Creative Restoration: A Yoga and Writing Retreat

Creative Restoration and Writing Retreat provides space and guidance in a beautiful setting to explore regenerative and creative practices in somatics and creative writing. Our goal as facilitators is to help each participant recognize, develop and explore their creative strengths through the intimacy of awareness, stillness and writing.

A retreat space—away from the distractions and responsibilities of home—offers a unique pathway into our innate, creative natures.

YOGA as Creative Restoration

Restorative Yoga is a powerful tool in the life of the creative. In stillness we are confronted with our inner landscape—where creativity dwells.

Somatic exploration is connecting to our felt experience in the moment. In these short but potent exercises we will let our body’s sensations and cues be our guide. It is freeing to move in this way—without any rules or plans. We will learn to oscillate between interoception and exteroception. Interoception is what is going on inside us; the emotions, thoughts, feelings and sensations aka feedback our body is communicating to us in the moment. Exteroception comes from the outside world, what is happening around us, the environment we are in, the people, etc. All of these things have an impact on us. If we can pivot between interoception and exteroception, we can learn a lot about how we respond to the stimulus of our lives. This helps us consciously shift to calmer states, or at least helps us recognize when it’s time to remove ourselves from situations and environments that are not serving us…when possible.

Yoga nidra is a highly regarded yogic practice. You may have heard of it as yogic sleep, but it is far more nuanced. In yoga nidra we start with a guided relaxation—taking you one body part at a time into deep rest. It is this deeply relaxed and calm state; where our breath is slow and our mind is quiet, that we enter a space similar to meditation. The goal is not to sleep, but to maintain subtle awareness of our thoughts and sensations as they come and go. The restorative nature of yoga nidra lends itself to those who have been impacted by trauma. It is in this meditative state that we start to heal our psychic wounds and our turbulent minds have a chance to settle. Don’t be fooled by the passive nature of this practice, it is truly powerful when done sincerely.

WRITING

In the same breath that people express an interest in writing, they often also express nervousness that they aren’t good at it, don’t have any ideas for a good story, or are overwhelmed by less-than-ideal memories of being “taught” writing as younger people. One of the main goals of this writing workshop is to help people access writing as creative enjoyment, whether you are writing stories from your life or from your imagination (or both!) While writing is an artistic discipline, it is also a practice and serves such a wide range of purposes. For this writing workshop, you do not need to have a single idea of what you’ll write about. You don’t need to already feel like you’re a writer. The workshop is designed and facilitated to support a wide range of people interested in writing in thoughtful, community-supported and creative ways.

Over the course of our time together you will have a variety of opportunities to write alone and in the structured company of others. Using short, interesting examples from diverse authors and engaging writing prompts, participants will likely find it enjoyable and rewarding to put pen to paper. The workshop can be used for writing poetry, short stories, memoir, or something else entirely. (And you definitely don’t need to know what you want to do.) Throughout the weekend, we will explore several different kinds of writing prompts as well as go over general tips and suggestions for strengthening work in the writing and editing processes, wherever your starting place is. We will learn/review the Amherst Writers & Artists Method, a great scaffold to use when back at home. Pat Schneider who developed this method states:

“Whether your purpose for writing is artistic expression, communication with friends and family, the healing of the inner life, or achieving public recognition for your art — the foundation is the same: the claiming of yourself as an artist/writer and the strengthening of your writing voice through practice…”

Relatedly, these following affirmations from the Amherst Method are at the foundation of this weekend workshop:

Everyone has a strong, unique voice.

Everyone is born with creative genius.

Writing as an art form belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level.

A writer is someone who writes.

*Sharing your written work at the retreat is completely optional and not at all expected or required.