Dear Reader,

I hope you had a good weekend! I myself am back from a lovely week away with my family. These are unusual times, and I'm writing with two messages.

First: If you live in the US and are concerned about the direction this country is going, call the Senate--the Reconciliation Bill is being debated as I write. Call your senators and say you don't want to further fund billionaire tax breaks and ICE while Medicaid and clean energy are being cut! According to Senator Warren, there are ten senators in particular to call. Hit reply to this email and I can email you a list of those names and numbers. But wherever you are, it's good to call your senators and let them know how you're feeling!

Second, I want to invite you to join me for an immersive in-person retreat this coming fall at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. There is something truly transformative about blocking off time and gathering together in person for an experience where you go deep into an area of focus and creation with support and community. We need to continue to support our nervous systems, our creative vision, and be together-- especially in these times.

I would absolutely love to see you there!

Presence and Vision Poetry Retreat: September 28th-October 3rd

From personal crises such as illness and loss, to the global climate crisis, threats to democracy, and war, we exist in a suffering world. This poetry workshop will give you creative tools to meet your life with greater openness, to embrace both pain and joy, and to find your own powerful voice amidst it all. Come immerse yourself in the restorative power of poetry. We'll be focusing on how poetry brings both greater presence and vision, and you'll leave with a renewed sense of connection and purpose—and a body of new poetry,

Nadia Colburn and Holly Wren Spaulding, two beloved teachers and acclaimed poets, together have more than 40 years of experience as writers, meditators, and activists. We’ll guide participants in close readings of work by poets such as Joy Harjo, Rainer Maria Rilke, Audre Lorde, and Mary Oliver to fill our creative well with rich language. We’ll share our own work and inside tips from lives in writing. And we’ll offer prompts paired with improvisation, meditation, and embodied practices, including yoga and movement, so that you create not only from the head, but from a place of integration and insight.

The majority of our time together will be spent in interactive activities: in meditation, gentle movement, writing, sharing, and discussion. Together, we will enjoy the connection, presence, consolation, and healing powers of poetry.

The workshop is appropriate for all levels, and no extra course materials are necessary. Poets, secret poets, memoir writers, personal essayists, therapists, healers, activists, earth-workers, and teachers will be at home in this retreat. Go home with greater awareness, deeper understanding, new skills and techniques as a writer, and a revitalized sense of creativity and agency that you can incorporate into your personal practice or share with students and clients.

Students will learn about and experience:

• The psycho-spiritual-emotional benefits of writing as a contemplative practice
• The transformative power of writing about and through our experience of being alive at this time in your unique life and in human history
• Techniques to come out of overwhelm and channel experience, emotion, and vision onto the page
• How our private vulnerabilities, traumas, and questions can enrich our creative work, creating connections with others
• Creative conversations and community as an antidote to isolation, loneliness, and political/ climate anxiety
• How movement can help us relax and find our center and strength, and the power of pairing movement and writing
• How writing poetry cultivates mindfulness, presence, and greater engagement.
• The mystical and social benefits of poetry as a form of vision
• The therapeutic value of listening deeply
• How a writing practice revives our mind, senses, and agency
• The freedom and depth of extended time devoted to writing
• The joy and nourishment of supportive, in-person community

Students will bring home:

• Re-found passion for writing and their own voice and vision
• New tools for greater presence and awareness
• Creative writing techniques: how to begin, how to keep going, what to do with early drafts to make them more impactful, revision techniques, and ways to come into greater insight and power on the page
• Deeper understanding of the mental and physiological benefits of a writing practice
• Techniques for entering the creative trance, encouraging flow
• The felt-experience of deep relaxation and creative flow
• Multiple pieces of new writing
• A new community of writer friends

Audience: The workshop is appropriate for: All levels. Poets, secret poets, memoir writers, personal essayists, therapists, healers, activists, earth-workers, and teachers will be at home in this retreat.

Participants learn through hands-on experience, group discussion, free-writing, brief lectures. The majority of our time together will be experiential.

Course materials (readings) will be provided by the instructors. Students should bring notebooks and writing utensils. We will encourage students to leave their devices outside the classroom in favor of an analog experience.

About Omega: Omega is a beautiful retreat center in Rhinebeck, New York, with lovely grounds for walking, daily yoga and movement classes included, delicious food, and more. Come relax in a community designed to cultivate wellbeing. With an eye to social justice and sustainability, Omega is a place where connection, beauty, and mindfulness are cultivated.

A note on the price: The price is all-inclusive.

Here's what some people said about last year's retreat:

Reach out with any questions at all. And of course, please share this with any friends who might be interested.

with love,
Nadia

PS: Again, see more and register for the retreat here.

PPS: Hit "reply" to this email if you want a list of the 10 senators who might lean to a no vote.