Clown Church: Mindfulness, Healing, and Your Deepest Self

What if the path to your truest self was paved with play, curiosity, and the willingness to be beautifully, vulnerably human? Clown Church invites you into a rare immersion where clowning becomes a spiritual practice—not entertainment, but a contemplative discipline that opens you to presence, authenticity, and the wisdom of your own impulse. Led by Jet Eveleth, an integrative medicine doctor, clown teacher, and former performer with Cirque du Soleil's Absinthe, this creative workshop at Esalen Institute in Big Sur transforms clowning from a performance art into a pathway of self-discovery and healing.

Over this immersive retreat, you'll learn to access the clown state—a way of being that is soft, available, radically curious, and undefended. This is not about learning tricks or perfecting an act. Instead, through nonverbal physical games, improvisation, somatic movement, meditation, and intentional play, you'll venture beyond your habitual comfort zones and into the spacious territory of spontaneity, wonder, and authentic connection. Jet's unique background—blending circus arts, medical training, and deep spiritual inquiry—creates a container where light and shadow are held together with equal reverence. What emerges is permission: to be quietly lost within yourself, to move through the world with less armor, and to discover the profound healing that lives in vulnerability touched by joy.

What to Expect

This workshop unfolds as a series of layered discoveries rather than linear skill-building. You'll begin with grounding practices and meditation to settle your nervous system, then move into physical games and rituals that awaken child-like wonder and spontaneity. Through improvisation and somatic work, you'll access states of altered awareness where the conditioned self relaxes and something truer can emerge. The atmosphere is sacred and safe—a container intentionally held so you can experiment, stumble, play, and discover without performance pressure or judgment.

Expect to engage primarily through your body and intuition rather than intellect. You'll leave with a lived experience of what it feels like to move through the world with more openness, presence, and authentic curiosity—tools and embodied wisdom you can carry into daily life. This is an invitation to uncover layers of yourself you may have forgotten were there.

Venue & Logistics

Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California is a legendary retreat center perched on the cliffs of the Pacific Coast, known for its commitment to human potential and transformative work. The workshop takes place Friday, September 25, 2026. Wear comfortable, loose clothing that allows for movement. Bring an open heart and a willingness to play. If you have mobility considerations, reach out to Esalen directly about accessibility.