Your Voice Is a Garden
A two-part embodied writing series in Portland, Maine.
Session I: Discovering January 4th - February 8th
Session II: Deepening March 1st - March 29th
“We often tell our students, ‘The future’s in your hands.’ But I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you live in, first.” - Ocean Vuong
In the busyness of life, we can sometimes forget the potency of our own voice.
When language resonates with a truth you can feel, you’re building bridges between inside and out. Connecting more deeply to the collective. Casting spells for a more inclusive future.
Honest naming plants seeds in the garden of your unfolding life.
Join us for Your Voice is a Garden, an immersive, two-part series to explore the organic richness of voice through embodied writing. Over each 5-week session, we’ll combine gentle movement and breath exercises with writing prompts and (optional) sharing in a small-group setting to tend to your voice, your creativity, and your inner unfolding.
Session I: Discovering January 4th - February 8th
Session II: Deepening March 1st - March 29th
Monday evenings, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m, Good Medicine Collective in Portland, Maine.
We’ll explore tending the writer’s voice as we would a garden. We’ll include seasons, light, soil, and hydration. We’ll make space for what what’s seeding, germinating, emerging, and composting. And we’ll celebrate the variety of approaches, rhythms, and needs that create spaces of both nourishment and rest.
What might germinate in the soil of our collective becoming? What histories might settle differently once fully included? What futures are waiting to be named?
Register for one or both sessions:
In Session I: Discovering, we explore voice through the body, inviting practices that support going inward, resourcing, and range. We listen for the richness inside engaged spaciousness.
In Session II: Deepening, we play in the subtle energetics of earliest spring, listening for how our voice moves and grows. We explore language as an empathic and dynamic field.
Throughout, we’ll bring playfulness, curiosity, and deep creativity to our explorations. Our approach will be gentle and expansive, taking inspiration from poets, writers, musicians, children, the natural world, body sites, seasons, fascia, bones, and the numinous. We’ll let our breath and body guide our writing, discovering new connections, and making space for intuition, mystery, and creative impulse.
Course title inspired by Maria Popova’s article, Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Sound Visualizations.
The course is for those who:
“the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own”
Want to step more fully into their lives and bodies
Appreciate spacious witness and collective support
Seek support and tools for tending their attention
Are interested in inhabiting their creativity with more self-trust and ease
Want to commit more fully to their own writing, embodiment, and inner rhythms
The course supports you to:
Strengthen your voice & writing in a community of care
Develop creativity and embodied writing practices
Discover new portals for connecting to attention
Become more familiar with your own rhythms & resources
Connect to your own creativity, intuition, & even joy
Learn body-specific exercises to unwind your own stuck places
Deepen your writing practice with ease and authenticity
Our beautiful meeting space at Good Medicine Collective.
Your Voice is a Garden includes:
Weekly Embodied Writing classes: In depth exercises and evocative writing prompts along with (optional) sharing in the context of a small, supportive group
Gentle, guided movement and breath exercises from a bodyworker with deep experience in anatomy, myofascial technique, and somatic approaches to the nervous system
Rich catalogue of poetry, music, body techniques, and other resources to keep you inspired and support your own explorations
A supportive, kind, & local community of fellow writers, movers, and empaths
Snacks & tea because… nourishment is essential ;)
Facilitator
Photo: Molly Haley
I’m Johanna
a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, a teacher, a writer, an audio producer, and someone who knows autoimmune disease and the benefits of creative practice. I facilitate spaces where we can listen to what our bodies are actually saying in order to inhabit ourselves more fully. I believe in abundant permission, reverence, and the vitality of creativity. Read more.
I’m also the author of Write Yourself Home, a creative guide to living well is the body you have through gentle movement and embodied writing practice. Published by North Atlantic Books.
Following the Creative Breath will be hosted and assisted by the wonderful Lara Turnure, a gifted bodyworker, yoga teacher, educator, and friend!
Course Themes
Each week we’ll be guided by themes to deepen our exploration through somatic writing. We’ll also leave room for fluidity in our structure - following the group’s evolution and interests.
Session I: Discovering
Jan. 4: Warm ups. Building somatic tools for resource and voice.
Jan. 11: Roots. Lineages & ancestries.
Jan. 18: MLK Day. No class.
Jan. 25: Verse / Chorus / Verse. Creating rhythms and phrases.
Feb. 1: Earth song. Working with seasons, nature, timing and the fascia to discern surface and dropping in.
Feb. 8: Succession planting. What seeds do we tuck into the soil of our becoming? What songs do we sing? Letting sensitivity & intuition nourish.
Session II: Deepening
Mar. 1: Luftpause / fallow. Attending to the alchemy of body & language. Engaging space.
Mar. 8: Cadence. Exploring bodied awareness beneath language.
Mar. 15: Resonance. Exploring communion without crowding. Focal points, peripheries, and the wild in between.
Mar. 22: Companion planting. Feeling the dynamic between what is and what could be.
Mar. 29: Harvest song. Following curiosity, beauty, & intuition. Incubating new ways of moving / being / attending.
“Utterance is magic. Words do have power. Names have power. Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
How it works
Your Voice is a Garden is a two-part immersive course to explore potency through embodiment and writing. Each session includes 5 workshops; you’re welcome to register for one or both.
Schedule.
Session I: Discovering meets Mondays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the following dates: January 4th, January 11th, January 25th, February 1st, February 8th. Please note we won’t be meeting on MLK day (January 18th)
Session II: Deepening meets Mondays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the following dates: March 1st, March 8th, March 15th, March 22nd, March 29th.
Location. We’ll meet in the beautiful meeting space upstairs at Good Medicine Collective located at 231 York Street in Portland, Maine. In the event of icy winter weather we’ll meet online.
Cost. Sessions I & II, 10 weeks: $925. Early bird price until Dec. 10th $875
Single 5-week session: $485. Early bird price until Dec. 10th $450
Payment plans are available. $200 deposit to register. In addition, limited scholarships are available for marginalized folx and those in great financial need. Please contact me if you’d like to learn about scholarships or donate to make this option more widely available to others.
Your Voice is a Garden is limited to a small group of 8-10 participants.
Questions & Answers
Are meetings recorded?
Nope! This is a live, in-person class. Please check your calendar to make sure you can join for most (hopefully, all!) meetings. If you need to miss a class, I’m happy to share class sequence and materials afterwards.
What if I don’t identify as a writer?
Identifying as a writer is no prerequisite! Many (many!) of us wrestle with this fraught designation. If writing is an interesting or occasional outlet, if you like to play with words, or are simply open to trying - that’s perfect :-)
I have another question - where can I find the answer?
Please be in touch directly via the contact page.