The Big Sur residential center founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962 — the institutional home of the Human Potential Movement and a crucible for the encounter between Western psychology, Eastern spirituality, and consciousness research.
Esalen's function: a residential workshop center that created a unique ecology for encounter between disciplines and traditions otherwise separated by institutional walls. Fritz Perls developed Gestalt therapy there; Alan Watts hosted seminars on Zen; Stanislav Grof advanced transpersonal psychology; Gregory Bateson, Joseph Campbell, and Richard Feynman all participated. The Esalen model — residential workshop, body-mind integration, experimental format — was widely imitated. Esalen represents the physical location where the Human Potential Movement took institutional form.
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