Pack a sweater.Ī version of this article originally appeared in the February 2018 issue of Allure. It was altering, unforgettable, and a little chilly in November. We had seen each other at our most naked. We all talked about coming back, but with the acute awareness that this weekend would never happen again, and that we were bound by this unique experience. Jacqueline and Penelope and I embraced and wiped tears from our eyes, thanking one another for being there, for lending ourselves. Our only common ground seemed to be that we both personally knew a young baby, and even so, we exchanged numbers and discussed meeting up when she was in New York next. Victoria became my new best friend - we gushed over photos of her granddaughter and my baby niece. I felt more naked in this room, wearing a metric ton of fabric (I was cold), than I did wearing nothing at the baths. I wondered about the context of nudity at a place like this, a place where you’re invited to take off your clothes and then bare yourself. That is a kind of nudity, I realized, although it hadn’t clicked until one of the workshop’s instructors summed up the kind of work we had been doing through movement and sharing: “We’re standing naked at the contact boundary,” he said, as my fellow seminarians wiped away tears and quietly side-embraced so as to honor the circle we were sitting in. A poem! In two days, I transformed from the kind of person who is put off by a Sublime T-shirt to the kind of person who cries at the poetry of strangers. I filled to bursting with joy and clapped my hands numb when a new friend gave a rave improv performance. I shared things with people that I would hesitate to tell my therapist. Over the course of a weekend, I crawled like a baby into the arms of a near stranger, who held me for five minutes while we rocked. And I swear to Goddess I am a different person from who I was on day one. Most of this camaraderie is forged within Esalen’s classes, which span from technical workshops to tear-soaked share sessions. Except instead of an annoying guy in a flannel playing “Wonderwall” unprompted, it’s a guy with a ponytail playing the bongos. Fires are discouraged on the grounds - this is California, remember - but a campfire sensibility burns through the atmosphere. Every single person on campus grounds is a walking magnet for your best self, pulling out your most emotionally generous impulses with every interaction. Not for the mineral baths or the workshops or the cafeteria-style meals or the post-bohemian rustic accommodations, although all of the above is pretty great, but for the people. That, I think, is why people flock to this place. They are chatting among themselves about San Francisco’s astronomical rents. The three or four other people in the bath do not seem to notice me. I don’t know what 18 micrograms per liter of aluminum is doing to my skin, but it feels amazing, even if it smells like hot onion water.
#WILD N OUT GIRLS NUDE SERIES#
The appeal of these baths is not revealed to me - the water smells terrible, and a link on the Esalen website promising “more information on the hot springs water and its healing properties” leads to a series of reports that include specific mineral content.
The mineral baths date back thousands of years, to when Native Americans of the Esselen tribe would gather and - I assume - get naked in a ceremonious way.
When he comes back to our room, an hour after I have already been here waiting for him, I furiously interrogate him about his whereabouts. We are inseparable for two hours, until he goes to his workshop (“Esalen Massage: The Basics”) and leaves me.
My assigned roommate, James the nurse, is instantly my best friend. Everything smells vaguely of lavender oil. The lodging is rustic with comfortable flourishes, like soft duvets and hotel furniture. Esalen is verdant - everything within campus limits is remarkably green, thanks in part to a sustainable irrigation plan that involves processing laundry water. One by one they spilled out over the grounds, which are, I cannot say it enough: stunning. Businessmen barking their last business commands into FaceTime Audio calls (the campus has very spotty cell service), yogis wearing beanies, thoroughly bleached women wearing expensive premium sportswear, a haggard couple who, I’m not joking, arrived in a yellow Volkswagen minibus.
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