Through art projects—including visual arts, dance, writing, and music—along with spiritual practices and guided imagery, Healing With the Arts gives you the tools to heal what you need to heal in your life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Power of Words
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From the course by University of Florida
Healing with the Arts
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From the lesson
Word
Meet the Instructors
Mary Rockwood Lane, PhD, RN, FAANAssociate Professor
College of Nursing
Michael Samuels, MD
The healing power of words.
As you've done this course, you've been able to keep a journal, and
you've written stories, and you've written the story of your heart.
In this module, I really want you to focus on the power and
ease and grace of using word as a way of healing.
Words can be used in many different ways.
They could be used to tell stories, they can be used to write poetry.
You can use words in the oral tradition of telling stories or
listening to other people's stories.
In this module, I want you to write your own poetry and stories, but
I also want to invite you to ask someone in your life that you know and
I want you to ask them to tell you a story of their life.
This may be a friend, a grandmother,
an uncle, a sister or a brother, someone in your
life is going to give you some time where you can sit and listen to their story.
And that, you do not have to write anything down.
Create that connection and that healing experience for
yourself by listening and holding someone else's story.
The next thing I'd like you to do is go back and reread some of the things
that you've already written in your journa and read them with a new perspective.
What are you saying?
What does it mean?
What is the messages that you're giving to yourself?
What is your story?
Words also, I think, are very magical.
One of the things I love about words is like when I open up to my own voice.
It's like I open up to a place inside me that is in flow with the oracle.
I think each one of us has our own inner voice and
opening ourselves up to that voice can be very, very
revealing when you begin to value the time that it takes
to write a story, or listening to yourself.
When I've written books,
one of the most fun moments is when I realize the book is writing itself.
Suddenly, I get to a point in the book where suddenly,
it's like it has its own voice.
Some mysterious voice begins to come through me
in my writing and I've seen that in poetry.
Suddenly, a poem writes itself.
So in this time,
I want you to open yourself up to the inspiration of the written word.
Take time to maybe, if you don't want to write,
simply read some of the most fun poetry or
fun stories or just use the written word as a way for
you to explore and go deeper in o your own inner world.
There's words everywhere around us.
In this module, select the words that are fulfilling and
comforting and healing to you.
And reside in that place where words are just there in the beauty,
and the magic of what words can bring to you.
One day, during this module,
take some time to be totally in silence without words.
Take a half a day and then
become very conscious in intention, intentional when you use words.
So you can develop a relationship between your spaciousness and
your ability to create words and speak.
Words are beautiful and
the way we speak can be very healing not only to ourselves, but to others.
I have found the way I speak to others is much more healing and
impacts me than it does anyone else.
Words have incredible
ability to take us places and
makes us feel deep and connected.
This week explore the power of your own words and
really look at where you can tell your story.
Also, write the journal, do the journal exercises in the book.
There's a download book.
Do some of the journal exercises if you're not too sure what to write about.
There's lots of suggestions.
Words.
Write the words after this in your journal.
Words that you just love.
Words.
There's tremendous power in just words.
Thank you.
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