The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

Poetry Therapy and the Impact of Poetic Dialogue

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

One Direction - Little Things

Video Clips. Duration : 3.63 Mins.

One Direction - Little Things

'Little Things' -- Taken from the brand new album 'Take Me Home' released 12th November in the UK / 13th November US & Canada. Pre-order TAKE ME HOME Now: iTunes: smarturl.it Amazon: amzn.to Official Store: myplay.me Music video by One Direction performing Little Things. (C) 2012 Simco Limited under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited

One Direction - Little Things

One Direction - Little Things

One Direction - Little Things

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The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

Poetry Therapy and the Impact of Poetic Dialogue

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

One Direction - Little Things

Tube. Duration : 3.63 Mins.

One Direction - Little Things

What Season Do Roses Grow - How to Grow Roses

What season do roses grow and wish positive kinds of maintenance and care is of great point to the enjoyment and delight you will have from your rose gardening hobby.

What Season Do Roses Grow - How to Grow Roses

One Direction - Little Things

Video Clips. Duration : 3.63 Mins.

One Direction - Little Things

withdrawal - What to Write on withdrawal Card

Retirement - this is a time to pursue dreams by exploring new dimensions of life. This is again the time for some citizen to get mentally paralyzed with loads to stress and stressful thoughts about how life's going to be the next phase. Anything way does withdrawal come in to one's life, it's true that he or she deserves the best and the choicest wishes, as the man is going to get a transition into an entirely new phase of life. The most meaningful and aesthetic of all are those withdrawal wishes, where you use some as a matter of fact thoughtful words of inspiration and encouragement. Wish the man a life flooded by the waves of happiness and cool splashes of peace - a wholesome life, both mentally and physically.

withdrawal - What to Write on withdrawal Card

One Direction - Little Things

Tube. Duration : 3.63 Mins.

One Direction - Little Things

Remember the Three P's When Planting Wisteria

A well established Wisteria that is in bloom can be breathtaking. It's large clusters of white or lavender flowers are well worth the effort needed in the initial planning stages, the patience required, and the time needed to prune. Allowable planning before planting can also save you a few headaches later on.

Remember the Three P's When Planting Wisteria

One Direction - Little Things

Video Clips. Duration : 3.63 Mins.

One Direction - Little Things

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Wisteria are slow to start growing after they are initially planted, however, if planted in full sun, in deep, moist, well-drained loam, they can come to be established fairly quickly. Once established, they can be vigorous growers and in southern states especially, can consume anything they grow on. Trellises, arbors, fences, pergolas, even parts of houses have been lost under the weight of the vine. Planted too close to a house, and left unchecked, the vine has been known to have ripped gutters off a house.

Bloom Energy

Remember the Three P's When Planting Wisteria

Proper planning and occasional pruning can keep these vines tamed. Before planting a wisteria, consider the fact that these vines can grow in the middle of 30 and 80 feet long. The limiting factor other than geographical location is essentially how large of a buildings it has to grow on. If planted next to a large arbor, the plant will finally cover the arbor, but it increase will be dinky if it has no other place to grow. However, if planted next to a house or tall tree, the vine can wrap around the roof line of the house, or climb the entire height tree. Occasional pruning can keep the vine in check, and limit it's advance.

Remember the Three P's When Planting Wisteria

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Pick a spot that is preferably away from the house and supply a strong withhold structure. Remember, the withhold buildings will finally be under a heavy mass of vines. Pick a material that won't want frequent painting, or be crushed under the weight of the heavy vines.

Begin with a plant that is 3 to 5 feet tall. The best time to plant it is in early spring. While the first year, don't be surprised if there is dinky growth. Wisteria will institute it's roots before giving energy to the leaves. Patience is the key with Wisteria. Plants don't usually bloom for 3 to 4 years after being transplanted. While it's initial growth, train the vine over your structure. Remember that the flowers will hang down and can be quite long.

After your Wisteria has put on some increase and has begun to cover your structure, you can safely prune the plant to begin to make it fill out, and to keep the increase under control. The best time to prune is in the summer months of July and August. Some plants will need heavy pruning. Don't be afraid of pruning, it will help promote flower buds.

Wisteria can also be trained to grow into a tree form. Some garden centers sell them already trained, but you can train your vine into a tree too. By providing a strong vertical withhold and training your vine up it, you can turn your vine into a small tree. At the desired height, naturally cut the end of the vine to force it to fill out from that point. Your tree will need to be supported until it can withhold it's own weight. This can take a few years for the vine to grow in diameter sufficient to stay vertical. Your tree will need to be pruned occasionally to keep it in good form, but when it blooms, you will be greatly rewarded with such a beautiful tree.

Following the three P's when it comes to Wisteria can consequent in a spectacular, addition to your yard that is sure to garner a few comments and second looks from friends, neighbors and passersby alike.

Remember the Three P's When Planting Wisteria

Bloom Energy

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The evidences of the unfulfilled seniors have been observed to be more prone to condition problems followed by severe reasoning depression - regularly compounded as time passed by. A good wish with a thoughtful message works like panacea. What to write on a withdrawal card is the most talked about topic of debate, when it comes to withdrawal wishes. Here are some points that works like magic:

Bloom Energy

withdrawal - What to Write on withdrawal Card

Write something that comes from your within - from the core of your heart. Your withdrawal wishes wordings must make the man feel his energy soared higher and spirits lifted to a great height.

withdrawal - What to Write on withdrawal Card

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Your withdrawal wishes wordings should give your wish fervor of inspiration and encouragement to flag on a new voyage in the next phase of life. Your wordings should be such that could sprinkle the grains of inspiration on the retired man to gear up a new journey of life even at the age of 60s.

If you are a co-worker of the man who's retiring from his or her job, it would be as a matter of fact appreciable if your wordings can reflect the memories of the past moments that you spent with him or her in the canteen and consulation room.

Retirement quotations and thoughtful sayings on withdrawal can give your speeches and wishes a special dimension. A beautiful withdrawal quotes can make your remarks come to bloom and set a distinctive tone for your message that can bring one of life's most important changes.

Here are some of the as a matter of fact awesome quotes that you can start off your remarks with:

"It has come to be clear to most of us that we don't want "our father's retirement"; the only thing that needs to be retired is old ideas about retirement.
Our many fear and insecurity for our later years should not be about the social protection theory or about being broke but rather about being without purpose and meaningful work." - Mitch Anthony, author of The New Retire mentality

"Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Touch achieves more with less energy and time." - Bernard Baruch, financier, statesman.

"When I was younger I could remember anything, either it happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so that I cannot remember any but the things that never happened." - Mark Twain, author.

withdrawal - What to Write on withdrawal Card

Bloom Energy

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Springtime is the most important period of time for what season do roses grow questions to request your attention. Spring is the season that new growth emerges from the dormant buds with buds near the top of the stems growing first.

Bloom Energy

What Season Do Roses Grow - How to Grow Roses

You need to be in constant alert for suckers which should be removed speedily to prevent them from sapping too much energy from the main plant. If they are not right away removed, they will appear to be more vigorous than your main rose plant and will take over and dominate the former plant.

What Season Do Roses Grow - How to Grow Roses

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Spring pruning should be done to organize and articulate well shaped plants and to prevent rose plants from becoming leggy or top heavy. The most pruning should be done on the thin bendy stems which are unlikely to furnish the beautiful unbelievable flowers. Leave the stronger salutary branches, but do prune away dead or diseased wood.

During midsummer, most roses are still in heavy bloom, but many of the most beautiful blooms will have passed for this season. Unless they set hips, all varieties of roses should be dead-headed which will encourage more blooms. Dead-heading is the term used to report the removing of old blooms, and is commonly done by selecting a leaf joint under the wilted flowerhead that is facing outward, and cutting away the stem above this joint. The new bud which is inexpressive under the leaf stalk will flourish and furnish a new flower.

Apply your second serving of rose food which will continue to keep natural growth into the autumn. You will want to continue watering, as well as pest and disease control. Continue to watch for and remove recently developed suckers and any diseased leaves.

By late summer growth has slowed down considerably, so what season do roses grow concerns will wish less maintenance, and you will only need to do light precautionary operate and remove diseased leaves. Continue watering and training the climbers and rambler varieties.

In early autumn some may be still blooming, but you will observation the ceasing of massive amounts of new blooms. Keep up pest and disease operate and minimum watering. Rose hips have now been fully formed and some rose varieties will begin to show their magnificent autumn colors.

By mid autumn your rose plants are roughly ready for their dormant period. Cut down on watering but continue controlling disease. Rake the fallen leaves up, and destroy them because they may comprise disease spores. After the flowering has completed in the autumn, tidy up the rose bushes by trimming them back a little. Make sure to remove any long sections of stems above where the buds were, because there will not be any new growth in that area, and will finally die back to the next node below, and is vulnerable to becoming diseased. This pruning will also help to keep your rose plants from being damaged by strong winter winds.

Once they are fully dormant, your responsibilities will comprise taking hardwood cuttings, involving and transplanting mature roses which can be done at any point before early spring when their growth cycle begins again. You also may want to apply winter washes to help prevent disease spores and blackspot over the wintering period. Take steps to safe tender varieties from the winter frost.

What Season Do Roses Grow - How to Grow Roses

Bloom Energy

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From the beginning of time, poetry has been a means for population to express their deepest emotions and create medical in ritual and ceremony. In Greek mythology, we know that Asclepius, the God of Healing, was the son of Apollo, god of poetry. Hermes served as messenger between the two worlds to report between the gods and humanity. He carried the caduceus, "the winged rod with two serpents intertwined, which has come to be a sticker of the medical profession" (Poplawski, 75). Poems have also been viewed as carriers of messages from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Wherever population get to mark a moment, they speak from heart to heart, with poetry.

Bloom Energy

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

In the counseling office, maybe you have read a poem to a client that seemed to capture an issue she/he was struggling with, contribution not only understanding, but hope. After the tragedy of 9/11, the airwaves and internet rang with poems of solace. When war in Iraq was imminent, a website industrialized where population could send poems expressing their feelings: Poets Against the War. Within days, thousands of poems were posted.

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

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Mary Oliver, in her poem, "Wild Geese," says, "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." (Oliver, 110) Joy Harjo, in "Fire" says. "look at me/I am not a separate woman/I am the continuance/ of blue sky/I am the throat of the mountains." (Harjo, 25) The fourteenth century Persian poet Lala speaks about poetry:

I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into small pieces. (Barks, 11)

These are lines to carry in our hearts, because they open us to beauty, a sense of self, healing, truth, and human connection, and all this in just a few words!

At conception, we are born to the rhythm of the heart, growing in the fluid darkness until one day we stretch our way into light. With our first cry, we make our first poem, a sound that reverberates in our mother's heart, and when she cries in response, we hear our first poem. And so it continues, the voices of those who care for us carry all of the emotions we will come to know as our own, words, that if written down, would be poetry. It's that simple. Poetry is giving sound and rhythm to silence, to darkness, giving it a shape, turning it to light. When we read a poem that speaks to our experience, there is a shift, a click within. Someone has understood our darkness by naming their own. We feel less alone. Therapeutically, the "I" of us gathers energy and insight. Our world expands.

The following poem illustrates the idea of writing a poem to give darkness and suffering a voice. It was written by a participant in Phyllis' poetry therapy group, part of an arduous day treatment program for women addicted to alcohol and drugs. This poem states the truth of the author's experience in a haunting and gorgeous way, giving the reader the chance to report to what it feels like to be "broken."

Today I didn't care
whether or not they stared
didn't have time to put on airs.

Yesterday was a distinct story
wanted to look like a morning glory
fresh and lively couldn't tell
I was up all night.

Sometimes I can hide behind
my colored lines other times
I feel like a stained glass
window that's just been shattered
pretty pieces everywhere. (Klein, 16)

Rather than diminish the excellence of the poet's art, the poetry therapist enhances it. Poet Gregory Orr, in his book Poetry and Survival says "...the elaborative and intense patterns of poetry can...make population feel safe...the gargantuan disordering power of trauma needs or demands an equally suited ordering to include it, and poetry offers such order" (Orr, 92). Poetry structures chaos.

Dr. James W. Pennebaker, one of the most widely published researchers on the benefits of writing, says in his book, chance Up: The medical Power of Expressing Emotions, that writing about emotional topics improves the immune ideas by reducing "stress, anxiety and depression, improves grades in college (and) aids population in securing new jobs." (Pennebaker, 40). "Disclosing secrets beneficially reduces blood pressure, heart rate, and skin conductance." (Pennebaker, 52). Gregory Orr says that when we share secrets "we take a small step from survival to healing; a step analogous to the one a poet makes when he or she shares poems with another reader or an audience." (Orr, 88)

In a therapeutic environment, the trained facilitator addresses the medical elements of poetry: form and shape, metaphor, metamessage, the words chosen, and the sounds of the words together (alliteration and assonance). These elements, in relationship with each other, carry the weight of many feelings and messages at once, creating a link from the hidden internal world to external reality, from the unconscious to the conscious.

Because a poem has a border, a frame, or structure, as opposed to prose, the form itself is a security net. Strong emotions will not run off the page. A poetry therapist might ask his/her clients to draw a box in the town of the paper and write the words inside. Metamessage implies the ability to carry several messages in one line that "strike at deeper levels of awareness than overt messages" (Murphy, 69). Through the capacity to carry multi-messages, clients are able to experience merging as well as individuation/separation. The poem allows for a trial divorce and then a return to the therapist for merging and "refueling" Through the therapist's comprehension of the poem. If the therapist says he/she appreciates a singular metaphor and how the words flow, the client feels loved and heard. In reading a poem aloud, the client may come to be caught up in his/her own rhythms and feel caressed.

An foremost quiz, students of poetry therapy ask is how to find the right poem to bring to a group or individual. The best poems to start with are those that are understandable, with clear language, and a strong theme, as well as emotions that reflect some hope. another needful element is that the poem must resonate with the mood and/or situation of the group or individual. This is called the isoprinciple, a term also used in music therapy for the same purpose. Dr. Jack Leedy says that "the poem becomes symbolically an understanding- someone/something with whom he/she can share his/her despair" (Leedy, 82)

A woman in Perie's cancer/poetry reserve group recently published a book of her poems and writings titled, I Can Do This: Living with Cancer-Tracing a Year of Hope. This title contains the needful word hope, for that is what we need in our lives to reserve us and heal. In her poem. "The Uninvited Guest," Beverley Hyman-Fead writes:

I feel fortunate my tumors came to me
in the fall of my life...
I'm grateful for this uninvited wake-up call, ...
Would I have appreciated the gorgeous
images the moon makes in the still of the night?
No, I have my tumors to thank for that. (54)

She was able to write this poem in response to a Rumi poem called "The Guest House." This poem, written so long ago, reframes the meaning of suffering saying:

This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, A depression, a meanness....

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows...

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond. (Barks, 1995, 109)

Perie chose this poem to bring to the cancer reserve group because it might engage the concentration of the group members, maybe to think about how their illness was a "guide," and what they had learned about themselves in the struggle. another foremost response might be: "This makes me so angry! How could I ever want to invite in the darkness?" whatever the emotional reaction, the poem is a catalyst for helping the reader to passage and express feelings in a supportive, safe environment. Reading a poem a second time helps the client feel even more deeply the article and emotion. Also, lines spoken spontaneously will often form the first lines of poems.

After a poem is read, the therapist might then ask participants for lines in the poem that speak to them, or to which lines they are most drawn. This might be followed by questions for consulation of an emotional nature. Considering the Rumi poem, the therapist might propose they discuss: What am I to experience in this life? What am I not lively in? How can my place of work or home be a Guest House? How is the Guest House like your heart? Comments town nearby what the poem emotionally means to the reader, not what the poem means intellectually. Through group discussion, time to write and read what was written in the group, both members and facilitator can learn to think differently, maybe applying newly formed concepts to existing behaviors and attitudes.

For instance, if one has felt like he/she was victimized by illness, Through consulation and writing of this or another pertinent poem, she/he might be enabled to begin reasoning about how to move toward acceptance. Even writing about rage toward illness is an foremost step. There is a beginning of some resolution within the poem. Rumi says to be grateful, and in her poem, Beverley, who is far along in her emotional medical process, is able to thank her illness, which gives her hope.

Another kind of medical that poems can contribute is visible by poems written in response to the other. Here are excerpts from poems that Perie and Phyllis wrote:

Maybe angels are

mistakes
corrected,
old times resurrected, misguided love
back on procedure to lift the inner flute...
The moon is ripe with hope

but don't look there, angels hover
at elbow bend, between your toes
rows of them, wings of leaves or breeze...
Notice when they arrive
how their wings vary,
some traditional-fully feathered...
others blossomed like heather...

There are those with only goosebumps
not always on the back,
and some no wings at all,
just scratched knees trying to get off the ground.
- Perie Longo

Phyllis responded:

Maybe angels
were with me the day
my sister and husband were run down
on the road in New York, guided my
thoughts to what it would feel like to get hit
as I crossed the road in San Francisco.

Surely angels, familiar with misfortune
and urgency rooms,
watched as my sister and her husband,
almost as big as a small
bear, stepped off the curb, his size what saved them.

Accident angels hovered, caressed, willed them
to survive. Saw the ambulance come.

Did friendship angels, familiar with compassion and coincidence,
know I wouldn't be told for a week?
Did they bring me to the sangha* and the trainer who spoke
about bearing unbearable pain?

Perhaps they remember what it was like to walk,
have shoulders without wings.
Do they know when humans will enter the next life,
and when the unopened tulips
on my table will bloom, die, resurrect?

*sangha-a Buddhist congregation

Gregory Orr talks about "The Two Survivals"-survival of the poet, in that the poet struggles to engage with the disorder to write a poem, and in the act of writing, "bring order to disorder." The other survival is that of the reader, who connects with poems that "enter deeply into" him or her, foremost to "sympathetic identification of reader with writer." (Orr, 83-84) This kind of relationship can be heightened with direct dialogue because the reader and writer cross back and forth from one role to the other, deepening the possibility for empathy and sympathetic identification.

To elaborate this concept, we return to the two poems we wrote about angels. Perie wrote her poem when her daughter was going Through a very difficult period. For Perie, the whole poem is for her daughter whose nickname was "angel-pie." The last three lines of the poem, and some no wings at all /just scratched knees/trying to get off the ground, is a message to encourage and empower her daughter, and more broadly for whatever who is feeling discouraged, traumatized, or troubled. When Phyllis received Perie's poem, she took the theme of angels and wrote her own house story about terrible pain and hope. The poems transcend the theme of angels because there is an even deeper article here-the theme of ordinary population becoming heroes, and the rebirth and reconciliation that can come from tragedy. Also, as is often the case with poetry, there is an unconscious relationship as both authors write about family.

In speaking about poetry, it is also foremost to identify that it can be an intimidating form of expression, carrying with it a need for perfection or a feeling like "I could never write a poem-my writing isn't good enough." In poetry therapy with groups or individuals, poems are never edited. Editing belongs in a poetry-for-craft setting. The objective of poetry therapy is to use the poem as an entry point for the writer, and it is a helpful way to work with transcendence of the inner editor, that resides in us all. To address a way to think about writing poetry, we turn to the words of our colleague, Robert Carroll, Md, who writes,

Read it aloud
pass it Through your ears
enjoy the
ride and
know
the inequity between poetry and prose
is that poetry is broken
into lines-
that is all.
(Carroll, 1)

Anyone can write poetry! It is our natural right and human instinct. All we have to do is allow the words to move and inspire us. The National relationship for Poetry Therapy (Napt): Promoting increase and medical Through language, symbol, and story (http://www.poetrytherapy.org), has much useful information on its website along with more examples of how to use poetry therapy with clients. We, in the Association, are like-minded psychiatrists, psychologists, college professors, collective workers, marriage and house therapists, and educators-all of us are also poets, journal writers, and storytellers who have experienced medical Through the written and spoken word, and want to share it with other clinicians as a skill they might like to develop. Poetry for self-expression and medical is used with mothers, children, and adolescents; battered women, the elderly, the depressed, the suicidal; those living with final illness, the bereaved, those with Hiv, the mentally ill, and now hurricane victims and soldiers returning from Iraq who suffer post traumatic stress. We also exchange poems with each other, over the country, that have been sufficient in helping others heal. This exchange continues the medical rhythm and heart of poetry therapy.

As Jelaluddin Rumi says:

Out Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. (Barks, 1995, 36 )

Let's find each other along the way.

References

Barks, C. (tr.) (1992). Naked Song. Maypop Books.
Barks, C. (tr.) with John Moyne. (1995). The needful Rumi. Ny: Castle Books.
Barks, C. (tr.) and Green, M. (1997). The Illuminated Rumi. Ny: Broadway Books.
Carroll, Robert, Md, (2005) "Finding Words to say it: The medical Power of Poetry" eCam 2005:2(2)161-172.
Harjo, Joy, (2002), How we Became Human, Ny: W.W. Norton and Company.
Hyman- Fead, B. (2004) I can do this/ Living with cancer: tracing a year of hope. Santa Barbara Cancer Center: Wellness program Publishing.
Klein, Phyllis, ed. (2001). Our Words-The Women of Lee Woodward town Speak Out, Sf: Phyllis Klein and Women and Children's Family.
Leedy, J.J. (Ed.). (1985) Poetry as healer: Mending the troubled mind. Ny: Vanguard. Orr, G. (2002) Poetry as survival. Athens, Ga: The University of Georgia Press.
Murphy, J. M. (1979). The therapeutic use of poetry in Current Psychiatric Therapies, vol. 18. Jules Masserman, ed. Ny: Grune & Stratton, Inc., pp. 65-72.
Oliver, M. (1993). Wild geese. New and selected poems. Boston: Beacon Press.
Pennebaker, J. (1990) chance Up: The medical power of expressing emotions. Ny: Guilford Press.
Poplawski, T. (1994) Schizophrenia and the Soul in The Quest, August, 74-79.

"This description appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of The Therapist, the publication of the California relationship of Marriage and house Therapists (Camft), headquartered in San Diego, California. This description is copyrighted and been reprinted with the permission of Camft. For more information concerning Camft, please log on to http://www.camft.org."

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

Bloom Energy

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From the beginning of time, poetry has been a means for population to express their deepest emotions and generate medical in ritual and ceremony. In Greek mythology, we know that Asclepius, the God of Healing, was the son of Apollo, god of poetry. Hermes served as messenger between the two worlds to report between the gods and humanity. He carried the caduceus, "the winged rod with two serpents intertwined, which has become a symbol of the medical profession" (Poplawski, 75). Poems have also been viewed as carriers of messages from the unconscious to the known mind. Wherever population derive to mark a moment, they speak from heart to heart, with poetry.

Bloom Energy

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

In the counseling office, possibly you have read a poem to a client that seemed to capture an issue she/he was struggling with, contribution not only understanding, but hope. After the tragedy of 9/11, the airwaves and internet rang with poems of solace. When war in Iraq was imminent, a website industrialized where population could send poems expressing their feelings: Poets Against the War. Within days, thousands of poems were posted.

The Therapeutic benefit of Poetry

No URL

Mary Oliver, in her poem, "Wild Geese," says, "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." (Oliver, 110) Joy Harjo, in "Fire" says. "look at me/I am not a detach woman/I am the continuance/ of blue sky/I am the throat of the mountains." (Harjo, 25) The fourteenth century Persian poet Lala speaks about poetry:

I didn't trust it for a occasion
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into miniature pieces. (Barks, 11)

These are lines to carry in our hearts, because they open us to beauty, a sense of self, healing, truth, and human connection, and all this in just a few words!

At conception, we are born to the rhythm of the heart, growing in the fluid darkness until one day we stretch our way into light. With our first cry, we make our first poem, a sound that reverberates in our mother's heart, and when she cries in response, we hear our first poem. And so it continues, the voices of those who care for us convey all of the emotions we will come to know as our own, words, that if written down, would be poetry. It's that simple. Poetry is giving sound and rhythm to silence, to darkness, giving it a shape, turning it to light. When we read a poem that speaks to our experience, there is a shift, a click within. Someone has understood our darkness by naming their own. We feel less alone. Therapeutically, the "I" of us gathers energy and insight. Our world expands.

The following poem illustrates the opinion of writing a poem to give darkness and suffering a voice. It was written by a participant in Phyllis' poetry therapy group, part of an intensive day treatment schedule for women addicted to alcohol and drugs. This poem states the truth of the author's palpate in a haunting and gorgeous way, giving the reader the chance to report to what it feels like to be "broken."

Today I didn't care
whether or not they stared
didn't have time to put on airs.

Yesterday was a dissimilar story
wanted to look like a morning glory
fresh and piquant couldn't tell
I was up all night.

Sometimes I can hide behind
my colored lines other times
I feel like a stained glass
window that's just been shattered
pretty pieces everywhere. (Klein, 16)

Rather than diminish the excellence of the poet's art, the poetry therapist enhances it. Poet Gregory Orr, in his book Poetry and Survival says "...the elaborative and intense patterns of poetry can...make population feel safe...the great disordering power of trauma needs or demands an equally superior ordering to comprise it, and poetry offers such order" (Orr, 92). Poetry structures chaos.

Dr. James W. Pennebaker, one of the most widely published researchers on the benefits of writing, says in his book, chance Up: The medical Power of Expressing Emotions, that writing about emotional topics improves the immune system by reducing "stress, anxiety and depression, improves grades in college (and) aids population in securing new jobs." (Pennebaker, 40). "Disclosing secrets beneficially reduces blood pressure, heart rate, and skin conductance." (Pennebaker, 52). Gregory Orr says that when we share secrets "we take a small step from survival to healing; a step analogous to the one a poet makes when he or she shares poems with other reader or an audience." (Orr, 88)

In a therapeutic environment, the trained facilitator addresses the medical elements of poetry: form and shape, metaphor, metamessage, the words chosen, and the sounds of the words together (alliteration and assonance). These elements, in association with each other, carry the weight of many feelings and messages at once, creating a link from the secret internal world to external reality, from the unconscious to the conscious.

Because a poem has a border, a frame, or structure, as opposed to prose, the form itself is a protection net. Strong emotions will not run off the page. A poetry therapist might ask his/her clients to draw a box in the town of the paper and write the words inside. Metamessage implies the ability to carry some messages in one line that "strike at deeper levels of awareness than overt messages" (Murphy, 69). Through the capacity to convey multi-messages, clients are able to palpate merging as well as individuation/separation. The poem allows for a trial separation and then a return to the therapist for merging and "refueling" Through the therapist's comprehension of the poem. If the therapist says he/she appreciates a singular metaphor and how the words flow, the client feels loved and heard. In reading a poem aloud, the client may become caught up in his/her own rhythms and feel caressed.

An leading interrogate students of poetry therapy ask is how to find the right poem to bring to a group or individual. The best poems to start with are those that are understandable, with clear language, and a strong theme, as well as emotions that reflect some hope. other primary element is that the poem must resonate with the mood and/or situation of the group or individual. This is called the isoprinciple, a term also used in music therapy for the same purpose. Dr. Jack Leedy says that "the poem becomes symbolically an understanding- someone/something with whom he/she can share his/her despair" (Leedy, 82)

A woman in Perie's cancer/poetry preserve group recently published a book of her poems and writings titled, I Can Do This: Living with Cancer-Tracing a Year of Hope. This title contains the primary word hope, for that is what we need in our lives to preserve us and heal. In her poem. "The Uninvited Guest," Beverley Hyman-Fead writes:

She was able to write this poem in response to a Rumi poem called "The Guest House." This poem, written so long ago, reframes the meaning of suffering saying:

This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, A depression, a meanness....

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows...

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond. (Barks, 1995, 109)

Perie chose this poem to bring to the cancer preserve group because it might engage the attentiveness of the group members, possibly to think about how their illness was a "guide," and what they had learned about themselves in the struggle. other leading response might be: "This makes me so angry! How could I ever want to ask in the darkness?" anyone the emotional reaction, the poem is a catalyst for helping the reader to entrance and express feelings in a supportive, safe environment. Reading a poem a second time helps the client feel even more deeply the article and emotion. Also, lines spoken easily will often form the first lines of poems.

After a poem is read, the therapist might then ask participants for lines in the poem that speak to them, or to which lines they are most drawn. This might be followed by questions for consulation of an emotional nature. Inspecting the Rumi poem, the therapist might suggest they discuss: What am I to palpate in this life? What am I not piquant in? How can my place of work or home be a Guest House? How is the Guest House like your heart? Comments town around what the poem emotionally means to the reader, not what the poem means intellectually. Through group discussion, time to write and read what was written in the group, both members and facilitator can learn to think differently, possibly applying newly formed concepts to existing behaviors and attitudes.

For instance, if one has felt like he/she was victimized by illness, Through consulation and writing of this or other pertinent poem, she/he might be enabled to begin thinking about how to move toward acceptance. Even writing about rage toward illness is an leading step. There is a beginning of some resolution within the poem. Rumi says to be grateful, and in her poem, Beverley, who is far along in her emotional medical process, is able to thank her illness, which gives her hope.

Another kind of medical that poems can supply is graphic by poems written in response to the other. Here are excerpts from poems that Perie and Phyllis wrote:

Maybe angels are

mistakes
corrected,
old times resurrected, misguided love
back on course to lift the inner flute...
The moon is ripe with hope

There are those with only goosebumps
not all the time on the back,
and some no wings at all,
just scratched knees trying to get off the ground.
- Perie Longo

Phyllis responded:

Maybe angels
were with me the day
my sister and husband were run down
on the road in New York, guided my
thoughts to what it would feel like to get hit
as I crossed the street in San Francisco.

Surely angels, familiar with misfortune
and accident rooms,
watched as my sister and her husband,
almost as big as a small
bear, stepped off the curb, his size what saved them.

Accident angels hovered, caressed, willed them
to survive. Saw the ambulance come.

Did friendship angels, familiar with compassion and coincidence,
know I wouldn't be told for a week?
Did they bring me to the sangha* and the teacher who spoke
about bearing unbearable pain?

*sangha-a Buddhist congregation

Gregory Orr talks about "The Two Survivals"-survival of the poet, in that the poet struggles to engage with the disorder to write a poem, and in the act of writing, "bring order to disorder." The other survival is that of the reader, who connects with poems that "enter deeply into" him or her, leading to "sympathetic identification of reader with writer." (Orr, 83-84) This kind of association can be heightened with direct dialogue because the reader and writer cross back and forth from one role to the other, deepening the possibility for empathy and sympathetic identification.

To construe this concept, we return to the two poems we wrote about angels. Perie wrote her poem when her daughter was going Through a very difficult period. For Perie, the whole poem is for her daughter whose nickname was "angel-pie." The last three lines of the poem, and some no wings at all /just scratched knees/trying to get off the ground, is a message to encourage and empower her daughter, and more broadly for anyone who is feeling discouraged, traumatized, or troubled. When Phyllis received Perie's poem, she took the theme of angels and wrote her own family story about terrible pain and hope. The poems transcend the theme of angels because there is an even deeper article here-the theme of ordinary population becoming heroes, and the rebirth and reconciliation that can come from tragedy. Also, as is often the case with poetry, there is an unconscious association as both authors write about family.

In speaking about poetry, it is also leading to recognize that it can be an intimidating form of expression, carrying with it a need for perfection or a feeling like "I could never write a poem-my writing isn't good enough." In poetry therapy with groups or individuals, poems are never edited. Editing belongs in a poetry-for-craft setting. The objective of poetry therapy is to use the poem as an entry point for the writer, and it is a helpful way to work with transcendence of the inner editor, that resides in us all. To address a way to think about writing poetry, we turn to the words of our colleague, Robert Carroll, Md, who writes,

Read it aloud
pass it Through your ears
enjoy the
ride and
know
the contrast between poetry and prose
is that poetry is broken
into lines-
that is all.
(Carroll, 1)

Anyone can write poetry! It is our natural right and human instinct. All we have to do is allow the words to move and inspire us. The National association for Poetry Therapy (Napt): Promoting increase and medical Through language, symbol, and story (http://www.poetrytherapy.org), has much beneficial data on its website including more examples of how to use poetry therapy with clients. We, in the Association, are like-minded psychiatrists, psychologists, college professors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and educators-all of us are also poets, journal writers, and storytellers who have experienced medical Through the written and spoken word, and want to share it with other clinicians as a skill they might like to develop. Poetry for self-expression and medical is used with mothers, children, and adolescents; battered women, the elderly, the depressed, the suicidal; those living with terminal illness, the bereaved, those with Hiv, the mentally ill, and now hurricane victims and soldiers returning from Iraq who suffer post traumatic stress. We also transfer poems with each other, over the country, that have been effective in helping others heal. This transfer continues the medical rhythm and heart of poetry therapy.

As Jelaluddin Rumi says:

Out Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. (Barks, 1995, 36 )

Let's find each other along the way.

References

Barks, C. (tr.) (1992). Naked Song. Maypop Books.
Barks, C. (tr.) with John Moyne. (1995). The primary Rumi. Ny: Castle Books.
Barks, C. (tr.) and Green, M. (1997). The Illuminated Rumi. Ny: Broadway Books.
Carroll, Robert, Md, (2005) "Finding Words to say it: The medical Power of Poetry" eCam 2005:2(2)161-172.
Harjo, Joy, (2002), How we Became Human, Ny: W.W. Norton and Company.
Hyman- Fead, B. (2004) I can do this/ Living with cancer: tracing a year of hope. Santa Barbara Cancer Center: Wellness schedule Publishing.
Klein, Phyllis, ed. (2001). Our Words-The Women of Lee Woodward town Speak Out, Sf: Phyllis Klein and Women and Children's Family.
Leedy, J.J. (Ed.). (1985) Poetry as healer: Mending the troubled mind. Ny: Vanguard. Orr, G. (2002) Poetry as survival. Athens, Ga: The University of Georgia Press.
Murphy, J. M. (1979). The therapeutic use of poetry in Current Psychiatric Therapies, vol. 18. Jules Masserman, ed. Ny: Grune & Stratton, Inc., pp. 65-72.
Oliver, M. (1993). Wild geese. New and excellent poems. Boston: Beacon Press.
Pennebaker, J. (1990) chance Up: The medical power of expressing emotions. Ny: Guilford Press.
Poplawski, T. (1994) Schizophrenia and the Soul in The Quest, August, 74-79.

"This record appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of The Therapist, the publication of the California association of Marriage and family Therapists (Camft), headquartered in San Diego, California. This record is copyrighted and been reprinted with the permission of Camft. For more data concerning Camft, please log on to http://www.camft.org."

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