unlock the power of storytelling

 

~Burlington, VT~

💜

 

Last week, I enjoyed the privilege of attending the fourth annual conference on narrative medicine at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA. This year the conference was reimagined and renamed "Narrative Healing~Unlock the Power of Storytelling." The program was more experiential this year, focusing on practices that generate stories, facilitate storytelling, and promote healing.

 

Buddhist teacher and author, Ethan Nichtern, taught us that storytelling is a meditative process, and that meditation is a creative and generative practice.





 

 

Ethan Nichtern, a senior Buddhist teacher primarily trained in the Shambhala tradition, is the author of The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path, which made multiple lists of the best books of 2015, and has recently published The Dharma of The Princess Bride: What the

Coolest Fairy Tale of Our Time Can Teach Us About Buddhism and Relationships.







Activist and publisher, Jamia Wilson, spoke about owning our authentic story, and connecting with one another for universal good.



 

Jamia Wilson is the executive director and publisher of the Feminist Press. She is the author of Young, Gifted, and Black and Step Into Your Power, coauthor of Road Map for Revolutionaries, and wrote the introduction and oral history to Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World. She is the recipient of the 2018 NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumnae Award, the Planned Parenthood Southeast "Legend in the Making" award, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Essence, Rookie, Refinery29, CNN, the Washington Post, Elle, and more.

 

 

Communications coach, Leah Bonvissuto, taught us about listening to our authentic voice and the embodiment of language. She challenged us to think in terms of the story our bodies are trying to tell us, and how to communicate it to others.





 

 

Leah Bonvissuto is a Communication Coach + Founder of PresentVoices, where she helps professionals communicate consciously and be powerfully present when speaking. She builds on her experience as an award-winning theater director to help leaders and teams at LinkedIn, Facebook, Bank of America, Indivisible, AIG, PayPal, among others, improve executive presence, defuse public speaking nerves, and advocate for themselves in the workplace. Leah is passionate about helping her clients speak with conviction and without apology. Leah coaches professionals one-on-one, designs custom workshops for teams at corporations and speaks about communication whenever possible. She pulls from the worlds of theater, mindfulness and movement to help people feel confident and in control of their communication.

 

 

Poet and teacher, Holly Wren Spaulding, introduced us to the healing and transformative power of poetry.

 



 

Holly Wren Spaulding is the founder of PoetryForge, where she empowers writers to explore the fullness of their humanity through the practice of poetry. A passionate teaching artist, collaborator, and editor, she works across disciplines to expand the definition of what it means to be a poet in the world. In 2018, the National Endowment for the Arts supported her role in the conception of a residency entitled the Long Memory Project. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness, Poetry Northwest, The Ecologist and in Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction, among other places. She is author of If August, Pilgrim, and The Grass Impossibly, and is a member of the creative writing faculty at Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she began her education more than 30 years ago.

g’s poems, articles

And, finally, Lisa Weinert, founder of the Narrative Healing program at Kripalu and dedicated yoga instructor, introduced us to a restorative yoga practice, and shared writing prompts that connected us with our authentic story, and with one another.





 

Lisa Weinert, RYT 200, is passionate about powerful voices and the potential for storytelling to heal and transform lives. She has worked with authors as a publicist, editor, and agent for 15 years, and is the curator of the Narrative Healing program at Kripalu. She is committed to empowering authors with the tools to create and launch their work. Lisa established an online course called the Age of the Storyteller with the Authors Guild, teaches a publishing course at Wesleyan University, and offers literary book coaching to select clients.

*

 

If there is something in your past that emerges again and again and brings you to sorrow, anger, remorse, or shame, it may hold the story you need to tell. If you keep tucking it away, out of sight and mind, this might be the time to summon it, embrace it, and then, send it out. Ask yourself, "Who will benefit from hearing my story?" Then, tell it.

 

"Start where you are.

Use what you have.

Do what you can."

~Arthur Ashe~

 

 

And, remember: The next Narrative Healing conference is less than a year away.





jan