Esalen Institute

Esalen Institute is a non-profit retreat and learning centre on the Big Sur coast of California, on a grassy headland above the Pacific where natural hot springs feed open-air baths. Two Stanford graduates, Michael Murphy and Richard Price, started it in 1962, taking their cue from the thinking of Aldous Huxley and Abraham Maslow on unused human capacities. Through the 1960s and 1970s it became the chief gathering place of the human potential movement, and people such as Fritz Perls, Alan Watts, Gregory Bateson and Stanislav Grof taught there. The land was home to the Esselen people for thousands of years, and Esalen now looks after it together with the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County.

Most visitors book a residential workshop of a weekend or five days, on anything from meditation, yoga and movement to writing, relationships and psychology, with lodging, meals and the baths included in one price. Self-Guided Explorations offers an open stay with drop-in classes led by resident teachers instead of a set course. The institute also runs its own massage school, teaching the Esalen Massage style that grew up there in the 1960s, a three-month Work Scholar residency, and a think tank, the Center for Theory & Research. Its free Voices of Esalen podcast mixes new interviews with recordings from the archive.