Escape To Woo Mountain
How I love being a woman who retreats.
This week’s episode is brought to you by the ~journey, the paths we cross, and the unhinged friends we meet along the way.
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Hi friends!
Well … I have returned from my retreat to Esalen. It was a full moon women’s retreat, during which we did exactly what you’re imagining and at least half a dozen wilder things, too.
The good news is: We vibed and chanted enough to redirect the foul course of humanity. The bad news: We must rely on divine timing and men are still finishing up their wretched moment. Enough already with the geopolitical tantrums, planetary disrespect, and quest to merge us with machines.
Sometimes a gal just needs to microdose dropping out of society and/or joining a cult. And that is why I love a retreat.
On the first night, surrounded by a large group of women I didn’t know, I wished I had brought a friend. But as soon as shit got going, I knew I had to be there alone — if I had a friend to raise my eyebrows at it would have been over for me before it began. Bereft of the ability to form a peanut gallery, I went all in. And this group of women turned out to be a sacred space. My moon sisters held my spirit like a baby and it healed me in unexpected ways.
This was actually my second week spent at Esalen. I first retreated there about two years ago when I was so creatively blocked from the isolation and horrors of the pandemic that I felt spiritually constipated.
We were supposed to live it up in summer ‘22, finally free from our caves, not a restriction in sight. My job had ended and I had a severance package of mercy, but while everyone I follow on Instagram was in Europe giving each other covid, I was insane and could barely get my ass down the street.
I can’t remember who recommended I go to Esalen, but when I saw that there was one spot left for the following week, it was mine. I deleted all the social media apps off my phone and drove up to Big Sur to attend a creativity workshop taught by two brothers with Hillsong energy. Their whole shtick uses singing as the pathway to unleash creativity, and after I sang and communed with an eclectic group of characters who were also recovering from their pandemic insanity, something shifted inside of me and I started writing again.
Not at the retreat, though. We were all supposed to go off and produce a final creation, an offering from our authentic voice to share with the group before we all departed Woo Mountain. Paul, my dear retreat friend who I never saw again, was also perishing with writer’s block. The last thing either of us wanted to do was sit alone and stare at a blank page. So, we decided to collaborate, and in like 15 magical minutes we created a game called “Chaos” with a spiral-shaped board that led to a visual depiction of a primal scream.
Creating “Chaos” with an unhinged gay man is probably the funniest thing I have ever done to avoid writing.
Today feels like a good day to drop all my retreat lore, so why not also add that on the verge of turning thirty I had an existential crisis, quit my job, left my vodka-soaked life in New York, and retreated to Southeast Asia on a one way ticket. Five months later, I was seriously considering moving to a mountain town in Northern Thailand to just … vibe indefinitely? Many hours of daily meditation at a retreat in Cambodia later (the retreat within the retreat!) and my higher self told me to get off the island. That bitch.
I went back to New York where my stuff was, then Toronto where my family was, but it was winter in both those places. I ended up on my best friend’s couch in Los Angeles, got a job writing clickbait headlines and kind of just … stayed in LA?
On a different timeline, I never dabbled in meditation and never got bitten by the sharks in Hollywood. I’m in those Thai mountains, selling shroom smoothies to Australian backpackers, writing a very different version of this newsletter.
Markedly saner these days, this second trip to Esalen was inspired by my need to touch grass. And that I did. I also participated in two different forms of ecstatic dance — a morning “soul movement sanctuary” and an evening affair in a dark room where a very deranged remix of The White Lotus theme song was played.
I spent a lot of time soaking in “the baths,” the famous cliffside hot springs overlooking the ocean, where everyone gets naked and the conversations flow freely. On night two, as the light of the nearly full moon sparkled in the rising tide, an angry man we can call John went on an epic tirade about how much better Esalen was in the ‘60s and how much everything sucks these days. Well, duh, this is the Age of Unhingement™ — spiritual experiences are not immune to inflation, and then they email you begging for a positive Yelp review. He also said that the U.S. military had been there two weeks prior to tell the Esalen staff that the UFO they’d seen wasn’t what they thought it was. Sublime.
The next morning, as I drank my coffee and gazed into the Pacific, I saw a pair of sea otters frolicking in the surf. They weren’t holding hands, but they were beautiful. I was moved to tears. And so began the retreat subplot of me staring at the ocean and crying — a salt water communion that happened on and off for two and a half days until I decided I had enough. The ocean was still into it, though.
Three days of full participation in Wooville is my limit before I need to go smoke a spliff behind a dumpster in the alley, energetically. And by Thursday evening, I had seen the full moon rise over the mountain, saluted the sun, worked my breath, meditated into a past life, revealed myself naked before the spirits of Esalen in various ways, and been complicit in the appropriation of at least two cultures. I couldn’t really keep it together anymore.
When the most unhinged moon sister (a superlative for the ages) appeared at the final evening’s fire ceremony with a woman I heard referred to as both her shaman and her goddess coach, it was over for me. The shaman and goddess coach was an elderly white woman with little round glasses. Her energy was giving slightly esoteric middle school librarian.
Days deep into the moon sisterhood, I had found my fellow cacklers. When we realized angry John of the hot springs rant was randomly there tending the fire, it was over for us all. And that was before an Elon Musk satellite (or John’s UFO) streaked across the darkening sky. The moon sister leaders were not happy with us, but the sigils still got burned in earnest with the full force of our womanhood. The joy of cackling at absurdity in this fuckass world is the core of my spiritual practice, and I will not be shamed.
What a time I had. There were so many revelations and I’m sure we’ll get to all of them eventually, but the biggest one was that it would serve everyone very well to take a week off from crying at the internet and just cry with the sea otters instead. A collective digital cleanse could change the course of history. Let the sociopaths fight it out while we regroup and retreat and figure out how we can stop the expanding universe of pain that exists within our phones from destroying us.
Inhabiting our own body for a few solid days instead of staring into a portal of doom is a gift we all need. I don’t want to be a full-time resident of Phoneland anymore. I may keep a small internetside cottage, but my spirit now lives with the ocean, the moon, and the trees.
I’m sure the glow will wear off and I’ll get back to roasting internet culture and paying attention to the Trump of it all (34 convictions and the thrill of a lifetime for the boomers addicted to MSNBC). But I may have to give my brain worms the summer off and pivot to writing about IRL unhingements for a bit.
I’m considering going on a woo tour of America now — there’s a vortex with my name on it in Sedona so I better hit the road before it gets too hot. I have also received one vote for clown college. If you have any good ideas, I would love to hear them. My inbox is as open as a group of women who have made each other feel seen, heard, and accepted for one very embodied week.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz
I remember reading lore about Esalen, how they would strip you down to say what you are really thinking. Bob Carol Ted and Alice had a decent dramatization of that. I'm guessing you saw none of that either time right?
Oh, Mother, you're doing so much better. Welcome back, we missed you 😁