Lesson 3: Writing and health
Ways that writing might influence health.
Introduction
Lesson Three, Section One: Introduction.
In this lesson we will be talking about and discussing the relation of writing to improvements in health functioning that are beginning to emerge in a large number of studies over the past twenty years. While some of this material is technical I hope not to have to bore you with details and try to present it in an understandable fashion. I will be basing this on James Pennebaker’s book and work, and on the summary Louise DeSalvo furnishes in her book.
Another way of understanding how this works, that is the beneficial effect of writing on health, is provided by the way science currently conceives the of the role of the immune system. This is basically pretty complicated and much of the research needs to be done. Here Esther Sternberg provides one useful guide to this complicated field.
Other accounts of ‘how it works’ come from a variety of orientations concerning with what I call coherency or healing. I happen to like Deena Metzger’s approach to coherency and healing, but I’m quite sure you all have versions of this which you might like to share as it turns out that here we are moving into the realm of spirituality, I hope there will be time here to share these ideas when we come to this section and to Lesson Four which is on Shaping the Feelings into Healing Feelings.
