Poetry & Mindfulness Uplift – 4 sessions for the new year 2024

A positive creative boost!

This new year rejuvenate your writing & yourself with four short 45min sessions of poetry and mindfulness once a week over 4 weeks.

Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress and improve well-being, clarity, happiness, memory, focus AND creativity. It can bring more depth of awareness, emotion, empathy, experience, senses, detail and truth into your writing.

These uplifting sessions are a fresh start to the day in the UK, or a wind down if you are in Australia nearing the end of the day.

Each session focuses on a theme related to well being theme, with a prompt or two for writing (one for journal writing and one for a more creative leap).

Writing with mindfulness gives your writing a refreshing edge.

It boosts my day – I have more perspective and ease. I feel lighter and more content in my own skin. Gail

I so loved your mindfulness and poetry sessions – they bring me to a place of contentment and quiet creativity. Virginia Gilmour

WHO is it for?

Those interested in mindfulness and/or poetry or writing. Those who want to explore techniques to recharge their wellbeing and creativity. You don’t have to be writer or poet to enjoy the sessions. Alternatively, you maybe a writer wanting to explore the effect of mindfulness on your writing (it surprised me how it expanded my creative expression).

FOUR DATES

Tuesdays 16th, 23rd, 30th January & 6th February. 

Join at any time.

How it will work 

These sessions are 30mins long , followed by an additional 15mins of writing together, thus 45mins in total (it is recommended, but you don’t have to stay for the 15mins of writing time at the end).

For those who can stay longer during the second and last session on 23rd Jan & 6th Feb, we’ll share our reflections and writing (approx. 1hour 15mins in total for this session), again this is not essential.

For example, if you are in the UK, we login at 7.55am; there’s a session of mindfulness with poetry at 8-8.30am (and the meeting room closes shortly after 8am), then at 8.30- 8.45 we are writing together with prompts for journal writing and/or creative writing (optional). On the first and last sessions, we stay on a little longer to share reflections and writing if you would like to.

START TIME

Login time (log in 5mins before we start)  7.55am UK Time 

3.55pm Western Australia //  6.55pm Sydney  // 5.55pm Adelaide & Darwin // 4.55pm Brisbane  (our clocks have changed, so this time of year our sessions are a little earlier for the Aussies)

A useful link for checking other timezones: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Please arrive early to settle in. The meeting room opens 5 mins before we start, and it closes just after we begin so as not to interrupt our peaceful mindfulness.

Get really comfy (you are welcome to come in your PJs) and bring a journal for your writing.

COST

£GBP40 for four sessions  OR try one session for only £GBP12

(I use Stripe, a fairly cost effective currency converter.)

Why Mindfulness?

Research has shown that the brain actually changes in response to regular mindfulness practice. Mindfulness can reduce stress and physical pain, and boost happiness, creativity, memory and concentration. Mindfulness is recommended by the NHS.

It enriches and deepens your writing practice, and can spark new poems.

Mindfulness is a therapeutic technique that can help you manage and prevent feelings of depression, stress, anxiety, or discontent. It enables anyone who practices it to live a more attentive, appreciative and vibrant life. The University of Oxford, Mindfulness Centre.

About Cath Drake

Cath is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer living in London. She teaches poetry, creative writing and mindfulness. She has practiced meditation and mindfulness for over twenty years in Australia and UK. She’s an active member of London Buddhist Centre where she set up monthly mindfulness and social action group. Cath trained with Breathworks mindfulness teacher training.

If this event sells out, contact me using this form TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITING LIST – I often do draw on the waiting list. Include the name of the workshop.

NOTE – if you book in the UK night time and I’m asleep I will pick up your booking and send you a login before it starts! Always check your spam for emails too.

What participants say…

I loved these sessions. It was a little oasis of calm in a busy, too active life; time to switch off and be still… to be a human being rather than a human doer. I also enjoyed the discipline of a weekly date with the stimulus to write and with just enough input to set us going.  Moira Brimacombe

A really magical hour each week of peace and reflection … such a pleasure to do it with others too. I try to remember to give myself a few moments and revisit the Tuesday session in miniature during the rest of the day and at other times during the week… Miranda Lewis

I’ve got so much out of these sessions; I’m really grateful… so gentle and inspiring. The mindfulness and the poems are perfect together. Cath is so skilled at leading these sessions… and is very skillful at holding the space, so it doesn’t feel like an online meeting and much more like a real community. Naomi Woddis

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