Haiku for Healing – Google Classroom Final Update

Haiku for Healing: Google Classroom Final Update

Here is the renowned poet and editor Geethanjali Rajan’s conclusion to the H4H Google Classroom:

The haiku course that ran for 8 weeks as part of the Haiku for Healing (H4H) series concluded on December 1st, 2025. It was conducted on the Google Classroom platform. The poets who registered for the course had varied experience levels with haiku. The backgrounds with healing protocols also varied with some of them being healers and all of them looking to add haiku as a healing toolkit. For many of us, in addition to learning and discussing haiku, there was a technical learning component as well in navigating the Google Classroom during travel and through phones.

The 6-modules programme started with the participants reading haiku from a reading list and commenting on them. The reading list for the programme also had articles and books on haiku, its technique and more importantly, how practitioners have used the form as part of their healing toolkit. This led to an interesting exchange of ideas and experiences.

In parallel, the participating poets focused on mindful journalling of noticed moments and gradually built these into haiku moments that they had experienced. The modules that followed encouraged the participants to shape these into haiku. The course also introduced the concept of self-editing and many of the participants went through multiple drafts of their haiku. Later, all the participants commented on haiku that resonated with them (the haiku were shared anonymously).

The course was premised on the paramount importance of confidentiality and privacy of the participants. Hence here are some of the poems of the poets who gave their permission to publish their work in this final update of the Google Classroom course.

autumn sunrise
her walker
turns gold

Buffy Shutt

Buffy’s engagement with the year-long Haiku for Parkinson’s email course run by Sonam Chhoki for the Haiku for Parkinson’s project under the aegis of Stella Pierides in 2024 marked the beginning of her haiku journey with regard to healing. She shares her thoughts about this year’s course:

“Writing haiku is an intimate and highly disciplined practice, but having Geethanjali Rajan as a guide made writing haiku feel possible, feel valuable even in my early drafts. I was drawn to this class as part of my own journey in accepting and understanding my sister’s new world defined by Parkinson’s. Reading and writing haiku and learning more about the history and various methods provides a specific kind of quiet, a specific lesson in observation and love.”

tuning into birdsong
before they are lost
the kitchen clatters

Raji Vijayaraghavan

Raji says, “I especially enjoy the predawn hour hush when there is this moment of peace before the routine starts. The first chirp that breaks into this silence is an absolute pleasure to tune into my day. Life is full of challenges and we face them, sort them out, win some, lose some and some fights even turn into regular battles. But, when we start noticing and enjoying moments such as a bird singing or anything that gives us pure pleasure like a baby’s smile or something connected to nature…  at least, we may learn to deal with things in life in a more calm and collected manner.  I believe the journey of haiku writing takes us consistently through this path and the process of keen observation and connection to nature hones it further.”

autumn morning…
mother’s breath
awakens

Diana Jeong

Diana’s discussion on the choice of words, rhythm and the thought she gives to reading a haiku aloud, the silences, the pauses and the cadence was thought-provoking and a learning experience for many of the participants.

open window
the forest
just a breath away

Kashmira Shaw Raj

Kashmira (a Qi Gong practitioner and Tai Qi teacher) found the concepts of stillness and flow in haiku quite similar to what she finds in her Tai Qi practise. She shares that her attention was drawn to the use of imagery in haiku and to minimalism. The concept of slowing down itself is an invitation to healing.

walking with Mother—
autumn leaves shuffle
across the pathway

Vidya S. Venkatramani

Vidya has been writing haiku for many years and found the reading list very informative. Her own haiku reflects her approach where mindfulness (and stopping to notice the moments) help her in her healing journey.

he softly removes
grandma’s hearing aids . . .
heavy thunderstorm

Lakshmi Iyer

Lakshmi shares, “The H4H Haiku course helped me withdraw myself from the relentless and wavering conscience to continuously submit to various journals and then, the after-effects of the monkey mind to think deeply of acceptance or rejections, which I found to tax my inner consciousness keeping me away from rejuvenating my inner energy of silence and peace. With the increase of cellphones and WhatsApp messages not helping me reach my goals, I came up with the above haiku which is the ultimate reality of this generation!”

Conclusion

While conducting this course with participants who wanted to engage with haiku for  healing, the focus was on the experience, the process of observing the outer environment and connecting to one’s own inner world. The structure of the haiku, the use of seasonal reference words or the form was not the emphasis. Through reading the examples of haiku by established poets and the articles on haiku, the newcomers to the genre got into the rhythm of writing. Most of the exchanges were on a one-to-one basis through private comments on the Google Classroom, though the public chat was enabled too. This was done keeping in mind the requests from some of the participants for complete privacy. All of the participants shared their views on healing and haiku with me as facilitator, which I collated, summarised and shared (sometimes anonymously on request) on a common “summary” document with the other participants. All this meant a certain amount of flexibility in the course delivery modes. (A lesson in “going with the flow” for me!)

The course was a culmination of over a year of reading, curating and designing the course. That itself was a nurturing experience for me. The haiku by the participants and the individual conversations with each of them helped open up so many shared moments and similar experiences. Though geography separates us, aren’t we all journeying together in this universe?

“Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh*

To the participants – Thank you for trusting the process and for sharing your journeys. Wishing you fulfilment in your journey ahead.

To Sonam Chhoki and The Haiku Foundation – Gratitude for this opportunity.

Wishing everyone a peaceful 2026!

Geethanjali Rajan

Notes

*Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Fight (Mindfulness Essentials), Parallax Press, 2017.

Starting on Monday, 9th February is the haiga photo prompts, the second part of the Haiga as a Healing Practice feature. The instructions will be posted with the first haiga photo prompt on the 9th.

If you have any questions about Haiku for Healing, please use the Haiku for Healing contact form on our Contact page.

Bios

Geethanjali Rajan teaches Japanese and English in Chennai, India and started her haiku journey in 2003. She edits haiku at the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails, and is on the editorial team of Café Haiku. She is the author of a book of haikai poetry longing for sun longing for rain (Red River, 2023) and the co-author of Unexpected Gift with Sonam Chhoki, Bhutan (Éditions des petits nuages, Canada, 2021).

She was on the panel of judges in the South Asia Online Haiku Contest for The Japan Foundation (Japanese language haiku) in 2021 and 2022. She has conducted over 60 haiku workshops in schools, colleges and other fora, spreading the joy of the ancient Japanese poetry form in India. Her poetry can be sampled here and here.

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short-form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing. She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan’s non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails.

Her chapbook of haibun, The Lure of the Threshold was published in May 2021. Mapping Absences, a collaboration of haibun, tan bun and tanka prose with Mike Montreuil was published in 2019. Another collaboration with Geethanjali Rajan: Unexpected Gift was published in November 2021. She organised a year-long email course in 2024 for The Haiku Foundation’s Haiku for Parkinson’s project.

Read past Haiku for Healing posts here.

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