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Health & Fitness

Poetry As a Spiritual Practice for Poetry Month and Beyond

Celebrate Poetry Month! Mom/Daughter team offering Poetry as a Spiritual Practice Retreat June 1

Poetry month may be ending today, but for Ellisville resident Kimberly Schneider and her Mom, Mary Lou Schneider of Ballwin, the relationship with poetry is a daily experience.  In fact, the two women have witnessed the transformational power of poetry for themselves and their clients so often that they are offering a one-day retreat on “Poetry as a Spiritual Practice.” 

 

“Poetry is experiencing a renaissance,” says Kimberly Schneider, “in part because modern poets like Mary Oliver, John O’Donohue and David Whyte, authors such as Caroline Kennedy (Poems to Learn by Heart) and Kim Rosen (Saved by a Poem) and gifted translators like Coleman Barks (The Essential Rumi) are reminding us how accessible, heart-opening and transformational poetic language can be.”

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“But many people aren’t sure exactly what to do with poems,” adds Mary Lou Schneider.  “They might be intrigued by the idea of reading more poetry, but they aren’t sure where to start.  And the experience of silently reading a poem to yourself is wholly different from that of reading it out loud, or listening to someone else recite a poem that touches them.”

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Kimberly is a poet herself, but even before she published her own work she was sharing other people’s poems with counseling clients, because “I knew that poetic language reaches a different part of the mind and heart than just talking, or reading prose.  Something happens when you encounter a poem that speaks to your own deeply felt experience.  Your breathing slows, your awareness heightens, your sense of presence deepens.  It’s as if you wake up to life.  And even if that awakening is sometimes painful, you also realize that, because you’ve remembered who you really are, you are able for the challenge.”

 

At the retreat, Mary Lou and Kimberly will offer experiential exercises that make poems accessible.  “Everyone will leave knowing how to make poetry meaningful and relevant in their daily lives.” 

 

Words of Power: Poetry as a Spiritual Practice will take place at Mercy Center on Saturday, June 1st.  Tuition is $95 and includes lunch.  Pre-registration is required; deadline to enroll is May 18.   For more information and to register go to www.KimberlySchneider.com/poetry or call Mary Lou at 636-227-9911.  

 

  

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