Nature + Writing = Intuitive EcoWriting

Are you a writer?
Do you want to be a writer?

Everyone has access to creative channels, and anyone interested in writing can be a writer.

I have been a writing instructor since I taught my first community class in the winter of 2000 in the darkness of a long Alaskan night. My small and enthusiastic group of students were open minded and happy to try all my crazy ideas. I demonstrated the idea of “show don’t tell” by having partners make emotional faces while the other described it without naming the emotion. We wrote poems by circling every 5^th word and listing them on half a page. We learned dialogue by eavesdropping. There was a playfulness to teaching craft in my early days.

I loved it so much that I returned to school for my MFA in writing. There I gained even more depth and nuances around teaching the craft of writing and I was able to explore my own writing style and voice, but only after a lot of editing and feedback from teachers and peers. With my MFA, I taught at colleges, writing programs and conferences all over the country. I proudly published two books, a novella and poetry chapbook. I ran writing programs and coached aspiring writers.

My life trajectory began to shift in my late forties. Midlife transitions (AKA crises) are the real deal. I always thought they were just for cis white men who needed to buy a sports car or have an affair to prove they were still young. But actually, when I reached a certain age, the vision forward looked nothing like it did in my twenties of thirties. I had gained so much more experience and my outlook shifted. I could suddenly see the end of my years.

As the writer Anais Nin said, “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” And for me, this meant I was ready to shift gears. I didn’t know what that meant though. So, I started exploring.

I had been a yoga instructor since 2015 and in 2020, I became certified in yoga nidra, a yoga technique that drops you into deep trance states, and my journey began to unfold. From there, I became certified in Reiki 1 and 2 with an excellent teacher. I learned energy work with another teacher who taught me to open intuitive channels and learn methods of working with energy and trance for states of healing myself and others.

At the same time, the pandemic hit, and we moved off grid to a remote mesa neighborhood on the west side of the Taos Gorge. I also started teaching nature writing classes safely outdoors. Yet, I found that I no longer wanted to teach the way that I used to. I didn’t care so much anymore about “the craft of writing” dialogue, narrative arcs, character development, etc. I cared about being creative channels, communing with nature, and exploring imaginal realms. That’s how Intuitive EcoWriting came to be.

I had students visit me from all over the country to take my little class in the park, often one-on-one. Often, they were on their own spiritual journeys that somehow led them to Taos and to me. The 5-star reviews filled my heart, and I kept going, encouraged.

Wanting to continue my evolution, I became certified as a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide. I discovered that much of what I learned in my training program, I was already practicing in my nature writing classes. Currently, I am expanding on forest bathing by adding journaling, an experience I call Rewild Your Words.

And now I’ve decided to take Intuitive EcoWriting online. Not everyone can come to Taos for one-on-one sessions with me, but everyone can practice Intuitive EcoWriting. The great thing about it is that anyone can do it. It is a way to channel the muse directly without your blocks getting in the way. No inner critic, no 8^th grade English teacher that implied your poem was mediocre with that C+ grade, nor parent who told you that you weren’t creative. We surpass all of them through meditation and embodied writing.

We learn stuff too. Lessons include how to write with vivid detail, how to mine your memories for stories, how to use figurative language and how to access the imaginal realm for more inspiration.

Importantly, Intuitive EcoWriting bring you into a closer and reciprocal relationship with the animate natural world while showing you a path to poetic self-expression at the same time.

Nature is in a constant state of creation at every moment and since you are nature, you can be too.

This is a 5-week asynchronous online course that begins on July 10^th. For the premier of this course online, I am offering: 5 VIRTUAL WRITING SHARES on Tuesdays, July 18th and 25th, August 1st, 8th and 15th from 4:30 to 6:00PM, US Mountain Standard Time. Join at any time during these five weeks to join the live online writing shares. This is an opportunity for students to share their work with others. This is especially helpful for students who are shy about reading their work to have a safe container in which to try it. This is not a requirement of the course and there is no extra cost.

I can’t wait to hear what you write!