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Esalen Massage and Bodywork was first developed over 40 years ago, in Big Sur, California at the Esalen Institute. The sound of the waves provides a soothing background for any massage session at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. more...

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This sound, coupled with the cliffside natural hot springs and the educational community dedicated to explore the \"far reaches of human potentiality\", inspires a unique approach to bodywork known worldwide as Esalen® Massage.

The Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 as an alternative educational center devoted to the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called the \"human potential,\" the world of unrealized human capacities that lies beyond the imagination. Esalen soon became known for its blend of East/West philosophies, its experiential/didactic workshops, the steady influx of philosophers, psychologists, artists, and religious thinkers, and its breathtaking grounds blessed with natural hot springs. Once home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, Esalen is situated on 27 acres of spectacular Big Sur coastline with the Santa Lucia Mountains rising sharply behind.

Esalen Massage Defined

\"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, 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.

The practitioner brings a knowledge of strokes (many have roots in Swedish Massage), of muscles and bones, of movement, of listening to the body as well as the words. Prior to the session, he/she pays attention to his own physical comfort, and quiets down internal chatter to welcome inner guidance, or intuition. As he massages, the practitioner responds to the signs of relaxation: deepened breath, enhanced circulation, a sigh, perhaps flutters of the eyelids. 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, Swedish massage, oriental medicine, meditation, gestalt practice. The influence of, deeper work borrowed for 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org