Using the principles outlined in somatic coaching and writing coaching, I also offer group work in the form of the poetry dojo. A dojo is a place of training, a place of building awareness and practice together in community. For years I have practiced both poetry and aikido in separate places, always sensing that these arts belong on the same page, the same mat. Both are places of finding one's aliveness and spirit and giving the depth of that aliveness a place to express itself. I love offering poetry to practicing aikidoka and aikido principles to writers–both are enlivened and enlarged through shared practice.

What matters in the poetry dojo is that we dive deeply and discover in community, that we help each other speak, be seen and fully claim our place "on the mats". When our voices line up with our deepest care, our wildest humor, our sadness, our longing or our spirited intelligence, we touch what most needs to be expressed. We let who we are spill out in language.

The poet Ted Hughes said, "When a real self finds language and manages to speak, it is surely a dazzling event." In the poetry dojo, we seek an embracing of this real self. Through engaging in body awareness and writing practices, and through evoking our presence in new ways, we sense what it means to body forth our poetry, or our unique means of expression. We move into a fullness that was not possible before. We practice deep listening while learning to give and receive embodied assessments.

In the poetry dojo, we explore the ways in which the self who writes is the self who has a body, a particular shaping and a way with language–and to crack open one is to find the heat and sharpness and wisdom of the others. The poetry dojo is a learning environment in which you explore the relationship between how you live in your body and what you bring to the blank page. We locate language from our centered presence, which allows language to take shape anew.