Instructor: Matthew Félix
While a focus on craft is indispensable, writers often overlook underlying fundamentals that profoundly influence not only the writing itself but also the writing life.
Attention, energy, and inspiration are just some of the factors essential to creating your best work, while challenges like self-doubt, writer’s block, and perfectionism can leave you anxious or burned out.
In this eight-week program, writer and life coach Matthew Félix explores the often-overlooked connection between wellness and creative success. Drawing on breathwork, nervous system regulation, resilience training, and his own personal experience, Falling into Writing: Wellness for Craft and the Writing Life incorporates instruction, embodied exercises, structured assessments, group discussion, and written reflection (workbook included).
Participants can expect to:
* gain clarity about their current writing life, including what’s working and what can be improved;
* develop greater presence, attention, and focus, with practical tools for managing distraction and mental chatter;
* learn to manage stress, anxiety, and energy to support resilience and avoid burnout;
* cultivate a deeper relationship with inspiration and intuition, and greater comfort with uncertainty and the unknown;
* identify and work through resistance, including self-doubt, perfectionism, and limiting beliefs;
* create habits and boundaries to support a sustainable, flourishing creative life.
"Matthew is an empathetic, knowledgeable, supportive instructor."
—The Body & the Pen retreat participant
Matthew Félix is the author of four books, a certified life coach, a speaker, and an interviewer. Publishers Weekly called his debut novel, A Voice Beyond Reason, “(a) highly crafted gem.” His work has been recognized with a Solas Awards Grand Prize for Story of the Year and Gold for Memoir in the Northern California Publishers & Authors Awards, and he ghost-writes, edits, publishes, and markets books for other authors. Matthew has certifications in personal resilience, nervous-system fitness, and intuition medicine, as well as immersive breathwork training through Esalen. His Have Fun Falling: the Program is for people ready to re-create their lives from inside out—and the inspiration for his Falling into Writing program. Matthew co-founded the daylong wellness and writing retreat The Body & the Pen, and he regularly interviews leading thinkers and authors, including two recent sold-out conversations with Isabel Allende.