Wild Serenity
A Meditation and Movement Retreat
with Camille Maurine and Lorin Roche
at Esalen Institute on the coast in Big Sur, California
Our next Esalen workshop will be in Spring of 2008. Send us a note now to be on our mailing list for the retreat.
Come join us for a week of deeply revitalizing, peaceful and joyous meditation and movement. We will be exploring the interplay of opposites, meditation and outward expression, serenity and wildness. The only prerequisite is that you have a desire to explore meditation.
The quietness of meditation gives rise to lively expression. Expressing ourselves fully, in turn, gives rise to great meditations. The natural beauty of Big Sur, surrounded by dozens of miles of wild coastline and mountains, gives rise to a protected sense of harmony and serenity. Wildness gives rise to serenity, a sense of harmony in action.
Esalen is in Big Sur and is surrounded by dozens of miles of wild coastline, ocean, and mountains. All this wildness creates a tangible sense of peace, a quiet and magnificent sense of celebration. The full moon is going to be March 3rd, so we will have illuminated evenings.
Meditation can be defined as paying attention to the current of life and love flowing through us every moment. It is useful to set aside special times, which we call meditation, to give over to attending to the flow of life.
Esalen's registration page.
Meditation is not a process of taming the self. Rather, be there to appreciate the wildness within. What is more peaceful looking at the vast ocean, or looking at a cement swimming pool? You are made out of the same stuff as forests, mountain ranges, raging rivers, and earth-encompassing oceans. Let meditation be a home for your love of vastness and wonder.
The purpose of this workshop is to give you the tools you need to have a dynamic and inspired 2006. Meditation is one of the best ways that has ever been discovered to make a practical, measurable improvement in the quality of our health and performance and enjoyment of life.
Meditation is a quiet celebration of life, a time and space where we give over to being renewed and revitalized, so that we can emerge refreshed. When we have a daily meditation practice that suits our individual nature, this means we can be in the midst of our busy lives, and still have access to the relaxation and healing that we need.
Let us know now if you are interested in attending this workshop. Inquire about the Esalen retreat.
Connect with your passion for life and find ways to live it more fully
Discover natural and pleasurable meditations that you love to do.
Learn how meditation can lead you into deeper intimacy with yourself and with others. Find tools for transforming any emotion into life force and creativity.
It is always a challenge to keep our meditation practice fresh, stay with it, and let it adapt to our changing needs. Meditation is intimate and personal, and we each have different approaches that emerge from our individual essence. All week long, we will be supporting you to discover and get into the rhythm of those meditation practices that nourish and inspire you, so that your life back at home will be infused with richness.
When you find the style of meditation that suits you to a T, it will feel natural to you. We have found that these innate techniques are always a fresh invention of the classic meditation practices, and that because they originate within you, they work better. During the workshop we will go to the primordial roots of meditation we will move, dance, sit, lie down, and breathe with all the elements the sky, the earth, the sun, the ocean, and space. We each have a personal relationship with all the elements, and meditation is a way of consumating that affair.
You can register by phone with Esalen, by calling 831-667-3005, Monday through Thursday between 9am and 7pm Pacific time. Fridays and Saturdays, the best times to call are usually 9 to 5. It is often a challenge to get someone on the phone so allow plenty of time, and be prepared to call back a dozen times. Once you get there, you will appreciate how quiet and unwired Esalen is, so dont be daunted by the difficulties of getting them to answer the damn phone. The actual reason for so few phone lines is that they are so far away from anything 100 miles north of San Luis Obispo and about 45 miles south of Monterey.
This is the view as you walk down the path to the natural hot springs baths overlooking the ocean.
Page at Esalen's site about how to register.
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.
To make a reservation for the workshop:
Esalen's Reservation Page
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.