Course Overview
Each week, we’ll focus on a different aspect of cultivating resilience and healing. You’re invited to write about the aspects of a particular situation or incident that’s happened in your career or personal life that’s been most challenging for you.
The supplies you’ll need:
- Dedicated notebook
- Favorite pen
The tools we will use include: Expressive writing, transactional writing, poetic writing, affirmative writing, legacy writing, and mindful writing (see below for more details on each type of writing.)
Some of the benefits of intentional writing:
- Creates vision and sets intentions
- Clarifies values
- Stimulates thinking that leads to insights and understanding
- Changes perspective and perception
- Facilitates mindfulness practice
- Expresses and defines readiness to change
- Clarifies importance and builds confidence
- Removes obstacles to build confidence and resilience
- Measures progress
- Encourages staying on track
- Affirms strengths
- Communicates and builds gratitude, empathy, and compassion
- Creates and supports joy and opportunities to flourish
This 6 week facilitated evidence-based course is designed to help you discover ways to manage stressful events and upheavals in your life. 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.
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
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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.
Next class starts Wednesday, March 20th, 2024
Weekly classes are Wednesday’s March 20, 27, April 3, 10, 17, 24
From 1:30 – 3:00 pm PST/4:30 – 6:00 pm EST
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.
IAJW Course Fee: Only $297 (IAJW Members save an additional 20% off the sale price :)
(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.)
REGISTER NOW! Don’t miss this.
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!
