After more than three decades of offering hundreds of workshops and retreats for women in Canada, the US, and internationally, in 2022-2023 I offered the first Body Soul Writing Teacher Training Program for women who want to develop their own Body Soul Writing workshops. This unique training program brings together expressive writing, Jungian themes, dreamwork, music and movement explorations, collage, and other modes of creative expression.

In September 2025 I will offer this program for the second time. My recently completed manuscript titled The Hand-Crafted Workshop: A Guide and Companion to Creating Soulful Spaces for Women will serve as our text for the program. In the course of this nine-month program, I will offer you the best of what I have learned during more than thirty years of facilitating women’s workshops, retreats, and seminars in North America and Europe, and on Zoom.

We will begin with a weeklong in-person retreat on a beautiful island outside Vancouver to begin our nine month journey to the heart of workshop facilitation.

We will cover all dimensions of offering workshops including practical and logistical aspects, recognizing good ideas and expanding them into rich and multi-faceted workshops, creating content and choosing materials, determining the form and structure of workshops, ensuring a sense of trust and safety in groups, designing a beautiful website and brochures that capture the spirit of your workshops, deciding on registration rates, getting the word out, creating a mailing list, dealing with challenging participants, teaching online, and more. In essence, this training program will cover the nuts and bolts of envisioning, designing, and facilitating inspiring workshops and soulful spaces that nurture women’s creativity.

This is the training program I would love to have taken when I began offering workshops: intensive and immersive, intimate and integrative.

I look forward to sharing the hard-won wisdom I have acquired throughout the years along with a wealth of practical materials such as sample brochures, workshop outlines, guided visualizations, a collection of poetry gathered through the decades, and a wide variety of tried-and-true writing exercises and experiential processes. I will help you develop your own ideas and creative passions into exciting workshops and gatherings that nourish other women’s souls and feed their imaginations. If you dream of offering workshops for women, please consider enrolling in this one-of-a-kind teacher training program.

The group will be limited to 12 participants to allow for ample attention to each individual.

• Both women who already have some experience facilitating workshops and those who have no previous teaching experience at all

• Teachers, counselors, therapists, analysts, spiritual directors, coaches and other professionals who would like to deepen their own, and their clients’ use of expressive writing on the journey of self-exploration

• Women who long to offer workshops for other women but don’t know where to start or how to begin

• Women who want to understand the nuts and bolts of offering workshops for women from the inside out

• Women who long to give writing greater importance in their own lives and share their creative passion and experience with others

• Women who want to offer workshops with a substantial writing component or to expand the role of writing in workshops they are already teaching

• Women prepared to make a substantial commitment to their own creative process as they prepare to launch their workshops

• Women who are weary of striving onward and upward in the outer world and are ready to move inward and downward into their own creative depths

• Women who want to deepen self-awareness as they begin offering their own workshops

• Women who love to bring others together in meaningful ways and create community together

• Women who feel that writing, dancing, and singing their way through life are joyful alternatives to trudging from one task to the next one

• Women who are fascinated by other people’s stories and the wondrous quirks and foibles of human nature

• Women who have a lively imagination, earthy common sense, and a solid grounding in the real world

• Women who want to explore passion, creativity, and the dance of the feminine

• Recognize a good idea and develop it into a rich and multi-faceted workshop or retreat

• Create compelling workshop content, and curriculum

• Bring your personal passions into your workshops

• Structure and pace your workshops and retreats

• Determine workshop dates, times, locations, fees, and registration details

• Create a beautiful website that reflects who you are and what you offer, and conveys the tone of your workshop

• Start building a mailing list, get the word out, and attract potential participants

• Inspire other women to enter their own depths and explore their own creative ideas and impulses

• Step into your role as workshop leader in a confident, authentic, and grounded way

• Decide how much of yourself to disclose in the workshop setting

• Create a gentle and respectful atmosphere in which women feel safe to express their thoughts and feelings

• Witness, mirror, and contain each woman in the group

• Introduce basic Jungian concepts and themes into your teaching

• Bring your own dreams into workshop preparation and encourage your participants to explore their dream images and stories

• Deal with difficult participants and situations

• Generate fresh workshop content and materials for returning participants

• Keep learning and checking in with yourself while you are teaching

• Help your students discover their own writing strengths and passions

• Keep a process journal of ideas, inspirations, and quotes

• Nurture yourself so that your own creative well does not run dry

• Design and offer a four week workshop series on a topic of your choice

• Extensive practical instruction in designing, creating, and offering workshops and retreats for women

• Exercises and experiential processes to enhance and deepen your own inner journey

• Monthly guest instructors who share their own specific areas of expertise and teaching tips

• Sample workshop outlines, content, and schedules for my most popular programs

• A variety of fully developed workshop materials and curricula

• Many writing prompts and experiential exercises for you and your participants

• A rich assortment of stimulating readings that will inspire your workshop content

• A large folder with hundreds of beautiful poems collected through the years

• Regular sharing and learning in a community of kindred soulful women

• Practice teaching sessions and receiving feedback in the group

• Experiential exercises in deep listening

• Detailed guidance on gathering materials and creating workshop content

• Recordings of monthly sessions for the duration of the program

• Weekly emails with creative prompts and additional resources

• A copy of my completed book manuscript, The Hand-Crafted Workshop: A Guide and Companion to Creating Soulful Spaces for Women

In April 2022 I was interviewed by Lynda Monk, Director of the International Association for Journal Writing, on creating soulful workshops for women. Here is an excerpt from our discussion, courtesy of Lynda and the IAJW. (IAJW.org)

This is an intensive nine-month training program with approximately 150 group contact hours and several individual consultation hours. The program will require a serious commitment of time, energy and resources. Please use thoughtful discernment in deciding to join the group.

Program sessions will generally take place on Sundays with the exception of twelve weekly Wednesday morning sessions (Pacific Time) in the first half of the program.

Meeting times will accommodate international participants. The program structure includes:

• A weeklong in-person retreat near Vancouver from September 8 – 14, 2025

• 12 weekly Wednesday morning writing circles

• Monthly three-hour training sessions

• Monthly two-hour experiential sessions

• Guest instructor sessions

• Monthly Zoom writing cafés (during the second half of the program)

• Practice teaching sessions (during the second half of the program)

• Several individual consultations

• Meeting in pairs between monthly sessions

• Regular email contact between sessions

• An online discussion forum and place to meet between sessions

Following our opening in-person retreat in September, we will be meeting on Zoom. Program materials will be sent to participants via Basecamp, an online platform, as Word and PDF files.

At the end of the program, participants will have the knowledge and skills required to offer their own body soul writing and related workshops for women.

A Certificate of Completion will be issued upon fulfillment of program requirements.

• Participation in two previous workshops, series, or retreats with Marlene. Please contact me if you are interested in this program and do not meet this requirement. We can discuss how you might fulfill it before the start date.

• A regular writing practice: this could be journal writing or morning pages, proprioceptive writing or other consistent writing habit.

• An additional form of soulwork: analysis, therapy, counseling, spiritual direction, or coaching; art, collage, movement, voice, music, or other expressive modality.

• A 30 minute telephone or Zoom conversation before your registration is confirmed.

• If you are a new participant, a consultation hour ($175). The fee will be applied to the registration fee if you are accepted into the program and otherwise refunded.

• A completed application and registration form, link below.

• Participation in the September retreat is mandatory. Regular attendance and participation in program sessions. This is a live training program and while sessions will be recorded for subsequent review, live participation is essential during a minimum of 80% of our group meetings.

• A final reflective essay of 10-15 pages.

• Written agreement to program requirements and conditions.

• Please read A Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey, Gypsy Fugue: An Archetypal Memoir, and Marion Woodman’s The Pregnant Virgin: A Study in Psychological Transformation before the program begins.

Before July 1, 2025:

One payment of $7600 CAD in Canada (save $500)
Or $900 monthly for nine months
Please pay by e-transfer or personal cheque

One payment of $7600 USD outside Canada (save $500)
Or $900 monthly for nine months
Please pay by Paypal or bank transfer

After July 1, 2025: 

One payment of $8200 CAD in Canada (save $500)
Or $965 monthly for nine months
Please pay by e-transfer or personal cheque

One payment of $8200 USD outside Canada (save $500)
Or $965 monthly for nine months
Please pay by Paypal or bank transfer