![]() “Reconnecting with oneself and rediscovering who you are happens when you practice meditation,” Watts says.Īs the Mayo Clinic notes, meditation may help clear away information overload that can build up and contribute to stress levels. Often, journaling involves writing down your thoughts and emotions - good or bad - and working through them to gain a better understanding of yourself. “By putting our feelings into words on paper, we’re hitting the brakes on our emotional response,” says Holly Schiff, PsyD, a Greenwich, Connecticut–based licensed clinical psychologist with Jewish Family Services of Greenwich.įor some, journaling can also be a form of meditation because it requires that you focus your attention on what’s happening in the present. But when people labeled the face as angry or scared on paper, the amygdala appeared to calm down. When participants saw a photo of an angry or scared face, the amygdala, a region of the brain that serves as an alarm to protect us from danger, activated. Research found that putting feelings into words, known as affect labeling, may have a therapeutic effect in the brain. Journaling functions in many ways, but it’s often recommended to reduce stress and anxiety. Pennebaker’s studies, the medical community started taking a closer look at journaling and how it affects mental, emotional, and physical health, according to the Center for Journal Therapy. One of those researchers was James Pennebaker, PhD, a psychologist who discovered that people who wrote about emotional events or feelings for 20 minutes a day for three or four days saw improvements in immune function.Īfter the publication of Dr. The purpose of the exercises is to help you get to know yourself better, so you can work through issues over time, according to the Progoff Intensive Journal Program website.Īs journaling caught on, researchers began studying its potential health and wellness benefits. Progoff created what he called the intensive journal method, which involves a series of writing exercises about different areas of your life, including personal relationships, body and health, life history, and dreams and imagery. “From an ayurvedic perspective, journaling is essentially mindfulness in action, since it gives us a chance to proactively and healthily process our emotions,” says Meera Watts, founder and CEO of Siddhi Yoga, a yoga, meditation, and ayurvedic training school based in Singapore.īut while journaling has been around for millennia, it wasn’t widely recognized as a form of therapy in the United States until New York psychologist Ira Progoff, PhD, began offering classes and workshops in the 1960s, according to the Center for Journal Therapy.ĭr. ![]() Your environment and mindfulness practices, like journaling, are key to building awareness and cultivating healthy shifts. Ayurveda encourages lifestyle habits that help you regain balance between the body, mind, and spirit. The mindfulness concepts that support journal therapy are rooted in ayurveda, a natural system of medicine that originated in India more than 3,000 years ago, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. The practice of journaling is thought to have originated thousands of years ago with the beginning of written language.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |