Transform Your Health: Write to Heal

Do you feel exhausted and depleted from this pandemic time?

Do you crave a sense of renewal, optimism and hope during these challenging times?

Join this 6 week online evidence-based course, facilitated by Dr. John Evans, designed to help you discover ways to manage stressful events and upheavals in your life during the pandemic and beyond through expressive writing.

The act of writing engages internal healing resources that affect mental and physical health. Expressive writing has the power to help you reduce heart rate and blood pressure, minimize stress, strengthen the immune system, and improve your self-esteem.

Transform Your Health: Write to Heal is a transformative six-week workshop that helps you access your inner healing voice.

You do not need to have writing experience or aspirations in order to participate. The instructor will lead you through a progression of restorative writing exercises. “During this (writing) exercise I remembered the pain and difficult times but tried to focus on the future and that the strengths that I have gained…Putting all of this into words has given me more strength and a better perspective.” Past course participant

COURSE DATES & TIME

The course starts on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022 at 4:00 – 5:30 pm PST/7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST and runs the same time each week through until the final class on Wednesday, March 9th.

The weekly classes are live via Zoom, they are not recorded and there are no course materials shared. The evidence-based writing protocol used in this course is done this way as it is the shared experience of writing alone together, the safe learning environment and the guided writing exercises done in real time together with the expert facilitation of your instructor, John Evans, that creates the results in this course.

This is truly rare and special opportunity to learn from one of the best teachers and researchers of our times in the expressive writing field. Join John Evans and be truly transformed from this six week Transform Your Health: Write to Heal journey!

On sale now through Wednesday, January 19th – SAVE $30 off!

Course fee is regularly $297 – on sale now for only $267.

Register now!

Please note, IAJW members save an additional 20% off.

Read below for more details about this course.

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$297.00

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About this Course

Course Overview

This workshop is an evidence-based course designed to help you discover ways to manage stressful events and upheavals in your life during the pandemic and beyond. The act of writing engages internal healing resources that affect mental and physical health. Expressive writing has the power to help you reduce heart rate and blood pressure, minimize stress, strengthen the immune system, and improve your self-esteem.

Transform Your Health: Write to Heal is a transformative six-week workshop that helps you access your inner healing voice. You do not need to have writing experience or aspirations in order to participate. The instructor will lead you through a progression of restorative writing exercises. The workshop employs different modes of writing that help you to heal in unique ways, including:

Expressive writing, which removes obstacles and moves you beyond a personal, private emotional upheaval or crisis.
Transactional writing, which allows you to take care of unfinished business and conveys your feelings, expectations, and intentions for yourself and others, in gratitude, compassion, forgiveness and loving kindness.
Poetic writing, which uses narrative structure and metaphor to tell your story as you wish to tell it.
Affirmative writing, which centers your focus on your best qualities and how you would like to express your life in the future.
Legacy writing, which teaches you to write for others about your values, major life lessons, turning points and epiphanies.
Mindful writing, which teaches you to use the principles of mindfulness to address triggers quickly.

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Weekly Class Times & Topic Overview

Transform Your Health:Write to Heal – A Pandemic Intervention is a special edition and application of the evidenced-based approach of using expressive writing for increased resiliency and well-being during challenging times.

Online Course: It is a six-week course that meets once a week via Zoom for 90 minutes.

Weekly Class Time on Zoom: 4:00 – 5:30 pm PST/7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST

Week 1: Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022

Writing to express difficult emotions

Week 2: Wednesday, February 9th, 2022

Writing to release and integrate difficult emotions

Week 3: Wednesday, February 16th, 2022

Writing to nurture gratitude

Week 4: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022

Writing to invite and enhance strengths and resources

Week 5: Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022

Writing to cultivate positive meaning and savor goodness

Week 6: Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

Writing to invite insight, perspective, and growth

What to expect in each weekly class…

This course consists of six different types of writing that extend the Pennebaker paradigm. You will engage in expressive writing, transactional writing, poetic writing, affirmative writing, legacy writing and mindful writing.

Also, you will complete post-writing reflections after each type of writing.

Sessions will end with a short discussion and Q & A.

Brief optional homework is offered at the end of sessions. Participants will not be asked to share their actual writing, so all writing is confidential.

No affinity for writing or love of writing is required to participate.

Recommended Reading

Expressive Writing: Words that Heal by James Pennebaker and John Evans

Wellness and Writing Connections: Writing for Better Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health by John Evans

Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo

Who is this course intended for…

This course is intended to provide an intervention, support, and tools for anyone over 18 years of age who is facing challenges because of the COVID-19 pandemic or any other emotionally overwhelming challenges in the last two years or before. Participants should feel comfortable reading and writing in English.

Background for this course: Two recently published studies (2016 and 2021) show that this adaptation of Transform Your Health: Write To Heal can build resilience, lower depression, perceived stress, and rumination.

When the course is offered face-to-face at Duke Integrative Medicine it is a $425 value. Offered one-one by Wellness & Writing Connections, it is a $495 value.

IAJW Course Fee: Regular price $297, On sale now for only $267 (and IAJW Members save an additional 20% off making the course only $213.60!)

On sale now through Wednesday, January 19th – SAVE $30 off!

(Please note, this is the lowest price this course has ever been offered for and it is a special rate for the IAJW.org community.)

John F. Evans with his journals. He practices what he teaches!

Meet Your Course Instructor

John F. Evans, MAT, MA, Ed.D is an expressive writing clinician, researcher, and a national board certified health and wellness coach who teaches groups, individuals, and health care professionals how to use writing for better physical, emotional, and spiritual health. An author of five books, he has taught journaling and writing for self-development for over thirty years.

Evans co-authored Expressive Writing: Words that Heal (2014) with James Pennebaker. His own book, Wellness & Writing Connections: Writing for Better Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health (2010), is a collection of essays from the Wellness & Writing Connections Conference Series Evans created and directed from 2007 – 2010. Since 2011, through Duke Integrative Medicine, Evans has taught on topics such as Caring for Caregivers, Transform Your Health: Write to Heal, Leading Others in Writing for Health, and Writing as a Tool for Integrative Health Coaches.

John is a leading researcher and teacher in the expressive writing field. You will be learning from the best when you take this course from him.

Register now and write to transform your health, heal and tap into your resilience and well-being!

John Evans

John F. Evans, MAT, MA, Ed.D is a writing clinician and integrative health coach who works with groups, individuals, and health care professionals, teaching them how to use writing for better physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Evans has authored five books and has taught journaling and writing for self-development for over thirty years. With James Pennebaker, Evans co-authored Expressive Writing: Words that Heal (2014). His book, Wellness & Writing Connections: Writing for Better Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health (2010), is a collection of essays from the Wellness & Writing Connections Conference Series (2007 – 2010). At Duke Integrative Medicine, Evans has taught Caring for Caregivers, Legacy Writing, Transform Your Health: Write to Heal, Leading Patients in Writing for Health, and Writing as a Tool for Integrative Health Coaches. Evans blogs occasionally for Psychology Today in Personal Perspectives and is in private practice at Psychology Associates in Chapel Hill, NC.

Evans received a scholar-in-residence and post-doctoral fellowship award in Expository Writing from New York University, a doctorate in post-secondary literature and writing pedagogy studies from North Carolina State University, and an MA in English from Middlebury College. He is founder and executive director of Wellness & Writing Connections, LLC and provides individual, group, and institutional life course guidance programs.

All of the following testimonials are from past students who participated in this same course when it was offered in 2021through Duke Integrative Medicine through Duke University in North Carolina, USA.

"I was surprised at what I wrote. Didn't expect this wise voice to show itself."

"It felt cathartic, as if stuck emotions were released instead of remaining bottled inside."

"During this exercise I remembered the pain and difficult times but tried to focus on the future and that the strengths that I have gained...Putting all of this into words has given me more strength and a better perspective."

"I found this writing deeply satisfying because it gave me a sense fo my own resources for finding contentment and satsifaction while having my life greatly shrunken in terms of going out into the world."

"WHEW!! I forgot I had a choice to choose how I show up in this world. The writing exerience alowed me to examine how I'd like to move forward. It's gvien me a deeper perspective on my value and worth."

"Wow. I could have written more. I didn't stop to breathe. I let my pen glide back and forth on my note pad. I am looking at this pandeic as a chance to for a do-over, and that came out quickly while writing. I felt as though my thoughts and pen were challenging me to do something, to be happier."

"This writing felt like waves coming and out that were building as the tide was coming in. It had a cleansing and refreshing qaulity that required work but was satisfying for the effort."

"...The writing wasn't difficult, just eye-opening."

Get Transform Your Health: Write to Heal here

$297.00

Transform Your Health: Write to Heal