Frangipani Flowers: 1960's Innovative Approaches to Psychotherapy, Harbin, Esalen

All kinds of very innovative approaches to therapy and psychotherapy took place in the 1960s, especially in California {in the context of far-reaching social changes and experimentation}. Often these departed from norms, engaged and incorporated practices from other countries, like India, and could become spiritual practices. Innovations in therapy and psychotherapy could take place in workshops, or one-on-one.


In California, there was a lot of travel back and forth between Harbin Hot Springs in northern California and Esalen on the Big Sur coast (and all over California, and the west coast), for example, for workshops and gatherings, ~ often therapeutic. Harbin was bought in 1972 with the intention to create a Gestalt therapy center with hot springs, and is now a hot springs' retreat center and Heart Consciousness Church (and sort of a hippie commune). Ellen Klages' book "Harbin Hot Springs: Healing Waters, Sacred Land" is a history of Harbin. And Jeffrey Kripal's book "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion" characterizes a lot of what happened at Esalen from the 1950s forward.


People were very creative in the 1960s and early 70s, especially, and there was a kind of directness and wide exploration, (counter~) culturally mediated, in engaging in therapies.


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See a therapist, if you want, if you like, if you're feeling bad or troubled. Life can be great, and talking about how this might work, with some insights based on reason, or a modality of your choice, can be enormously helpful.

Talk, talk, talk ... this can generate complementary, beneficial language, 'codes,' and understandings to the way you presently understand the world. {Good listeners are wonderful, as are great interlocutors:}.

Check out Re-evaluation Counseling as a fascinating approach - rc.org. Beginning in the late 50s and early 1960s, originator Harvey Jackins wrote a number of books about Re-evaluation Counseling in the early 1970s.

Consider starting your own innovative form of therapy ...

{Here's Stanford Psychology Professor Phil Zimbardo again: facebook.com/video/video.php?v=614090435683}.


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Both Harbin and Esalen have hot springs, and both were/are clothing-optional. Both are also open and freedom-oriented places, which explore and innovate therapeutically and 'culturally' {another meaning of counterculture?}. Most people are naked in the pools at Harbin these days. I think most people are at Esalen, too.


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Why not explore this virtually? ... In a virtual Harbin, for example?