INELDA Workshop – Poetic Medicine

LEARNING BREAKDOWN

Session 1: The Art of Deep Listening & Attention, Slowing Down & Silence

The art of listening includes being open to what is happening, paying close attention to what is happening, giving your full attention to what someone is saying, and showing respect for that person. The art of listening is very connected to slowing down. Listening is a beautiful expression of silence and/or quietness – being comfortable with silence and quietness – this silence and quietness helps to make listening a generative activity. 

Poetry and the elements of poetry, the act of poem-making are ways to fine-tune the quality of your listening. They also contribute to your ability to pay attention and slow down. In this workshop, we will explore, as we write and share poems, what the experience of being deeply listened to is like—and what it is like not to be listened to. The undergirding of this session is to show and demonstrate how poetry and poem-making enhance, that is deepen, an atmosphere of listening and illuminate the bearing of witness.

Session 2: Return to the Most Human

In this session, we will explore what it means to be human with an emphasis on a person’s experience when nearing the end of life. Carrying the presence of deep listening into our doula practices, we will draw closer to the incredible range of human experience, allowing that range in our hearts to meet and be with it with our open, expanded, wide-ranging heart.  A focus, through poetry and poem-making, will be on the lines illustrated by May Sarton’s raw poem of the grieving, angry, and “torn mind” – and paradoxically – with a remembrance and attention to the lines by W. Williams about being ‘startled anew’ in the instant by the scent of a rose.

Session 3: Opening of the Field

In the third session (this one will be 2 hours) we will open up our exploration, digging deeper into fear & the unknown, into mystery & grief, into intimacy & loneliness, into self-awareness and acceptance, into letting go & wonder.  John will demonstrate how poetry and poem-making can illustrate, even illuminate each of these in a way that welcomes more heart into the room.

We will also consider some “techniques” for successfully using poetry and poem-making for those who are served – as well as, perhaps even more importantly, as a “tool” or “companion” for use by those who are serving. These techniques include writing prompts and, if desired by a client, speaking poems at the bedside or wherever you are together.