Writing is excellent for both physical and mental health. While journaling doesn’t burn as many calories as working out or running, it still works to lower your stress levels, teaches you mindfulness, and more. Your brain, just like your body, needs to be exercised and having a leather journal might be just the thing. Here are just some of the published health benefits from expressive writing.
What is Expressive Writing?
Expressive writing throws away conventional writing and focuses on you. You don’t need rules, nor do you need that nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you’re doing it wrong. Expressive writing is like a jump-start to help your brain process events which are going on in your life. It is generally done for a set period of time, but it is not constrained in any other way.
Here are 5 health benefits do you receive from Expressive Writing.
1. Lowering Stress
Stress has many sources. Scribing your stress-causes in a leather journal gets them out into the open in a safe environment. Nobody needs to see your venting, but the simple matter of writing them down tends to help your brain work through the events of the day. From a purely physiological standpoint, you are also sitting still in front of the journal, breathing deeply while you write.
2. Boosting Immune Function
Dr. James Pennebaker, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, pioneered the field of writing therapy. He does not hold back about the benefits you can achieve from journaling.
“When people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experienced improved health. They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune function. If they are first-year college students, their grades tend to go up.” says Pennebaker.
Going hand-in-hand with the stress reduction is the boost in immune function.
3. Lowering Blood Pressure
When you sit in front of the paper in your leather journal, let yourself go. Think about the event as it happened without pushing the boundary too much. As you breathe in deeply and get to the core of your thoughts, you can feel yourself relaxing. With that relaxation response, your heart rate slows down, stress seems to leave you, and you’ll find yourself in the zone for health-boosting emotional healing.
4. Mindfulness Training
Mindfulness is the art of drawing yourself back to the present moment. Using your expressive writing skills, write down the thoughts that you’ve had about events which happened in the past or will happen in the future. By sorting those out, you are able to let go of the memories and start to focus on the present moment. Mindfulness and meditation are two skills at the core of happiness according to positive psychology.
5. Developing Mental Stability
When you write your thoughts on paper, you are reliving the events which may have traumatized you, strengthened you, or both. The mere act of writing it down helps your brain work through the event. It will guide you through to the other side, leaving you a much stronger individual.
Take your leather journal and write to your heart’s content. With expressive writing and the health benefits that you can receive from it, you can prepare yourself for anything or de-stress from even the worst situations.
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