Talk To Me Nice: Using The Word as a Healing Modality // with Zena Robinson-Wouadjou

"Whether you desire to renew your word-powered self-care practices, or use word-medicine to clarify and empower your unique calling, Talk To Me Nice will bring you closer to YOU in a supportive cooperative learning space."

In this 6-week collective transformative language journey, we will explore the ways in which we can intentionally use the power of words to deepen self-connection, self-awareness, and self-determination. Talk To Me Nice invites participants to examine the use of embodied positive self-talk as a healing modality. Each session will incorporate knowledge sharing, guided practice, and hands-on activities that focus on a specific evidence-based practice, including intuitive journaling, meditation and mantra, affirmation creation, poetry and song. 

Whether you desire to renew your word-powered self-care practices, or use word-medicine to clarify and empower your unique calling, Talk To Me Nice will bring you closer to YOU in a supportive cooperative learning space. 

Join us as we use the power of “the word” to create new realities for our inner and outer worlds.

Week By Week

Week 1: Orientation and Introduction:

Getting grounded with an introduction to traditions of using words as medicine throughout time, across cultures. We will begin to build community through a Live Virtual Open House event featuring a restorative storytelling session centered around the identity shaping power of naming. Participants will also be given a course overview and become familiar with some of the standing activities, such as the “talk to me nice reflective writing” and “discussion circle.” 

Week 2: When I Talk to Myself: Intuitive Journaling

In this week we will explore the word medicine practice of self-questioning and intuitive journal prompts as a way to connect to our deepest longings and wonderings and bring our own voice to the surface. Participants will experience both guided and independent practice of the practice and have the opportunity to discuss their experience during the weekly live session. 

Week 3: Talking Back: Self-Affirmation Creation

As our voice begins to surface, we will typically experience competing stories (good and bad) about ourselves that have been “passed down” to us from family, social groups, and adopted by us over time. We will learn how to “talk back” to the narratives through the creation of affirmations that directly amplify the self-stories that are true and healthy for us and challenge the self-stories that are not supportive of who we are/ growing into. 

Week 4: Speak, Heal, and Repeat: Personalizing Mantra & Meditation

More than a power statement, the mantra combines the elements of sound and word to activate healing. Finding the mantra from within that aligns with our specific physical, emotional, and spiritual needs for growth and healing can enhance our meditation practice and our conscious lived experience. We will look at examples and wisdom of word-sound medicine in various cultures and create our own personal mantras and meditation.

Week 5: Input, Output: The Talk to Me Nice Playlist

As we begin to integrate word-medicine into our daily practice, it is important that we bring our inner world healing into our outer world experience. This week, we will create a mash-up of the word-medicine tools we have created in the previous weeks that we can “loop,” “shuffle,” and “sample” anytime we need to hear our own positive self-talk expressions in our environment to reinforce our internal well-being. 

Week 6: Talk to Me Nice Partner: A Reflective Collab and Celebration

In our final week, we explore the ‘Talk to Me Nice Together' principle— what it feels like to build relationships around word-medicine that affirms ourselves and the people around us. Participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their personal “Talk to Me Nice” journey and receive and reflect back the journey of a “Talk to Me Nice” partner in the group. Partners will share out in the word-medicine style of their choice as we celebrate the rebirth of our healing collective voices.

Who Should Take This Class

Talk to Me Nice is a joyful, reflective space for word medicine healing and new reality creation. Designed with the lover of contemplation, the creative, and the heart-centered practitioner in mind, this course is meant to meet participants where they are on their personal development and life-work paths. There are no prerequisites for this course, aside from an open mind, open heart, and a supportive spirit that welcomes the ideas and presence of fellow participants.

Format

Class lessons, assignments, and discussion forums will be accessible via the Wet Ink platform. We will also meet via Zoom to build community and share reflections on weekly lessons.

Zoom meetings will be scheduled in conversation with students at the beginning of the course, and will be recorded for students who must miss a class meeting.

About the Facilitator

Over the past 25 years Zena Robinson-Wouadjou has worked primarily in education, first as a school-based teacher and curriculum and program designer within New York City public schools focused on creating culturally responsive and sustaining learning spaces, higher education equity and access, and introducing restorative approaches for intergenerational learning and conflict transformation. Additionally, as the co-founder of a literacy and school culture improvement organization (SchoolWideRead), and a healing-centered community educator,  she works with young people, families, educators, and organizations, using the power of words as a tool to build community and social justice— redefining what it means to teach, learn, and heal.

You can connect with Zena in these places: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sistarzena 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zena-robinson-wouadjou 

Blog: https://medium.com/@progress.zen