Show Notes
Today we begin a three part series in which we explore the idea of the subtle body, a concept found in many contemplative and healing traditions around the world. From yogic energy channels to Daoist internal alchemy, the subtle body refers to the layers of human experience that lie between the physical body and consciousness, suggesting that our lives may unfold through more dimensions than the purely material.
In this episode, scholar and martial artist Simon Cox interviews Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy. Murphy was born in Salinas, California in 1930, making him a lively 95 years old at the time of this recording. He is a longtime student of Sri Aurobindo’s integral philosophy and the author of numerous innovative books that approach the topic of the subtle body — including 1992's The Future of the Body and 1995’s In the Zone. Throughout his career, Murphy has made it a priority to investigate extraordinary human capacities and the further evolution of human nature.
Simon Cox brings a unique perspective to this conversation. he spent six years training in Daoist internal arts at Wudang Mountain in China before earning his PhD from Rice University. His book The Subtle Body: A Genealogy traces the history of subtle body concepts across cultures, and his research explores how these ideas have shaped both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. He’s currently a research fellow at Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. He holds weekly conversations with Michael Murphy as part of a collaborative effort to illuminate the deeper architecture of Esalen’s mission. Simon is currently writing a new book on Esalen’s intellectual history — a mythic excavation of Murphy’s “Big Vision”: the radical, reality-bending aspiration that seeded Esalen’s creation and continues to shape its evolutionary field.
Photo of Michael Murphy: Kate Kondratieva
More from Voices of Esalen
Today, we return to that stack of dusty reel to reels, discovered a couple of years ago, as a part of the storied Esalen archives. This one turns out to be a gem: a conversation that was recorded in 1976, not at Esalen, but at the Bel Aire School in Tiburon, California, likely recorded and preserved by Esalen archival legend Paul Herbert. This talk features two famous thinkers - psychologist Rollo May and author of the pentagon papers, Daniel Ellsberg. Their subject is good and evil. Rollo May was a pioneering figure in American existential psychology as well being as an early teacher at Esalen institute. Earlier in life, May had been a Protestant minister and had studied with the prominent theologian Paul Tillich. By the time of this recording, he had published some of his pivotal books, including Love and Will, Power and Innocence, and The Courage to Create. In those texts he explored human beings creative possibilities and their capacity for destruction. Daniel Ellsberg was a former Marine as well as a Harvard-trained economist who worked as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and served in the Defense Department, where he helped shape nuclear war planning and American policy in Vietnam. He rose to great prominence in 1971 when he provided the Pentagon Papers to the press, where he exploded the classified history of American involvement in the war. He faced charges carrying a possible sentence of 115 years; the case was dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct. So when these two men met in 1976 at the time of this talk, the Vietnam war had only been over for one year. Ellsberg’s prosecution was only a few years behind him. Rollo May had recently published a book on creative courage. Listening today, we might keep those lives in mind as we encounter a world that remains as difficult, and full of urgent moral themes, as ever.
When Ellen Watson first arrived at Esalen in the summer of 1984, she expected to stay for a few months. Instead, she remained onsite for more than two decades, engaging in an immersion in the practices, teachers, and experiments that helped define Esalen during one of its most fertile eras. She has remained associated with Esalen, teaching programs and training bodyworkers and teachers of bodywork.
Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky is a workplace belonging expert, internationally recognized keynote speaker, and bestselling author whose work explores friendship, loneliness, human connection, and the ways technology is reshaping our relationships with one another. In this conversation, Sam and Smiley trace a line from the early digital-detox movement and Camp Grounded to the present moment of AI, hybrid work, and widespread social disconnection.
Artificial intelligence has become deeply embedded in everyday life, and way too nuanced to describe as a single phenomenon. In this third installment of How We’re Really Using AI, Sam attempts to create clarity through specificity, speaking with people whose work and lives reveal distinct corners of the emerging AI landscape.
In this live conversation recorded at Esalen in the spring of 2026, author Robert Moor joins Andrew Castle, weaver of Esalen’s Treenet, to explore the ideas at the heart of Moor’s new book, In Trees. Moor describes trees as a way of being: branching outward into curiosity and experimentation, pruning what no longer works, adapting around difficulty, and remaining deeply rooted in place and relationship.