Get comfortable with not knowing, with play, experimentation, mistakes, with the ugly, the beautiful, and non judgement.

We will look closely at a wide variety of voices exploring a wide variety of contents to give you more freedom in your own range of expression.

Includes Mindful Exercises and Unlocking the Spine in Yoga

Studied Texts: Sapho, W.H.Auden, Anne Lamott, Natalie Golberg

In this module of the writing workshop for women, we will write from listening—and then we will practice listening to and reading our own work. In this module, we will practice finding a place of stillness and exploring where that takes our writing. We will read pieces that encourage us to go deep within ourselves.

Includes Mindful Exercise and Yoga of Stretching.

Studied texts include pieces by Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Rainer Maria Rillke

What we can learn from our shadow side so we can embrace our truest power? Sometimes we need to go into the difficult places before we can move forward. This module will give you the tools to approach resistance without fear and to move through it with curiosity and grace.

Meditation exercises and strengthening the lower chakras.

Studied texts include: Maxine Hong Kingston, Charles Bukowski, Rumi

The good, the bad, the funny, the ugly, the beautiful, all can be found in childhood. This module will give you the tools to connect with the source of your own power as a writer by reconnecting with your power as a child.

Meditation exercise and heart opening yoga

Reading includes texts by William Wordsworth, Virginia Woolf, Jacqueline Woodson

What have been unexpected moments of joy in your life? When have you had sustained periods of joy? Find your true voice, even if it is deeply sad or hurt or angry; there is joy in the creative act itself. This module will help you come into a more nuanced relationship with joy and bring it into your writing life in new ways.

Meditation, chanting and yoga to open your throat chakra 

Studied texts include: Leo Tolstoy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mary Oliver

In this module, you will experiment with revising, rewriting, re-seeing. Try on different hats: play, experiment, align. We won’t stress perfection, but will be open, curious, and diligent in the process of writing and revising our work so that it can be polished and shine on the page.

Meditation and yin yoga

Studied texts: Basho, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop

How do you narrate a story, whatever genre you're working in? Where do you start? What is significant? What do you put in and what do you keep out? What tone do you take? What images do you use?

In this module, we’ll put together the pieces in a variety of different ways and come into alignment so that we can write polished, finished pieces.

Meditation and yoga flow

Studied Texts: Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Walt Whitman, Hafiz

So how do you keep going? In this final module, you will have the tools to keep your writing practice going for as long as you like–perhaps your whole life. Full of inspiration and encouragement, this module will make you fall in love–if you haven’t already–with your own writing.

Meditation and heart opening yoga

Studied texts: Malcolm X, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Emily Dickinson

There are great benefits to online writing classes that in-person classes can't offer.

In this online course, you get more teaching material than could be delivered in in-person classes. You get not only writing instruction, but also meditation and yoga instruction.

You can take your time with the course and keep the materials for life, going deeper and deeper into them with time.

You can go through the course at your own leisure and on your own time-table.

You get to focus on your own work and not spend lots of energy on other student's writing. 

Students benefit from repeating the material in this course many times.

Like an in-person class, this online course also offers a community of supportive, dedicated writers—but you have ongoing, lifetime access to this online community of women writers around the world.

This course also offers direct access to Nadia in the Facebook group and live calls so that all your questions are answered.

While one of the benefits of a writing course can be the feedback from the teacher, that is only one benefit of a writing course–and sometimes that benefit has its shadow side.

In Align Your Story, students are often amazed at how much more free they feel in their writing. Even if they didn't feel "worried" about teacher feedback in the past, they realize that they've been accustomed to write for affirmation, for feedback, and judgment. 

This class, instead, will  encourage you to experiment and explore the limits of your writing, understanding, and voice. Students feel free to put things on the page they never would have written for a more traditional class. 

And at the same time, they become better readers, editors and witnesses of their own writing. They learn to listen to themselves and give themselves feedback more fully. 

The unique format of AYS, guides students to unlock their creativity and authenticity, connect mind, body and spirit, become better readers, editors, and writers. .

Students in AYS learn to become their own best and first witness. This is essential for our long term health as writers (and people). Even if we get feedback, we need to have the tools for how to receive feedback, what to take and what to let go of because in the end, we are always the best authority on our own work. 

Writers have told me that they have grown in this course more than they have in complete MFA programs because of all the tools they are given and the ways in which the course invites them to trust their own voice, develop it authentically, and get the skills to be their own best reader.

If you want to take this course as a private writing retreat, that is one option, but if you want support, there is lots of community and support. 

Students can also share their work in the supportive, active Facebook group, where I am also there reading and commenting. Students learn to ask for the kind of feedback they want--and to learn what they don't want. There is also time to share work in the breakout rooms on Zoom. 

Students have often formed writers groups and lifelong writing friendships with other women in the community, so while this course does not offer traditional teacher feedback, you will feel held and supported by the community. And I'm there every step of the way to answer questions and guide you through the course and journey. 

If you can make the live calls, that’s great. They will be offered at different times on different weeks to fit as many people’s schedule as possible. But if you can’t make the live sessions, don’t fret!

Everyone will get a recording of all the live sessions. You can email me your questions in advance and I’ll be sure to answer them in the session. 

You will also have access to the (optional) private Facebook group, where you can also reach out for support.

No new material will be offered in the live sessions. All the material for the course is housed online where you have lifetime access!

Yes! If you want to deepen and align your writing practice, this class is for you.

I find that experienced writers are often the people who most need this class–we need to get out of our heads and reconnect and re-integrate our writing with our hearts, bodies, and souls. We need to reconnect with our authentic purpose as a writer–writing not just for others, but for ourselves.

Often the most experienced writers have forgotten that it’s okay to be vulnerable in their writing. But the vulnerability hasn’t gone away–this is a place to explore that vulnerability with grace, compassion, wisdom, and humor. And ultimately to allow that vulnerability to become your greatest strength.

Absolutely! This class is perfect for novice writers. It will give you a step-by-step guide to get started. You don't need to know what you want to write about. Just follow the prompts, and they will guide you on a journey of discovery through different topics and genres. 

You never need to worry about being judged, and you have the support of a community and coaching calls if you have any questions.

While I want to support people of all genders and backgrounds, and in other places do,  (my other classes are all for people of any gender identification) I created Align Your Story as a sacred place where women could come out of hiding and tell their full truth in a safe, supportive community.

For millennia, women's voices have not been given the support or encouragement they deserve. AYS is a place where women come into the spotlight.

I also created a class for women because for so many women, as we begin to listen more deeply to our bodies, we often encounter experiences of threat and abuse. To unearth these experiences in a women-only space often feels safer. I think of the space a bit like an all-women's locker room: it's easier to take off our clothes without looking over our shoulder. 

Here's what some students have said about the space: 

"There is magic, safety, and wisdom shared when it's just a circle of women"

"There is a level of freedom and vulnerability I was able to go to with an all women group that I was not able to get to in other classes"

"I was able to share things in this class that I've never shared before" 

"I didn't realize how much being in a gender-mixed groups was holding me back until I entered this supportive, magical space with other women, and suddenly I felt a level of trust—of others and myself — I'd never before experienced in a writing class." 

In this class, we study writing by both men and women; I want the history of literature and its full scope to be available to us as women writers. And we encourage and support one another to shine in our fullest light. 

Although this course is not exclusively for people who identify as a woman, it is intended for people who face assumptions based on and cultural baggage related to having a woman's body. If you identify as nonbinary but feel that this group would be a good place for you, then it probably will be. You can also feel free to contact me. 

If you don’t want to do the yoga or meditation, don’t do it. They are optional; it’s all optional.

But you might surprise yourself and try–and just see what happens….the yoga and meditation will deepen your writing practice, and your experience of yourself, your body, your mind and the world!

All yoga can be modified, and I offer a special chair yoga practice for those who can't do the more rigorous positions.

This course is about listening to yourself. You’re not being graded. You can do what you want to do and leave the rest. That said, I encourage you to at least try all the topics and see where they take you. This course has a step-by-step method to get you writing your best work.

If you are taking the course to help you with a pre-existing project that you are already working on that has nothing to do with childhood, following the course will still guide you to go deeper with any project.

For example, even when you are writing about a completely fictional bank robbery, some part of you is writing from your childhood self. Many of our best details come from being able to connect with our own childhood experiences, even if we then use them in different ways in our final drafts. So take the time to really dive in and explore writing from all the different modules. The course guides you through a process that will give you new levels of energy on and off the page.

If you come to the course with a project that you’re already working on,  I have specific steps in the course to guide you to use the course for those purposes. (See more below)

My course is similar in some ways to Julia Cameron’s excellent Artist’s Way method and different in others. Much as I admire that groundbreaking book and method, my course offers much more than it, and truly integrates mind, body and spirit, going more deeply into each of these three areas. And my course unfolds in real time with a community of real people and a live teacher, me!

So that said, here are some of the ways our work is similar:

Like Cameron’s work, my course gives you tools and encouragement to tap into and stick with and value your creative self. Like Cameron’s work, my course helps you move through blocks, and like Cameron’s work, my course also has a spiritual dimension.

And here are some of the ways my course is different:

First of all my specific method and insights are different from Cameron’s.

Second, You get to have live check-ins with me and a community of supportive writers, with whom you can have a life-long connection. 

Third, my course is released module by module, so that you can chart your own progress, and really develop a writing practice over time.

Fourth, while the Artists Way focuses mainly on writing exercises, my course also develops deep reading skills.  I believe that good writing comes from good reading. And  I also believe that good reading awakens and fuels our creative selves. Included with each module is suggested reading of great published texts and close readings of those texts, that help you understand both content and technique.

Fifth, my course also offers a true mind-body-spirit integration and includes yoga and meditation along with the writing exercises and close readings.

Yes! The course will lead you through a process and prompts so that you get comfortable with writing and create a body of work.

Yes! Most people who are working on a long project find this course very helpful. If you want detailed feedback on your project, this course is not for you. But if you want to deepen your relationship to your project, to come at it from some slightly new angles, to get through blocks and to invigorate your writing, then yes, this course is for you. You can work through these modules to fit specific writing projects that you are already working on. If you want some support doing that, feel free to reach out to me for some suggestions about how best to do that. Other students have taken this course as a way to get through a memoir-writing project or other book-length project and have had great success.

If you have no interest at all in writing, this course is probably not for you. But if your primary interests are yoga and meditation and you are curious about how to bring writing into those practices to support them and to deeper in your own personal growth, this course is for you! You don't need any writing experience, and the course is very flexible and guides you to develop your own personal interests and pursue your own growth.  

I use the word story to point to any meaning-making system. Stories come in every form: in our bodies, in our emotions, in our dreams. They need not only be narrative. Any time we have an act of creative expression and meaning making, we’re tapping into some story. This course encourages you to go deeply into your art, to let go of a traditional path, and to open up to the creative process.

I am a serious student of Thich Nhat Hanh, who teaches breathing meditation and meditation in everything we do in our every day lives.  I also have a lot of experience with Vipassana meditation and have sat 10 day silent retreats and I’m a certified kundalini yoga teacher. I bring all of these practices together and offer a variety of teachings in Align Your Story, pairing individual teachings with the focus of each lesson. For example, in our deep listening module, we practice attention to our breath. But in the module in which we are overcoming resistance, I lead students in an uplifting chanting meditation that helps break through old habit energy and blocks and quiets the mind in powerful ways.

I practice a mixture of hatha, vinyassa and Kundalini yogas personally and bring a mixture of these practices into the course. I focus on kundalini, especially for writing courses, because of Kundalini’s powerful ability to help us break through old energetic blocks and come into greater awareness of the movement and power of our own internal energy systems.

That’s a great question, and I have many people ask me that. Align Your Story is almost infinitely flexible. Even half an hour a week can help you start a writing practice and home meditation or yoga practice and get your creative juices flowing. What is great about the course is once you sign up, you have access to the material forever. So whether you want to take the course as an intensive retreat during a sabbatical or in retirement when you can devote several hours a day to the course, or whether you want to just dip your toes in, this class is for you! What is important is that you make this first commitment to yourself; the first step is always the hardest internal barrier to get over, but once you do, the course will give you support you need to keep going

No need to be on Facebook to participate in the course. All the material is housed on a website, and all the facebook conversations are completely optional. The course is very low tech. All you need is a basic computer to access the website–and much of the course material can be done off-screen! I want to create a rich experience that doesn’t depend on being on a screen for hours.

Taking the course as a self-guided retreat is a beautiful way to interact with the material. While the community of women in this course is a strong and vibrant one, the main focus of the course is listening to yourself, which you may feel you can do better on your own. Many students have chosen not to interact with the facebook group and the conference calls. Do what’s right for you. And if another year you want to interact with the course differently, you can do that, too.