Voices of Esalen the Esalen Institute

Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social entrepreneur. As a historian, she studies Indian religions focusing on esoteric rituals and gender, particularly in Hindu traditions (Goddess Tantra). As an educator, she is the Instructional Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. At present, she is a Center for the Study of World Religions fellow at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University. In the past, she has taught at Harvard University, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, the University of Montana, and Rice University.

Sravana is currently working on no less than four book projects: Divinized Divas: Superwomen, Wives, Hijṛās in Hindu Śākta Tantra, The Serpent’s Tale: Kuṇḍalinī and the History of an Experience, Living Folk Religions, and Religious Responses to the Pandemic & Crises: Isolation, Survival, and #Covidchaos. Details of her published works can be found on this website, under the “Written” tab.

As a social entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of a nonprofit, Lumen Tree Portal. Sravana invests in building communities with individuals from various faith backgrounds who believe in kindness, compassion, and fulfillment. We are proud to have her as a Board of Trustee member for Esalen Institute. She also serves as an Advisory Board member for Compassionate Houston.

Coming up at Esalen: Sravana will be teaching Embodied Writing and Spiritual Practice with Erik Davis
https://www.esalen.org/workshops/embodied-writing-and-spiritual-practice-071524

Workshop description: Part writing workshop and part tantric retreat, this unique practice week explores the relationship between personal writing and subtle body practices.

Religious historian and Tantric practitioner Sravana Borkataky-Varma will lead experiential sessions largely stemming from Hindu Goddess Tantra practices. Award-winning author and scholar Erik Davis will then guide the group in reading and writing exercises, developing skills and techniques that will help us creatively express our embodied experiences.

Exercises and opportunities will include:

Chakra and subtle body meditations.
Reading short texts to understand how writing engages subtle embodied experience.
Using elements of writing, including metaphor, poetry, and spontaneous language, to capture and express your own inner work.
Techniques to develop an ongoing writing practice that supports a deepening engagement with meditation and embodied life.

Over the days, we will collectively cultivate a feedback loop between writing, discussion, and inner work. Through this alchemical process, participants will learn to more intimately and poetically clarify their subtle experiences, while at the same time using the power and energy of such practices to fire up and inspire their writing life.

Dr. Kamilah Majied is a contemplative inclusivity and equity consultant, mental health therapist, clinical educator, researcher, and internationally engaged consultant on building inclusivity and equity using meditative practices. After 15 years of teaching at Howard University, Dr. Majied joined the faculty at California State University, Monterey Bay as Professor of Social Work. She teaches clinical practice to graduate students employing psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness-based, and artistic approaches to well-being, and authored a chapter in the second edition of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy, “Contemplative Practices for Assessing and Eliminating Racism in Psychotherapy.” Dr. Majied gave opening remarks at the first White House Conference of Buddhist Leaders on Climate Change and Racial Justice, where she also facilitated a dialogue on ending racism amongst the internationally represented Buddhist leadership. She is the author of the forthcoming book Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living (Sounds True, 2024).

In this episode we discuss her latest work, 'Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living ,’ a book that not only challenges us to rethink our approach to justice but also invites us to engage with joy as a radical act of resistance. Through this discussion, Dr. Majied shares how interdependence and Buddhist insights, when blended with Black wisdom traditions, can offer rich perspective and possibility for both justice and joy. In this conversation, we explore how language and culture play pivotal roles in shaping our approach to liberation, and how art, music and contemplative practices can nurture joy as well as help us confronting the biases of our own intuition. So dig in, and get ready to build your discomfort resilience and stoke your fierce compassion.

Music credits - Blue Dot Sessions tracks:

Milkwood https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/251374

10c Coffee https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/251382

Santo Apure https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/251383

Slow Rollout https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/251384

Buy the Book:

https://www.kamilahmajied.com/joyfully-just

Dr. Andrea Juhan is a revered figure in the realms of somatic psychotherapy, dance, and yoga. With over forty years dedicated to exploring embodiment through diverse avenues—be it bodywork, somatic psychotherapy, or dance—Dr. Juhan has profoundly impacted the fields of mindful movement and therapeutic practices.

Andrea is not only a licensed Marriage and Family Psychotherapist but also holds a Ph.D. in Dance and Movement Therapy. Her commitment to the development of body awareness and embodied movement practices has guided hundreds of movement teachers, psychotherapists, and healthcare professionals.

As a co-founder of Open Floor International, Andrea has helped foster a global community dedicated to using conscious movement and dance to promote creativity, social justice, and well-being. Her journey reflects a deep devotion to the felt sense of life, blending the transformative qualities of presence, compassion, and spiritual union.

In our conversation, Andrea shares her experiences from those formative years at Esalen—how the dynamic and expressive environment fostered her deep interest in the embodied movement practices that would define her career. She reflects on the support of pivotal figures like Janet Ledterman, Dick Price, Chris Price, Dean Juhan, Gabrielle Roth, her father, Dr. Jack Rosenberg, and the Esalen massage crew of the 1980's.

We also get into catharsis, trauma, holotropic breathwork, Open Seats, the original encounter groups, the genesis of Open Floor, and much more.

Join us as we delve into a thoughtful discussion on the healing powers of movement and the continuous journey of self-discovery.

In recent times, an essential piece of our nation’s history is facing challenges and censorship across the country, making it all the more crucial we reaffirm our commitment to honoring and understanding our shared narrative. Our discussion today is not just a journey through the past; it's a conversation about the importance of preserving these narratives in the face of attempts to erase them.

Historian Jan Batiste Adkin’s work meticulously documents the rich history of Black people in these regions, shedding light on the experiences of these communities. She is the author of "African Americans of San Francisco," "African Americans of Monterey County," and "African Americans of San Jose and Santa Clara County" and in this conversation she sheds light on the major trends and experiences of Black communities in the California Bay Area from the time of the establishment of the Golden State.

This conversation was recorded live at Esalen in late February of 2024.

Visit Jan Adkins at https://www.africanamericanhistories.com/

Bayo Akomolafe is an author, teacher, and modern philosopher whose work challenges the boundaries of conventional thought. Bayo was born in 1983 into a Christian home to Yoruban parents in western Nigeria. Soon after he was born, his family moved to Bonn, Germany, to accommodate his diplomat father. While in Zaire, Bayo’s father passed away suddenly, leaving a teenaged Bayo to grapple with the painful loss.

As a young, restless academic, Bayo studied psychology and notions of healing, eventually meeting with scores of traditional shamans as a quest to better understand the notion trauma, healing and well-being. His concerns for decolonized landscapes congealed into a life spent exploring the nuances of a “magical” world he describes as “too promiscuous to fit neatly into our fondest notions of it.”

I think you’ll find that Bayo's work is deeply rooted in the trickster archetype, which above all else encourages us to reconsider the solidity of things: of our understandings of reality, identity, and activism. He’s an advocate for a world beyond fixed boundaries, where his only clear allegiance is to emergence, to a perpetual becoming rather than being.

I had such a wonderful time talking to Bayo - and I’ll mention that his ideas, so rich in density and expressed with a true poetic grace, might not unfold their meanings upon first listening. Let the buyer beware. Yet, as we navigate this conversation, the layers begin to reveal themselves, and in the end, they present a convincing argument for reconceiving reality, not as a static entity but as a dynamic unfolding of relations.

https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/

Stephen Dubner is the New York Times best-selling author and host of the podcast Freakonomics. I met Stephen when he and his Freakonomics crew came to Esalen for an on-site interview that centered around deceased Nobel Prize winner and occasional Esalen lecturer Richard Feynman. Feynman assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II; later in his career, he investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
During the 1980s, in Big Sur, three women who had experience with underground psychedelic therapy, Debby Harlow, Barbara Berg, and Cheryl Haley, initiated Feynman through the psychedelic experience. Now, the Freakonomics team was interested in interviewing these three women, at Esalen, where they had initially met Feynman.

We gathered together in the famed Fritz room at the southern most tip of the Esalen property, and I got to see Stephen do his work. He seemed fascinated with Feynman, not just as an intellect, but as a human being. And in many ways, as a person, Feynman exemplified the human potential project — he pursued expansion and fulfillment, right up to the very end of his life.

I am thankful for Feynman, if only because it linked me to Stephen Dubner, one of my favorite writers, thinkers and interviewers alive today. In our conversation, we delve into the life of Feynman, but save a little time to talk AI, job loss, storytelling, the future of work, and the critical role of community. In this episode, I play some short clips from one of the recent Freakonomics episodes: "Mr Feynman Takes a Trip — But Doesn’t Fall." I also play a few brief segments from one of Feynman’s talks at Esalen Institute in 1984, which he called Tiny Machines.

Enjoy Freakonomics:

https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/