We knew writing was good for us didn’t we?
Writer
Natalie Goldburg, Writing Down the Bones,
said it long ago, “Writing will take you where you want to go.”
Julie
Cameron, The Artist’s Way, championed
the cause of “Morning Pages,” a process of writing for a few minutes as a mind
dump to pour out extraneous garbage. A period at the end of a sentence does
wonders to stop the endless mind chatter.
See, we knew it. Now researchers are jumping into the
fray. “No matter the quality of your
prose,” wrote Rachel Grate*, “the act of writing itself leads to strong
physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood,
stress levels and depressive symptoms.” *Science
Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love to Write,” September
15, 2014).
We don’t even have to
be good writers to reap the rewards, unless of course, the pain
of rejection becomes too excruciating to bare.
My friend
who sent Grate's article and I both have an intuitive nature as well as scientific. We both learn from our own experiences and do not need data to
support them, but evidence is always fun.
In a four-month
study, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five
times during the study was enough to make a difference in the physical and
mental health benefits of the writer
Writing
of traumatic events helped participants. They had fewer illnesses, and if
hospitalized, they spent less time there.
Apparently
people who write out their trauma have lower blood presser, and their wounds
heal faster than those who don’t.
“New Zealand researchers monitored the recovery of wounds from
medically necessary biopsies on 49 healthy adults. The adults wrote about their
thoughts and feelings for just 20 minutes, three days in a row, two weeks
before the biopsy. Eleven days later, 76% of the group that wrote had fully
healed. Fifty-eight percent of the control group had not recovered. The study
concluded that writing about distressing events helped participants make sense
of the events and reduce distress."
What can
I say except, writers, keep on keeping on.
