💌 I got permission to share my MFA sessions with you!
Dearest camerados,
This is an old picture I had the Zen Master take of me when I was meditating on the subway in NYC so I could show students that you really can meditate anywhere. It's actually one of my favorite places to meditate, because you can use sound as your anchor and there is so much to hear when you don't have your earbuds in.Â
For the past term, I've been teaching a weekly drop-in for the MFA students in the creative writing program I teach in at Southern New Hampshire University. I love these students because our student population is filled with adult learners who are going for it with their writing while being single parents, caretaking, working full time, and any number of challenges. We have lots of veterans, writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, writers who are in their second half of life and know it's never too late to do what you love.
When my students show up for meditation, it means a lot, because they are SO busy. They aren't undergrads with parental support, shuffling in because they had some time to kill. (I was never that undergrad, but I knew many like that!).
These are people who are committed to waking up to their life for themselves, their writing, and their communities.Â
We recorded each 30-minute session and when I asked our dean if I could share these with all of you, he gave me the OK. Joy!Â
You now have 14 drop-ins at your disposal. Seven hours of various modalities of meditation designed for writers.
Some nice Q+A, and a bit of dot-connecting from me. I chose each meditation we did with care for writers and their mental health and creativity. I hope you receive good benefit from this! Please feel free to share with your writer friends. I recommend downloading these if you can because I don't control the Google Drive, so I have no idea how long they'll be available in this context.Â
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If you find you'd like 1:1 mindfulness support for your writing practice, process, flow, and just life in general, you can always book some Breakthrough calls with me. I love supporting in this way because we get to go really deep with how mindfulness can best support you individually.Â
For those of you wondering about my regular mindfulness immersion class...I just wasn't able to make it work this year with the move and getting ready for grad school. I'm not sure when I'll be able to have a full mindfulness course again, but I'll send out a survey sometime in the fall to see if people want a weekend workshop. Maybe to build off of the work in these sessions? I could do one for beginners and one for experienced folks. Email me if that sounds good to you, too.Â
In the meantime, don't forget you have the Mindfulness for Writers handbook on the portal and here are some of my resources for mindfulness on my website. The blog has a lot, too.Â
Here's to deep breaths and ease,
P.S.
If you're looking for a good starter guide for mindfulness with an emphasis on non-formal meditation practices, you'll love this! Diana is a wonderful teacher and she's the director of UCLA's Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, where I'm currently receiving another meditation facilitator certification. I've learned so much from her tender relationship to paying attention and having compassion for one's self. This is organized into little bits, too, so if you liked my last newsletter on devotionals, this could be a good one for that purpose, as well.Â