Transform Your Health: Write to Heal

Do you feel exhausted and depleted and in need of a sense of renewed energy and resilience?

Do you crave more feelings of optimism and hope during these challenging and stressful times we are living in?

Join this 6 week online evidence-based course, grounded in the work of the late 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 dates TBD in 2023.

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, a teacher who was trained in this expressive writing method by the late John Evans.

Register now and be truly transformed from this six week Transform Your Health: Write to Heal journey!

Please note, IAJW members save 20% off (simply be logged in as a member when you add this course to your cart and your member savings will be automatically applied).

Read below for more details about this course.

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$297.00

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Course Info
Testimonials

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 Overview

Transform Your Health:Write to Heal – offers you 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: TBD in 2023

Week 1: Writing to express difficult emotions

Week 2: Writing to release and integrate difficult emotions

Week 3: Writing to nurture gratitude

Week 4: Writing to invite and enhance strengths and resources

Week 5: Writing to cultivate positive meaning and savor goodness

Week 6: 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 or stressors that you would like to find some relief from through expressive writing to heal. 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: Only $297 (and IAJW Members save an additional 20% off making the course only $213.60!)

(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 was a member of our IAJW Journal Council and a much loved writing to heal teacher and researcher. He is greatly missed. We are offering this course by one of his trained facilitators and colleagues as part of our John Evan’s Legacy efforts.

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

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