Esalen Institute, renowned for its healing natural hot springs has long been recognized as a world leader in alternative and experiential education. Dramatically situated on the Big Sur cliffs over the Pacific Ocean, the sacred beauty of the land – clear air, pulsing sea garden path and waterfall, steaming mineral water bubbling up from deep within the earth – is itself transformative.

Now in its fifth decade, Esalen is an organization that has been devoted to the exploration of human potential since the 1960’s. Historical luminaries like Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez and Fritz Perls have gathered at Esalen to develop revolutionary ideas, transformative practices, and innovative art forms. Today, it is a place that guests participate in an incredible variety of alternative education and personal growth programs in subjects ranging from meditation to massage, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, art, music, and much more.

The Monarch Center is now in collaboration with the Esalen Institute and will be setting up backcountry trips out of the Esalen facilities. See the currently planned trips below:

1. Conscious Parenting : The weekend of June 27 - 29, 2008

   
   
   

Workshop Cost: $665 per person.

Parenting: Is there a more important job that requires less training?
This workshop is designed for parents who want to explore:


• New ways of parenting
• Why they parent the way they do
• How their own family of origin impacts their current parenting
• Conscious parenting techniques

Workshop sessions will focus on ways to deepen one's level of contact—relationships, honesty, love—as a parent in order to improve the health and well-being of one's children. The workshop will identify ways we defend ourselves and avoid intimacy, and how this then impacts our children. Additionally, societal and cultural realities will be examined, especially as they relate to raising youth in today's world. All of this is framed in the context of raising consciousness, not raising blame.

Participants will explore their own masks and how what they present to the world may inhibit contact from a loving place, thereby negatively impacting the healthy raising of their children. The role of community, technology, personal responsibility, and our own emotional blocks will be looked at from a Gestalt perspective. This workshop will be facilitated by Dave Ventimiglia, Duey Freeman and Victoria Story.

For more information or to register for this workshop, please email Lorie Federman or call her at 303.569.0767.

For more information on the Esalen Institute, please visit Esalen.org