Yoga & Poetry: Finding Stillness Through Words and Movement with Corie Feiner

Women + Wellbeing Interview #9

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Corie Feiner

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“The greatest atrocity of our time is we've forgotten how to be delighted by being alive.”

~Corie Feiner

Corie Feiner brings a new depth of spirituality to yoga practice with her A Poem for Every Pose series, published on her Substack

Corie Feiner

—go subscribe, her poems are awesome! I was excited to chat with her about her poetry but had no idea that the conversation would also touch so deeply on navigating motherhood and a creative career.

Be sure to make it to the end of the interview where Corie has graciously shared an audio recording of her poem Happy Baby.

Meet Corie Feiner

Corie Feiner is a poet and performer born out of the 90’s NYC slam scene. She is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Bucks County, PA and an award-winning author, performance poet, and slam champion called, “wonderful,” by The New York Times, and “absorbing” by Backstage Magazine. She obtained her MFA studying with some of teh greats at NYU. She is also a certified health coach specializing in women’s health, self-image and bodylove, an at-home yogi, wife, mom, gardener, cook, traveler, and seeker of higher consciousness, new experiences, and beauty.

The Interview

ASHLEY ZUBERI: What does wellbeing mean to you?

CORIE FEINER: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of wellbeing is having a foundation that you can always return to. If you veer off of it, you come back to a strong base founded in solid feelings of worthiness, self-compassion, self-empathy, and self- love. I don't mean that in the trendy way that is being sold with things right now, but I mean it in a very sincere “I am worthy of being here” and “I have self-worth just by being alive” way.

Besides yoga, an essential part of my wellbeing practice is writing. Sometimes I'll just write myself a question and then I let myself answer. I think Elizabeth Gilbert calls it the two-way prayer. It's almost like someone else is answering. It could be your higher Self. It could be God. It doesn't matter. It feels really good.

ASHLEY: Can you tell me about your own journey toward wellbeing? Poetry has always been in your life. Holistic health coaching came a little bit later. Your yoga practice came a little bit later. What was your path towards that?

CORIE: My father was an athlete. My mother was the short, fat nerd. Sorry, mom. She was a beautiful, brilliant, and brainy marketing executive—she called herself a powerhouse and she was. But there was this disparity between the bloodlines in the two sides of my family. 

I grew up with a deep fear of the disapproval of my father. I was bulimic by seven—a lot of my parents’ arguments were about weight. By nine I was not eating very much. My mother showed me a movie to terrify me enough to be like, “Oh, okay, no, I'm not going to end up in the hospital.” Growing up in the eighties in New York City, I smoked and drank just like everyone else. I was a very heavy drinker in high school. But deep down, I was very upset that I smoked because I knew how bad it was for me.

At the same time I would go jogging with my father. I always stayed active. It wasn't like I was Amy Winehouse or anything. I loved my family so much that I didn't want to hurt them. So when I saw a lot of my friends end up in rehab I told myself, “I'm not going there.” This was the functional, yet self-destructive, edge that I worked with.

On the poetry front, my parents read Shel Silverstein to me when I was growing up. I remember when I was in third grade my best friend gave me a journal for my birthday and that became my poetry journal. I said I was going to be a poet like Shel Silverstein when I grew up. Poetry became this place where I lived. It was this place where I just stayed—I could be my most authentic self. And performance—I was just that sort of kid. If there was a street performer in New York City, I would start performing with them. If there was a play, I'd want to be in it.

I didn't always think poetry would be my pursuit, but it's what I always kept circling back to. In my twenties, when I decided to pursue poetry and make some sort of living with it, I pursued it with the strength of a corporate lawyer. I got into NYU’s MFA Poetry Writing Program, and at the same time, I slammed, performed, got hired to compose poems to perform at dinner parties and gallery openings, worked as a writer-in-the-schools specializing on integrating poetry into special needs curriculums, ran staff developments and teacher trainings, you name it. I did workshops and shows anywhere I could.  

As I was doing all of this, my health was suffering. I still smoked and drank too much and found that I was struggling to walk up more than a few flights of stairs. I had this moment when I was wheezing on the fourth flight of stairs and realized I had had enough. I quit smoking, quit drinking, and started biking 10 miles a day. At the same time, a writer friend of mine was training to become a shaman and was offering free sessions. I agreed to help her out and  I had no idea how powerful these healing journeys would be for me. It was deep. I came to a place of utter forgiveness for my past relationships and really opened my heart to receiving love. I decided to not date anyone else unless I knew I was going to marry them. Within a couple of weeks of being extremely clear about what I wanted, I met my husband.  

When I got married, things started shifting. I went from someone who was slamming and performing all night to a family unit. It was humbling and beautiful. My husband also helped me when I quit smoking and drinking and my body went wackadoodle. When he decided to enroll in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to become a health coach, I joined him and together we had a practice called Thriving Health.  

After I had my first son I thought I would carry him with me to work and to my poetry readings. One of my very good friends and mentors said, “Oh, isn't it great. You just bring your kids to class with you and they're like potatoes.” Not my son. He would rather scream for hours than take any bottle. It didn't matter how much milk I pumped, it was never enough. I got phone call after phone call every time I left him about how he wouldn’t take the bottles I left for him and was shrieking and crying the whole time. 

I remember I got to this place where I just held my son on my shoulders while trying to run a workshop and he was inconsolable. It hit me that I couldn’t keep doing what I had been doing. I had to tend to him. Talk about a yogic surrender. I remember that moment—everything that I worked for, everything I thought was me, everything I thought that I accomplished, was over. 

I gave in so much that I lost myself—I found myself a sleepless, rag-tag, martyr mom. That's where my yoga practice came in. It gave me this container of self-care and self-love. It gave me the visceral knowledge of how much trauma was being held in my body and how much tension was being held in my stomach, back, and hips.

We moved from NYC to a small town along the Delaware River. I started writing poetry again and became Poet Laureate of Bucks County, which was an amazing honor. I started teaching in the schools again and then got pregnant with my second child. I was like, “I know how this goes. I'll see you later.”

I am the archetype of the maiden, the caretaker, the mother,  but with my second child, I knew how to take care of myself, too.

ASHLEY: I noticed you mentioned you are an Aries in your bio. It is clear to me how driven and ambitious you are. That feels familiar and comfortable to me. I'm Taurus. I also approach teaching yoga from that lawyer-like perspective. I recognize that pursuit. To see how you shifted to being a health coach and then to being a mother—that’s a really big deal to go from that amount of drive and ambition, from performing and being seen to being a mother where you never feel seen or acknowledged. That's such a transition.

CORIE: That reminds me of a collaboration I did with an Alvin Aley dancer where she asked me to write a poem around a dance piece based on her life. It was about being a very aggressive, ambitious woman surrendering to love and to Self. It was a very powerful piece. I was reciting these poems in a dim spotlight with dancers moving around me reflecting the journey of being “out there” in the world to being “in here”—in the inner world of healing and transformation. 

We got write-ups and accolades in The New York Times and Backstage Magazine, we went on a mini-tour. It was great but it passed and I eventually surrendered to a more internal life where my focus was healing my past traumas, receiving love, building a sustainable and loving family life, and living a life of service (not without challenges and my own inner resistance).

Even then, I distinctly remember a mothering moment when I had two very active young boys and I was no longer writing, performing, or teaching, I was not practicing health coaching outside of my home. I remember sobbing on the kitchen floor and saying out loud to my husband, “Is this it? Is this all I am?” 

But from there, it has only gotten better and the more I learn to love, the more I am in love with being alive.  

ASHLEY: How does poetry factor into your wellbeing?

CORIE: I love the act of writing poetry, of being inside of it. There's a zone that I get into where it just all feels right, where I have permission to take off the costume of personality and tap into something deeper. It feels cathartic and enthralling to have the physical and mental space to write a poem, even if it is only ten minutes. To let go, to say the unsayable, to have permission to just be and say anything in the ancient rhythmic language of poetry. 

To me, the page is very much like the mat. It is your space to move your mind and body to a new place—from stagnancy to flow, from stiffness to ease. That's where poetry and yoga converge so much. Moving through the asanas is poetry, a beautiful dance. Moving through the page I can take this journey to this other place and then come home.

It's really easy to think that no one understands you, that you are alone. And then you read a poem by someone like Rosemerry Trommer, Rumi, Mary Oliver, Mark Nepo or another mystic poet and you're like, “Oh, thank you. I'm not alone.”

That can make someone feel supported. Despite our fear of each other, I think that we're here for each other.

ASHLEY: Can you share some of your process for creating your A Poem for Every Pose series? Do you do the pose, does the poem come to you? What does that look like?

CORIE: During COVID, I committed myself to an at-home yoga and meditation practice first thing in the morning before my family woke up. I also started a daily journaling practice based on my new studies in non-violent communication, self-compassion, and healing my inner child. Soon after this, the poems started to come. 

One morning, after a brief meditation sitting in Hero Pose, I asked myself, “What does it mean to be a hero?” and wrote my first yogasana poem. 

Then Warrior One came and then Child’s Pose. Even though I was wracked with doubt, I decided to continue and write 84 poems. These poems came differently than my morning musings. These poems were assignments. Some came only after extensive research, like Pigeon Pose, and some, like Goddess Pose, came almost completely whole after an outside morning yoga practice along a wild river in Vermont. Many of the poems, like Extended Side Angle Pose, were composed with a combination of me writing, moving into the pose, writing some more, moving into the pose, and asking myself, “How does this really feel?”

The poems took about one year to write and about a year to revise—every single one of them had more than one draft. Some, like Pigeon Pose, had well over 15 drafts. 

What really helped each one feel “done” was that one of my oldest and dearest friends whom I studied writing with in college is also a yoga teacher and she looked every one over for me and gave me feedback and suggestions. Support is essential.   

Even after I perform the poems or before I post the poems on my Substack, I still make a few revisions here and there because when I speak a poem, it becomes embodied. Poems are like food for me, they have to taste good in order for me to share them. 

As my yoga journey continues and evolves, more poems have asked to be written. So there will be more. One-hundred-and-eight is the next number.

ASHLEY: I feel like you could go and rewrite it every year. The embodiment of each pose, the experience and the context, is constantly evolving and changing. It’s never finished.

CORIE: That is true. As I said, I still tweak the poems, but mostly what I ask myself is how it will serve those who hear or read them. 

The first time I performed a Moon Salutation sequence with a fellow yoga instructor at The Bucks County Yoga Festival, it really moved people. The practice ended with the poem Happy Baby where we all took in the words that went something to the effect of how the biggest tragedy of our times is that we have forgotten to be delighted by our toes. 

Afterwards, the owner of a local yoga studio walked up to me and told me that he had never experienced Happy Baby the way he experienced it while he heard me reading the poems, wiggling his toes and being really present. This is why I continue. This is what I keep in mind when I share them. They are my way to contribute to a more loving and healed existence.

ASHLEY: The poetry piece takes you to that deeper part within a pose. It's a wonderful container for exploring something that's so deep and spiritual.

What do you do for your own wellbeing? What are some of your practices?

CORIE: Every single morning I make sure that before I look at any screen, I step outside and I look at the sun. That's a very small gesture, but it's important to me. I make sure that I practice at least 20-30 minutes of yoga a day and take it off the mat in my movement and my breath. 

I don't eat out at all. I don't order in at all. Everything I cook is local or organic and from scratch. I'm not going to get a Pulitzer Prize from it or get a Substack badge but it's really important to me that I eat that way and feed my family that way. It is a quiet, yet radically domestic, act. 

I also make sure that I get a walk or a bike ride every day. Movement is essential. And I do as much preventive care as possible. If I’m sick, I get out my oil of oregano or other natural remedies and try to give my body what it needs in order to do its job.

ASHLEY: Is there anything else that you wanted to add to this conversation about wellbeing, poetry, yoga, women, motherhood?

CORIE: I’ve experienced birthing, bleeding, two abortions, one miscarriage, and two home births. They're not battle scars, because it wasn't a battle, but they have defined me, taught me, humbled me. They're my landscape, my topography. 

I have two boys and I'm around my family all the time. I know a lot about cars, mechanics, all that sort of stuff. But there is something also important about women coming together to talk together, nurse together, bleed together. Hold each other.

I'm very grateful for my mother being the first generation of feminists to break all the rules, and when she saw my more domestic decisions she told me, “You're like a throwback.” In some ways yes, and in some ways no. I want to emphasize to every woman that it is a choice how you design your life. Whatever that choice is, you have worth. If you can, find your community of women, whether it is going to a cafe, moon bathing, sound healing, cooking, or a workshop, live or online.  

Those connections for women are a really important part of our mental and spiritual well being. It is why my Bodylove Poetry Writing Workshops are, at this time, women-only. It is not to be exclusive, it is to allow this time for us to be intimate about our relationships with our bodies and write and share poetry together with such an incredible amount of love.

ASHLEY: Coming back to our innate strengths and gifts, knowing ourselves and being okay with living with what we individually want and need—that’s really hard to do.

CORIE: Definitely. Having two young kids at home and just breaking down on the floor…

ASHLEY: Which is such a common experience…

CORIE: If only there was a 1-800 line to cry and release all your struggles so that you can concentrate on what has to be done while taking care of yourself, too. 

I spent fourteen years at home serving my family and I am excited to share my work again in a way that encourages others to embody yoga poses, practice radical self-love and self-acceptance, and teach others to write poetry in an empowering way. All while still being able to take care of my family, and most importantly, myself.

Happy Baby

Written and read by Corie Feiner

Consider listening to this reading while in Happy Baby pose.

If you enjoyed this interview, please forward it to a friend, share it as a note, or share on social media. And be sure to subscribe to Yoga for Women’s Wellbeing for monthly conversations with women about wellbeing and yoga practices to support and inspire you during your messy moments as you move through the natural transitions of life.