guided mindful writing
Saltwater Workshops
Seasonal and themed sessions designed to bring back your calm, your clarity, your spark, and help you access your innate wisdom and creativity along the way.
COME AND WRITE, TOGETHER
Mindful writing workshops in Cornwall and online
I bring people together round the table for guided journaling workshops in Cornwall and online. You don't need to a ‘natural’ writer to get started; the value is in the doing, not in getting it right.
I call these Saltwater Workshops because in Cornwall, saltwater days are always the best days.
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” — Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
What to expect
Inside a Saltwater Workshop
I'll guide you through the whole session myself, with music and literature carefully chosen to set the tone, sometimes no more than a brief quote, before a single prompt is given.
Each session moves through a simple arc: starting with grounding, moving through your senses, then going deeper still, toward what I call the deeper gold, the insights within us we don't always make time to find.
I develop content around seasonal themes, some of life's more challenging moments and those times when you're looking to boost your spirits and feel more alive. Themes are also shaped around the venue, partner or sponsor of an event - whether that's a quiet room or boardroom, a coastal garden or beautiful hotel. There's always a fresh way in.
Interested in an online or in-person workshop hosted just for you? Email me to talk it through.
your writing practice
Why Journal?
Leonardo Da Vinci filled thousands of pages with sketches, questions and half-formed ideas, simply following his own curiosity wherever it led. Oscar Wilde never travelled anywhere without his diary, joking that a person should always have something sensational to read on the train.
The good news is, we don't need to have ideas as brilliant as Da Vinci or write as wittily as Wilde for this to work. We can actually write shockingly badly - the point of journaling isn't the quality of the writing, it's what simply turning up to the page does for us. Joan Didion wrote an entire essay on why she kept a notebook, concluding that its real purpose was simply to remember what it felt like to be herself at the time. Different people, different centuries, same simple habit.
And it isn't just anecdotal. Journaling has one of the strongest evidence bases of any wellbeing practice available - over 200 peer-reviewed studies and counting.
It started with Dr James Pennebaker's landmark research at the University of Texas, where just fifteen to twenty minutes of writing, four days in a row, measurably lowered stress hormones, strengthened immune response and eased anxiety. Research out of Harvard has linked the same kind of mindful writing to sharper focus and better decision-making, and decades of follow-up studies have only built the case further: better sleep, faster emotional recovery, a calmer nervous system and sharper creative thinking too.
Writing alone is lovely. Writing together is magic. This is exactly what gathering round the table is for.
Whatever draws you to it - alone or together - the reason underneath is usually the same: to create a richer, happier, juicier life - more calm, more clarity, more creativity, more connection. And it works.
Join me for a session and I’ll show you how.
"Having secretly journaled most of my life, I'm finally letting this little habit ditch the sunglasses and fake moustache and step out into the limelight." — Jenny Ella
