"We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. The body the senses must conspire with the spirit--Expression is the act of the whole man that our speech may be vascular." --Henry David Thoreau, 1852

"For at least one or two hours a day, writers need to swim, walk, do yoga--anything to get into their bodies. Writers spend much too much time in their heads." --Tom Robbins, 1987 interview

Recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ellen Gilchrist brought her yoga teacher to a writers conference. Why? To emphasize that without yoga Gilchrist wouldn't be the writer she is. Yoga works with her writing. Like Thoreau and Robbins, Gilchrist knows that authentic writing is a whole experience, one that aligns intellect, imagination, emotion, memory, body, and breath. Thousands of writers in the United States and Europe--including Leslie Ullman (Yale Younger Poet Series Award Winner), Olga Broumas, Gayle Brandeis, Stanley Plumly--have discovered yoga's practical magic.

This work begins with a simple, yet profound principle: Yoga can deepen your writing process and enrich your writing style.  As a writer, you rely upon your intellect, imagination, emotions, and language facility, right?  The body contains and shapes all of these faculties.  Yoga heightens your awareness of your writing faculties. In essence, yoga is a way to explore how breath wedded with movement and concentration can unfold our unconscious.

Learn more about the Yoga As Muse workshops.

I took my first yoga class when I was nineteen, and I had little idea what I was doing. Still, it felt right. It took over another ten years, though, before yoga transformed my writing practice and profession. My skeptical inquiry into ancient yogic texts and into neuroscience and psychology have confirmed much of my experience as has my training in the Vanda Scaravelli Method with Michelle Andrei and Irene Beer, Jivamukti-inspired vinyasa with Debi DiPeso, and the principles of Anusara Yoga alignment with Joe Palese. I have traveled to Greece to study with Angela Farmer and Victor von Kooten and to Southern India to study with TKV Desikachar and his family of teachers at the Krishnamacarya Yoga Mandiram.   

Center to Page, LLC offers Yoga as Muse workshops, retreats, and courses. In these workshops, our discussions draw from writing, yoga philosophy & practice, and neuroscience; we study pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to inspire our own writing; and we integrate simple yoga sequences, breath work, and stimulating prompts into a whole writing process that moves us from the center to the page. This process inevitably leads to richer writing as we pay due attention to the soul of craft and to craft's challenges. In a safe atmosphere, writers can experiment and delve into their body of work. As Margaret Atwood notes in her book about writing Negotiating the Dead, most of this body like the journey of writing is dark. Yoga doesn't dispel this darkness; it helps you navigate it, perchance make love to it. 

Learn more about the WORKSHOPS & RETREATS, the Woodstock Events in Woodstock, NY, and COACHING & EDITING.