We recently connected with Stefanie Maura and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Stefanie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One meaningful project is my Writing Yoga® Online Community Workshops that started after the pandemic.

I recently received an email following a workshop from a participant. She so clearly expressed to me how our practice together had shifted her energy, cleared stress out of her body, and gave her the mental clarity she desperately needed. I have helped probably thousands of people over the years with this method and it’s very meaningful to hear people articulate exactly what is happening in their mind and body while we work together!

We started by sitting together and doing breathwork. It is amazing what can be accomplished through deep breathing. You can literally shift and calm the energy in the room and bring inspiration, the breath, into your mind.

The crazy thing is that we even did this over Zoom. It really shows that energetically, we are all much more connected than we realize, even when physically distant from each other.

After we sat with our calm breathing, we set an intention for our writing, just like you do at the beginning or end of a yoga practice. As inspiration, I used a prompt from a poet I love. We took lessons from the nature poem and wrote.

My Writing Yogi was not a professional writer. She’s in the healthcare field. But she wrote this beautiful, brilliant poem. We sat and spoke about what her poem meant, and she came up with a really wonderful solution to a problem she had been dealing with.

Then we worked out extra tension in the body with some yoga. To honor the season and time in the moon cycle, we used moon salutations and poses that are open and outstretched.

To end our session, we sat back down, breathed together again, and celebrated all the insight that comes from nature, a quiet mind and supportive community.

The effects of the practice had a lasting impact on her week and her success inspired me as well.

Stefanie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always been a writer and a poet. When I went to school for my MFA in Creative Writing, my children were small and I worked full-time as a school librarian. I love books!

Reading, writing, poetry and nature all inform the work that I do, but I didn’t have time or energy to balance my writing practice with school and parenting. I saw that many, many people also tried to nurture creative projects while working in day jobs and raising children.

Writing Yoga® became the solution! My yoga and meditation practice gave me time, space and clarity to write poems, teach and parent.

I had such incredible results that I needed to share and research exactly how this worked. And that became what is now called the Writing Yoga® method.

I deepened my yoga practice by completing several yoga training programs and studying yoga all over the world. I most joyfully was able to share and further develop the Writing Yoga® method at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, NY where I taught staff classes for many years.

More recently, I taught and managed a yoga program at the Glen Cove Mansion which was a Pratt family estate of the North Shore of Long Island. We held many of the classes outdoors on the lawn or by the pool. It was a place where my students could truly relax and escape for a bit.

I have also been involved in helping to preserve another historic site, Cedarmere. The poet William Cullen Bryant lived there in the 1800’s and today we are fixing up the house, grounds and library so that people can enjoy events and poetry readings. Check it out at www.FriendsofCedarmere.org. I host a poetry series there. We have had Pulitzer Prize winners and Poet Laureates delight local audiences with their work. Last summer, I started facilitating educational leadership retreats and the school administrators walked away feeling motivated and luminous!

I have built a creative life by actively participating in the work that lights me up. After 20 years in practice as Writing Yoga® educational consultant, I continue to help educators learn effective, research-based ways to fit self-care into very full and focused days. I offer continuing education credits for teachers in Social-Emotional Learning and English Language Arts. My Writing Yoga® workshops, talks, and retreats inspire people to make space for difficult, creative work. Sometimes that just means facing the daily challenges of life in a difficult and ever-changing world.

My mission is to share simple ways to sustain calm, creative and more compassionate schools and workspaces. When we feel calm and inspired as the adults in the room, our children do too!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Time to pivot.

I’m in the middle of a pivot! And this is not the first time I have had to pivot. Any creative understands how vital it is to change direction from time to time.

I always wanted to be a full-time writer, but got married young and had to help provide for my family. I found a career where I could be surrounded by books and became a librarian. I love my job, but it doesn’t leave me much time to write poems and work with school leaders.

I have made it work brilliantly for over 20 years, but there often comes a time when you envision a long-term goal that does not include your current work.

I am ready to offer the benefits of Writing Yoga® to more people, specifically in education, who really could use the strategies I offer! The next phase of Writing Yoga® is exciting to me. It will include more workshops, in-person retreats and foster writing communities for teachers and writers.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I am just starting to build a social media presence, but I think I have some insight. I have been shy and cautious about what I put out into the world. My outlook is generally positive and when people are negative as they can be at times on social media, it makes me not want to share anything. The funny thing is that the more I share and post, the fear of negativity has softened. The people who support me and learn from me are wonderful, interesting people and so far, my fear has been unfounded.

My advice is to not overthink and just get out there! I have begun to take my own advice and only share what is meaningful to me and what could be helpful to others.

My goal is to be authentic, uplifting, informative and have some fun with it! Like real life, we all work better in community.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.WritingYoga.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stefanie.maura
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stefaniemaura.writingyoga/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanie-maura/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@StefanieMaura
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/stefanie-maura-mfa-mls-glen-cove