· Align ·
Mindful Embodied Writers Collective
Your home for writing—and more
Here at Align, we believe that your story and your voice matter, that good inner work leads to better work on the page, that community makes us stronger, and that our truth needs to be written.
I'm Nadia, and I'm so excited to invite you to this wonderful community!
Who is it for?
We are open to professional writers and beginning writers–and everyone in between. Here we are interested in both the craft and process of writing, in both the discoveries that happen through writing and writing as art on the page. We are interested in using writing as a means of exploration and transformation both personally and socially.
FOR: poets, memoir writers, fiction writers, screenwriters, people who journal, copywriters. This is a community for yogis and meditators, healers and teachers, lawyers and business people, parents and retirees.
The Align Collective is for writers who want to live and create with more power and joy.
The Goals of Align are for writers across genres and across skill levels to:
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Go from feeling isolated in your writing life to feeling supported by a teacher and a community.
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Go from feeling stuck to feeling inspired and excited by your writing life.
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Have a safe and grounded writing home where you feel centered as you’re working on your projects.
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Have a community where you are empowered to step into your full, authentic, most courageous voice.
The ongoing Align Collective is there for you as you work through the material in my online courses or as you work on your own writing projects.
It's a place to reconnect with yourself and with other writers, to check in with me, Nadia, for coaching and inspiring live sessions, and to gather for communal writing sessions.
It's the place to keep you going and energized as a writer—and as a creative, mindful, alive person living in these times.
Connect with community
We have no need for the myth of the solitary genius writer, struggling with his work. We know from countless scientific studies that we thrive in community, that we need support and companionship, that we also benefit from giving support and companionship, and the more we are immersed in community, the more we take on new healthy habits and mindsets.
This is a space to find and connect with friends and to be in a group together.
- Share your work, get feedback, and most importantly, be fed by a group of thoughtful, heart-centered, writers making meaning and beauty.
- In the 24/7 online space, the live sessions and in the breakout rooms, that happen three times a month, you will find a community of mindful writers around the world to inspire and support you and who you will in turn support and inspire. These will become friends for the long term; you’ll find writing partners and perhaps meet with people in your area.
Unlike the time-limited/temporary community that is formed in a class, Align is a space for ongoing, year-round community!
Grow as a writer and person
In this space, you will have the support to step into your full voice as a writer, take risks, get spot coaching, and connect with others. This community space supplements the online classes that I, Nadia, also offer, and is a place to share work and practice with the techniques offered there.
- Since my courses come with lifetime access, you can go through them (or back through them again!) at your own pace and continue to connect with me and the community for ongoing support, to answer questions, practice new skills with, share work, and more.
- I will also be offering live coaching, feedback, and discounted classes just for community members (see more below).
Tap into your deep knowing and wellbeing
We can’t tap into that knowing and wellbeing unless we have supports. This is a place that will encourage you to step into your biggest self, your best writing and deepest knowing.
Hone your work
Get new tools/skills/guidance to bring to your writing/creative practice, ask for support and get coaching, lessons, close readings, and more.
Get accountability
We’ll have spaces to share writing schedule for the week, get accountability and, each month, we’ll come together live and write as a community. Don’t write in a vacuum. With this community you’ll be part of a group of writers to keep you on track with your goals.
Find your purpose and fulfillment
If your creative life is not fulfilled, everything else in your life will feel dull. This is your writing home, your safe place to be and to explore, to create and to connect.
Align gives you the tools and support to unlock the full power of your creative vision.
What’s included:
24/7 online community
Whatever time zone you are in, whatever your schedule, connect with the online community, share work, comment on other work, post questions, ask for feedback, get accountability, and more!
We use the Circle platform, which is easy to use and to connect with a community of mindful writers around the world!
2x per month 75-90 minute: Live Teaching/ Coaching Session with Nadia
Each session will have a different theme to focus our attention on one aspect of our writing and lives. At the end of each session, there is time for (optional) small break-out rooms to connect more deeply with community members.
In these sessions Nadia will:
✦ Lead writers in close readings (focused on both content and craft) of inspiring work to learn from some of the world’s best writers
✦ Offer a meditation and/ or embodied practice and writing prompt based on the theme and give participants time to write.
✦ Offer spot coaching with one to three group members (10 minutes each) where members get and can witness more in-depth coaching around any writing issues that come up.
✦ Answer community questions.
✦Offer Breakout Rooms where you can connect with other members of the community live.
The value of each of these group sessions is $150, and one-on-one coaching with Nadia starts at roughly $400 per hour so being a member of Align is the most economical way to get consistent coaching with Nadia.
1x per month 75-90 minutes: Group writing time
Join Nadia and other community members for a time to write together. Nadia will offer meditation/ embodied practices and some guidelines. Come with a prompt from a course or a writing project and work in community. At the end of each session, there is time for (optional) small break-out rooms to connect more deeply with community members.
Discounts and Exclusive Opportunities
There will be discounts and exclusive opportunities for members of Align, including discounts on classes, invitations to events with outside experts, writers, publishers, and more.
Your investment:
Total value: $600+ per month.
Your price: $93 per month
Join with this price and be guaranteed this price for the next three years.
Cancel any time
"Nadia’s teachings helped me find a renewed joy in writing. I feel...freer, and my work is much more powerful as a result.”
-Christine Poreba, poet and teacher
Inside of you is a precious gift:
your voice and creative imagination. Just as a bird sings, so you are meant to sing, to create.
Why is it called Align: Mindful Embodied Writers Collective?
What do we mean by Align? To align is to bring together mind, body and spirit; it’s to bring together what we say and how we live; it’s to bring together the head and the heart, the personal and the social, the local and the global.
Like light that shines unobstructed when it is in alignment, like the chakra system or the spine that channels our energy through our body and connects us to breath and spirit, our writing and our life flows best when our energy is integrated.
As Gandhi says, “Happiness is when what I think, what I say and what I do are in harmony.”
When we align, our writing – and living – can come through us with greater purpose and power.
As mindful writers, we are conscious of the connection between our words and our thoughts, our words and our actions, and are interested in the relationship between all things. This is a spiritual practice for many of us–across traditions, beyond tradition.
As embodied writers, we write not from the head alone, but also from the wisdom of the body. We tap into the insights of the embodied world, not just our own physical bodies, but also the body of the earth.
As writers, we use language to make meaning, to sing, to communicate, to reach across chasms, to claim our humanness, to explore and discover, to write pieces that we ourselves would love to read.
As a collective, we are a community working together for a common goal: that of uplifting one another and the work we do as writers and as creative humans on our one planet.
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This is a safe, supportive, inspiring space.
We are woman-focused – everyone is welcome, but we want to be sure to give women space to tell their full stories after millennia of living in a male-centered culture.
We are a place to shine light on the secrets that bind and narrow us, a safe place to shift the paradigm, a safe place to translate the unsaid into language, to understand, to connect, and to transform.
We are interested in light that sparkles, dazzles, and delights, in tapping into our deep knowing and insights and trusting our voices.
We are also here to hold space for the darkness, the shadows; this is a safe place to grieve, to bemoan and to express our full range of emotion, for we are also part of the night that also holds us and is part of the natural cycle.
We are here for one another throughout our cycles and transformations, at every stage of life.
Join Align now
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How to use the space and resources:
Some things we will explore together:
How to bring mindfulness and writing together.
New skills as writers
How to set up and maintain aligned writing practices
How to start, revise, and finish our work
How to cultivate joy in the writing process and/or how to find/access our “creative flow”
How to quiet the inner critic and bring the spirit of curiosity to the writing/revision process
How to go about sharing our work and the publication process
Writing in these unusual times
Writing as a spiritual practice
Writing as a healing practice
Writing as self-discovery
Writing with the wisdom of the earth
Writing to come into courage
Writing to step into greater joy
Writing to assert values that disrupt oppression, injustice and inequality
...and more!
What's encouraged in Align?
This is a space where you can experiment, make mistakes, push yourself, rest, be inspired, write your best work—and simply be you!
In this space we believe in respect and compassion.
These are volatile, unprecedented times, and we need safe, supportive communities more than ever! Let Align be your writing home, the place you return to for refuge and solace, for companionship and delight.
Finding our place in this world as writers - and as people - is never a matter of "fitting in," but rather of coming to inhabit our fullest selves.
Hi, I'm Nadia Colburn.
I’m the author of two books of poetry, The High Shelf (2019), and I Say the Sky, winner of the 2024 American Bookfest Book Awards for Best Poetry Book: General and Best Poetry Book: Nature. My poetry and creative nonfiction have been widely published in more than eighty national publications, including The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Spirituality & Health, Lion’s Roar, Kenyon Review, The Sun, and The Yale Review.
I hold a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University and a B.A. from Harvard. I’m also a certified yoga teacher and a serious student in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Tradition. I’ve been a professor at MIT, Lesley, and Stonehill College, and I’m currently the writer-in-residence at Northeastern's Center For Spirituality, Dialogue and Service.
As the founder of the Align Your Story Writing School, I’ve worked with thousands of students as a writing teacher, developmental writing and book coach, and life coach. My unique approach to teaching writing brings together the best of craft and process, and integrates mind, body and spirit. My programs often bring together meditation, yoga and writing and explore how writing can be a form of both personal and social transformation.
I’m passionate about helping my students achieve their full creative potential, freedom, and empowerment. It’s my belief that craft and healing go hand in hand, that art is a human birthright and a spiritual medium, and that in today’s world, we need strong, insightful voices that can guide us forward with truth, compassion, and a greater sense of possibility and connection. It’s my great delight to help my students write their best work and unlock their full creative voice and vision.
Nadia Colburn
Love notes from Community members
"For a long time, trying to write felt like poking at a hot bruise of self-doubt and fear. Nadia’s writing workshop... catalyzed a fundamental change in how I approach my writing, and now,
I write with enthusiasm and minimal anxiety...I'm now a coach helping other people write and achieve coherence. After all, the world needs creative people to align themselves more than ever these days; we are the superheroes the world needs.”
Simone Grace S.
"Nadia is a miracle worker. She has some magic alchemy whereby she merges yoga and breath, poetry and writing prompts. Her work brings me into my body, and help me create freewrites and fiction that surprise me every time. As I work on my novel... Nadia’s prompts keep me grounded in my body, where my deepest creative truth resides, every time."
May K.
"The encouragement and level of acceptance I felt from Nadia and the group allowed me to...deal with... unresolved trauma around being seen and heard. My authentic voice had been buried under all of this fear and was ready to come alive...I've being more and more honest about what I feel and what I know to be true for me and not twisting up my words on the page or preventing the words from coming out. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart, Nadia! You are an amazing teacher and I am so lucky to work with you...I'm in the process of finishing my poetry memoir - I'm doing things I only dreamed of doing - and you are
a huge part of the reason."
Tawona P.
"Nadia's course made me feel in every fiber of my body that a more holistic approach is the direction I want to go in with my writing. That this is what holds purpose and real resonance, and that is what interests me most...To not just sing from the neck up, but to use my whole body as a 'sound box' when writing. To look with compassion. To stay with the body and the breath when writing. To study deeply the work of the most skilled writers, and to have more faith in my own intuition and taste, to view them as guides."
Isa A.
"Since working with Nadia, I have been writing more consistently and deeply than before, but it’s not just that. Nadia’s approach is so much more than a writing workshop – it’s a new way of looking at life and art...
Nadia has built a supportive and loving community, and...you are welcomed inside with open arms.
The atmosphere...is safe and encouraging – no judgment, just appreciation for the magic and healing power of creativity. Through Nadia’s live calls and coaching, I found new confidence in my writing."
Robin R.
"Nadia created an atmosphere of respect in her class...This is SACRED work when it is done in the right space;
Nadia created that space. I credit Nadia for giving me the courage to write about and through my pain and fear.
Good writing teachers encourage true expression; that expression acknowledges pain and also leads to real self empowerment. Nadia Colburn is truly one of those very great teachers."
Pam B.
Frequently Asked Questions
The ongoing Align Collective is designed to support you as you work through the material in my online courses – Write From Your Center, Poetry of Attention, and Align Your Story, which all come with lifetime access, so you can go through them at your own pace (or come through them again) with support. My courses are places where I give more step-by-step guidance and practices.
The Collective is also a place to work on your own writing projects! (You do not need to be enrolled in one of my online courses to participate here, though I encourage you to also explore those courses)
The Align Collective is your writing home for support and inspiration, accountability and community.
Have a space and a community to turn to to keep you going and energized as a writer—and as a creative, mindful, alive person living in these times.
We’ll be offering the sessions on a variety of days and times in the hopes of meeting as many people’s schedules as possible. We try to offer the sessions at noon ET, 3:30pm ET and 6pm ET on the weekdays.
Members of this community live in different time zones around the world, and we want to accommodate as many of you as possible. We have students on every continent (except Antarctica :)), so it's impossible to match everyone's schedule.
If you can't make them live, don’t worry. Every session will be recorded so that you can watch it later on your own schedule, and you can always submit your questions in advance. Some students come to all the live sessions; some can't make any of them live or prefer to watch them as recordings. Whatever you do, you'll have a very rich experience…and there will be other ways to connect with the community.
The community space is open 24/7/365, so no matter where you live, you always have a way to connect with this community. :)
You do not need to share your writing with the group. You can choose only to come onto the live sessions—or watch the recordings. You can also use the community space to get accountability and support without sharing your writing.
Or, of course, you can share your writing and ask for the kind of feedback you want.
This community is very versatile. You get to decide what works for you.
Yes, you can cancel your monthly membership at any time by emailing me at nadia@nadiacolburn.com.
Once you sign up for the month, there are no refunds, but you can cancel and not be charged for the following month.
If you cancel, the founding members price will not be available again.
I'm here to support you. Send me an email at nadia@nadiacolburn.com
Join Align now. $600 value for only $93/month.
Enroll now and be guaranteed this price for the next three years.
Cancel anytime.
Already a member of Align? Access our community space in Circle at the button below:
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