What can the creative practices of writing and meditation teach us about intimacy? And how are they connected? How do we gain intimacy with ourselves and others, with all our experiences and emotions, with our impulses and needs, our innate desire for connection?

Breath, Heart, Story is a skill-development program: we brainstorm and practice together with a set of skills and tools for creative writing and meditation, both of which can easily apply into our everyday life - to feel and respond to life from a place of intimacy with ourself and others.

We will weave together these practices of creative expression: meditation, journaling, and creative writing - as vehicles to explore all emotions and experiences as honorable and to hold them with curiosity, compassion, and a sense of humor.

Each workshop is designed around an aspect of intimacy - generosity, resilience, love, gratitude, vulnerability, compassion, humor, the senses, the body. We will investigate these aspects on the cushion, the blank page, in our body and heart, and with each other. Inspired by this path of intimacy, we will devote some time to generate original writing.

Please bring a yoga mat, a blanket or cushion, and your medium for writing.

Instructors’ bios:

Wilhelm Engelbrecht is both a RYT 200 yoga instructor and meditation guide graduated from the inaugural class of the New School of Yogic Arts in 2016.Since then he has completed meditation courses by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and is studying for his 200 hour meditation teacher training with Lorin Roche. He is keenly interested in making the practice accessible for those who live in Boston by introducing small and simple techniques to help navigate the hectic city life. It is now his sincere desire to bring the benefits of meditation to anyone willing to sit.

considertodayboston@gmail.com

Marika Preziuso, PhD, is Associate Professor of World Literature and Writing at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is a RYT 200 yoga instructor, and a published poet. Her teaching is very informed by an understanding of cultural differences in the classroom, and she leads workshops on cross-cultural communication for art and writing educators (Grub Street, New England Conservatory, MassArt). When she is not teaching or writing, Marika mentors “blocked creatives” to unlock their creative potential through the practices of meditation, yoga, journaling, public speaking, and poetry.

www.marikapreziuso.com