Before Lance Weihmuller discovered the name Esalen Massage, he was already practicing it.
Working as a massage therapist in Austin after the pandemic, he began offering a style of touch that felt natural to his hands — slow, attentive, and deeply connective.
Only later did he realize that this way of working already belonged to a living lineage.
Discovering a Language of Touch
Lance Weihmuller began studying massage therapy for simple reasons. “What drew me to massage therapy and bodywork in the first place was wanting to help people,” he says. “And wanting a profession I could spend the rest of my life studying.”
But another aspect of the work interested him just as much. “What truly interested me about massage was the intimacy,” he explains. “Being close to people in order to support them feeling closer to themselves”
He received his massage license in Texas just as the global pandemic began. Almost immediately, the world went into lockdown. When restrictions slowly lifted, Lance noticed something new in his practice. “Everyone was kind of seeking the same thing after that time of isolation,” he says. “People wanted connection”
His practice in Austin began to grow quickly. Yet after many sessions, clients often asked the same question: What kind of massage was that?
Lance realized he did not have an answer. “I knew what I was offering was working. It was helpful. But I didn’t know the name for it.”
Recognizing Esalen Massage
While searching for the origins of the style of touch he felt in his hands, Lance came across old instructional footage of Esalen Massage. The video was grainy and dated, but something in it immediately resonated.
“There’s a scene where Carl Chase is massaging someone on the deck at the baths,” he remembers. “His eyes have this intense curiosity.”
Then something else happened. The practitioner smiled. In that moment Lance recognized something familiar. “I saw the same joy in that smile that I experience when I’m able to offer someone a deeper sense of themselves through touch”
That moment clarified something important for him. “I knew that was where I was supposed to be,” he says. “And I knew that was my tribe.”
Finding community
Because the Esalen Institute in Big Sur remained closed for some time after the pandemic, Lance’s first Esalen Massage training happened elsewhere. He traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, where he met his first Esalen Massage teachers, Robin Fann-Costanzo and Jessica Fagan.
He quickly committed to a deeper training. “I dove right in. I’ll never forget how it felt to have permission to massage with a full heart.”
What he experienced there shaped his understanding of the work. “The safety and the structure that Robin creates in the classroom empowered us to find our potential” he explains.
Before that training, he had been practicing successfully but without a clear lineage. “Then I knew the answer to the question I’d been getting asked after sessions: ‘Esalen Massage,’” he says.
Afterward, things changed quickly. Lance continued studying with teachers in the Esalen Massage lineage and began deepening his practice at Esalen Institute and beyond.
Creating Space for Learning
Today Lance teaches introductory Esalen Massage workshops in Austin, TX. What moves him most when he enters a room with new students is the atmosphere that appears in the beginning.
“I like to see how people show up,” he says. “There’s a charge in the room when a group first gathers, a charge of nervousness, excitement and uncertainty.”
Participants often arrive unsure about touching another person in a learning environment. Yet what stands out to him is their willingness to try. “What really touches me is the vulnerability that this practice invites,” he explains.
Something begins to change once people start practicing. “By the second day, usually by just the second hour, I notice more smiles. I notice more laughter,” he says. "Individuals soften, the group lightens–that’s when learning happens.”
Students start to understand that Esalen Massage is not only about techniques. It is about the way people connect with one another and with themselves. “It’s less about the techniques and more about the approach,” Lance says. “The gentleness, the presence, and the way people relate to each other.”
Turning Down the Volume of Life
Over time Lance has also noticed why many people come to introductory workshops. Often they are looking for something very simple: a chance to slow down and sense connection.
“I believe people join the introductory course to turn the volume down of life and come back to their senses,” he says.
Some are massage therapists working long days with many sessions back to back. Others simply feel the speed of everyday life and want a moment to pause.
In the workshop room something different becomes possible. Participants put their phones away. They meet face to face. And often, quite literally, hand in hand.
Transitions in Touch and Life
Another idea that has shaped Lance’s understanding of Esalen Massage is the idea of transitions. One of his teachers, Jessica Fagan, helped him see the work in this way.
“She helped me realize that Esalen Massage is really about transitions,” he explains.
Physically, this can be felt in the long connecting strokes that link different parts of the body together. The foot connects to the hand, the hip to the shoulder, and separate parts of the body begin to feel like one whole.
But transitions also occur on a deeper level–from one moment to the next. In his private practice, clients often share a similar experience after a session. “They might say, ‘I feel more present, energized. I feel more alive.’”
Recently Lance has also begun offering Esalen Massage in hospice care settings. There he has seen how awareness and presence can similarly support people during the important transition beyond life.
“When someone becomes more aware of their body, their sensations, the present moment” he says, “they’re ready for the one that comes next.”
Practice and Teaching Today
Lance Weihmuller lives and practices in Austin, Texas, where he offers Esalen Massage sessions and workshops and continues to deepen his work within the lineage.
Recently he completed the Esalen Massage Teacher Training in Bali, studying with senior teachers Dean Marson, Ellen Watson and Robin Fann-Costanzo. The training brought together practitioners from different parts of the world who were preparing to share this work as teachers.
Following this training, Lance began offering introductory Esalen Massage workshops, creating spaces where participants can slow down, listen through their hands, and reconnect with the simple presence of touch.
At the EMGV Gathering in Switzerland, Lance will co-lead an introductory Esalen Massage workshop together with Mac Murphy, inviting participants into a supportive learning circle where the fundamentals of presence-based touch can be explored and experienced.
“What I’m really excited about,” Lance says about teaching internationally, “is learning together, what the land there has to teach us, and of course, what we all have to teach one another”.