Esalen Massage
What is Esalen Massage?
The Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 as an educational community devoted to the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called the human potential. It was named after the Essalen tribe, Native Americans who once inhabited Big Sur. Esalen is blessed with a series of natural hot springs. Baths have been built into the cliffs, overlooking the expansive Pacific Ocean. Alongside the consciousness-expanding courses and workshops, the intentional community, and the baths, a unique style of bodywork emerged: Esalen Massage.
The Esalen style of integrated bodywork has roots in sensory awareness, Swedish massage, oriental medicine, meditation and gestalt practice. At the core are long, lengthening strokes combined with gentle rocking and stretching. For deeper work, ideas are borrowed from previous Esalen residents, such as Ida Rolf's teachings, Moshe Feldenkrais's sense of neural coordinates, and Milton Trager's passive movement to awaken the mind. Eastern influences include Chinese point work and yoga stretches. Esalen massage also integrates energy-based polarity balancing and cranial-sacral work.
The surf pounding the cliffs at Esalen isn't just a dramatically beautiful backdrop to the massage; it provides a sense of slow-moving rhythm very much akin to the internal rhythms of the body. Even for practitioners who work in other parts of the world, the ocean waves continue to influence their style.
The practitioner also brings their own knowledge of anatomy and movement and translates this into a massage that is a personal art form. Each massage is unique as the practitioner responds to the client using their repertoire of techniques intuitively, listening to the client's body with their hands, and restoring a sense of harmony and balance. This approach makes each session unique and purposeful.
An Esalen massage experience begins prior to the session with the practitioner taking time out for meditation, breathing, movement, or whatever relaxation method enables them to get in touch with their own physical comfort and quiets their internal chatter, leaving them more receptive to inner guidance and intuition.
The client rests on the massage table, draped. The practitioner's hands begin quietly, with presence, attending to breath, allowing the receiver to drop inward. The long, slow and deep strokes awaken awareness, and as the tissues open to the warmth of touch, the contact deepens, encouraging muscular tension to release and drawing forth expanded movement. The practitioner responds with integration strokes into related areas. The massage continues, seamlessly, wrapping the body and spirit into a united whole.
The integrative approach of treating the mind, body and soul of every client is what sets Esalen Massage apart from other forms of bodywork. At the heart of this practice is a sense of empowering each individual to regain a sense of harmony, reverence and balance, and to awaken their own inner resources for healing. The effects of this intentional touch are as varied as people themselves. Some feel a renewed sense of health and vigor, while others may regain a sense of safety with regard to touch. Often old tension patterns break free and old emotions are released, signaling a return to wholeness.
Contact Details
Soma Healing Arts
San Diego, California
Tel: 858-220-3293
E-mail: soma@chandrabeal.com