Esalen Institute

Uncommon card · No. 144631

The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, that focuses on humanistic alternative education. The institute played a key role in the Human Potential Movement beginning in the 1960s. Its innovative use of encounter groups, a focus on the mind-body connection, and their ongoing experimentation in personal awareness introduced many ideas that later became mainstream. Esalen was founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962, both former students of Frederic Spiegelberg. Their intention was to support alternative methods for exploring human consciousness, what Aldous Huxley described as "human potentialities". Over the next few years, Esalen became the center of practices and beliefs that made up the New Age movement, from Eastern religions/philosophy, to alternative medicine and mind-body interventions, from transpersonal to Gestalt practice. Price ran the institute until he died in a hiking accident...

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