Come join us at Esalen!

Esalen Institute in Big Sur is the most physically and emotionally rejuvenating place we know . . .


To register by phone, call 831.667.3005.

From where Camille and I live in Los Angeles, it is a 6-hour drive up the coast. Within a couple of hours of arriving, I usually feel brand-new. It is also one of my favorite places to meditate. Esalen has the mountains, the ocean, trees, otters playing in the surf, hot springs, and one of the best massage crews in the world.

The coastline just south of Esalen in Big Sur. We stopped to gaze in awe.

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This is the view as you walk down the path to the natural hot springs baths overlooking the ocean.

There are various ways to stay at Esalen. They have adorable little rooms all over the property, and you can also stay in a sleeping bag, if you want to save money. The Basic double room rate (you share a room) is about $1050 for the week, which includes 3 meals a day, the workshop fee, and the room. The sleeping bag rate is about $450. Esalen Housing Options - Single rooms, double rooms, bunk beds and sleeping bags.

If you have already taken workshops at Esalen, you can use their express number, 831-667-3000, Extension 7321. The food is wonderful and healthy, the place is gorgeous, the atmosphere is healing, and the rooms are nice. Esalen is not really a hotel, though, and be patient with them if you have trouble getting them on the phone to register most of the staff at Esalen are there for their own healing and education, they are not really professional hotel staff. About You And Your Individual Meditation Practice

Camille and I have each been teaching meditation for more than 30 years, and we have developed ways of working with a group as individuals, so that each person in the workshop is doing her own individual practice.

Meditation can be defined as paying attention to the current of life and love flowing through us, and riding it inward to our essence. The techniques we will be using are inspired by the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, an ancient meditation text. Both beginners and experienced meditators benefit profoundly from this approach. You can go at your own pace; nothing is forced. We explore with curiosity and compassion, finding practices that work best for your individual nature. If you want to be able to meditate as a lifelong, self-renewing practice, you need to find a way to ride the power of your passions into your inner and outer worlds.

Wonder, love, anger, joy, sorrow, courage, desire - how can we embrace the rich spectrum of these powerful energies? Each passion activates us in a different way and calls us outward, into engagement with the world. At the same time, each of these vital energies lights up our internal circuitry and calls us to pay attention to the world within.

Passion leads us into the heart of our experience, and thus is the power source for meditation as well as daily life. Meditative practices can create a container of awareness within which the passions can each play their role and give their gifts for our creativity, relationships, and health. When we savor a passion, we find that the current of the passion alerts us to the source of passion, which is our original life impulse, the inspiration for coming into embodiment in the first place.

We will alternate sitting, standing, moving, and dancing meditations. Through subtle and expressive movement, sound, breath, visualizations, and other embodied techniques, you will gently and gradually open your capacity to let more life force stream through you.

About Esalen


Esalen Institute looks like Middle Earth, perhaps part of Hobbitown that humans are allowed to live. It is a fantastic place to do a meditation workshop - there is something delightful to see, hear or smell with every step you take. The buildings are situated along a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean south of Carmel. People who have been there often think it is one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the United States.

Upon arriving in Big Sur, near Esalen, Henry Miller wrote,
Here I shall find the strength to do the work I was made to do. Just breathing the ocean air here makes me feel that way, too.

Click here to take a
virtual tour of Esalen.


This is the view from the dining hall at Esalen.


You can call Esalen at 831-667-3005. You can try calling, but don't hold your breath.

Reservation Hours:

Mon, Tues, Thurs 9am - 7pm
Weds 10am - 12pm
Fri 10 am - 5 pm
Sat 10am - 3 pm
Sun 12 noon- 5 pm

They make it a little difficult to make reservations. So be persistent and patient. It is better to sign up at least a few weeks before the workshop starts. When you get here and are standing in the garden, looking out over the ocean, watching the otters play, you will understand.


Recommended Reading
Maurine and Roche, Meditation 24/7 and Meditation Secrets for Women; Roche, Meditation Made Easy.

Lorin Roche has been in love with meditation since 1968. His work, Instinctive Meditation, is set forth in Meditation 24/7, Meditation Secrets for Women, Meditation Made Easy, Breath Taking, and Whole Body Meditations.

Camille Maurine is the co-author of Meditation 24/7 and Meditation Secrets for Women. A dancer and performing artist who has been teaching since 1975, she is the creator of kinAesthetics and the transformational Moving Theater process.

The techniques in 24/7 are based on The Radiance Sutras, Lorins version of the classic meditation text, the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. The workshop will be great fun, healing, and deeply renewing. Check out Esalens site. Dream about it.