Esalen Institute is a center for humanistic education, a nonprofit organization devoted to multidisciplinary studies ordinarily neglected by traditional academia. Now in its fifth decade, Esalen offers more than 500 public workshops a year in addition to invitational conferences, residential work-study programs, research initiatives, and internships. Part think-tank for the emerging world culture, part college and lab for transformative practices, and part restorative retreat, Esalen is dedicated to exploring work in the humanities and sciences that furthers the full realization of the human potential.

Esalen Institute was founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962 as an alternative educational center devoted to the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called the "human potential," the world of unrealized human capacities that lies beyond the imagination. Esalen soon became known for its blend of East/West philosophies, its experiential/didactic workshops, the steady influx of philosophers, psychologists, artists, and religious thinkers, and its breathtaking grounds blessed with natural hot springs. Once home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, Esalen is situated on 27 acres (109,000 m²) of spectacular Big Sur coastline with the Santa Lucia Mountains rising sharply behind.

Workshops cover many subjects including:

• The Arts
• Ecopsychology
• Health
• Integral Studies
• Martial arts
• Massage
• Dance
• Myth
• Philosophical Inquiry
• Somatics
• Spiritual & Religious Studies
• Transpersonal Process
• Wilderness
• Yoga

Past Teachers at Esalen Institute

Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Alan Watts, Aldous

Esalen brought Boris Yeltsin to the United States for the first time.

Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac used the springs.

Hunter Thompson was a security guard (1961-62).

References

• Anderson, Walter Truett The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the Human Potential Movement: The First Twenty Years