Polyvagal Writing: An Informed Practice for Writing about Trauma

A generative webinar with Leigh Hopkins
Saturday, May 3rd 1pm-3:30pm Pacific
(A recording will be made available to all registrants for a limited time afterwards.)

“Trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.” — Dr. Gabor Maté

"But come here, Fear. / I am alive! / And you are so afraid / of dying." — Joy Harjo

How do we care for ourselves when we write about the past? Writing about trauma often requires us to return to the places that haunt us. The heart rate increases, the palms sweat. Although the body is not in the direct line of danger, the autonomic nervous system still gives us cues that we are still under threat.

Often, we venture into the dark realms untended and alone. In POLYVAGAL WRITING, we’ll travel together.

Join Leigh Hopkins for a generative writing workshop designed to gently guide you through a process for safely writing about trauma. This live webinar is grounded in neuroscience, but it’s an immediately accessible, “doable” process.

If you’re a writer or artist looking for new ways to engage with difficult places, you’ll leave this webinar with a series of exercises that will empower you to navigate the dark spaces and return with your body-self fully intact. When we learn to safely engage with the past, we can discover new places in our writing, new pathways for coming back to the light.

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks.

This workshop offers a sliding scale based on your relative financial standing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world; are you expecting an inheritance); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$250 Partner

$175 Supporter (Note: This amount reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$100 Companion

$50 Friend

A limited number of scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

Leigh Hopkins is a queer writer and the Editor and Curator of Khôra, a dynamic online arts space conceived and produced in collaboration with author Lidia Yuknavitch and Corporeal Writing. Leigh is a columnist at The Rumpus, and her work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Longreads, McSweeney’s, Entropy, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications. She is a writing workshop leader at Corporeal Writing and the Director of Viva Institute. After the publication of Leigh’s essay The Brazilian Healer and the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes (Longreads), she was featured in a Brazilian documentary by the film crew who first exposed the crimes of John of God, the world’s most famous “spiritual surgeon.”

In 2010, Leigh left a career in social policy to move to Brazil, where she founded an online institute by rigging a satellite dish to a boulder in a banana field. Before moving to Brazil, Leigh was a leader in the design, development and implementation of the after school literacy program model Youth Education for Tomorrow (YET), which was referenced by President Obama in the New York Times as an example of what’s possible in community-based institutions. As the Vice President for Education of a leading social policy think tank, Leigh provided support to 500 literacy programs in historically underserved communities throughout the United States. Today, Leigh lives in Philadelphia with her wife and Portuguese-speaking Jack Russell Terrier.