Magnitude, Mayhem, and Monstrosity

What if the intensity you've been taught to suppress—the rage, the grief, the urgent aliveness coursing through you—could become your greatest teacher and creative ally? Magnitude, Mayhem, and Monstrosity is a five-day immersive workshop at California's legendary Esalen Institute in Big Sur that invites you to meet the large, difficult energies of contemporary life not with resistance, but with conscious presence and movement.

Led by facilitators Andrea Juhan and Vic Cooper, this offering addresses a truth many of us live daily: we are collectively overwhelmed, individually pressured, and often taught that intensity is something to manage rather than understand. This workshop proposes another way. Through guided ecstatic dance, music, and art-making held in a carefully facilitated container, you'll discover how to channel overwhelming feelings into expressive, embodied form. There's no performance here, no "right way" to move—only an invitation to explore your own relationship with power, creativity, and aliveness.

Whether you arrive burnt out, grief-stricken, angry, or simply curious about what lives beneath the surface of your everyday self, this experience offers a rare opportunity to work with intensity as fuel rather than as something to be feared or hidden. Set against the dramatic cliffs and redwood groves of Big Sur, surrounded by a small group of fellow seekers, you'll have the space and support to discover what becomes possible when large feelings are met with care, consent, and awareness.

What to Expect

This five-day intensive combines movement exploration with grounding and integration practices. Each session begins with clear facilitation and conscious choice-making: you determine your own pace, your proximity to others, and your level of engagement at every moment. Using ecstatic dance, live music, and creative art-making as containers, you'll work with emotions and energies that often feel too big or too dangerous to touch. The workshop honors the contemporary conditions we're all navigating—collective urgency, personal overwhelm, systemic pressure—and suggests that these very energies, when approached with skill and compassion, can become sources of aliveness and creative power.

Sessions are structured with both activation and integration, so you'll move from movement exploration into grounding practices, reflection, and embodied rest. This isn't about cathartic release alone, but about conscious relationship with intensity.

Venue & Logistics

Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California
August 11–15, 2026

Wear comfortable, unrestricting clothing. Arrive ready to move barefoot or in flexible shoes. Esalen's grounds are accessible by car; some paths involve gentle terrain. Please contact the venue directly for specific accessibility accommodations.