysergic acid diethlymide, and in the process creating the world's first recorded intentional LSD trip. When Hoffman originally synthesized the compound in 1938, in the Sandoz Pharmeacuticals laboratory, in Basel, he had deemed it next to useless, and put it up on the shelf to be forgotten - but five years later, something within him told him to take a second look. The rest, as they say, is history. Today’s Voices of Esalen episode is a treasure drawn from our extensive archives - an interview with Albert Hoffman himself, conducted by none other than Stanislav Grof, sometimes known as the godfather of LSD psychotherapy. Grof was a Czechoslovakian psychoanalyst who was enormously influenced by Hoffman’s discovery of LSD; in his research in Czechoslovakia he oversaw tens of thousands of supervised therapeutic LSD trips. Grof would emigrate to the United States in the late 1960’s, a move precipitated by the Soviet invasion of his country. Grof spent more than ten years as a teacher in residence at the Esalen Institute during the 1970’s and 80’s, where he developed the practice of holotropic breath work and became one of the founders of the school of transpersonal psychology. In this interview, Grof and Hoffman explore a host of topics, including Hoffman’s discovery of LSD and how on his first trip, Hoffman freaked out and thought he was going insane, then thought he was dying; how Hoffman then became aware that his new discovery would have immense significance to the field of psychiatry; why Hoffman believed LSD could be used as a model psychosis and a way to study schizophrenia; how Hoffman collaborated with amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson to create a synthetic version of so-called magic mushrooms, which would be known as psilocybin; how Hoffman traveled to Mexico to deliver this modern version of mushrooms to the famed curandera Maria Sabina, who had introduced Wasson to the mushrooms in the first place, and more. They end this interview by speaking about Hoffman’s reaction to the way LSD escaped the laboratory and infiltrated culture during the turbulent 1960s. This interview was conducted at Esalen Institute in 1984 - just one part of the ever evolving and complex tapestry of history that unfolded here in Big Sur.

Dr. Deborah Egerton is a psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, author, coach, and spiritual teacher. She brings a focus of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism to her enneagram work and uses that focus to help individuals and organizations release false historical narratives and open their minds and hearts to a more compassionate and connected approach to life. Her work with The Enneagram and Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism (IDEA) is designed to help heal our fractured society one connection at a time with compassion, respect, and awareness. Dr. Egerton uses the Enneagram as a mechanism for social justice and anti-racism to reconnect people across all dimensions of diversity, acknowledging and respecting the humanity in us all. https://www.deborahegerton.com/

Akuyoe Graham is founder of the Spirit Awakening Foundation, an arts based non-profit dedicated to helping underserved youth in the juvenile justice system. Since its inception in 1995, SAF has been a pioneer in developing and offering restorative, trauma-informed, prevention and intervention programs to underserved, incarcerated and systems-involved youth in Los Angeles County. Akuyoe speaks about how difficult and broken the juvenile justice system is, what tools she gives the participants in her program to empower them, including meditation, writing, and dramatic arts, and how the young people of Spirit Awakening Foundation have come several times to Esalen institute for a leadership retreat of their own. This episode contains bonus material from a recent conversation that is a follow-up to the original 2021 interview. Spirit Awakening Foundation: https://www.spiritawakening.org/ Donate: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/spirit-awakening-foundation

Akuyoe Graham is founder of the Spirit Awakening Foundation, an arts based non-profit dedicated to helping underserved youth in the juvenile justice system. Since 1995, SA has been a pioneer in developing restorative, trauma-informed prevention and intervention programs to incarcerated and systems-involved young people in Los Angeles County. Using the tools of meditation, self-reflection, creative writing, visual arts, mentorship, service, and leadership training, all of which have been guided by evidence-based research, SAF is able to accomplish their mission to help underserved youth build character and raise self-esteem. Visit them and be inspired: https://www.spiritawakening.org And now for some upcoming Esalen offerings: Are you a transgender, non-binary, gender-fluid or gender-exploring individual interested in a deep exploration of  your own gender journey and building community connections? Join Ben Geilhufe and Dr. Jen Hastings at Esalen, July 9th through July 11th, for “Gender Journeys: Exploring Identity in Community”  to explore how gender impacts, influences and informs your day-to-day experiences with both lecture-based sessions and a wide range of personal exploration modalities, including art, movement, and journaling. Find out more or enroll now: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/gender-journeys-exploring-identity-in-community Join us in Big Sur July 23rd to 25th for Reclaiming Your Authentic Power, a workshop led by Justin Michael Williams award-winning instructor and author of Stay Woke: A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us. In this dynamic three-day course, you’ll break toxic habits, uncover hidden fears, and make behavioral changes to help you overcome personal patterns standing in the way of your goals. Find out more or enroll now https://www.esalen.org/workshops/reclaiming-your-authentic-power Join long-time Esalen instructor Dorothy Charles for Relational Gestalt Practice: The Transformative Power of Emotion, in which youll learn basic gestalt awareness practices to help you recognize limiting relational patterns and enhance your ability to have positive connections with others. This workshop takes place July 26th to July 30th at Esalen. Find out more or enroll now: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/relational-gestalt-practice-the-transformative-power-of-emotion

Reverend Erika Allison is a queer interfaith minister and the author of the memoir "Gay the Pray Away: Healing your Life, Love, and Relationships from the Harms of LBGT Conversion Therapy." We spoke about her personal journey of healing after being sent to conversion therapy as a teenager in Texas, the coping strategies she developed after experiencing the trauma of identity harm, the state of conversion therapy in the United States today, how few practices harm teens more than attempts to change their sexual preference or gender identity, how a search for her mother’s approval led to a string of serial monogamous relationships, her path to becoming an interfaith minister, how this book landed with her parents, and her current mission to empower the queer community through spiritual liberation. http://reverikaallison.com

Dr. Brian Pace is a lecturer who teaches Psychedelic Studies at The Ohio State University. He is trained as an evolutionary ecologist, specializing in phytochemistry, ethnobotany, and ecophysiology. He believes in grassroots drug decriminalization efforts and hopes to find alternative policies to the imperial drug war. For more than a decade, Brian has worked on agroecology and climate change. Dr. Nese Devenot is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Research in Sensing (or IRiS) at the University of Cincinnati; an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research & Education at Ohio State University; and the Medicine, Society & Culture Research Fellow with Psymposia. She also researches and teaches bioethical approaches to psychedelic medicine. She was a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where she participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. Dr. Pace and Dr. Devenot are authors of a paper entitled “Right-Wing Psychedelia: Case Studies in Cultural Plasticity and Political Pluripotency,” a piece they created to rebut the common cultural assumption that psychedelics have the potential to improve society because of inherent characteristics that tend to point their users to a liberal, free-thinking ideology. in the discussion that follows, they suggest that psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers of their set and setting, which, they take pains to remind me, is within the capitalist realm, and that contrary to the de facto cultural credo, conservative, hierarchy based ideologies are quite able to withstand the face melting effects of a few hits of LSD. They speak about many cases where psychedelic users either remained authoritarian in their views or became conservatively radicalized after taking psychedelics. We also get into conservative thought leaders who happen to be psychedelic cheerleaders, like Jordan Peterson, as well as the moneyed individuals who are central players in the corporate psychedelic world, like Peter Thiel and Rebecca Mercer. I have taken the liberty of importing some clips that I found on YouTube of these famous folks up for discussion, in the hopes of better illustrating the points being made. Hope you enjoy. More information akin to this: https://www.psymposia.com