Voices of Esalen

Chef Elle Simone is a well-known American chef, culinary producer, test cook, and food stylist. In 2013, after realizing that women and persons of color were underrepresented among chefs, she founded SheChef, a mentoring and networking organization for women of color in the culinary field. She can be seen on PBS on America’s Test Kitchen and is the first African American woman to appear as a regular host on that show. Chef Elle is also a survivor of ovarian cancer and shows up as an activist and representative in that space. Chef Elle is interviewed by S. Rae Peoples, Associate Director of Diversity & Inclusion Education at Tufts University. She has over 25 years of experience serving in leadership roles that revolve around social justice in the arts, education, political, and nonprofit sectors. She advises organizations on how best to create internal conditions that allow equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice to flourish. Her opinions and writings have been featured in The Washington Post, Oakland Post, BlogHer, and YFS Magazine. S. Rae is currently rooted in motherhood, love, and community in Somerville, MA.

✧༺mirrored fatality is the nonbinary Kapampangan-Pilipinx and Pakistani-Muslim performance art duo of Mango and Samar, artists in residence at Esalen during the summer of 2021. Together we discuss the difference between non-binary and trans, how they share their rituals, altars, and medicine through DIT (Do It Together) experimental and healing noise punk, why punk as a genre is their musical choice, how fashion can be weaponized, why farming is a huge part of their lives and creative practice, how capitalism functions as the backdrop for their world, what an anti-imperialist education would look like, what they love about one another, how to educate, how they might react when they are misgendered, what they hope for Esalen's future, and much more. We play selections of several of their songs throughout this episode. To support Mango and Samar, head to their bandcamp and check out their music. https://mirroredfatality.bandcamp.com/music In their words: "mirrored fatality’s performance activism allows them a safe space to release their bubbling, fermenting primal rage rooted in the settler colonialism, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, and intergenerational ancestral trauma they experience daily as nonbinary people of color. mirrored fatality’s intentions for their art is for Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color to embody their rage, disrupt the silence and isolation from existing in a white supremacist capitalistic apocalyptic world, and harness collective care, catharsis, and holistic healing. Join them in imagining the future we’ve been fighting for and experience mirrored fatality’s reflections to witness our highest, truest selves."

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.

Keith Thompson is an author, independent journalist, talk radio host, and former U.S. Senate staff member. Keith’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Esquire and the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s the author of the new book, The UFO Paradox: The Celestial and Symbolic World of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, in which he reveals how the UFO phenomenon ultimately represents a call from the cosmos for humanity to open to greater dimensions of reality and recognize that our understanding of the universe is still far from complete. Together we talked about how he discovered Esalen in 1975 from a New Yorker article, his friendship with Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, how he became involved in the earliest incarnations of Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research, the genius of Esalen’s "no one captures the flag" approach, the "Tuesday morning phenomenon," and the links between the paranormal and the aims of the human potential movement.

Today we have a special episode. We're bringing you something unique and powerful: a real Esalen check-in. This practice, rooted in the Gestalt therapy that evolved at Esalen over the years, has become a cornerstone of the Esalen experience, often described as a catalyst for self-awareness, connection, and personal growth. Our check-in features an incredible group of people: full-time staff members Nani Almanza, Jess Siller, Alex Shepherd, Sam Stern, and Shira Levine, as well as Faith Blakeney, a participant in the LEEP and REEP residential programs. What you'll hear is real. It is authentic and unscripted. While our participants were aware of being recorded, they spoke from the heart. We've made every effort to preserve the intimacy and rawness of the experience with only minimal editing. This episode offers a rare glimpse into the heart of what makes Esalen truly special. This is the secret sauce - the open, honest sharing that forms the foundation for personal transformation. I invite you to listen with an open heart and mind, as we explore this fundamental Esalen practice together.

Erik Davis stands tall at the intersection between mysticism, technology, and counterculture. He's one of my favorite writers, the author of many stupendous books, among them "TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information," "Nomad Codes," as well as "High Weirdness" a highly entertaining book that explores 1970s counterculture and its relationship with altered states of consciousness. Erik is also an Esalen faculty member, having recently taught a course on Embodied Writing and Spiritual Practice. In this conversation, we went into his new book, "Blotter," an extended meditation on LSD blotter art and the culture that surrounds it. We also found time to veer off into a host of topics, including Terence McKenna, John C. Lilly, Dick Price, madness, Stan Grof, the spiritual emergency network, prep-school deadheads, the Village Voice, the Internet and Erik's theory that it kills subcultures, the phenomenon of what Erik calls "cannabis thinking," how he was never much of a "cannabis writer," tape machines and their place in the counterculture, the Merry Pranksters, Phillip K. Dick, Bay Area Poster art, the DEA and its own little zine - and much more. Erik is one of the cofounders of the Berkeley Alembic - a nonprofit bodymind center committed to experiments in transformation. https://berkeleyalembic.org/ You can also find his collected works at Techgnosis: https://techgnosis.com/

Alex Belser is the founding member and administrative director of a Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Trial at NYU School of Medicine where he’s investigated if psychedelic mushrooms can ease anxiety for folks facing end of life. In his psychotherapeutic practice, he focuses in part on preventing suicide amongst young gay and bisexual men. We spoke about his queer critique of the psychedelic world from his vantage point as a researcher and a queer cis-gender man, and ruminated in depth about queer spirituality, queer wisdom and the subversive nature of psychedelics.

Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., is the founder of Internal Family Systems, a unique and astoundingly effective modality of psychotherapy that focuses on the various parts within a person. Internal Family Systems, or IFS, views multiplicity of mind as our natural state and our “parts” as sub-personalities that may be healed and transformed by bringing the Self into its rightful role as leader of the internal system. In this interview, he guides Sam through some transformational trauma work.

Dr. Emily Silverman came to Esalen to help faciliate Through Our Own Eyes, a retreat for and by women physicians. She’s the host and creator of the Nocturnists, a medical storytelling live show and podcast whose aim is to demystify doctorhood and bring to light the real people who toil behind the mask as our modern-society healers. We discussed whether what it means to be a woman and a physician in our contemporary health care system, how the inner world of a doctor continues to change in an increasingly capitalistic society, how health care and human connection may interact in the near future, and more.

Today's episode is part of a series of panels presented at the 9th annual Blue Mind Summit at the Esalen Institute in the summer of 2019. The Blue Mind summit is the brainchild of Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, whose stated mission is to create the new story of water and share it with the world, focusing on the cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits that we can derive from healthy waters throughout our lives. By connecting neuroscientists and psychologists with aquatic experts and artists, Dr. Nichols advocates for the health and well-being of people and planet earth. He is currently Chief Evangelist for Water (CEH2O) at Bouy Labs, a Senior Fellow at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, a Research Associate at California Academy of Sciences and co-founder of Ocean Revolution, an international network of young ocean advocates. He is also the author of the national bestseller Blue Mind, published in 2014, and the upcoming book, Live Blue. This year at Esalen, he partnered with Dr. Shauna Shapiro and Dr. Dan Siegel to explore the topic of Blue Mindfulness.