Voices of Esalen

A glimpse under the hood at Voices of Esalen. Host Sam Stern interviews himself, entertaining questions such as How and why did you start Voices of Esalen - What was the first episode of the show and what was it about ? - Were the first episodes popular ? How many people listened to them? - What are your favorite podcasts and who are your favorite hosts? - Who have been some of your favorite people to talk to? - What is the most challenging thing about hosting a podcast ? - What episode gave you some simple practical advice? - What concepts have you most appreciated being exposed to while talking to your guests? - Who would you consider your wisest teacher? - What is your recording set up like ? - Who created your theme music? - What mistakes did you use to make as a host that you don’t make now? - What have been the hardest interviews you did, hosting Voices of Esalen ? - Do you have any advice for folks who might want to start their own podcast ? - And what will you be focusing on for most of this year’s interviews? Listen and learn about the show's evolution. . . .

Justin Michael Williams is an author, speaker and musician who works at the intersection of social justice, mindfulness, and personal growth. Justin has become a pioneering voice of color for the new healing movement. His mission is to make sure that all people, of all backgrounds, have access to the information they need to change their lives. Together, we discussed the science of transformation, what it means to combat forces of oppression (in a healthy way), identity labels (and how they function for good and for bad within the activist framework), what it means to go beyond anti-racism, Justin's current take on the human potential movement, and more. Also... Did you know that each purchase in our online store goes directly back to Esalen’s programs and the land? Go to http://shop.esalen.org and embark on a personal treasure hunt for highly curated objects that will support your well-being and spiritual discovery.  Lucia Horan: Where do you want to go? In times of turmoil and change, how do you navigate your way out of resistance… and into ecstasy? Lucia Horan, lineage holder of Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms movement practice and somatic meditation, will share the science and skills needed to support balance, easy, and joy. Celebrate being alive in the wild, wondrous, natural beauty of Esalen. Sign up at https://www.esalen.org/workshops/maps-to-ecstasy-5rhythms-r-mindfulness-workshop Justin Michael Williams and Shelly Tygielski: Learn what it means to set yourself and others free with an awake, authentic voice. Justin Michael Williams partners with Pandemic of Love’s Shelly Tygielski to show the power of coming together across gender, race, age, and sexual orientation. You will leave with greater clarity and a clear course of action to call people forward - instead of calling people “out.” Join them for a wildly inclusive and compassionate weekend. Sign up at - esalen.org/workshops/liberate-yourself-set-yourself-free

Welcome to a Voices of Esalen archive edition. Our featured lecture was delivered at Esalen as a part of a weeklong training in 2018, by wise teachers Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman. Jack Kornfield is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma, and has taught meditation internationally since 1974 .After graduating from Dartmouth College in Asian Studies in 1967 he joined the Peace Corps and worked on tropical medicine teams in the Mekong River valley. He later met and studied as a monk under the Buddhist master Ajahn Chah. Returning to the United States, Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein . His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies. They include, A Wise Heart,  Living Dharma; and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Trudy Goodman has devoted much of her life to practicing Buddhist meditation. She is one of the earliest teachers of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and co-taught with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the MBSR clinic at University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 1995 she co-founded the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, the first center in the world dedicated to exploring the synergy of these two disciplines. From 1991 to 1998, Trudy was a resident Zen teacher at the Cambridge Buddhist Association. She then moved to Los Angeles and founded InsightLA, the first center in the world to combine training in both Buddhist Insight (Vipassana) Meditation and nonsectarian mindfulness and compassion practices. After becoming a mother, Trudy co-founded a school for distressed children, practicing mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, parents, teenagers, couples and individuals. She has trained a generation of teachers, mindfulness humanitarians who make mindfulness and meditation classes available for professional caregivers, social justice and environmental activists, unsung individuals working on the front lines of suffering – all done with tenderness, courage and a simple commitment to holding hands together. (Side note: She is also the voice of “Trudy the Love Barbarian” on the Netflix series Midnight Gospel.) This is an wonderful talk. They cover so much, including how we may misuse mindfulness, how thought is a great servant but not a great master, how we may navigate living in this life of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Also, Jack and Trudy are married, for those who don’t know, and they comment insightfully on their relationship during the question and answer section of this talk. A final note: at one point, Jack and Trudy comment on an Esalen community member who died unexpectedly in 2018. They are in fact referring to Weston Call, who was a friend to so many people at Esalen and in Big Sur. This episode is dedicated to his memory.

Today our episode is an encore presentation of Michael Pollan’s keynote presentation at the 2019 Psychedelic Integration Conference at the Esalen Institute. Pollan is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including 2018’s “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” This tome has become a four-part Netflix show, also entitled “How to Change Your Mind.” Pollan gives a great speech here, touching upon the pervasiveness of the human tendency to want to change consciousness, the ways that noetic understanding can add to healing on the psychedelic journey, the radical ways that plants can change us and change consciousness, and the ways that he remains a skeptic to some of the more grandiose claims of the psychedelic movement. A must-listen for fans and for newbies alike.

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/

Louie Schwartzberg is the filmmaker behind "Fantastic Fungi" - he's back now with a follow up film: "Gratitude Revealed." Louie has created and worked on a score of films in his life, including his own features like Mysteries of the Unseen World and Wings of Life, as well as the Netflix series Moving Art. Over the process of his career, it's fair to say that he’s revolutionized the field of time-lapse photography. Louie has also been a contributing cinematographer or visual effects artist to many idiosyncratic Hollywood movies, including Men in Black 2, Erin Brockovich, Vice Versa, The Heavenly Kid, Xanadu, Altered States, and the 1982 masterpiece Koyanisqatsi. His inventive TED talks have garnered more than 60 million views. Together we talked about how he balances a love of documentary footage shot in the wild with his continuing dedication to time-lapse footage that's shot in studio, how he sees making work as a spiritual practice, how social justice photography gave him his start in film, what Los Angeles was like in the early 1970’s, why he split town after graduation from UCLA and moved to a tiny town in Northern California, where he started retrofitting 35mm movie cameras to enable them to take high-resolution time-lapse photos. Louie also talks about how he lent his own take on psychedelic iconography to the film Altered States in the early stages of a film career that has always existed in a fiercely independent realm. And I couldn't let him leave without talking a bit about how Esalen continues to inspire a sense of wonder in him. Watch Louie's new film at https://gratituderevealed.com/

“All of these sort of regular things that biotech companies do, like snapping up patents so that they can get investor dollars moving forward, they’re intersecting with this culture in the psychedelics world, which is sort of anti-ownership. These forces will clash. They oppose with one another.” - Shayla Love, Vice Media Shayla Love is a senior staff writer at Vice Media whose writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, the Guardian, and more. Her recent focus has been the field of psychedelics and how they exist and interact with the forces of what some refer to as late-stage capitalism. Shayla discussed whether there is a way to corporatize psychedelics responsibly, who has the most to gain in the new landscape of psychedelic capitalism, why the for-profit entity known as Compass Pathways attempted to patent a form of synthetic psilocybin, how and why the accompanying challenge to this patent from a group called FTO, or Freedom to Operate, originated, whether state decriminalization of psychedelics is at odds with federal medicalization, and more. Coming Soon at Esalen: Live and learn at Esalen for 4 weeks as part of our Live Extended Education Program or L.E.E.P.  Under the guidance of our skilled faculty and surrounded by a cohort of twelve other learners, students will be challenged to expand their personal growth edges and open up to greater discoveries of self and community. Learn more and apply, at https://www.esalen.org Integration From the Core: Embodiment through Yoga, Dance, and Sound Meditation. Drawing on the embodied practices of yoga, pranayama , sound meditation, and conscious dance, reconnect your bodies and minds, digest your feelings and emotions, and open yourselves to the wisdom of your heart. Led by Jovinna Chan. Learn more or apply now at https://www.esalen.org.

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/

This episode captures Jack Kornfield's lecture/ Dharma talk at Esalen on September 15th, 1983. Kornfield, one of the most articulate and compassionate voices in modern Western Buddhism, is co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah, about whom he speaks at length in this lecture. Kornfield has taught meditation worldwide since 1974 and is considered one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practices to the West. He’s the author of a host of books, including 1977’s "Living Dharma," 1993’s "A Path with Heart," and 2001’s "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry." This talk is at turns funny, wise, and insightful. It awakens a certain kind of spirit in the listener. We're grateful to Kornfield for his continuing association with the Esalen Institute, and continuing devotion to the path of the heart. Upcoming at Esalen: Being With Your Heart: Enneagram and Inner Work Retreat Are you ready to be with your heart and do deep inner work to get there? Russ Hudson, one of the top teachers and developers of the Enneagram system, & Deborah Rose Longo, an instructor of the Gurdjieff Movements for over 40 years, lead this retreat focused on restoring the centrality of spiritual practice and psychological rigor to Enneagram work. Sign up: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/being-with-your-heart-enneagram-and-inner-work-retreat Esalen Hosts Embrace Yoga’s Roots Virtual Book Tour with Susanna Barkataki October 21 at 5:00 PST, Esalen is honored to host a virtual book tour with Susanna Barkataki, author of Embrace Yoga’s Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice. An Indian yoga practitioner in the Shankaracharya tradition, Susanna supports practitioners to lead with equity, diversity, and yogic values while growing thriving practices and businesses with confidence. Join Susanna for a conversation with Danny Fluker Jr., queer Atlanta native and the creator and executive director of Black Boys OM. Danny is a Esalen Teacher in Residence alum and a yoga/meditation teacher, writer, and activist whose vision is to uplift the Black community, Black boys in particular, with programs centering on their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Tickets to the event are $35, but as part of our End of Year Campaign, Esalen is offering free tickets to the first 50 people who sign up to become a Friend of Esalen between October 1-October 21. You’ll receive the comp code and the RSVP link to the event when you become a friend. Become a friend and get your Comp Code now: https://www.esalen.org/give/friends-of-esalen Grief Into Beauty: Creating Nature Altars to Transform and Heal from This Year October 29-31, Internationally renowned author and artist Day Schildkret of Morning Altars will teach students how to use nature, art, and ritual to transform, heal, and make meaning from this chaotic time.

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