Esalen Institute workshop

In July I will be teaching two workshops at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. The Esalen catalogue description of each course follows.

Week of July 3-8, 2011
Learning From Leonardo: The Role of the Arts in Overcoming Our Crisis of Perception
Fritjof Capra & Peter Adams

Leonardo da Vinci, the great genius of the Renaissance, developed a unique synthesis of art, science, and technology. In this course, Fritjof Capra and Peter Adams, a scientist and an artist who have both been frequent visitors to Esalen, will discuss Leonardo’s synthesis and its great relevance to the present time. They will argue that, in order to overcome the crisis of perception that lies at the root of the major problems of our time, it will be critical to integrate an artistic dimension into the ecological perspectives of science, philosophy, and spirituality.

Workshop participants will be engaged not only intellectually, but also physically and emotionally, in adaptations of Leonardo’s methodology in observations, experiments, and artistic expressions within the Esalen landscape.

Week of July 17-22, 2011
Artful Strategies for a Changing World
Peter Adams

You are not alone in feeling a dark mountain casting its ever-increasing shadow upon your optimistic and determined efforts to bring about social or environmental change. In today’s world of melting ice caps, species extinction, economic uncertainty, and increasing religious and political fundamentalism, your compassionate heart is also melting.

Let’s look, together, at how the deepening despair that accompanies global upheaval can be greeted with the tangible, felt awareness of the eternal beauty that resides in every nook and cranny. Simply put: “How shall we love when we are losing everything?”
Art can be a key to answering this question. During our time together we’ll look deeply into the importance of living an engaged and artistic life, as well as explore the how-to’s of living creatively.

Poet James L. White writes:
When you return to something you love
It’s already beyond repair.
You wear it broken.

In this workshop, through stories, poetry, and hands-on manipulation of materials, you can massage your heart so that your felt responses to the world are not shut down. Rather, they remain awake to the terrible importance of capturing the beauty in a blade of grass or a shard of broken glass.

Whether you are a layperson of no particular artistic direction or a studio artist, we will experience how life, as seen through the lens of artistic behavior, can sustain us as we sail upon troubled waters.

For further information on Esalen and other courses on offer, please go to their website: