Only at Esalen: Walking the Wilds Within

From the July-December 2018 Esalen Catalog
By Stacy Carlson

With 40 years of experience as student, staff, and faculty at Esalen, Steven Harper holds a tremendous range of the Institute’s history and experience. His wilderness workshops are woven into the fabric of the place, and not just because they’re offered an average nine times per year. With their emphasis on direct experience, awareness practices, and attention to the unfolding relational self, Steven’s offerings bring together much of what has made Esalen unique since the beginning.

When he first walked down the hill to Esalen in 1978 Steven was a curious college graduate. “I was working as a wilderness instructor at the time,” he says. “During extended expeditions, I watched people go through amazing changes, but as instructors we didn’t have the skill set to work with group or emotional dynamics. I got really curious and decided to go to Esalen. I quickly learned that it wasn’t so much about me learning how to be a group facilitator, it was more about me learning about my own inner landscape.” One curiosity led to another and Steven stayed at Esalen to pursue them.

He was a Work Scholar and Extended Student in the Esalen Garden, and then co-founded the Farm. He took yearlong trainings and weekend, weeklong, and month-long workshops, following his interests into massage, movement, leadership, Gestalt, and even Esalen’s administrative side. All the while, he continued to feel his way ever more deeply into the Big Sur wilds. “There’s something in the whole of the landscape here where land meets sea that inspires imagination. Big Sur kept calling me back, and I chose to set down roots here, raise my two sons here, design and build my own home here – these all led to deeper and deeper dialogue with the land and the place.”

Steven shared a close friendship with Esalen co-founder Dick Price. They hiked extensively together, and incorporated Dick’s unique Gestalt Practice into their time on the trail. “Dick could hold a space of huge acceptance for whatever was coming up, and a huge capacity to sit with whatever was arising, no matter how much suffering was involved, or how much silence was involved. What we shared was a curiosity to go outside into wilderness, and inside into wilderness. We had hiking and Gestalt as the vehicles to do that.”

When he reflects on four decades at Esalen, Steven says one of the things he is most grateful for are his workshop participants. “In my workshops wilderness is the primary teacher, so I get to be student too. I am very lucky that people show up to be student along with me, and that we get to learn from each other. I don’t know if the participants know how much I receive every time.”

Copyright Esalen Institute 2018

Link to the July-December 2018 Esalen Catalog