Embodied Writing & Yoga Workshop for Teens & Adults!

I suffered from disordered eating, obsessive exercise, and sexual trauma as an adolescent and teen. Since then, I've found personal and professional purpose in understanding and mitigating this suffering in my community. From studying feminist literature (BA, MA), to teaching in the humanities for 4+ years, to growing my own publications as an embodied essayist and poet, I have claimed writing and moving as a tool in radical self healing & liberation. In 2021, I earned my certification in teaching yoga to teens and became a Be Body Positive leader through The Body Positive. I am excited to share my ever-growing awarenesses about how writing & moving can collaborate in our journey to love and live honestly inside our bodies. 

Every week, we will move through a 30 minute Vinyasa-Hatha flow, focused around a weekly theme (Themes listed to the left).

Questions that inspire my somatic instruction:

• What if, when we moved, we listened to our bodies as closely as we looked in the mirror?

• What if, every time we chose to enter a pose, we oscillated between external tracking (What am I being told to do?) and internal scanning (What do I need? Which part of me needs this & why?)

I believe our capacity to listen to the truth in our bodies reinforces and reflects our capacity to hear and heed truths in our whole lives--in our social, academic, and creative spheres. 

To support this alignment between what's going on inside, and what our bodies are being asked to do, I will offer a range of modifications for each pose.

​All of my writing instruction emanates from a core belief that articulation-- be it storytelling, poetry, list-making, stream-of-consciousness scribbling--is an immensely helpful tool that can return us to the truth of our bodies, make sense of our complex selves, and free ourselves from the fictions underlying shame and fear.

Here are a few of the prompts we might venture together:

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• Write from the P.O.V. of a body part that you struggle to love. What does it want to share with you? What has it experienced, witnessed, wanted, feared?

• A) Write a poem about a time when you felt most connected to the "animal" in you; when you felt untamed. How old were you? What animal did you imagine you were? B) When did you first receive the message that this natural version of you might not be acceptable? Tell me that story.

• Recall a time when you said "yes" to something that you (or a big part of you) didn't really want. Retell that complicated experience. Let each part of you have the pen for a minute. Who said yes? Who said no? Let them share their perspectives. Then rewrite. Write the outcome that you wish you could have had; the decision you wish you could have made. Experience your "no" now, in your body, and on the page. 

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I believe our bodies, and our bodies of words have a lot to teach one another (and that maybe they're not so separate after all!) Let's listen, let's write, let's move!