Welcome to Yoga & Writing! We are a new community with a podcast, courses, and retreats coming soon. Stay tuned for ideas, tips, and conversations.
These first few weeks, I’m sharing the origins of this project and orienting you in my approach. Soon, I’ll be sharing ideas, also in podcast form, from a variety of angles: practical, philosophical, cultural, historical, or literary. Additionally, I’ll alternate these articles with community discussion threads. Another part of the newsletter and podcast will bring you fun and meaningful ways to deepen your practice to start each week.
If you want to check out some of my other writing, please visit The Matterhorn: intersections of literature & art (also a podcast) or my author website.
Is Y&W for you?
Yoga & Writing is for anyone who wants to work on their own creativity, authenticity, strength, balance, courage, powers of observation, imagination, and feelings of joy and freedom through the practices of yoga and writing in complement.
This community and the courses as well are designed for all levels of yoga and writing, though some of the courses are labeled with different participants in mind. I’ll have specific posts and classes for people like grad students, parents, English teachers, professional writers, people with injuries, teenagers, those working through particular challenges, athletes, and more.
In general, though, there are four main strands of the courses that can help you to get oriented with a foundation course or simply to consider for yourself how you’re arriving in the community. I would also love to hear by reply email to my posts what perspective you’re coming from, or you can reach me at yogaandwritingwithkathleen@gmail.com. These are:
Yoga & Writing for Newcomers
Yoga for Writers
Writing for Yogis
Yogi-Writers
If you are completely new to yoga, I recommend you attend a few live classes if possible or at least practice a few online beginner classes before starting one of my workshops or diving into the ‘Move Your Mind’ start-your-week quick tips (although there are a bunch you can do with zero experience). You can also contact me if you’re not sure where to find a place to begin. Even after just three classes, you can begin with the introductory course or just the newsletter and podcast. If you’re reading this, I imagine you are curious about it!
In the courses that are for newcomers to both yoga and writing, we’ll start slow, explore, and have fun. The focus will be on getting in touch with your voice and developing the start of a daily or weekly practice. I’ll also share resources for getting started with your writing. I’ve taught writing in various forms as an English teacher for over twenty years and firmly believe that anybody can write. Each of you has a unique voice that deserves to be heard.
Yoga for writers helps those who already have an established writing practice - whether in a journal, through professional writing like journalists, blog and newsletter writers, students, or those working on books - by considering the addition of a yoga practice to help you access things like creativity, vulnerability, precision and structure, motivation, relaxation, or the courage to publish.
Writing for yogis considers how we can include writing as a part of our personal practice toward a better mind-body connection or to explore writing as a method of articulating your ideas and observations that come from your writing practice. We look at various types of writing that might work for you, develop a personal practice, and use intuition and observation to access parts of yourself and the world around you.
Finally, yogi-writers, those who already practice yoga and writing in various forms are welcome to join me to go deeper in both practices by seeking truth and beauty through mind-body connections and applying the philosophy of yoga to writing. We can also go deeper in language and literary studies to move further in our yoga practices.
Essentially, all strands have aspects of the philosophical, physical, and practical elements to help you move forward on your own journey, whatever that may be. The practices and ideas here should help us to make new discoveries together and open ourselves to a world of new possibilities.
Thanks for checking out Yoga & Writing, a new community with a podcast, courses, and retreats coming soon. These next introductory posts will help you to get the most out of the community and understand my approach. I would be grateful if you share this post with anybody who might connect with our ethos or be curious about something new!