Esalen Bodywork massage
Esalen
Esalen Massage is a healing art that has evolved over the last several decades at Esalen Institute.
The sound of the waves provides a soothing background for any massage session at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. This sound, coupled with the cliffside natural hot springs and the
educational community dedicated to exploring the "far reaches of human potentiality", inspires a unique approach to bodywork known worldwide as Esalen Massage.
The ocean provides a slow-moving rhythm very much akin to the internal rhythms of the body. The receiver rests on the massage table, draped, and the practitioner's hands begin quietly, with presence, attending to breath, allowing the receiver to drop inward. The long,integrating, slow, t'ai chi-like strokes awaken awareness, and as the tissues open to the warm of touch, the contact deepens, nudging bound-up muscles, drawing forth expanded movement. A relaxing sigh resounds through the body, and the practitioner responds with integration strokes into related areas. The massage continues, seamlessly, wrapping the torso arms, legs, hands, feet, neck, and spirit into a united whole.
Esalen 2
Each session is unique, tailored by personal requests, comfort level, physical tension and release, the felt sense of intuition.
The effects of this intentional touch, loosely categorized as "wellness/stress management massage", range widely. For some, it brings a renewed sense of health and vigor, others may regain a
sense of safety with regard to touch. Often old tension patterns break free and old emotions are released. It signals a return to one's nature, a switch from everyday consciousness into a calmer,
more colorful space less inhabited by the constraints of time and place. An out-of-ordinary reality.
The sources of this rich work are endless: it was informed by sensory awareness, swedishmassage, oriental medicine, meditation, gestalt practice. The influence of deeper work
borrowed from Ida Rolf's teachings, Moshe Feldenkrais' sense of neural co-ordinates, Milton Trager's passive movement to awaken the mind, yoga stretches, somatic mind-body psychology, and
more energetically based polarity massage and cranial-sacral work continue to "grow" the work. Each practitioner translates this into his/her personal art form.
At the heart of the session is a sense of empowering each individual to regain a sense of harmony, reverence, and balance, and to awaken inner resources for healing. It is not unusual to
hear,"That was the most amazing massage I've ever received."
- Brita Ostrom
- Esalen Practitioners -
-quotation of Esalen Home-