From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Esalen buildings and hot springs | |
| Founder(s) | Michael Murphy Dick Price |
|---|---|
| Established | 1962 |
| Focus | Humanistic alternative education |
| President | Gordon Wheeler |
| Key people | Terry Gilbey, General Manager and CEO Camille Wright, Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Fraenzl, Director of Programs |
| Owner | Esalen Institute |
| Address | 55000 Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920[1] |
| Location | Slates Hot Springs, Big Sur, California, United States |
| Coordinates |  36.12701°N 121.64159°WCoordinates: 36.12701°N 121.64159°W |
| Website | Esalen Institute |
 EsalenLocation in California |
Meditation Room at EsalenEsalen Art Barn, 2005
The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanistic alternative education.[2] The institute played a key role in the Human Potential Movement beginning in the 1960s. Its innovative use of encounter groups, a focus on the mind-body connection, and their ongoing experimentation in personal awareness introduced many ideas that later became mainstream.[3]
Esalen was founded by Stanford graduates Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962. Their intention was to support alternative methods for exploring human consciousness, what Aldous Huxley described as “human potentialities”.[4][5] Over the next few years, Esalen became the center of practices and beliefs that make up the New Age movement, from Eastern religions/philosophy, to alternative medicine and mind-body interventions, to Gestalt Practice.[6]
Price ran the institute until he was killed in a hiking accident in 1985. In 2012, the board hired professional executives to help raise money and keep the institute profitable. Until 2016, Esalen offered over 500 workshops yearly[7] in areas including personal growth, meditation, massage, Gestalt Practice, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, and organic food.[8] In 2016, about 15,000 people attended its workshops.[9]
In February 2017, the institute was cut off when Highway 1 was closed by a mud slide on either side of the hot springs. It closed its doors, evacuated guests via helicopter, and was forced to lay off 90% of its staff through at least July, when they reopened with limited workshop offerings. It also decided to revamp its offerings to include topics more relevant to a younger generation.[9]
As of July 2017, due to the limited access resulting from the road closures, the hot springs are only open to Esalen guests.[9]
Early history
Further information: Slates Hot Springs
The grounds of the Esalen Institute were first home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, from whom the institute adopted its name.[10] Carbon dating tests of artifacts found on Esalen’s property have indicated a human presence as early as 2600 BCE.[11]
The location was homesteaded by Thomas Slate on September 9, 1882, when he filed a land patent under the Homestead Act of 1862.[12] The settlement became known as Slates Hot Springs. It was the first tourist-oriented business in Big Sur, frequented by people seeking relief from physical ailments. In 1910, the land was purchased by Henry Murphy,[13] a Salinas, California, physician. The official business name was “Big Sur Hot Springs” although it was more generally referred to as “Slate’s Hot Springs”.[14]View of the building on the bluff housing the hot springs
Founding
Stanford grads meet
Michael Murphy and Dick Price both attended Stanford University in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[15] Both had developed an interest in human psychology and earned degrees in the subject in 1952.[16] Price was influenced by a lecture he heard Aldous Huxley give in 1960 titled “Human Potentialities”. After graduating from Stanford, Price attended Harvard University to continue studying psychology. Murphy, meanwhile, traveled to Sri Aurobindo‘s ashram in India where he resided for several months[17] before returning to San Francisco.
Price’s parents involuntarily committed him to a mental hospital for a year, ending on November 26, 1957. He hated the experience and thought he would like to create an environment where people could explore new ideas and thoughts without judgment and influence from the outside world. In May 1960, Price returned to San Francisco and lived at the East-West House with Taoist teacher Gia-Fu Feng. That year he met fellow Stanford University graduate Michael Murphy at Haridas Chaudhuri’s Cultural Integration Fellowship where Murphy was in residence. They met at the suggestion of Frederic Spiegelberg, a Stanford professor of comparative religion and Indic studies, with whom both had studied.[18]
By then they had both dropped out of their graduate programs (Price at Harvard and Murphy at Stanford), and had served time in the military.[16] Their similar experiences and interests were the basis for the partnership that created Esalen.[16] Inspired by Buddhist practices, and based on his own understanding of Taoism, Price developed his teachings. He took what Fritz Perls had taught him and created a Gestalt Awareness process that is still taught and followed today. People all over the world follow the thought and healing practice created by Price in guidance,.[19][20]
Lease property
Price and Murphy wanted to create a venue where non-traditional workshops and lecturers could present their ideas free of the dogma associated with traditional education. The two began drawing up plans for a forum that would be open to ways of thinking beyond the constraints of mainstream academia while avoiding the dogma so often seen in groups organized around a single idea promoted by a charismatic leader. They envisioned offering a wide range of philosophies, religious disciplines and psychological techniques.[21]
In 1961, they went to look at property owned by the Murphy family at Slates Hot Springs in Big Sur.[22] It included a run-down hotel occupied in part by members of a Pentecostal church.[23] The property was patrolled by gun-toting Hunter S. Thompson. Gay men from San Francisco filled the baths on the weekends.[23]
Henry Murphy’s widow and Michael’s grandmother Vinnie “Bunnie” MacDonald Murphy, who owned the property, lived 62 miles (100 km) away in Salinas. She had previously refused to lease the property to anyone, even turning down an earlier request from Michael. She was afraid her grandson was going to “give the hotel to the Hindus,” Murphy later said. Not long after, Thompson attempted to visit the baths with friends and got into a fistfight after antagonizing some of the gay men present. The men almost tossed him over the cliff. Murphy’s father, a lawyer, finally persuaded his mother to allow her grandson to take over[23] and she agreed to lease the property to them in 1962.[24][25][26] The two men used capital that Price obtained from his father, who was a vice-president at Sears.[27] They incorporated their business as a non-profit named Esalen Institute in 1963.[28][29]
Develop counterculture workshops
Murphy and Price were assisted by Spiegelberg, Watts, Huxley and his wife Laura, as well as by Gerald Heard and Gregory Bateson. They modeled the concept of Esalen partially upon Trabuco College, founded by Heard as a quasi-monastic experiment in the mountains east of Irvine, California, and later donated to the Vedanta Society.[30] Their intent was to provide “a forum to bring together a wide variety of approaches to enhancement of the human potential… including experiential sessions involving encounter groups, sensory awakening, gestalt awareness training, related disciplines.”[31][32] They stated that they did not want to be viewed as a “cult” or a new church but that it was to be a center where people could explore the concepts that Price and Murphy were passionate about. The philosophy of Esalen lies in the idea that “the cosmos, the universe itself, the whole evolutionary unfoldment is what a lot of philosophers call slumbering spirit. The divine is incarnate in the world and is present in us and is trying to manifest,” according to Murphy.[16]
Alan Watts gave the first lecture at Esalen in January 1962.[33] Gia-fu Feng joined Price and Murphy,[34] along with Bob Breckenridge, Bob Nash, Alice and Jim Sellers, as the first Esalen staff members.[26] In the middle of that same year Abraham Maslow, a prominent humanistic psychologist, just happened to drive into the grounds and soon became an important figure at the institute.[35] In the fall of 1962, they published a catalog advertising workshops with such titles as “Individual and Cultural Definitions of Rationality,” “The Expanding Vision” and “Drug-Induced Mysticism”.[33] Their first seminar series in the fall of 1962 was “The Human Potentiality,” based on a lecture by Huxley.[3]
Fritz Perls residency
In 1964, Fritz Perls began what became a five-year long residency at Esalen, leaving a lasting influence. Perls offered many Gestalt therapy seminars at the institute until he left in July 1969.[36] Jim Simkin[37] and Perls led Gestalt training courses at Esalen. Simkin started a Gestalt training center[38] on property next door that was later incorporated into Esalen’s main campus.[39]
When Perls left Esalen he considered it to be “in crisis again”. He saw young people without any training leading encounter groups. And he feared that charlatans would take the lead.[40] However, Grogan[who?] claims that Perls’ practice at Esalen had been ethically “questionable”,[41] and according to Kripal, Perls insulted Abraham Maslow.[42]
Gestalt Practice developed
Dick Price became one of Perls’ closest students. Price managed the institute and developed his own form he called Gestalt Practice,[43] which he taught at Esalen until his death in a hiking accident in 1985.[44] Michael Murphy lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and wrote non-fiction books about Esalen-related topics, as well as several novels.[45]
Leads counterculture movement
Esalen gained popularity quickly and started to regularly publish catalogs full of programs. The facility was large enough to run multiple programs simultaneously, so Esalen created numerous resident teacher positions.[46] Murphy recruited Will Schutz, the well-known encounter group leader, to take up permanent residence at Esalen.[47] All this combined to firmly position Esalen in the nexus of the counterculture of the 1960s.[48]
The institute gained increased attention in 1966 when several magazines wrote about it. George Leonard published an article in Look magazine about the California scene which mentioned Esalen and included a picture of Murphy.[49] Time magazine published an article about Esalen in September 1967.[50] The New York Times Magazine published an article by Leo E. Litwak in late December.[51] Life also published an article about the resort.[52] These articles increased the media and the public’s awareness of the institute in the U.S. and abroad. Esalen responded by holding large-scale conferences in Midwestern and East Coast cities,[53] as well as in Europe. Esalen opened a satellite center in San Francisco that offered extensive programming until it closed in the mid-1970s for financial reasons.[54]
Programs and management
The institute continues to offer workshops about humanistic psychology, physical wellness, and spiritual awareness. The institute has also added workshops on permaculture and ecological sustainability.[55] Other workshops cover a wide range of subjects including arts, health, Gestalt, integral thought, martial arts, massage, dance, mythology, philosophical inquiry, somatics, spiritual and religious studies, ecopsychology, wilderness experience, yoga, tai chi, mindfulness practice, and meditation. The institute was closed for the first half of 2017 and forced to drastically reduce staff. They also decided to revamp their offerings upon reopening to include topics more relevant to a younger generation.[9]
Center for Theory and Research
In 1998, Esalen launched the Center for Theory and Research to initiate new areas of practice and action which foster social change and realization of the human potential.[56] It is the research and development arm of Esalen Institute.[57] As of 2016, Michael Cornwall, who previously worked in the institutes’ Schizophrenia Research Project at Agnews State Hospital, was conducting workshops titled the Alternative Views and Approaches to Psychosis Initiative at Esalen. He was inviting leaders in the field of psychosis treatment to attend the workshops.[58]
Management changes
Esalen has been making changes to respond to internal and external factors.[59][60][61] Dick Price was the key leader of the institute until his sudden death in a hiking accident in late 1985 brought about many changes in personnel and programming.[62] Steven Donovan became president of the institute,[63] and Brian Lyke served as general manager.[62] Nancy Lunney became the director of programming,[64] and Dick Price’s son David Price served as general manager of Esalen beginning in the mid-1990s.[65]
The baths were destroyed in 1998 by severe weather and were rebuilt at great expense, but this caused severe institutional stress.[66] Afterward, Andy Nusbaum developed an economic plan to stabilize Esalen’s finances.[67]
In 2011, the institute commissioned the company Beyond the Leading Edge to conduct a Leadership Culture Survey to assess the quality of its leadership culture. The results were negative. The survey measured how well the leadership “builds quality relationships, fosters teamwork, collaborates, develops people, involves people in decision making and planning, and demonstrates a high level of interpersonal skill.” In the “relating dimension” the survey returned a score of 18%, compared to a desired 88%. It also produced strongly dissonant scores in measures of community welfare, relating with interpersonal intelligence, clearly communicating vision, and building a sense of personal worth within the community. It ranked management as overly compliant and lacking authenticity. However, the survey found that Esalen closely matched its overall goal for customer focus.[68]
Gordon Wheeler dramatically restructured Esalen management.[69] These changes prompted Christine Stewart Price, the widow of Dick Price, to withdraw from the institute, and found an organization named the Tribal Ground Circle with the intention to preserve Dick Price’s legacy.[70][71]
Early leaders and programs
In the few years after its founding, many of the seminars[72] like “The Value of Psychotic Experience” attempted to challenge the status quo. There were even Esalen programs that questioned the movement of which Esalen itself was a part—for instance, “Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness To Submit”. There were also a series of encounter groups focused on racial prejudice.[73]
Early leaders included many well-known individuals, including Ansel Adams, Gia-fu Feng, Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Robert Nadeau, Linus Pauling, Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, B.F. Skinner, and Arnold Toynbee. Rather than merely lecturing, many leaders experimented with what Huxley called the non-verbal humanities: the education of the body, the senses, and the emotions. Their intention was to help individuals develop awareness of their present flow of experience, to express this fully and accurately, and to listen to feedback. These “experiential” workshops were particularly well attended and were influential in shaping Esalen’s future course.[74]William Schutz at Esalen, circa 1987
Staff residency
Because of Esalen’s isolated location, its operational staff members have lived on site from the beginning and for many years collectively contributed to the character of the institute.[75] The community has been steeped in a form of Gestalt that pervades all aspects of daily life, including meeting structures, workplace practices, and individual language styles.[76] There is a preschool on site called the Gazebo, serving the children of staff, some program participants, and affiliated local residents.[77]
Scholars in residence
Esalen has sponsored long-term resident scholars, including notable individuals such as Gregory Bateson, Joseph Campbell, Stanislav Grof, Sam Keen, George Leonard, Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Virginia Satir, William Schutz, and Alan Watts.
Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association
Bodywork has always been a significant part of the Esalen experience. In the late 1990s, the “EMBA” was organized as a semi-autonomous Esalen association for the regulation of Esalen massage practitioners.[78]