Dear Editors,

 

Please consider this post for your next "Editors Picks":

 

Writing & Yoga Retreats: What are They? How do They Benefit Writers?

Imagine having the opportunity to dedicate a whole week to working exclusively on your manuscript, with daily guided writing workshops and yoga practice just outside your door, to be amongst other writers, and writing teachers who support your effort.  How to make this your reality?  You can sign up for a Writing & Yoga Retreat, they span the globe in place like:  Brazil, Costa Rica, England, Guatemala, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States. 

What are the benefits from attending this type of writing retreat?  These retreats aim to kindle your creative fire and liberate your authentic voice and deepest truths.  Writers need dedicated time to connect with the Muse, or to bring concentrated effort to complete a project  ̶  time that can be hard to come by in everyday life.  Everyone’s standards of composition are elevated and expanded in a community of writers. And getting outside of one’s everyday writing atmosphere can trigger new perspectives and imagination. A writing retreat combined with yoga offers an ideal space in which to concentrate on writing without interruptions and to help you relax into your work.

Writers often suffer from physical pain in the shoulders, neck, head, lower back, hips and eyes. This stress in the body can inhibit or block creativity. Yoga practice helps reverse and relieve bodily tension; when the body is eased, so are the tensions of the mind.

Yoga Benefits to the Writer:

• Open your chest, bring your shoulders back, loosen up your neck, and increase circulation to your head. Improve your posture after long days at the computer and reading
• Stretch your body and awaken your mind
• Open your hips, where creativity, emotions and creative expression often get trapped
• Learn to create and access the state that creativity likes to manifest into: A state of empowerment, focus, grounding, intuition, strength, compassion, staying power
• Learn to set intentions/goals for your writing and visualize/meditate on them
• Create balance, which will increase your ability to focus clearly
• Experience community
• Release your mind and body and open the space for ideas to flow

Participating in a writing retreat is a public declaration of being a writer and demonstrates your courage and willingness to test your ideas  ̶  honing, sharing, and readying them for the world.  A daily yoga practice aides the writing endeavor.

Writing & Yoga

Writing and Yoga are soul mates. Yoga reveals insights; Writing is the recorder. Yoga balances the rhythms of breath; Writing surfs breath through oceans of language. Yoga taps the unconscious mind; Writing transcribes the wisdom of the unconscious. Writing requires work; Yoga is the assistant. Writing is an offering to the world; Yoga eases the offering’s sacrifice. Writing is a solo act; Yoga provides community.

Stephanie Renée dos Santos is a fiction and freelance writer and yoga instructor.  She leads Writing & Yoga Retreats in Brazil and the United States. Next retreat is in Brazil, March 31-April 7, 2013.  Registration deadline January 15, 2013. For more information please visit:  www.stephaniereneedossantos.com or email stephaniereneedossantos@gmail.com.

 

 

Thank you so much for featuring my post, it was so nice to receive so much support from other She Writes Members.

Thank you so much! It all came out from my heart and I'm so glad it reached you! I really appreciate this :)

Thanks so much! I teach a hybrid composition class at UC Berkeley, and we discussed Carr's article. I sometimes write with my students, and they were working on a digital literacy narrative, which inspired this blog post. (I didn't exactly do the assignment, but I guess that's a teacher's prerogative :)

Hey, thanks for featuring my post. I really appreciate it. :)

Hey, this is the third time I have been a "Pick," and I am starting to get a swelled head! Thank you so very much. Things like this make me feel very proud, and very validated as a writer. xo molly

Thanks so much, Kate!

Thanks again for featuring my post!

Well thank you very much! I really do appreciate that.
Grinning ear to ear....

Thanks for the editor pick!

Hi Kate,

My thought when joining this website was, "I'm not a writer, I'm a blogger. I'm an artist who blogs. I'm not sure I belong in She Writes".

The Editor's Pick I just received means so much to me! It holds up a mirror that reflects, "If you write, you are a writer! But you must write & make it your business". I've been loving blogging so much that it has become my business. It has become my life & passion. Thank you for acknowledging that passion with your pick. It confirms that love for what you do is what matters & passion is a key component to success.

With love & appreciation,
A.

Thank you so much! A great start with you guys :)

Appreciate your picking I Am Not Perfect. I hope it will inspire more people to be ok with who they are ... "flaws" and all.

one small request -- my title was slightly altered (an "s" was added to "question"). can that be removed please?

what a fun surprise! i like being picked! thank you:)

Wow! Thanks so much for recognizing my post "Thinkful Wishing". Karma rocks!

What a lovely way to start the day! Thank you for choosing "The Ballerina" as one of the Editor's Picks this week. Besides the fact that it is a moment that will live in my soul forever, I posted it for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. May the The Ballerina continue her dance from soul to soul until a cure can be found~

Thanks for drawing attention to my work interviewing poetry contributors for The Fertile Source--I love the interview as a format, and Timothy Black has some powerful comments I'd love to share with other readers and writers.

And things have been very quiet for me on the publishing front with my own submissions, so I really appreciate the nod, and the sense of shared community here.

Thank you so very much for featuring my writing here on "Editors' Picks." What a thrill! And this is my second time! molly