Esalen Initiatives

The Esalen Institute has often been in the public spotlight, most notably for its role in encouraging new understandings of human nature in the sixties and initiating citizen diplomacy with the Soviet Union in the eighties. However, it has also sponsored an array of programs out of the public eye, programs that have had far-reaching effects. The following list, though by no means comprehensive, highlights some of these initiatives.

Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology

• 1962: The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow, co-founder of both humanistic and transpersonal psychology, arrived at Esalen by chance, and came to play an important role in its development, leading several workshops and guiding the founders. Esalen workshop leaders eventually played a pivotal role in the growing discipline of humanistic psychology.
• 1964: Fritz Perls, co-founder of Gestalt therapy, arrived at Esalen in poor health and relatively unknown. In the ensuing five years at Esalen, his health improved and he was provided a public platform for his work through regular demonstrations in the lodge and sundry workshops. By his death in 1970, several training centers had opened and Gestalt had become an important component of the psychotherapeutic landscape.
• 1967: Will Schutz published the national-bestseller Joy and took up residence at Esalen, which subsequently became a major center for his style of encounter groups, thereby helping to spark a boom in group-centered therapies.
• 1970: an Esalen team visited Europe to find new approaches to personal growth and discovered Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, an eclectic and comprehensive approach to development focused on the positive and "higher" dimensions of humans. This group then introduced Assagioli’s work to America in the winter of 1971. Key figures: Michael Murphy, James and Susan Vargiu, Stuart and Sukie Miller, James Fadiman, Robert and Donna Gerard.
• 1970-1971: a number of Esalen group leaders traveled to Arica, Chile to study with the Sufi teacher Oscar Ichazo. Key figures: Claudio Naranjo, John Lilly, Steven Stroud, Jack Downing. This eventually resulted in the proliferation of work on the Enneagram, a system of personality typology, as well as the founding of the Arica school.
• 1971-5: summer programs in Berkeley, co-sponsored with the Association of Transpersonal Psychology, on "Human Consciousness: Exploration, Maps, and Models." Core seminars taught by: John Lilly, Dorothy Fadiman, James Fadiman, John Perry, Charles Tart, Stanley Keleman, Arthur Hastings, Stanislav Grof, Joan Halifax-Grof, Jean Houston, and Arthur Deikman. These summer programs helped shape the nascent discipline of transpersonal psychology.
• 1977: during a month-long seminar at Esalen, Christina and Stanislav Grof invented Holotropic Breathwork, a non-drug method for exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness using deep breathing in a group setting with evocative music and bodywork. In 1987, they created a formal training program, which has since spawned its own international organization and journal.

Education

• 1965: George Brown, professor at UC-Santa Barbara, first began teaching workshops at Esalen on new paradigms of education.
• 1966: Esalen sponsored "Education in the Year 2000," a workshop jointly led by Richard Farson, director of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute; George Leonard, west coast editor for Look magazine and winner of more national awards for education reporting than any other writer; and Richard Suchman, Director for the Divisions of Elementary-Secondary Research and Higher Education Research in the U.S. Office of Education.
• 1966: Rollo May, a leading figure in humanistic psychology, led a workshop on "Education and the Dimensions of Consciousness."
• 1966: James Bugental, prominent existential psychologist, facilitated a workshop on "Ontogogy: Education for the Human Frontier."
• 1967: a Ford Foundation grant led to the creation of the Ford/Esalen Project in Confluent Education, joining affective and cognitive learning. Dr. George Brown, a regular Esalen workshop leader and Professor of Education at UC-Santa Barbara, spearheaded the program. His work was summarized in an Esalen book entitled Human Teaching for Human Learning. and a subsequent book called The Live Education: Innovations Through Confluent Education and Gestalt. This project gave rise to the Confluent Education program at UC-Santa Barbara’s School of Education, which has conferred more than 80 doctorates and 300 master’s degrees.
• 1968: Esalen’s vice-president, George Leonard, drawing upon his reporting background and experience in the human potential movement, published Education and Ecstasy, a radical, utopian vision of education that is still influential today.
• 1970: Esalen San Francisco sponsored a regular series of lectures and workshops for educators on humanistic education.
• 1970-1973: Esalen implemented a sub-grant from George Brown’s Ford Foundation work in which fourteen teachers and principals spent three years training in Esalen techniques and then applied such methods to their work in education.
• 1971: Esalen’s education work, under the direction of Sukie Miller, was awarded a Title-III grant from the state of California for a demonstration program in confluent reading in the Newark school system.
• 1973: Esalen seminars on education became available for academic credit through the UC-Santa Barbara extension program.
• 1977: Esalen created the Gazebo school under the guidance and vision of Janet Lederman, a regular seminar leader on educational subjects, an innovative teacher, and author of Anger and the Rocking Chair. The Gazebo became a long-term experiment in applying new principles to the field of education.
• 1987: invited conference on "Early Childhood Education for the '90's," convened by Janet Lederman.

Somatic Education

• 1962: Esalen opened as an educational center, with a strong emphasis on incorporating the body into visions of human development. Over the years, a distinctive style of massage developed and became known as Esalen massage. Thousands of massage practitioners from around the world have now been trained in this approach.
• 1963: Charlotte Selver arrived at Esalen for the first time, bringing with her the Sensory Awareness approach, first developed by Elsa Gindler in Germany. Through her regular workshops at Esalen this work became much more widely known and practiced.
• 1964: Ida Rolf, creator of Structural Integration, began a series of extended residence periods. Structural Integration involves a deep muscular-fascial restructuring of the body. With Esalen as a platform, this work grew into international prominence, with its own licensing body and training program.
• 1965-present: Esalen offered a major West Coast venue for Reichian and neo-Reichian approaches to personal growth, among them the Bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos.
• 1970: Moshe Feldenkrais, creator of the Feldenkrais method, held his first major training in the United States at Esalen.
• 1971: Judith Aston gave her first training in Aston Patterning at Esalen.
• 1987: conference on "The Biological, Psychological, and Cultural Body: Methods of Transformation" bringing together experts in various somatic disciplines, including Don Hanlon Johnson, Ted Melnechuk, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, George Leonard, Judith Aston, Thomas Hanna, Candace Pert, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, George Solomon, Charlotte Selver, Michael Murphy, Leslie Gray, Barbara Halpern, and Susan Griffin.
• 1988: first of three conferences on "The Body and Spirituality," funded by Laurance Rockefeller’s Fund for the Enhancement of the Human Spirit, convened by Don Hanlon Johnson. Participants: Lauren Artress, Diana Beach, Shepherd Bliss, Grita Gil-Austern, Alan Jones, June Keener-Wink, Paul LaChance, Daniel O’Connor, Michel Pantenberg, Paula Pohlman, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Thomas Stoll, and Alton Wasson.
• 1989: second conference on "The Body and Spirituality" convened by Don Hanlon Johnson. Participants: Phyllis Ocean Berman, Richard Bollman, Sandy Boucher, Sister Myriam Dardenne, Sister Rose Mary Dougherty, Clare Fischer, Reverend Marsha Foster, David Griffin, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, Elise Saggau, Dmitri Spivak, Halima Toure, Ted Tracy, Arthur Waskow, Rabbi Sheila Weinberg, Judith Aston, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Robert Hall, and Jean Lanier.
• 1990: third conference on "The Body and Spirituality." Participants: Joseph Couture, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Sister Myriam Dardenne, Robert Hall, Rosemarie Harding, Vincent Harding, Barbara Holifield, Don Hanlon Johnson, Michael Murphy, Naomi Newman, Dr. Mohammed Shaalan, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Father Thomas Matus, Father Innocenzo Gargano, Victor and Luiza Krivorotov, Dmitri and Leonid Spivak, Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko.
• Out of the "Body and Spirituality" conference series came several projects, including the Healing Center for Survivors of Political Torture in San Francisco, and the Group for Healing the Body of Slavery, based in Oakland.
• 1991: Conference convened by Don Hanlon Johnson on Somatics and Phenomenology. Participants: Elizabeth Behnke, Seymour Carter, Edward Casey, Maureen Connolly, Chris Gove, Robert Hall, Drew Leder, Kennard Lipman, David Rehorick, Glen Mazis, Kay Toombs.
• 1992: invited conference on "Somatic Therapy and People of Color" convened by Clyde Ford and Don Johnson.
• 1995: Don Johnson edited the first in a series of CIIS-sponsored texts on somatic literature Bone, Breath, & Gesture : Practices of Embodiment as an outgrowth of the working group established through the Esalen conferences, which included Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Continuum; Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Body-Mind Centering; Clifford Smythe, Feldenkrais; Michael Salveson, Rolfing; Darcy Elman, The F. M. Alexander Guild; Robert Hall, Lomi; Michael Marsh; Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School; and Stuart Newman, PhD, NY Medical School.
• 1997: Don Johnson edited the second volume, entitled Groundworks: Narratives of Embodiment, to emerge from the working group, including articles by Robert Hall, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Emilie Conrad Da’oud, Michael Salveson, Elizabeth Beringer, and Darcy Elman. Each therapist described how he or she approaches and diagnoses a patient's problem, how he or she determines what and where to work, and the progress of a session.
• 1998: Don Johnson edited the third volume, entitled The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology, with cases that explored the interface between bodywork and clinical psychology.

Holistic/Humanistic Medicine

• 1971-1974: Esalen created the Program in Humanistic Medicine in which twenty carefully selected medical professionals met monthly over a period of three years to explore various human growth methods, somatic disciplines, Eastern spiritual practices, and alternative medical models. This understanding was then applied to a more humane practice of medicine. Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen and the late Dr. Alan Barbour, among others, participated in the first group. This program also trained and consulted for SAMA (Student American Medical Association).
• 1973: workshop on "Holistic Medicine" led by Gay Luce.
• 1974: workshop entitled "Four Pillars of Health: A Workshop in Preventative Medicine" led by John McCamy and Al Drucker.
• 1974: workshop on "Femininity in Humanistic Medicine" featuring Rachel Naomi Remen, Marguerite Abell, and Mary Morgan.
• 1974: first Esalen month-long workshop devoted to health. It emphasized nutrition, bodywork, structural integration, meditation, and group work, and was led by Dr. John McCamy
• 1974: the Program in Humanistic Medicine became a separate entity called the Institute for Study of Humanistic Medicine after receiving a $1.2 million grant from HEW Manpower. This program was subsequently adopted by Mt. Zion Hospital.
• 1976: The first federal legislation (PL94-434: Health Professions Education Assistance Act) mentioning "humanistic medicine" came before Congress, sponsored by Sukie and Stuart Miller, directors of Esalen’s program.
• 1976: month-long seminar for professionals and graduate students entitled "Holistic Medicine and Traditional Healing," facilitated by Joan Halifax-Grof, Dr. Stanislav Grof, and Dr. Kenneth Pelletier. Visiting faculty included: Carl & Stephanie Simonton, Michael Harner, John Lilly, Gay Luce, and Julian Silverman.
• 1976: Wayne Jonas attended an alternative health month-long workshop, planting many of the seeds which later manifested in his work as the head of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine.
• 1979: Esalen approved by the Board of Registered Nursing and the Califonia Medical Association in California as a provider of continuing eduction.
• 1979-1980: two public conferences on "Stress: Harnessing Its Energy for Health," led by stress experts Hans Selye and Meyer Friedman, targeted to nurses and physicians for continuing education.
• 1981: creation of a four-month residential training program in Holistic Health, designed for health care professionals and students in the health field. It included fifteen major areas of study: homeopathy, gestalt, acupuncture, herbology, group process, nutrition, t’ai chi, massage, healing meditations, organic gardening, movement integration, bach flowers, anatomy, deep tissue, and community health. This residential training was repeated in the fall of 1982 and the fall of 1983.
• 1981: invited conference on "The Perinatal Period: Interface of Biology and Behavior," bringing together specialists in neurobiology, neuroendocrinology, anatomy & physiology, clinical psychology, obstetrics, hypnotherapy, psychiatry, and philosophy to discuss the effect of birth on consciousness and to find ways to create more humane and psychologically sensitive birth experiences. Participants: Peter Levine, Jeffrey Babbitt, Lewis Mehl, Suzanne Arms, Stanislav Grof, John Lilly, Gayle Petersen, Michael Leon, David Cheek, Michael Leon, Jack Downing, Stephan Porges, and Ian MacNaughton.

International Relations

• 1981-1987: six conferences on "Citizen Diplomacy" organized first by James Hickman and subsequently by James Garrison. During the first of these conferences, Joseph Montville coined the term "track-two diplomacy" to refer to private-sector initiatives between Soviets and Americans that supplemented formal diplomatic channels. Participants: James Hickman, Joseph Montville, Jay Ogilvy, John Marks, Michael Murphy, Dulce Murphy, Peter Schwartz, and David Harris. The first conference provided John Marks with his primary inspiration for the creation of the NGO Search for Common Ground in 1982 (www.sfcg.org), which now has offices in Washington, Brussels, Amman, Bujumbura, Gaza City, Kiev, Luanda, Monrovia, and Skopje. This group engages in creative conflict-reducing and bridge-building activities in many of the world’s most troubled zones.
• 1982: pioneered the first spacebridges, allowing Soviet and American citizens to speak directly with one another via satellite communication. These spacebridges inspired subsequent satellite teleconferences between Soviets and Americans, including an ongoing Congress-to-Supreme Soviet teleconference.
• 1983-1987: four conferences, entitled the Erik Erikson Symposia, on the political psychology of Soviet-American relations with career diplomat Joseph Montville and psychologists Erik and Joan Erikson. Participants: the eminent historian James McGregor Burns, diplomat Joseph Montville, John Mack, Charles Lindbloom, political psychologist Vamik Volkan, theologian Harvey Cox, psychologist Erik Erikson, philosopher Sam Keen, and psychologist James Hillman. Many participants were members of the Political Psychology Society and through Andre Melville, prominent Soviet delegate to that society, their reflections on the psychodynamics of the relationship between the superpowers were transmitted to high levels of the Soviet bureaucracy. Effects: 1) James Blight attended one meeting and was inspired to take a similar psychodynamic approach to the Cuban missile crisis, which resulted in several books and a PBS documentary. 2) Joseph Montville edited a special edition of the Journal of Political Psychology called "A Notebook on the Psychology of the U.S.-Soviet relationship." 3) John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning psychoanalyst at Harvard, set up his own research center called The Center for Psychology and Social Change, influenced by Esalen work. 4) Vamik Volkan, professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia medical school, created the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction at UVA.
• 1983: co-sponsored a conference entitled "Faces of the Enemy." Speakers, including Sam Keen, Ashley Montagu, Robert Bly, and Soviet diplomat Valentin Berezhkov, discussed the psychology and politics of enmity, propaganda, and projection. Keen’s book Faces of the Enemy, destined to become a classic in the field, was influenced by this conference.
• 1984: meetings between Dulce and Michael Murphy and the leaders of the Soviet Writers’ Union eventually led to its joining the International Pen Club.
• 1985: helped create the Association of Space Explorers with astronaut Rusty Schweickert, the first forum in which Russian and American astronauts and cosmonauts could share their experiences in space and their hopes for the future of space exploration.
• 1985: signed one of the first agreements between an American private-sector group and the USSR Ministry of Health, brokered by Dulce Murphy. This agreement facilitated work in the areas of health promotion, productivity in the work place, and non-pharmacological methods of treating disease and stress.
• 1986: co-produced a spacebridge on Chernobyl and Three Mile Island with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the USSR Academy of Sciences.
• 1986: major delegation of Soviet writers toured the United States under the auspices of the Soviet-American exchange program.
• 1987: convened a conference on "Sino-American Dialogues on Social and Economic Transformation" led by James Garrison.
• 1988: hosted Academician Abel Aganbegyan for his first visit to the United States as one of Gorbachev’s chief economic advisors. This led to the development of a management training program in Moscow with senior executives from across the Soviet Union.
• 1988: sponsored the first Russian conference on psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), an interdisciplinary field concerned with the relationship between psychological processes and the functioning of the immune system. Inspired by Dulce Murphy, this conference led to productive Russian-American collaborative research in the field and to a follow-up conference, held in 1991 at Leningrad’s Institute for Experimental Medicine.
• 1989: coordinated, in conjunction with the United States-based International Center for Economic Growth and Moscow State University, a conference called "Entrepreneurship in the World Economy."
• 1989: hosted Boris Yeltsin on his first trip to the United States. Esalen arranged meetings for Mr. Yeltsin with President Bush, former President Reagan, and many leaders in business and government.
• 1990: conducted the Furth Ruble Prize, an international competition for the best proposal offering a practical solution to the question of ruble convertibility in international trade. Award recipients were chosen by a panel of Soviet and American scholars, including Abel Aganbegyan, Joseph Brada, Ed Hewett, and Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief.
• 1992: organized a conference in Moscow to address the resurgence and persistence of neo-Bolshevism in Russian society. Russian and American participants confronted the Bolshevist mentality and discussed ways to embrace democratic pluralism rather than totalitarianism.
• 1992: played an instrumental role in a conference, held at the Vatican in Rome, to raise awareness of the emotional and physical needs of people with disabilities.
• 1993: hosted a major conference at Stanford University, entitled "Toward the Further Reaches of Sport Psychology," in which prominent coaches, athletes, and sport psychologists from the former Soviet republics and the United States discussed current trends in theoretical and applied sport psychology.
• 1994: The Russian-American Center became a separate 501 c-3, although it remains in close collaboration with Esalen.

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