http://www.ukathome.co.uk/assignments.php
Looks an interesting project. It asks for essays written about your home to be sent in (aswell as the photos). Actually its on now!
Wednesday 19 September 2007
Saturday 8 September 2007
The Power of Putting Pen to Paper
Dr James Pennebaker, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, has researched the connection between writing and health. He did a study in which volunteers wrote about a traumatic event in their lives and their feelings around it. Immediately after writing about the event they felt horrible. But six months later, compared to the control groups who had written on other topics, the journal group felt better.
Prof Pennebaker findings show that writing a journal improves sleep, strengthens the immune system, decreases pain levels and lowers blood pressure. He said ‘Writing about their deepest thoughts and feelings about trauma resulted in improved moods, more positive outlook and greater physical health.’
Why journal writing should make a difference to people’s health can perhaps be explained by Petra King. She is author of the Quest For Life and Your Life Matters, and founder of the Quest For Life Centre in Bundanoon, NSW, and Australia. She has helped over 50,000 people suffering from trauma and life threatening illnesses. Our emotions are enmeshed in our bodies, Petra explains, but writing uses different neural pathways to those of emotions.’ A reaction is just a re-activation of the whole neural pathway system. Writing can make a more appropriate response rather than just reactivating it’ she says. ‘Writing gives people a safe controlled environment in which they can begin to get the energy moving of whatever it is they are feeling. Once it stops churning around inside our heads and we find the language for it, then we begin to have some power over the experience.’
When Petra was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 33, writing was one of the tools she used in her own recovery. ‘I was so appalled to think that anyone might see the sort of stuff that went on inside my head,’ she confesses, ‘that I had to give myself permission to burn whatever I wrote after half a page.’ She realised when she first put pen to paper and wrote and burnt those half pages just how negative, judgmental and self-critical she felt. ‘Sometimes,’ she revealed, ‘you don’t even know what it is that you are feeling, or it can be a smorgasbord of feelings: confusion, shock and fear. Writing can give us that capacity to separate them out.’
Often the people who attend her writing courses and the quest For Life Centre are unable to vocalise how they are feeling. So writing can be a safe way to explore their feelings. If someone has been abused in earlier life, writing can often enable them to find the words and feelings around the issue. So when they leave the centre at the end of the course, they are able to go home and confront a parent about what happened in their childhood and find a way of saying out loud what had been unutterable until then.
Other people have turned to the cathartic release of their journal in dealing with grief. Pam Angus-Leppan found her journal writing invaluable when she lost her husband, Peter, through illness, several years ago. They had been married for 48 years. ‘It was a very strong relationship,’ says Pam. ‘We had little need for other people, except our children.’
For six months after Peter’s death, Pam wrote for 20 minutes first thing in the morning. ‘I wrote anything that came in to my head. I talked to myself in the journal. “I feel awful, in fact, bloody. What is it exactly? Is it some specific thing?”
She slowly found that what she was thinking was in her mind rather than reality, and began to notice that the world was nicer than she thought. ‘It gave me a direction towards things that were interesting.’ At 70, she started a law degree, and now, in addition to the rigours of essay writing and exams, she goes ten pin bowling.
American Julia Cameron is author of The Artists Way, an inspirational guide for anyone wanting to unblock their creativity. Of all the tools she recommends in the book the most useful, she believes, are what she calls ‘morning pages’. These are three pages written in longhand first thing every morning. The page doesn’t need to make sense. She sees them as a way of moving through the fears that stop a person doing what they are meant to be doing.
‘I think the morning pages give us our lives,’ Julia Cameron says. ‘We go to the page and we write down this is what I wish I had more of, what I like. This is what I don’t like, what I wish I had less of. I have to call my sister back. I need to buy kitty litter. None of this looks like it has a lot to do with art, but these are the things in between us and being present in our lives.’
She believes that morning pages make them able to see what is going on around them, instead of just ‘watching their inner movie’. One Australian woman remarked to her: ‘Julia, I was perfectly happy drunk in the outback, then I started doing morning pages and now I’m a Hollywood scriptwriter.’
The Artists Way was written to help blocked artists. But the book has reached s afar more wider audience and has been an invaluable resource for people facing such diverse challenges as getting divorced, or dealing with illness. She describes the book as being a bridge for many people, ‘I don’t think you can divide spiritual energy from creative energy,’ she says. ‘They are the same thing. You can’t divide creative energy from your health energy.’
Jacqueline Murphy teaches writing for storyworks Australia, and uses writing to help businesses bring their visions in to being. She sees morning pages as a non-rational, non-mental approach to writing. It’s about keeping the pen moving and it doesn’t need to make sense or have a plot. ‘I think it’s a kind of release,’ she says, ‘I love the empty feeling you get from it.’
Journal writing is something she sees as being more rational, more of an enquiry in to herself, and what the burning issues are for her that day. It is also a way to strategise, says Jacqueline. ‘I think its one of the most beautiful things you can do for yourself. It’s a very private, intimate relationship with yourself. It’s a way of valuing yourself, and all sorts of wonderful thins arrive out of it, such as insights, ideas and plans. It makes you more conscious.’
Both mediums, she finds, give her a deeper understanding and acceptance of herself and her emotions, and enables her to express herself more clearly in both the spoken and written word.
Excerpt from: The Power of Putting Pen to Paper
Rosamund Burton
Kindred Spirit Magazine May/June 2007
Prof Pennebaker findings show that writing a journal improves sleep, strengthens the immune system, decreases pain levels and lowers blood pressure. He said ‘Writing about their deepest thoughts and feelings about trauma resulted in improved moods, more positive outlook and greater physical health.’
Why journal writing should make a difference to people’s health can perhaps be explained by Petra King. She is author of the Quest For Life and Your Life Matters, and founder of the Quest For Life Centre in Bundanoon, NSW, and Australia. She has helped over 50,000 people suffering from trauma and life threatening illnesses. Our emotions are enmeshed in our bodies, Petra explains, but writing uses different neural pathways to those of emotions.’ A reaction is just a re-activation of the whole neural pathway system. Writing can make a more appropriate response rather than just reactivating it’ she says. ‘Writing gives people a safe controlled environment in which they can begin to get the energy moving of whatever it is they are feeling. Once it stops churning around inside our heads and we find the language for it, then we begin to have some power over the experience.’
When Petra was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 33, writing was one of the tools she used in her own recovery. ‘I was so appalled to think that anyone might see the sort of stuff that went on inside my head,’ she confesses, ‘that I had to give myself permission to burn whatever I wrote after half a page.’ She realised when she first put pen to paper and wrote and burnt those half pages just how negative, judgmental and self-critical she felt. ‘Sometimes,’ she revealed, ‘you don’t even know what it is that you are feeling, or it can be a smorgasbord of feelings: confusion, shock and fear. Writing can give us that capacity to separate them out.’
Often the people who attend her writing courses and the quest For Life Centre are unable to vocalise how they are feeling. So writing can be a safe way to explore their feelings. If someone has been abused in earlier life, writing can often enable them to find the words and feelings around the issue. So when they leave the centre at the end of the course, they are able to go home and confront a parent about what happened in their childhood and find a way of saying out loud what had been unutterable until then.
Other people have turned to the cathartic release of their journal in dealing with grief. Pam Angus-Leppan found her journal writing invaluable when she lost her husband, Peter, through illness, several years ago. They had been married for 48 years. ‘It was a very strong relationship,’ says Pam. ‘We had little need for other people, except our children.’
For six months after Peter’s death, Pam wrote for 20 minutes first thing in the morning. ‘I wrote anything that came in to my head. I talked to myself in the journal. “I feel awful, in fact, bloody. What is it exactly? Is it some specific thing?”
She slowly found that what she was thinking was in her mind rather than reality, and began to notice that the world was nicer than she thought. ‘It gave me a direction towards things that were interesting.’ At 70, she started a law degree, and now, in addition to the rigours of essay writing and exams, she goes ten pin bowling.
American Julia Cameron is author of The Artists Way, an inspirational guide for anyone wanting to unblock their creativity. Of all the tools she recommends in the book the most useful, she believes, are what she calls ‘morning pages’. These are three pages written in longhand first thing every morning. The page doesn’t need to make sense. She sees them as a way of moving through the fears that stop a person doing what they are meant to be doing.
‘I think the morning pages give us our lives,’ Julia Cameron says. ‘We go to the page and we write down this is what I wish I had more of, what I like. This is what I don’t like, what I wish I had less of. I have to call my sister back. I need to buy kitty litter. None of this looks like it has a lot to do with art, but these are the things in between us and being present in our lives.’
She believes that morning pages make them able to see what is going on around them, instead of just ‘watching their inner movie’. One Australian woman remarked to her: ‘Julia, I was perfectly happy drunk in the outback, then I started doing morning pages and now I’m a Hollywood scriptwriter.’
The Artists Way was written to help blocked artists. But the book has reached s afar more wider audience and has been an invaluable resource for people facing such diverse challenges as getting divorced, or dealing with illness. She describes the book as being a bridge for many people, ‘I don’t think you can divide spiritual energy from creative energy,’ she says. ‘They are the same thing. You can’t divide creative energy from your health energy.’
Jacqueline Murphy teaches writing for storyworks Australia, and uses writing to help businesses bring their visions in to being. She sees morning pages as a non-rational, non-mental approach to writing. It’s about keeping the pen moving and it doesn’t need to make sense or have a plot. ‘I think it’s a kind of release,’ she says, ‘I love the empty feeling you get from it.’
Journal writing is something she sees as being more rational, more of an enquiry in to herself, and what the burning issues are for her that day. It is also a way to strategise, says Jacqueline. ‘I think its one of the most beautiful things you can do for yourself. It’s a very private, intimate relationship with yourself. It’s a way of valuing yourself, and all sorts of wonderful thins arrive out of it, such as insights, ideas and plans. It makes you more conscious.’
Both mediums, she finds, give her a deeper understanding and acceptance of herself and her emotions, and enables her to express herself more clearly in both the spoken and written word.
Excerpt from: The Power of Putting Pen to Paper
Rosamund Burton
Kindred Spirit Magazine May/June 2007
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