The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen , is an American retreat and intentional community center in Big Sur, California, focusing on humanistic alternative education. The Institute played a key role in the Human Potential Movement beginning in the 1960s. The innovative use of group meetings, focusing on mind-body relationships, and their ongoing experiments in personal consciousness introduce many ideas that later became mainstream.
Esalen was founded by Stanford graduate Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962. Their goal was to support alternative methods of exploring human consciousness, what Aldous Huxley described as "human potential". Over the next few years Esalen became the center of practice and belief that shaped the New Age movement, from Eastern religion/philosophy, to alternative medicine and body-physical intervention, to Gestalt Practice.
Price runs 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 offers over 500 annual workshops in areas including personal growth, meditation, massage, Gestalt Exercise, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, and organic food. by 2016, about 15,000 people attend the workshop.
In February 2017, the Institute was interrupted when Highway 1 closed on both sides of the hot springs. It closed its doors, evacuated guests via helicopter, and was forced to lay off 90% of its staff at least until July, when they reopened with limited workshop offerings. He also decided to change his offer to include more relevant topics to the younger generation.
Starting July 2017, due to limited access due to road closures, hot springs are only open to Esalen guests.
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The foundations of the Esalen Institute are the first homes for Native Americans known as Esselen, from which the institute adopted its name. The carbon dating test of artifacts found on the Esalen property has indicated human existence as early as 2600 BC.
The site was inhabited by Thomas Slate on September 9, 1882, when he filed a land patent under Homestead Act of 1862. The settlement became known as Slates Hot Springs. This is the first tourist-oriented business in Big Sur, frequented by people who seek help from physical ailments. In 1910, the land was bought by Henry Murphy, a doctor of Salinas, California,. The official business name is "Big Sur Hot Springs" though more commonly referred to as "Slate's Hot Springs".
Maps Esalen Institute
Establishment
Stanford grads meet
Michael Murphy and Dick Price both attended Stanford University in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Both have developed an interest in human psychology and earned degrees in this field in 1952. Price influenced by the lecture he heard given Aldous Huxley in 1960 entitled "Human Potential". After graduating from Stanford, Price went to Harvard University to continue studying psychology. Murphy, meanwhile, traveled to Sri Aurobindo ashram in India where he stayed for several months before returning to San Francisco. They met in San Francisco on the advice of Frederic Spiegelberg, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies from Stanford, both of whom have studied. By then they had dropped out of their graduate programs (Price at Harvard and Murphy at Stanford), and had served time in the military. Although they have not met up to this point, their experience is quite similar for them to start their partnership creating Esalen.
After Price was hospitalized for eighteen months, she was inspired to change the way people can experience new ways to live their lives and experience new ideas and thoughts without judgment and influence from the outside world. He was inspired by his own interest in Buddhist practice and along with his own understanding of Taoism, he shaped his teachings. He then took what Fritz Perls had taught him and created a process still taught and followed today. Students today around the world follow practices set by Price in guidance, healing, and processes and principles.
Rent property
Price and Murphy want to create a place where non-traditional workshops and lecturers can present their ideas free from the dogma associated with traditional education. The two began drafting a plan for a forum that would be open to ways of thinking beyond the constraints of mainstream academics while avoiding the dogma that is often seen in groups organized around an idea promoted by a charismatic leader. They imagine offering a wide range of philosophy, religious discipline and psychological techniques.
In 1961, they went to see the property owned by the Murphy family at Slates Hot Springs in Big Sur. This includes a broken hotel partly occupied by members of the Pentecostal church. The property was patrolled by Gun-toting Hunter S. Thompson. Gay men from San Francisco fill the baths on weekends.
Widow Henry Murphy and grandmother Michael Vinnie "Bunnie" MacDonald Murphy, who owns the property, lives 62 miles (100 km) in Salinas. He had previously refused to rent the property to anyone, even denying a previous request from Michael. She feared her grandson would "give the hotel to the Hindus," Murphy said later. Not long after that, Thompson tried to visit the baths with his friends and quarreled when some gay men jumped over him. The men almost threw it on the cliff. Murphy's father, a lawyer, eventually persuaded his mother to allow his grandson to take over and he agreed to lease the property to them in 1962. Both men used the capital Price earned from his father, who was vice president at Sears. They merged their business as a non-profit Esalen Institute named in 1963.
Develop a counter-cultural workshop
Murphy and Price were helped by Spiegelberg, Watts, Huxley and his wife Laura, as well as by Gerald Heard and Gregory Bateson. They modeled the Esalen concept partially on Trabuco College, founded by Heard as a quasi-monastic experiment in the mountains east of Irvine, California, and then donated to the Vedanta Society. Their goal is to provide "a forum for bringing together different approaches to human potential enhancement... including experience sessions involving group meetings, sensory awakening, gestalt awareness training, related disciplines." They declare that they do not want to be viewed as a "sect" or a new church, but that is the center where one can explore the concept of Price and Murphy passionate. The Esalen philosophy lies in the idea that "the cosmos, the universe itself, the whole process of evolution is what many philosophers call the dormant spirit, the divine is incarnate in the world and present in us and is trying to manifest," according to Murphy.
Alan Watts gave his first lecture at Esalen in January 1962. Gia-fu Feng joined Price and Murphy, along with Bob Breckenridge, Bob Nash, Alice, and Jim Sellers, as the first Esalen staff member. In the middle of the same year Abraham Maslow, a prominent humanistic psychologist, happened to go into the yard and soon became an important figure at the institute. In the fall of 1962, they published a catalog advertising workshop with titles such as "Individual and Cultural Truth Definition," "Widespread Vision" and "Medically Induced Mysticism". Their first seminar series in the fall of 1962 was "Human Potential," based on a lecture by Huxley.
Fritz Perls residency
In 1964, Fritz Perls started what became a five-year residency in Esalen, leaving a lasting influence. Perls offered many Gestalt therapy seminars at the institute until he left in July 1969. Jim Simkin and Perls led the Gestalt training course at Esalen. Simkin started the Gestalt training center on the next property which was then put into Esalen's main campus.
When Perls left Esalen, he regarded it as "in crisis again". He sees young people without training leading group meetings. And he's afraid that fraudsters will lead. However, Grogan claims that the Perls exercises in Esalen are ethically "questionable", and according to Kripal, Perls insult Abraham Maslow.
Gestalt Practice developed
Dick Price became one of Perls' closest students. The price runs the Institute and develops its own form of what he calls the Gestalt Practice, which he taught in Esalen until his death in a hiking accident in 1985. Michael Murphy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes non-fiction books on topics related to Esalen, as well as some novel.
Lead the counter-cultural movement
Esalen gained popularity quickly and began publishing regular catalogs full of programs. The facility was large enough to run several programs simultaneously, so Esalen created many positions of resident teachers. Murphy recruited Will Schutz, leader of a well-known gathering group, to take up permanent residence in Esalen. All of this combined to establish Esalen's position in the counter-cultural nexus of the 1960s.
The Institute received increased attention in 1966 when several magazines wrote about it. George Leonard published an article in Look magazine about a California scene calling Esalen and included a picture of Murphy. The Time magazine published an article on Esalen in September 1967. The New York Times Magazine published an article by Leo E. Litwak at the end of December. Life also publishes articles about resorts. These articles enhance media and public awareness about institutes in the US and abroad. Esalen responded by holding large-scale conferences in cities in the Midwestern and East Coast, as well as in Europe. Esalen opened a satellite center in San Francisco that offered an extensive program until it closed in the mid-1970s for financial reasons.
Programs and management
The institute continues to offer workshops on humanistic psychology, physical health, and spiritual awareness. The institute also added workshops on permaculture and ecological sustainability. Other workshops cover a wide range of subjects including art, health, Gestalt, integral thinking, martial arts, massage, dance, mythology, philosophical inquiry, religious, spiritual and religious studies, ecopsychology, wilderness experience, yoga, tai chi, , and meditation. The Institute is closed for the first half of 2017 and is forced to dramatically reduce staff. They also decided to change their offer after reopening to include more relevant topics to the younger generation.
Theory and Research Center
In 1998, Esalen launched the Center for Theory and Research to begin new areas of practice and action that drive social change and the realization of human potential. This is the research and development arm of the Esalen Institute. In 2016, Michael Cornwall, who previously worked at the Schizophrenia Research Project Institute at Agnews State Hospital, is conducting a workshop entitled Alternative Outlook and Approach for Psychosis Initiatives in Esalen. He invited the leaders in the field of psychosis treatment to attend the workshop.
Change management
Esalen has made changes to respond to internal and external factors. Dick Price was the institute's key leader until his sudden death in a climbing accident in late 1985 brought many changes in personnel and programming. Steven Donovan became institute president, and Brian Lyke served as general manager. Nancy Lunney became program director, and Dick Price's son, David Price served as Esalen's general manager beginning in the mid-1990s.
The baths were destroyed in 1998 by bad weather and rebuilt at great cost, but this caused intense institutional pressure. After that, Andy Nusbaum developed an economic plan to stabilize Esalen's finances.
In 2011, the Institute commissioned the Beyond the Leading Edge company to conduct a Cultural Leadership Survey to assess the quality of its leadership culture. The result is negative. Surveys measure how well leadership "builds quality relationships, fosters teamwork, collaborates, develops people, involves people in decision making and planning, and shows high levels of interpersonal skills." In "related dimensions", the survey yielded a score of 18%, compared to the desired 88%. It also generates highly dissonant scores in the measure of people's welfare, deals with interpersonal intelligence, clearly communicates vision, and builds a sense of personal value in society. This ranks the management as too appropriate and lacking authenticity. However, the survey found that Esalen fits perfectly with its overall goal for customer focus.
Gordon Wheeler dramatically restructured Esalen's management. This change prompted Christine Stewart Price, widow of Dick Price, to resign from the institute, and found an organization called Tribal Ground Circle with the intent to preserve Dick Price's legacy.
Initial leaders and programs
Within a few years after its founding, many seminars such as "The Value of Psychotic Experience" sought to challenge the status quo. There is even an Esalen program that questions the movement that Esalen himself is part of - for example, "Tyranny Spiritual and Therapeutic: Willingness to Submit." There is also a series of meeting groups that focus on racial prejudice.
The early leaders included many famous people, including Ansel Adams, Gia-fu Feng, Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Robert Nadeau, Linus Pauling, Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, B.F Skinner, and Arnold Toynbee. Instead of just giving lectures, many leaders experiment with what Huxley calls a non-verbal humanity: body, sensory, and emotional education. Their goal is to help individuals develop an awareness of the flow of their current experience, to express this fully and accurately, and to listen to feedback. This "experience" workshop was attended and influential in shaping Esalen's future.
Staff residency
Due to Esalen's isolated location, its operational staff members have been living on site from scratch and for years collectively contributed to the agency's character. The community has been immersed in a Gestalt that encompasses all aspects of everyday life, including meeting structure, workplace practices, and individual language styles. There is a preschool on a site called Gazebo, serving staff children, some program participants, and affiliated locals.
Bachelor in residence
Esalen has sponsored long-term resident experts, including well-known individuals such as Gregory Bateson, Joseph Campbell, Stanislav Grof, Sam Keen, George Leonard, Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Satir Virginia, William Schutz, Kyle Campbell and Alan Watts.
Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association
Bodywork has always been an important part of Esalen's experience. In the late 1990s, "EMBA" was organized as a semi-autonomous Esalen association for the regulation of Esalen massage practitioners.
Previous initiatives and projects
Esalen Institute has sponsored many research initiatives, educational projects, and invitation conferences. The Big Sur facility has been used for these events, as well as other locations, including international sites.
Art event
In 1964, Joan Baez led a workshop entitled "The New Folk Music" which included a free show. This is the first of seven "Big Sur Folk Festivals" featuring many music legends of the era. The 1969 concert included musicians who had just come from the Woodstock Festival. The show is featured in the documentary, Big Sur's Celebration , released in 1971.
John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg perform together in Esalen. Robert Bly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth (who led one of the first workshops), Gary Snyder and others held poetry readings and workshops.
In 1994, President and CEO Sharon Thom created an artist-in-residence program to provide a two-week retreat for artists to focus on ongoing work. These artists interact with the staff, offer informal meetings, and perform on the newly created dance stage. Located next to the Art Shed, the dance platform is used by Esalen teachers for dance and martial arts. The platform was later closed by a dome and renamed Leonard Pavilion after the late Esalen passed president and board member, George Leonard.
In 1995 and 1996 Esalen organized two art festivals that brought together artists, poets, musicians, photographers and artists, including artist Margot McLean, psychotherapist James Hillman, guitarist Michael Hedges and Joan Baez. All staff members are allowed to attend every class and performance that does not interfere with their schedule. The art festival has since become a popular annual event in Esalen.
Schizophrenia Research Project
Driven by Dick Price, the Schizophrenia Research Project was conducted for three years at Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, California, involving 80 young men diagnosed with schizophrenia. Funded in part by the Esalen Institute, the program is sponsored by the California Department of Mental Hygiene (reorganization: CMHSA) and the National Institute of Mental Health. It explores the thesis that the health of certain patients will increase permanently if their psychotic process is not disturbed by the administration of antipsychotic pharmaceutical drugs. Julian Silverman is head of research for the project. He also served as Esalen's general manager in the 1970s. Double blind research Agnews is the largest ever episode psychosis research project ever undertaken in the United States. This suggests that young men given placebo had a 75% lower rate of hospitalization and a much better outcome than men who received anti-psychotic drugs. This result is used as a justification for a drug-free program in the San Francisco Bay Area. Esalen has recently started reviving some of this interest in schizophrenia and psychosis, and is hosting the Summary of the Laing Symposium and workshops on compassionate responses to psychosis.
Publish
Beginning in 1969, working with the Viking Press, the institute published a series of 17 books on topics related to Esalen, including the first edition of Michael Murphy's novel, Golf in the Kingdom (1971). Some of these books are still in print. In the mid-1980s, Esalen signed a publishing agreement with Lindisfarne Press to publish a small library of Russian philosophical and theological books.
Soviet-American Exchange Program
In 1979, Esalen started the Soviet-American Exchange Program (later renamed: Line Two, an institution for citizen diplomacy). This initiative came at a time when the Cold War tension peaked. The program is credited with substantial success in encouraging peaceful personal exchanges between citizens of "super powers". In the 1980s Michael Murphy and his wife Dulce were instrumental in organizing programs with Soviet citizen Joseph Goldin, to provide vehicles for citizen-citizen relations between Russia and America. In 1982, Esalen and Goldin pioneered the first US-Soviet Space Bridge, allowing Soviet and American citizens to speak directly with each other through satellite communications. In 1988, Esalen brought Abel Aganbegyan, one of Mikhail Gorbachev's chief economic advisers, to the United States. In 1989, Esalen brought Boris Yeltsin on his first trip to the United States, though Yeltsin did not visit the Esalen facility in Big Sur. Esalen arranges meetings for Yeltsin with President George H. W. Bush and many other leaders in business and government. Two ex-president exchange programs include Jim Garrison and Jim Hickman. After Gorbachev resigned, and effectively dissolved the Soviet Union, Garrison helped shape the World Country Forum, with Gorbachev as chairman of the meeting. This success led to other Esalen diplomatic programs, including exchanges with China, an initiative for further understanding among Jews, Christians and Muslims, and further work on Russian-American relations.
Pricing and finance
2017 closure
On February 12, 2017, a number of landslides and mud closed Highway 1 at several locations in the south and north of the hot springs and caused Esalen to close in part. On 18 February 2017, the earth shift damaged the docks supporting the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge north of Esalen and forced CalTrans to close Highway 1. CalTrans determined that the bridge was damaged and repaired and announced an accelerated project to replace the bridge in September. After the closure of the bridge, Esalen was cut off, and was forced to evacuate dozens of guests by helicopter. The landslide in Mud Creek south of the hot springs severely restricts the vehicle's access to the resort, and Esalen closes the door for a while. Then, on May 20, 2017, a new slide at Mud Creek closed Highway 1 for at least a year.
On June 20, Eslalen announced that it would lay off 45 staff members at least until July, leaving only about 10 percent of its staff.
Esalen partially reopened on July 28, 2017, offering limited workshops. He plans to add more seminars after the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge reopens in September 2017.
Attendance and cost
In 2012, 600 Esalen workshops were attended by more than 12,000 people. Topics range from sustainable business practices to hypnosis to "The Holy Fool: Crazy Wisdom From Van Gogh to Tina Fey and The Big Lebowski."
Starting 2015, weekend workshops, including programs, banquets, and a place for sleeping bags in communal areas, a minimum cost of $ 405 per person. Couples can rent private rooms for $ 730 per person. Workshops for a week start at $ 900 and couples are charged $ 1,700 per person to stay in private rooms. In 2013, the Agency imposes fees to participants in a month-long fully licensed, licensed massage practitioner training program, $ 4910, including board and room. In 1987, a weekend workshop with one room and food cost $ 270, and a five-day workshop cost $ 530.
Revenue and costs
In 2013, the Institute reported revenues of $ 18,513,254, $ 13,066,407 from the program, and after spending $ 13,515,552 net income of $ 4,997,702. That year he paid CEO Patricia McEntee $ 152,077 In 2014, he reported total revenues of $ 15,934,586, total cost of $ 14,472,201, and net income of $ 1,462,385. McEntee paid $ 157,839.
The company spends nearly $ 10 million on renovations from 2014 to 2016, including $ 7.4 million to renovate the main cottage and add cafes and bars. It also spent $ 1.8 million for a six room guesthouse. No mobile internet service is available, but Esalen plans to make some of its workshops available to online participants.
Rental terms
The annual fee of the 87-year lease for the 27-acre site of Vinnie A. Murphy Trust - which extends to 2049 - is $ 344,704 in 2014. McEntee told Monterey County Weekly that rental fees are heavily discounted, and that rental provisions allow the trust to reassess lease terms by 2017. This could potentially increase the Institute tenants into market value.
Past teacher
Previous guest teachers include:
In popular culture
Cultural influence
Esalen has been cited as having played a key role in the transformation of the 1960s culture. At first as a "laboratory for new thinking", it was seen by some as the base of the human potential movement. The use of group meetings, focusing on mind-body relationships, and ongoing experiments in personal awareness introduce many ideas to American society that later became mainstream. In the early years, guest lecturers and workshop leaders included many prominent thinkers, psychologists and philosophers including Erik Erikson, Ken Kesey, Alan Watts, John Lilly, Buckminster Fuller, Aldous Huxley, Linus Pauling, Fritz Perl, Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly and Carl Rogers.
Esalen has also been the subject of some criticism and controversy. The Economist writes, "For many people in America and around the world, Esalen stands more vaguely to the point of metaphor where 'East meets West' and is transformed into something unique and mystical American or New Agey And for many others Esalen is just a famous bagno-bordello where people have sex and become tall throughout the 1960s and 1970s before returning home to talk about psychobabble and dangling crystals. "
The Human Potential Movement is criticized for putting forward the ethics that the inner self must be freely expressed to achieve one's true potential. Some people see this ethic as an aspect of the Esalen culture. Historian Christopher Lasch claims that humanistic techniques encourage narcissistic, materialistic or obsessive spiritual thought and behavior. In 1990 a graffiti artist painted "Jive shit for rich white folk" at the entrance to Esalen, highlighting the issues of class and race. Some people think that this is a decline of progress away from true spiritual growth. Michel Houellebecq's Atomised traces the influence of the New Age movement on the protagonist's novel for an opportunity meeting of older generations in Esalen.
Popular media
In the comedy drama Bob & amp; Carol & amp; Ted & amp; Alice (1969), a sophisticated resident of Los Angeles Bob and Carol Sanders (played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) spent the weekend of emotional honesty at an Esalen-style retreat, after which they returned to their lives determined to embrace free love and full openness.
In "What About Bob?" (1991) Bill Murray's character states that he has not felt this kindness since Esalen on his arrival at his psychiatrist's vacation home.
Esalen tampil menonjol dalam novel komik Edward St Aubyn On the Edge (1998).
A BBC television series, The Century of the Self (2002), criticized the Human Potential Movement and incorporated video segments recorded in Esalen.
The final Mad Men , "Person to Person" (which aired on May 17, 2015), featuring Don and Stephanie living on the Esalen coastline-was like going back in 1970.
The Panticapaeum Institute of True Detective Season 2 is largely based on the Esalen Institute.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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