The Esalen Movement Arts Program has evolved into a popular and varied schedule of movement and meditation classes. Every day of the week, classes are open to everyone at Esalen, guests and staff, and all levels of experience. Check the Movement Program schedule when you are here.
Below are descriptions of a few of the classes currently offered. Keep in mind that scheduled classes vary from week to week depending on the workshops we are hosting, and in addition we sometimes host visiting movement teachers not listed here. A typical daily schedule is as follows, although class times occasionally vary and cancellations sometimes occur:
Sunday
7:00am - 7:25am Chanting and Meditation -
Ellen Watson
7:30am - 8:45am Spirit Dance - Ellen Watson
5:00pm - 6:30pm Restorative Yoga - Bea Sochor
Big Sur Drum & Dance Jam with David Schiffman and Friends
Come out and drum and dance your glory. A 21st century revival of an Esalen tradition.
Body Moves with Bryan Scott
Shake your body to contemporary dance music in this free-form class.
Chakra Meditation with Bea Sochor or JJ Jeffries
Guided meditations and pranayama (breathing exercises) to help balance the seven major chakras/energy centers of the body. This class will help you become aware of the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of each chakra and how they impact your health and well being. No previous experience necessary.
Dance Lab with Nora Matten and other Movement Arts Staff
Explore movement with a varied selection of music from around the world. Teachers offer their experience in new techniques and methods of mostly unstructured, improvisational dancing.
Dance Awake with JJ Jeffries
Groove to your music muse in a Zen Boogie of mindful movement meditation. Explore your connection to the self, to the other and to the divine in a spirit of playfulness and curiosity with the dance of heart opening.
Dance Church with Lance Lindborg
Free-form improvisational dancing influenced by the methods of Gabrielle Roth and Vinn Marti. Spirit in Motion!
Dancing with Rumi
with Ellen Watson
Dance as meditation where the dancer becomes the dance. A transformational dance class integrating Ellen’s many years of dance, massage, meditation and yoga instruction.
Didgeridoo Meditation with Cordell Wesselink and Friends
Sink into calm pools of the SELF at the baths with the soothing and mysterious sounds of the Australian didgeridoo.
5Rhythms Ecstatic Dance Practice™ with
Ellen Watson or Lucia Horan
This dancing meditation practice presents the work of Gabrielle Roth and the 5Rhythms™, flowing, staccato, lyrical, chaos and stillness. Each teacher focuses on different aspects of Gabrielle's Moving Center work. Open to all levels.
Flowing Yoga with
Johanna Holloman
Focus on breath and strength-building asana. Geared for intermediate students. Variations will be provided for beginners, all yogis and yoginis welcome.
Fluidity with Cynthia Bianchetta
An embodied spiritual practice, this work invites the mover
into a liquid inner world of soft and gentle wavelike undulations through internal movements, breath and sound. Based on the Continuum Movement of Emilie Conrad.
Fluidity & Focus: YogaDance with Ellen Watson
The union of yoga and dance. Stretch and invigorate with some basic yoga poses and transition into a lively, fun and loosely structured ecstatic dance! Accompanied by a varied selection of great music.
Gestalt-Movement with Dianne Miller
Our bodies move in repetitive patterns of joy and stress.
Participants will be offered a larger vocabulary of movement to realize, express, shape and dance patterns of their lives. Join us in self-exploration through structured movement, using dance, active listening, Gestalt techniques, collective creativity and psychodrama -- in a format designed by Anna and Larry Halprin; pioneers in dance, architecture, art, and social change -- led by Dianne Miller, a Halprin practitioner since 1973.
Hatha Yoga with
Thomas Michael Fortel, Jan Sinclair, Bea Sochor, Cory Dean Shank, Nora Matten Rick Cannon
Hatha Yoga can be practiced for building strength, enhancing
flexibility and for supporting deep relaxation. Morning classes
are planned for intermediate students with consideration for
beginners. Each teacher focuses on an aspect of particular
interest to themselves. Play at the edge of your resistance
and expand through Yoga.
ITP Kata with Rick Cannon
ITP Kata combines exercises, aikido moves, yoga, transformational imaging and meditation. Integral Transformative Practice is a long-term study in human potential created by Michael Murphy and George Leonard.
Morning Meditation, Chanting and Meditation, Breath and Sound Meditation with Movement Arts Staff
Basic meditation instruction is offered sometimes accompanied
by vocalization, breath awareness or music.
Restorative Yoga with
Bea Sochor or Seema Christie, Carl Swanson
An active relaxation practice developed by B.K.S. Iyengar.
By supporting the body with props in the relaxed poses, participants alternately stimulate and relax the body to move towards balance. Restorative poses benefit health and reduce the effects of stress. Good for when one feels weak, fatigued, stressed, ill or recovering from illness.
SpiritDance with
Ellen Watson
SpiritDance is your dance, enlivened by your breath, powered
by your heartbeat and set into motion with the catalyst of music from around the world. Since the dawn of time, peoples from all cultures have used dance as a path to re-establish connection between body and heart and spirit, and experience an offering that can lead one beyond temporal mind into a dance with the divine -- this is movement as a spiritual practice.
TTai Chi with Kevin Burke
This class is an introduction to the Yang Style Short Form of Tai Chi Chuan, a gentle, slow motion movement practice with ancient roots. The class emphasizes the meditative aspects of the practice such as centering, grounding, and integrating energy, though martial aspects of the form are also presented.
TransDance with Heather Munro-Pearce
Integrates elements of tribal motion, freestyle dance and moving meditation into a potent, playful and prayer-full dance experience.
Vinyasa Flow Yoga with Carl Swanson
This strong vinyasa class focuses on the breath and being present in each moment, both in movement and in stillness. This focus provides an environment for stilling the mind, deepening body awareness, and allowing prana (life energy) to flow more freely.
Vinyasa Flow Yoga with Jessica Fagan
Practicing simplicity in asana, postures emerge through foundation and awareness of breath.
Wake Up 101 with Ellen Watson
A dynamic, energetic class, synthesizing yoga and the 5 Tibetans. A multicultural movement meditation practice, to wake up mind, body and spirit.
Yin Yoga with Rick Cannon
A very slow paced and gentle class of deep breathing and stretches and long holds which work on ligaments as well as muscles. Designed to open hips, psoas, hamstrings and other core areas of the body.
YUM Session with Philip Novotny, Adam Kapuzinski, Ryan Herr, Andrew Wise, Philip Novotny and Company
A space to explore soulful body awareness through breath, through beat, through dance, through movement..! Live, continuous, improvisational music blends East, West and World grooves with ambient sound landscapes, moving you through an energetic wave into a blissful stillness at journey's end...
