I can't believe I'm here

All right, so I'm in the dining hall at this place I told you I was going to yesterday.

It's called Esalen Institute.

This place has been a home and gathering ground for some of the most influential artists, thinkers, entrepreneurs, and spiritual pioneers of the last century…

What POWER. Thank you again, Riva. I know u read these emails sometimes : ) You are the best! (She is the reason i’m here, if you read yesterday’s email)

Everyone please just go watch some Riva Tez youtube videos & follow her blog / X and podcasts although her sitings are more rare online lately (which I’m sad about).

She truly is an amazingly inspiring human. And everything she touches will elevate you.

Anyhoo - Chloe is doing some artwork next to me.

And I just have to tell you guys what happened in the last 24 hours since my last email.

We showed up to Esalen last night around 7:30 PM.

It was a very long and winding drive to get here. Like six hours.

We stopped in a little town on the way called Paso Robles and had a very delicious lunch.

And then up by Big Sur, because the highway on the coastline was closed, we had to go inland, up and around, and then back down the coast.

We had about 45 minutes on the coast at night on this very dark winding road.

Waves in the distance off the cliffside, crashing hypnotically.

We arrived at Esalen Institute.

It's one of those places where the energy kind of takes over every cell of your body.

You go into this vortex of relaxation.

You can feel it.

Alan Watts. George Harrison. Steve Jobs. Aldous Huxley.

These greats left their energetic footprint here.

The list goes on and on of famous creatives, scientists, artists, and very successful people who've been here since it was founded.

So we went to the front desk.

The desk attendant—I think her name was Lisa—checked us in.

We got there just in time for dinner. And 15 minutes before we arrived, there was an opening ceremony that had started for people on the self-guided experience.

She told us where to go for that.

So we grabbed our food and rushed up to where they had this opening ceremony.

We walked into the room to about 40 or 50 people all standing up, surrounding this short little Asian guy, and they were doing all these Tai Chi or Qigong kind of movements.

Chloe and I walked in, put our stuff down, and we're like, "All right, I guess we're doing a group warm-up icebreaker exercise."

So we start following along with the moves.

Just picture me and Chloe doing Tai Chi like the old asian people do in the parks some times.

I actually did QiGong for a while. ya know, i mean… well don’t ask.

This (go like ¾ into the vid):

So me and CHloe are doing these… moves.

The funny thing was that the moves never really stopped.

They just kept going.

I looked back at Chloe 10 minutes after doing these QiGong moves—and by the way, everybody in the room was older. Probably 50-plus club. There were some younger people, but for the most part all older folk, and this one older Asian guy leading it was maybe in his 70s.

I looked back at Chloe. Chloe looked at me.

She's like, "I don't think this is the opening ceremony."

And I whispered back, "I think it must be. I mean, I don't know where else we were supposed to go and there's a lot of people here."

So we ended up doing about an hour and a half of Qigong. And we guessed that the opening ceremony was just, idk a bunch of QiGong.

We even got a short little sermon-lecture about these Chinese lettering and symbolism.

And then, well, we went back to our Yurt to bed.

The next morning, we woke up very early—just before 7 AM—and went to a yoga class.

We hadn't thought much of the opening ceremony, although we did think it was a little bit odd that there wasn't much like situational content about Eselan at all. Like nothing to orient us to what we hsould be doing here or the property at all.

But nonetheless, we found our way to the studio. This was one of the most beautiful yoga studios I've ever seen. It overlooks this expanse of ocean.

An amazing way to start the day.

Then we got some breakfast. Enjoyed a beautiful breakfast overlooking the ocean.

We went into the bookstore and spent probably about an hour in there.

Chloe was looking at art books and drawing materials that she was excited about.

I was looking at some Aldous Huxley and spirituality books, just reading about the kind of stuff they were doing when they were here.

Then we went back to our yurt—which, by the way, was also beautiful.

It overlooks the ocean. Absolutely magnificent view.

It's made of wood. Feels like it was built with love.

After we did some creative stuff, I decided to go check out the hot springs.

I went on my own. Chloe stayed back and was doing some art stuff.

These were all-nude hot springs, which was pretty funny.

I'm sitting there in these very sulfur-rich hot springs, just relaxing.

And these old ladies, old men, various people walking around, swinging things around totally naked.

And I was, of course, wearing a bathing suit because I'm not quite on that level.

But it was really beautifully relaxing. I really enjoyed the time.

The other thing I should mention is that the property is absolutely magnificently gorgeous.

Like, one of the most beautiful places I've been to. And I've traveled all over the world.

The land and the grounds just have this very mystical, dreamlike feeling.

And the people here—it feels almost like you're at a ski lodge mixed with camp, mixed with a Silicon Valley type energy.

Everyone here, you can tell, is probably pretty intelligent, cerebral and very interesting.

On my way back from the hot springs, I ran into this lady that I saw the night before.

She recognized me and she was like, "Oh, you're in the Tai Chi retreat."

And I was like, "What?"

She was like, "I saw you last night."

And I was like, "Oh yeah, I thought that was the opening ceremony for Eselan”.

Well, it turns out that the guy who ran that class we walked into is actually running a retreat here.

And he's a world-famous Qigong master named Al Huang.

He's written plenty of books and done stuff with Alan Watts and been teaching here for decades.

So apparently we accidentally walked in on that instead of the opening lecture. lol.

Which explains me and chloe’s 90 minute QiGon on arrival.

So that's kind of where we're at right now.

We just enjoyed dinner. We're sitting in the dining hall, eating some food.

Lots of jolly, nice energy people around us.

And I think we're going to go do another night dip in the hot springs.

Hopefully you enjoyed this.

I'll see you in the next one!

- Arlin