8/13/2019 Clothes, Emotional Logjams Disappear (Oct. 11, 1978) http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/clothes-emotional-logjams-disappear-oct-11-1978 1/1 48 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1978 Clothes, emotional logjams disappear By ART HARRIS Th e Washington Post BIG SUR, Calif. — Grad- uation ceremonies for Ber- nie Gunther's 5-day, 29 0 seminar, From Sex to Su- perconsciousness, have ad - journed to the baths. "Ooooooooooooooooh,'' sighs a dentist from Fort Lee, N.J., as he slithers into the hot communal tub. An L.A. special education teacher strokes the nape of his neck, fondles an ear lobe. A veil of steam, rises o ff the water, softening the expressions of delight on the eight faces sharing the bath. They look as sweet and contended as anyone Raphael ever painted. "I had people touching each others' naked bodies before anyone else in this business," boasts Gunther. "I've always been outland - ish." Five days ago, when the bathers arrived here'at t he Esalen Institute to loosen up emotional logjams, they were strangers to each other an d themselves. A nd now? Well, the clothes are off; everyone is becoming his own best friend. A full moon dances like a million diamonds over a dark blue, undulating Pacific, and the Cosmic Caterer has served up a banquet of stars. "California is wonder- ful " exclaims a bather. "We'd be outlaws back Hast," says another. "But they're 25 years behind.'. We'll try anything out here; we're living on the edge... Naran home recipe ptan takes off ugly fat. The Naran Plan c an help you lose pounds of unsightly fa t right in your own home. This home recipe weight-control plan is . easy to follow and costs little. Go o your drug store and ash for the Naran Reducing Plan. The whole plan is included in every package. T he directions ar e right on t he labe. Pour t he liquidInto a pint bottle and add enough grapefruit juice to fill th e bottle. 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The tunnel is actually a human gauntlet of seekers who pound, pummel an d frus- trate the crawler as he at- tempts to belly through to the other end. The moral: that life just isn't fair. In 1961, Michael Murphy drove down to Big Sur with psychologist Dick Price to check out 375 acres owned by Murphy's late grandfa- ther, a'Salinas doctor who once dreamed of turning th e rugged, coastal para- "dise into a European-style spa.. ' Murphy talked h is grand- mother into giving Esalen a cheap, long-term lease (until 2017) — essentially so he could pursue his col- leage dalliance'with East- ern mysticism, psychology an d philosophy. When his grandmother died, the property went to Murphy an d assorted relatives — in trust. She refused to hand over the land without strings. "You'd just give it to some Hindu," she once Washington Post Photo Bernie Gunther, conductor of the five-day, $290 seminar From Sex to Superconsc iousness at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., says I've always been outlandish. The institute is no longer a way-out outpost. sniffed. "She wasn't far off," laughs M urphy, 47, a lean long distance runner who takes little active part in Esalen these days. To his nonprofit salon came western therapists fascinated with mining t he eastern disciplines, and various yoga practices were incorporated into tra- ditional repertoires of dig- ging out the emotions. It w as at Esalen that gestalt psychology first shook hands with Kundilini Yoga. Purveyors of various therapies were forever dueling over how best to peel the emotional onion- skin. Non-Freudian rivals experimented daily with some new technique, they frquently shot from the hip This person can sellyouyour new car, finance your newcar, or lease you a new car. All in one place. 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Fritz Perls, the beloved and feared godfather of gestalt, often accused Will Schutz, the Adam of en- counter groups, of spread- in g superficiality in the form of "instant joy." "He was just jealous of my gaining popularity," says Schutz. No single path to explor- in g the self was deemed The Way, although Esalen ha d its experiential bias. Behaviorists' view of man as a Mr. Stimulus-Re- sponse was discounted (too mechanical), as was Freud's obsession with human pathology. Psyches weren't sick, sick, sick, but just fine, thank you. Esalen's Big Daddies felt that so-called normal peo- pl e were capable of the ecstatic or "peak experi- ences" mystics have long described. Only the proper combination of ingredients w as needed to make things happen, and this usually consisted of estern-style meditation combined with physical exercise. The focus was on developing th e "Body-mind" — the mind, the body and the emotions, together. To harmonize the Body- mind, it was necessary to strip away repressions, an d a number of fledgling therapies evolved, not the least among them bioener- getics, a body technique that focuses on opening up the body's energy centers roughly corresponding to th e chakras of eastern tra- dition. "When you're dealing with blocked energy, al - most anything ca n hap- pen," says New Yorker Alan Schwartz, who com- bines gestalt with bioener- getics. "Some people would breathe three times and go right up the wall —stark, raving mad — or have an orgasm on the spot. Of course, Esalen's If-It- Feels-Good-Do-It atmo- sphere nudged things along. "If you give people a license to do things they have never done before, you're going to get a very powerful vibration," says Esalen president Julian Sil- verman. "It was an emo- tion-charged environ- ment." Nowadays, a visitor is as likely to encounter a gov- ernment bureau crat as the girl next door, a movie star as a group of French tour- ists in sex therapy. So b stories abound, as do .tales of renewal. Strangers ar e introduced to Esalen's favorite piece of evidence — anthropolo- gist Gregory Bateson, 74, a skeptic who came here to die. So far, he hasn't suc- ceeded. It is hardly what the learned old man expected when he arrived six months ago. Doctors had diagnosed lung cancer. Esalen was seeking a res- ident grandfather, and Ba- teson fit the bill. A former University of California re - gent famous for his "dou- ble-bind" theory of schizo- phrenia, author, philosopher-and ex-hus- WESTHOME FOODS 737 WELLINGTON AVE. PH. 774-3491 o r 2 CANADA GR. A 1 RED 1's 2's WELL AGED GUARANTEED TENDER FRE ITY WIDE DELIVERY BEEF TENDERLOIN (FILET MIGNON WILL GOURMET ON REQUEST 20 Portions 6 oz. size (approx.) 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He doesn't quite know what to make of his sudden longevity. "I just don't feei particu- larly like dying these days, he grins. "They've been pumping me full of wheat grass juice." More typical of the peo- ple here is a fortyish woman named Barbara wh o says s he came to Esa- le n after flirting with sui- cide. She has found solace working in the garden here. After scuttling a 30-year marriage for another man, then dumping th e other man, s he considered "driv- ing west on California 1" — that is, off a cliff. She yearned to be hugged, took est, then came to Esalen to learn how to "stop playing my old games. Asked what she has learned, she looks up from pulling weeds, mops her brnw with a muddy hand an d says, "Some weeds ar e like people; they hurt your back. I've learned to love my weeds." Once a year, the New Jersey dentist comes to Esalen to work up courage to drop burdensome friends. Afterwards, he stops attending dental so- ciety meetings, takes to burning incense in the of- fice and feels closer to his wife a nd kids. "After a cou- ple of weeks here, I'm not afraid of things I thought I was afraid of," he says. Th e 70-odd beds in motel- modern dormitories are booked months in advance by primarily w hite, mid- dle-class seekers who can afford $220-$335 for five-day intensives and all the sprouts they can eat. Health care professionals curious about alternative medicine seminars mingle with lawyers, businessmen and Army brass seking ventilation. After years in the red, Esalen has tight- ened the reins; last year's $150,000 operating profit w as plowed back into the grounds and work-scholar- ships. There are workshops on Transcendental Running; Taoism; Living; Hypnosis; Black Dance; Pleasure; Sensuality; Fear, Panic & Vulnerability; Tuning In ; letting G o & Getting Every- thing; Massage, and so forth. Techniques deve- loped here long ago entered th e marketplace. In fact, the current glut of self-help, from holistic health to pop therapies to nouveau addictions like running, has Esalen to thank for its early role as TH E laboratory for New A ge social scientists. It was perhaps inevitable that a few mad scientists would emerge to vie for the dol- lars and minds of loyal re- cruits. Critics in human poten- tial's high society sniff that Esalen is no longer the frontier, but a boring settle- ment. It may well be the mainstream, but it's not yet so middle-of-the-road that everyone wants their friends and neighbors to know they spent their vaca- tion here. "I t would ruin us," said the wife of an electronics executive who feared her husband would lose his job if their name saw print. "It's sad, but that's the way it is. You say, 'Esalen,' a nd they think, 'Orgy, loose, erotic.'" "Sure, we've been selling th e same old stuff f or a long time. So what?" says Sil- verman. "Esalen is like a child tha t's gone through adolesence and reached its late 20s. Life isn't t he same as at 16. After awhile, yo u look ridiculous crawling around in a crib."