Workshop Love!
I co-facilitated my first creative writing/yoga workshop at Confluence Cycle and Yoga in Cleveland Heights on Sunday and it...was....scary.....
I host workshops all the time at work, but this was a new space with a new audience and I WAS NERVOUS. I had to keep reminding myself that timed agendas full of bullet points, dry erase boards, and PowerPoints (no matter how well crafted) probably weren't appropriate for this group, in this setting. I couldn't quite manage to leave the dry erase board at home (it's like a weird security blanket for me), but I was proud that I harnessed enough restraint to not actually use it!
I felt honored and humbled to be surrounded by such amazing, creative, inspiring women. I got to share space, breath, and words with moms, daughters, aunts - - a 69 year old performing ballerina, a religious studies scholar who studied in Bhutan, female entrepreneurs, fellow writers/poets/artist, and an animal activist among them.
We talked a bit about how the practices of writing and yoga mirror one another, and the meaning-making that can result from the practice of both. Then we got down to writing.
Some choose to share their personal narratives, and more than one of us may have been moved to tears throughout the session (not me of course...wink wink).
I was surprised by the comfort and sense of community that [this workshop] created. The writing and yoga practice beautifully integrated. - Nan W.
Leanne then led us through a gentle vinyasa flow class and used an "I am" mantra to help us revise those fictional stories we tell ourselves, and which do NOT serve us, and to replace those stories with new more empowering self-descriptors. During one downward dog, I happened to glance over at the pencil I had been using during the session and that I, no doubt, had stolen from someone (was it you Ty?) and noticed a saying on the side. I squinted a little harder to make out the words. "I am fucking brilliant" I mouthed quietly reading the message on the pencil. I burst into a big smile - I mean, how is that for the universe cooperating with the task at hand! #positiveaffirmationsalltheway
Also, I already lost the pencil in question so sorry to whomever I "borrowed" it from...oops.
Locking eyes and smiles with the women who made up the circle in which we were encompassed provided all the warmth I needed on a snowy cold April day.
A special thank you to my Aunt Donna who "didn't chicken out". Your support meant the world to me.
