"BOUNTIFUL BIG SUR" a Big Sur Travel Page by JeanCooke

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Visit HEARST CASTLE IN MY TRAVELOGUES

ESALEN BATHS TODAY

When not in seminar, I and my twin, soaked in the outdoor hot tubs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with hummingbirds a handbreadth from my face. Since the Baths are clothing optional, when students, teachers, scholars, artists or workers talk and bathe together, professional rolls drop away.

Enjoy a massage outdoors on the deck after soaking in the tubs.

YESTERDAY

For over 4,000 years, people have enjoyed soaking in hot sulfur springs listening to soothing surf where the Pacific Ocean meets the Pacific landmass. Esalen comes from the Esselen Indians who inhabited the region and springs long before Spanish land grants gave the place away or Thomas Slate homesteaded the springs to help his arthritis. Henry Murphy, a Salinas MD who delivered John Steinbeck, bought the property around 1910 to create a "European" Health Spa.

Back then Highway One was just a county road connecting farmsteads. "I just remember this being an empty country road. Workers I knew from Nepethe Resteraunt used to sit up on the deck and make bets on what direction the next car would come", says David Price Esalen present day Operations Manager.

Esalen Institute founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Richard Price, both schooled at Stanford, envisioned a place where differing philosophies, religious disciplines and psychological techniques could come together in a forum that didn't yet exist within main stream academia: one that was more intimate, competitive, interactive and experiential.

Teachers mix with students and other teachers creating a symbiosis, a friction that makes the place very alive. Luminaries in their respective fields come in contact with other luminaries.