Transform Your Health: Write to Heal

Research tells us that expressive writing has the power to help us transform our physical, mental, and spiritual health. In fact expressive writing (1) has been shown to decrease the heart rate, lower blood pressure, enhance breathing, strengthen the immune system so that it can better fight off infection, improve self-esteem, or help manage stress.During this 6-week workshop, John Evans will coach participants through a simple progression of exercises he has developed from his more than 25 years of working in the field. Participation requires neither any prior writing experience nor any aspiration to become a writer. In fact, the practices simply cultivate your natural and easy ability to express the ideas that define who you are and how you experience your life, through a variety of modes of writing that enhance health in different ways, including:- Expressive Writing: moving beyond what you thought you could not get over.- Transactional Writing: communicating your desires with compassion, empathy, forgiveness and gratitude.- Poetic Writing: expressing your "rites of passage" with metaphor, story, poetry and creative nonfiction.- Affirmative Writing: discovering your gifts and describing your best possible life by writing it forward.- Legacy Writing: sharing your values and the life lessons you have learned for those you love.