Expressive Therapeutic Journaling

Get It Down, Give It Up! Writing for healing

Many of us head to our journals instinctively in times of trouble. Sometimes we get sick of writing about the same old situation over and over again, wondering if we’re ever going to get beyond our negative obsessions.

Twenty years of research has proven time and time again that writing down “what disturbs and dismays you” is good for you both physically and mentally. People who express themselves by writing in a journal have stronger immune systems, fewer illnesses, and lowered blood pressure. Writing in a journal also reduces symptoms of many chronic illnesses such as arthritis, asthma, etc. Expressive writing can signifcantly, positively improve mood states including depression and anxiety.

This workshop will provide techniques and exercises to be engaged with in class as well as taken home for future use, to use our journals to best effect for expression, insight and resolution. For those of us who are writers, our problems tend to rise over and over again in our poetry and our fiction as well as our journaling – this workshop will also touch on how to mine our journals for material that can be transformed into powerful fiction and poetry.

Certified in the AWA method of leading creative writing workshops, Susan Lynn Reynolds, BSc. Psych, has taught creative writing for 12 years. Writing for therapeutic benefit is both the subject of her award-winning undergrad thesis and her current program of study for her Masters degree.

Sue leads writing groups for criminalized women both in jail and in the community, a program that earned her the 2007 June Callwood Award for Outstanding Volunteerism.

To register, please contact: Catherine Sword, Librarian

Saturday, September 20, 2008

11:15 am – 5:15 pm.

$84 ($73.50 for WCDR members)