Stacia Butterfield is a somatic practitioner and a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator. Stacia's journey into Holotropic breath work started in 1999. Since then, she has been on a quest to explore the wisdom of the body and the intrinsic healing orientation of the psyche. She worked with Dr. Deborah Mash at Healing Visions, an early Ibogaine clinic in the British Virgin Islands and certified as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator in 2005. She worked closely with Stanislav Grof for over 13...

Katy Bowman is a bestselling author and speaker who’s revolutionizing the way that we think about movement and our need for it in today’s modern culture. In this episode, we explore Katy's unique perspective on movement and discuss her upcoming book, "Rethink Your Position." We touch on topics such as "tech neck," junk-food movement, sedentary culture, furniture-free homes, minimalist footwear, the art of long distance walking, the benefits of hanging, dynamic workstations, your "sleep...

Today our episode centers on a talk given at Esalen in 1985 by Dr. Andrew Weil. Dr. Weil is a prominent figure and a trailblazer in the field of integrative medicine, which combines conventional medical practices with alternative and complementary therapies such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, and mind-body techniques. (All of this of course used to be rather fringe; Esalen in the 1980’s, was a bit fringe, too. Nowadays, things like acupuncture and herbal medicine raise nary an eyebrow, and...

Deborah Eden Tull is a spiritual activist, author, and sustainability educator who works to teach the integration of compassionate awareness into our everyday lives. For seven years, she trained as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery. She has been teaching engaged meditation for over 20 years. Her latest book, “Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown” was released in September of 2022. She currently resides in the mountains of western North Carolina,...

In this recent talk at Esalen Institute, delivered February 16, 2023, to a packed audience, Bessel Van Der Kolk discusses the efficacy of psychedelic psychotherapy. Van Der Kolk is a renowned psychiatrist and researcher who has dedicated his career to studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences. He is well-known for his 2014 book “The Body Keeps the Score,” widely regarded as one of the go-to books on the effects of psychological trauma on mind and body. Van der Kok is an...

BJ Miller is a renowned palliative care physician, author, and speaker. Well known for his 2015 TED Talk ”What Really Matters at the End of Life,” which has been viewed over 10 million times, BJ is a thought leader in the field of conscious dying. When he was a sophomore at Princeton University, BJ experienced a tragic accident that resulted in the loss of three of his limbs. He followed a path in the medical field, and fell in love with palliative care while in residency. He has been...

Deborah Eden Tull is the founder of Mindful Living Revolution - a deeply experienced and respected dharma teacher, Tull is a spiritual activist, author, and sustainability educator. She has taught engaged meditation for over 20 years and trained for seven and a half years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery. With a focus on post-patriarchal thought and practices, Eden integrates compassionate awareness into her offerings, bridging personal and collective awakening in an age of...

Bill Donius is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book, Thought Revolution. In this book, Donius explains the science behind non-dominant handwriting and teaches how to incorporate this powerful technique into your personal life. Through the simple process of non-dominant hand writing, you can discover how to connect more fully with your subconscious right brain, unlocking hidden talents, reducing stress, and even healing from trauma. This episode is a bit different, in that we...

Sam runs through his top 6 favorite things of 2022, including cloning his own voice, messing around with the bizarre world of ChatGPT, microdosing things other than psychedelics, intentionally being different in order to gain an outsize advantage, and being intentional and resourceful in finding new music to revitalize your soul and spirit.

Adam Bramlage is Founder and /CEO of Flow State Micro, a functional mushroom company and microdosing education platform. Adam has helped hundreds of people, from professional athletes to people suffering from addiction and depression, achieve results through microdosing in his private practice. This interview gives the basics of microdosing; it's a great primer for anyone just at the beginning of their journey. Adam will be hosting a webinar with psychedelic pioneer and the father of modern...

Louie Schwartzberg is the filmmaker behind "Fantastic Fungi" - he's back now with a follow up film: "Gratitude Revealed." Louie has created and worked on a score of films in his life, including his own features like Mysteries of the Unseen World and Wings of Life, as well as the Netflix series Moving Art. Over the process of his career, it's fair to say that he’s revolutionized the field of time-lapse photography. Louie has also been a contributing cinematographer or visual effects artist to...

Chef Elle Simone is a well-known American chef, culinary producer, test cook, and food stylist. In 2013, after realizing that women and persons of color were underrepresented among chefs, she founded SheChef, a mentoring and networking organization for women of color in the culinary field. She can be seen on PBS on America’s Test Kitchen and is the first African American woman to appear as a regular host on that show. Chef Elle is also a survivor of ovarian cancer and shows up as an activist...

Today we’re sharing a conversation that took place in October, 2022, between members of the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County and the Esalen Institute. Representing the Esselen tribe are Jana Nason and Stephen Vicente Arevalo. Jana Nason is an Esselen and Rumsen descendant, and an enrolled tribal member of the ETMC. She is the nonprofit secretary, and serves on the Tribal Council as Tribal Administrator and Secretary, Publications Chair, and Cultural Resource Committee member. She also...

Tim McKee is publisher at North Atlantic Books, an educational non-profit publishing house that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives; nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing; and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature. Tim is interviewed today by S. Rae Peoples, Associate Director of Diversity & Inclusion Education at Tufts University. She has over 25 years of...

Today our episode is an encore presentation of Michael Pollan’s keynote presentation at the 2019 Psychedelic Integration Conference at the Esalen Institute. Pollan is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including 2018’s “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” This tome has become a four-part Netflix show, also entitled “How to Change Your Mind.” Pollan gives a great speech here,...

✧༺mirrored fatality is the nonbinary Kapampangan-Pilipinx and Pakistani-Muslim performance art duo of Mango and Samar, artists in residence at Esalen during the summer of 2021. Together we discuss the difference between non-binary and trans, how they share their rituals, altars, and medicine through DIT (Do It Together) experimental and healing noise punk, why punk as a genre is their musical choice, how fashion can be weaponized, why farming is a huge part of their lives and creative...

Dr. Brian Pace is a lecturer who teaches Psychedelic Studies at The Ohio State University. He is trained as an evolutionary ecologist, specializing in phytochemistry, ethnobotany, and ecophysiology. He believes in grassroots drug decriminalization efforts and hopes to find alternative policies to the imperial drug war. For more than a decade, Brian has worked on agroecology and climate change. Dr. Nese Devenot is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Research in Sensing (or IRiS) at...

Emily Ladau is a disability rights activist, writer, storyteller, and digital communications consultant whose career began at the age of 10 when she appeared on several episodes of Sesame Street to educate children about her life with a physical disability. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, CNN, Vice, and Huffington Post. She is the author of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally. With co-host Kyle Khachardurian, Emily is the host...

Akuyoe Graham is founder of the Spirit Awakening Foundation, an arts based non-profit dedicated to helping underserved youth in the juvenile justice system. Since its inception in 1995, SAF has been a pioneer in developing and offering restorative, trauma-informed, prevention and intervention programs to underserved, incarcerated and systems-involved youth in Los Angeles County. Akuyoe speaks about how difficult and broken the juvenile justice system is, what tools she gives the...

Welcome to a Voices of Esalen archive edition. Our featured lecture was delivered at Esalen as a part of a weeklong training in 2018, by wise teachers Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman. Jack Kornfield is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma, and has taught meditation internationally since 1974 .After graduating from Dartmouth College in Asian Studies in 1967 he joined the...

Dr. Deborah Egerton is a psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, author, coach, and spiritual teacher. She brings a focus of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism to her enneagram work and uses that focus to help individuals and organizations release false historical narratives and open their minds and hearts to a more compassionate and connected approach to life. Her work with The Enneagram and Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism (IDEA) is designed to help heal our fractured...

Reverend Erika Allison is a queer interfaith minister and the author of the memoir "Gay the Pray Away: Healing your Life, Love, and Relationships from the Harms of LBGT Conversion Therapy." We spoke about her personal journey of healing after being sent to conversion therapy as a teenager in Texas, the coping strategies she developed after experiencing the trauma of identity harm, the state of conversion therapy in the United States today, how few practices harm teens more than attempts to...

D’Lo is a queer/transgender Tamil Sri Lankan-American actor/writer/comic whose work ranges from stand-up comedy and solo theater to plays, films, short stories and poetry. His acting credits include: LOOKING, TRANSPARENT, SENSE 8, Mr. ROBOT and Issa Rae-produced MINIMUM WAGE. His solo show “To T or Not to T” premieres June 25th at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles. Together we talked about transmasculinity and what it’s like being a trans man in a world dominated by toxic...

Mary Sanders is a founding board member of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, an organization that provides psychedelic education to historically marginalized communities in order to foster empowerment and healing. She is a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in exploring the depths of transgenerational trauma and, in her words, peeling off layers of oppression and cultural conditioning. She is certified in psychedelic-assisted therapies and believes that plant medicines can...

Senti Sojwal and Tiffany Diane Tso are founding members of the Asian American Feminist Collective, a grassroots racial and gender justice group that works to interrogate and dismantle systems of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism, telling their stories through various modes of feminist media while providing spaces for identity exploration, political education, community building, and advocacy. https://www.asianamfeminism.org In our conversation we explored a host of topics, including the...