Offering mind-expanding workshops, internationally acclaimed speakers, nights of entertainment, and healthy cuisine aboard a cruise ship, The Inner Voyage delivers seven days of transformational fun while bound for a tropical destination. 

Says Peter Einstein, the originator of the Inner Voyage, “We’ve reinvented the cruise experience and made it appropriate for people who normally wouldn’t be caught dead on a cruise ship.”

Randy Peyser: What gave you the idea to create the Inner Voyage?

Peter Einstein: It came to me as a vision. I had gone to sleep with the idea of trying to dream about a solution to make intuition and consciousness more accessible to the mainstream. When I woke up, I heard the word, “environment,” in my head, but I had no idea what that meant. My wife is an intuition trainer. One of the things she teaches people is to take a shower to open one’s intuition because the water helps you to “go with the flow.” I was in the shower, and all of a sudden I had this vision of lots of happy people on a cruise ship. I realized if the people were happy, that must mean the event would be successful. So I decided to create a combination vacation and workshop conference aboard a ship.

RP: What takes place on an Inner Voyage?

PE: We offer two kinds of experiences depends on the ship’s itinerary, whether it’s a day at sea or a day at one of our various ports of call. We hold most of our workshops when we’re at sea. Mornings begin with yoga or t’ai chi or some form of body-mind exercise as well as a meditation program. Then workshops begin around 9am and go for an hour to an hour-and-a-half each. After lunch, we offer both large and small workshops. Closer to dinner time, we have more contemplative types of programs such as high tech meditation, followed by end of day rituals and socializing. Then after dinner, we offer fun stuff such as a psychic night or moon ceremonies, trance dancing, or drumming. 

RP: What is high tech meditation?

PE: High tech meditation was created by Kelly Howell who runs a company called Brain Sync. She has a number of bestselling tapes which put you into a deep meditative state, the theta state, within a few minutes. By wearing head phones and listening to these tapes, you’ll go into state of consciousness you wouldn’t go into unless you’d been meditating for twenty years. 

RP: What happens when the ship is at a port of call?

PE: We start our day with our early morning programs, then the remainder of the day is free for exploring, shopping or just relaxing. Occasionally, we also create our own special land excursions. For example, we’re going to the Western Caribbean to the Yucatan to visit some Mayan sites. We’ll be creating special trips to the Lost City of Coba, which is the largest of the Mayan cities, as well as a trip to Tulum, which is a Mayan site on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean. We strive to make the travel experience authentic. It’s not the typical pre-packaged stuff that the cruise lines offer. For example, when we go to Jamaica, we’ll be having a beach party with Rastafarians. 

RP: Tell me about some of your speakers.

PE: We’ve had Shakti Gawain, Dannion Brinkley, Joan Borysenko, Larry Dossey, Raymond Moody, and Ilana Rubenfeld, plus numerous experts in every aspect of consciousness from all over the country. All of our speakers, whether famous or not, are pretty accessible and available throughout most of the cruise. We don’t want them to be hiding in their cabins. You get to spend a week with these people, shopping together, or dancing in the moonlight on the deck of the ship, or hanging out in a hot tub. It’s a different experience than just listening to these people lecture in a hotel conference room setting. 

RP: What kind of attendance do you draw?

PE: 120 people attended the very first one and it grew from there. Eventually I approached New Age Journal with the idea of them becoming my partner. 550 people showed up for that cruise in January of ‘97. The last seven day cruise we did in the Caribbean drew 715 people. 

Today, the Inner Voyage is the world’s most successful, transformational travel event. People come from all over the country and around the world, from South Africa, Greece, Japan. And a good percentage of people have become avid, repeat customers. Some have come three or four times, and we’ve only been doing this for a few years. People tell us, “I don’t have to ever decide what I’m doing for my vacation anymore. Whatever you guys are doing, that’s my vacation.”

RP: Any big plans for the future?

PE: We’re going to be taking over an entire resort on the east side of Kauai for 500 people, for five days, from December 28, 1999 until January 2nd, 2000, to celebrate the new Millenium. We’ve invited the local healers and elders to present an authentic program of bringing the spirit of Aloha into the new millenium. 

And we’ve also shot a TV series from the last Caribbean Cruise which will air on the Wisdom Channel via satellite beginning this October. 

If you’d like to take an Inner Voyage, call (800) 546-7871.