Benefits of Journal Writing

Mari · 05-01-2007, 03:08 AM

Benefits of Journaling:

http://www.toolswithheart.com/healthbenefits/index.html

Quote:

Health Benefits of Journal Writing
by founder Felice Willat

Many journaling teachers and authors know the healing benefits of keeping a journal. Marlene A. Schiwy, in her book A Voice of Her Own, talks about the healing dimensions of journal writing: "To create wholeness in our lives is to heal ourselves. Healing comes from the same root as whole and holiness. It is the attainment of wholeness of body, mind, emotions and spirit.

For many women, The journal provides a gentle setting in which healing can take place. It offers one place where literally and symbolically, all of the pieces of one’s life finally come together." And Lucia Cappaccione, author of The Well Being Journal, recognizes that illness can be a great teacher from within. "The most important message I learned from my disease is that the healing process is activated by a spiritual force that resides within. A journal can be a ‘living textbook’ for learning the lessons that the illness has to teach."

..........

The first studies, in the late l980’s, examined healthy people and journaling. Researchers have found that people who write about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding upsetting events have stronger immunity and visit their doctors half as often as those who write only about trivial events.

....
"More importantly," says Pamela M. Peeke, MD, MPH, ISPA Medical Advisor, "22% of the people who only wrote about their daily plans worsened substantially over the four-month period, while only 4% of those who wrote about their stressful events did so." She adds, "One of the least studied techniques so commonly taught in spas is journaling. Now, there is intriguing evidence that journaling has a direct impact upon the status of chronic disease."

In their studies, Smyth and Pennebaker had participants write for 15-30 minutes on four consecutive days about the most traumatic event in their lives. Writing continuously about a problem allowed the participants to thoroughly examine the event and how it affected them. "People have to stick with it," said a participant. "I get to the first page and it’s pure anger or frustration. They need to get beyond the emotion and discover a better understand. The need to find the ending of the process."

Pennebaker says developing a deeper understanding of the event and the emotions it generates helps the brain digest the information. He thinks when you analyze a traumatic event your brain turns it into a story that’s stored more easily. "Storytelling simplifies a complex experience," he says.

.....

Journal writing has the lowest risk factor imaginable, mentally as well as financially, providing you with the gentlest and safest of therapies. No expertise required, no minimum time required, and you don’t lose the benefits if you miss a time period.

There are even instances where the process of journal writing has sustained the writer beyond her anticipated life span, where she lived on precisely in order to finish saying what she had to say.

Mari · 05-01-2007, 03:15 AM

http://www.appleseeds.org/100_Journaling.htm

Quote:

100 Benefits of Journaling (part 1)

Stress reduction:

-Reduces the scatter in your life
-Increases focus
-Brings stability
-Offers a deeper level of learning, order, action and release
-Holds thoughts still so they can be changed and integrated
-Processes your stuff in a natural and appropriate way
-Releases pent-up thoughts and emotions
-Empowers
-Disentangles thoughts and ideas
-Bridges inner thinking with outer events
-Detaches and lets go of the past
-Allows you to re-experience the past with today's adult mind

Healing:

-Heals relationships
-Heals the past
-Dignifies all events
-Is honest, trusting, non-judgmental
-Strengthens your sense of yourself
-Balances and harmonizes
-Recalls and reconstructs past events
-Acts as your own counselor
-Integrates peaks and valleys in life
-Soothes troubled memories
--Sees yourself as a larger, important, whole and connected being
-Leverages therapy sessions for better and faster results
-Reveals and tracks patterns and cycles

Know yourself and
your truth better:

-Builds self confidence and self knowledge
-Records the past
-Brings out natural beauty and wisdom
-Helps you feel better about yourself
-Helps you identify your values
-Reads your own mind
-Aids in connecting causes to effects
-Reveals the depths of who you are
-Reveals outward expression of yet unformed inner impulses
-Creates mystery
-Clarifies thoughts, feelings and behavior
-Reveals your greater potential
-Shifts you to the observer, recorder, counselor level
-Reveals your processes - how you think, learn, create and use intuition
-Creates awareness of beliefs and options so you can change them
-Self-discovery
-Reveals different aspects of self
-Helps you see yourself as an individual
-Connects you to the bigger picture
-Is a close, intimate, accepting, trusting, caring, honest, non-judgmental, perfect friend
-Accesses the unconscious, subconscious and super consciousness
-Finds the missing pieces and the unsaid
-Helps rid you of the masks you wear
-Helps solve the mysteries of life
-Finds more meaning in life

Mari · 05-01-2007, 03:23 AM

http://www.appleseeds.org/100_Journaling.htm

Quote:

100 Benefits of Journaling (part 2)

Personal growth:

-Enables you to live life to the fullest
-Is fun, playful and sometimes humorous
-Expresses and creates
-Plants seeds
-Starts the sorting and grouping process
-Integrates life experiences and learnings
-Moves you towards wholeness and growth, to who you really are
Creates more results in life
-Explores your spirituality
-Focuses and clarifies your desires and needs
-Enhances self expression
-Enhances career and community
-Allows freedom of expression
--Offers progressive inner momentum to static unrelated events
-Exercises your mental muscles
-Improves congruency and integrity
-Enhances breakthroughs
-Unfolds the writer in you
-Maximizes time and business efficiency
-Explores night dreams, day dreams and fantasies
-Measures and tracks what is important
-Easier problem solving:
-Eases decision making
-Offers new perspectives
-Brings things together
-Shows relationships and wholeness instead of separation

It’s flexible and easy:

-Can be applied to clarify any issue in your life
-Takes so little time to stop, pay attention and listen to yourself
-Meets your needs, style, processing methods
-Caters to left and right brained people
-Has no rules - messiness, typos, poor writing are all OK
-Is often self-starting and motivating and supplies its own energy

Enhances intuition and
creativity:

-Improves self trust
-Awakens the inner voice
-Directs intention and discernment
-Provides insights
-Improves sensitivity
-Interprets your symbols and dreams
-Increases memory of events

Captures your life story:

-Teaches you how to write stories
-Soothes troubled memories
-Captures family and personal story
-Stimulates personal growth
-Improves family unity

Mari · 05-01-2007, 03:29 AM

Hi,
I'm thinking of re-starting a journal. I've kept one off and on since I was in elementary school. i think it has helped me over the years. And I've seen recent studies that journaling can help with such things as metal health, ....even weight loss. Apparently, even writing for 5 minutes a day can help.

My purpose for keeping a journal change every few years. I think that now I want to get back in touch with myself -- if that makes any sense.

I bought a new blank book at Barnes and Noble on Sunday. But I wonder if I should write on the computer instead. Maybe I will try the hard copy journal first and see how it goes..
M.

BJ · 05-01-2007, 07:58 AM

Mari I write in my journal every day. I have a hard time getting things out with my pdoc or tdoc. So I write and sometimes I show them and sometimes I don't. But it makes me feel better to write it out. I carry a book journal with me all the time. And if I happen to forget it, I leave notes on my Blackjack cell phone...always have that.

Good luck with it.

Nikko · 05-01-2007, 11:40 AM

I never had a journal, although I would like to. I used to write about things for my p-doc.

I guess I am afraid to start a journal because if someone found it or something.

Nikko

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