Writing workshop connects with Nanaimo’s outdoors

Nanaimo writer and teacher Kim Goldberg includes nature in workshop activities

Supercharge creative powers with award-winning author and poet Kim Goldberg in a six-week course combining the ancient Chinese healing practice of Qigong with creative writing exercises in a Nanaimo forest.

Beginning March 6, students will explore a different organ of the body each week using a simple Qigong practice, which will be followed by guided writing exercises tailored to fit that organ’s special properties.

The specific location chosen each week will correspond to the properties of that week’s organ.

Goldberg said each of the five principal organs of the human body is represented by its own element, colour and other properties in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and that system forms the basis for the course.

As an example, the liver’s element is wood, its colour is green, its virtue is kindness, and its deficiency manifests as anger, so a cedar grove is an extension and expression of liver energy, said Goldberg.

Goldberg has been studying Qigong and the related practices of Tai Chi and Liuhebafa since 1997.

Her book Ride Backwards on Dragon details her own journey with these ancient healing arts.

The course will run on Tuesday mornings, 10-11 a.m., from March 6-April 17 (no class March 27). The cost is $95, or $75 if paid by Thursday (Feb. 23).

For more information or to register, please call 250-741-8577 or e-mail goldberg@ncf.ca.

Nanaimo News Bulletin