Laying there naked in the sulfur-smelling baths with the waves crashing and the stars twinkling more than forty years ago, I endeavored to meet Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy. Not long after that, I introduced myself to him at a Stanford University football tailgater as we’re both alums from “The Farm.”
Over the course of the next few decades, I became a regular seminarian at Esalen, wrote two of my books there, taught classes, joined the board of trustees for a decade, and, more recently, the bookstore was named after me. And, most importantly, I got to spend some wonderful quality time with Michael Murphy to understand his lyrical, philosophical approach to life. Here’s a photo of the two of us earlier this year. Michael celebrated his 94th birthday last week.
In 2019, I made the pilgrimage to Tucson’s Canyon Ranch to spend time with 91-year-old Mel Zuckerman who’d long been a hero of mine. A quarter-century earlier, I was creating a 20-room spa hotel on San Francisco’s Nob Hill and visited both the Arizona and Massachusetts Canyon Ranch locations as “role models.” In the 1990s, I was also buying and renovating the city’s largest spa, Kabuki Springs and Spa, and building Costanoa, a boutique campground that offered yoga and spa services (more than a half-dozen years before the word “glamping” had been coined). Making the trips to Canyon Ranch in my 30s was a learning journey, with stunning collateral benefits.
So, when I met Mel five years ago, I was in awe of this “restless visionary” and his origin story. He was an overweight, overstressed real estate developer on the precipice of 50 who’d found religion at a spa in Ojai in the late 1970s. But, he was curious why his only choices for getting healthy were fat farms or pamper palaces, both of which exclusively catered to women. Weren’t there a few other restless and overwrought men out there who wanted to seek out a healthier lifestyle? His personal mantra became “I want to feel like this forever and share it with others.” Canyon Ranch was not an immediate success as Mel took no salary for his first ten years.
Mel and I realized we had so much in common. We were both introverts who worked on our personalities like a school project. We became more gregarious in our late teens and college years, sometimes to the point of being overly-assertive. We had a drive for perfection and growth — that feeling of never being satisfied wherever we are, the appetite for more. We tended to spend a lot of time on the figurative treadmill of achievement. We both desired to create a healing space for others to find joy and peace even when, ironically, we found that elusive ourselves. He’d received an astrological reading (as did I) early in his history of creating Canyon Ranch that told him he was on the right path as long as he sought “attunement to your inner nature.” I’m so glad I got quality time with Mel before he passed last year.
And, while Michael Murphy was celebrating his 94th birthday last week, I was teaching at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Baja, Mexico, the venerable spa resort created by Deborah Szekely and her husband in 1940 when she was 17 and he was 34. I had dinner and breakfast with Deborah and heard about how they charged $17.50 per week for their first spa customers 84 years ago and all the twists and turns of “the Ranch” growing into the pioneering landmark it is today. It gave me comfort that MEA’s path to creating the world’s first midlife wisdom school – which has had its share of ups and downs – has lineage in what’s been created at Esalen, Canyon Ranch, and Rancho La Puerta.
Deborah is a fan of my book “Learning to Love Midlife,” so I asked her what’s gotten better with age in her life and she, without hesitation, offered the following, “Number one, I’m a more attentive listener including listening for what isn’t being said. Number two, I speak my mind more skillfully and am always willing to offer unvarnished insight. And, number three, I have a better sense of humor. It’s the one sense that won’t fail me in old age.”
We all need, and deserve, heroes at any age. Who are your heroes?
-Chip
P.S. One of my heroes is my co-founder Jeff Hamaoui who is leading a “Cultivating Purpose” workshop in Santa Fe next week that we just added to the calendar so we have lots of financial aid available for this workshop (which brings your all-inclusive price down to $1,500 or $3,000 depending on which scholarship level you choose). I can say with confidence that anyone who has a need who applies for financial aid next week will be accepted so here’s your chance to experience MEA’s best facilitator, Jeff, on a budget. If you book a call with our Advisors, they can tell you more about the 75% of our fall workshops in Baja and Santa Fe that are offering financial aid options.