Workshops & Courses

Naomi Westwater graduated with honors in 2013 from Goucher College with a B.A. in The Practice and Theory of Storytelling and holds a Master in Music from Berklee College of Music in Contemporary Performance. Since 2020, Naomi has been teaching adult classes and workshops in songwriting, poetry, tarot, and spirituality. She is on faculty at Club Passim, where she teaches Songwriting Inspired By Nature, Intermediate Songwriting, and the popular workshop Writing 10 Songs In 1 Day. Naomi is also on faculty at Not Sorry Productions where she has taught: Harry Potter & Wizard Supremacy, Tarot As A Sacred Practice, and lead a Mary Oliver Poetry Pilgrimage on Cape Cod. Naomi leads Song & Sanctuary, a virtual songwriting retreat, and co-creative Herb & Myth a class on tarot and herbalism.

Songwriting & Poetry

Writing 10 Songs In 1 Day

As songwriters, we can often get stuck or reach for the same tools when writing – sometimes songs magically come to us, but often we can be sitting around waiting for inspiration for a long time. This virtual retreat is designed to open up your creativity, help you to dive into flow state, explore new tools for songwriting, and to create a safe container for you to take risks. We will gather for 7 hours to write 10 songs – each song will include a prompt, free write, and a song form. With a running clock and a group of songwriters as the best accountability buddies, you’ll walk away with 10 new songs for you to develop and flesh out. And guess what, 10 songs that’s an album! A week after this retreat, there will be a private virtual open mic where each participant will select one of their new songs to share.

Mary Oliver Poetry Retreat

This pilgrimage, with space for twenty pilgrims, will examine Mary Oliver’s Pulitzer-prize winning poetry collection, Dream Work, and its themes of nature, connection, and longing. Using Common Ground’s traditional mix of sacred reading, rigorous discussion, meditative walks, and guided journaling, Naomi will lead pilgrims through close engagement with Oliver’s poetry, encouraging them to reflect on questions like: how does observing the natural world connect me to others? How am I called to wildness, and how am I called to rest, by the world that surrounds me?  

For its terrain, the pilgrimage will take the rugged, sublime beauty of Cape Cod’s southern coast in autumn, with Auto Camp Cape Cod as its home base. As with all of Common Grounds’ pilgrimages, the trip will feature daily hikes designed to immerse you in the landscape, allowing you to soak in the tiny details of this environment that Mary Oliver loved so dearly. Pilgrims will share communal meals of delicious food and conversation and retreat to rest each night in one of Auto Camp’s gorgeous Airstream Suites, where they will be surrounded by nature but provided with every possible comfort.

We want this pilgrimage to provide a moment of deep peace and reflection for those that partake, a space where they can catch their breath and center themselves before being plunged into the welter of commitments that characterize the end of the year. While the Cape is familiar territory for many in our organization, and perhaps for many of you, we cannot wait to see how differently we experience it in late autumn, free of the sunbathing tourists who throng its shores all summer. We are likewise thrilled to be able to devote a trip to Mary Oliver, an artist to whom we have never previously dedicated programming, but whose work is much beloved amongst us all. We hope you are excited, too.

Songwriting Inspired By Nature

Tarot & Spirituality

Tarot As A Sacred Practice

This course explores the magical and practical uses of tarot to discover ways to use it as a sacred practice. Originally a card game, then used as a tool for divination, there are now many different ways to use tarot, both practical and sacred. This class will start by using tarot as a reflection and meditation tool, and then dive into creative ways to use tarot, including: tarot as a daily ritual; classic tarot spreads and how to write your own; reading for others vs. reading for yourself; sacred reading practice Lectio Divina and tarot; and tarot for storytelling. This course is designed for anyone who is new to tarot, or already has a tarot practice, but would like to dive in deeper.