Healthytarian Minutes with holistic teacher Evita Ochel. This episode explores the benefits of journalling to relieve, reduce and eliminate stress, and how to journal.

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Video Transcript

Writing in a journal, or journalling, can serve as a powerful tool to help you reduce the effects of stress and anxiety. Writing allows us to express, examine and process our thoughts and feelings. Writing accesses the left brain and creates an opportunity for the right brain to intuit and feel. With open access to your emotions, you are less likely to suppress or repress them, which only leads to physical disease and mental unease.

Writing about stressful events, for example, helps you come to terms with them, reducing the impact of stress on your health. Writing about anger, sadness and other painful emotions helps to release the intensity of these feelings. Journalling provides an open, all-accepting and nonjudgemental platform for personal expression. It can help you gain clarity and broaden your perspective to be more effective at problem solving and conflict resolution.

Journalling is best done by using a pen and paper, as opposed to using a computer or other digital device. You can choose a simple notebook or purchase a specific journal that represents you. You can journal throughout the day, as different situations or emotions arise, or at the end of each day to process that day’s events, or journal whenever you feel the need or desire to do so. You can start by writing how you feel and why, and then allow the writing to flow naturally and go where it needs to. While grammar and spelling is not a priority, be sure to keep your journal in a safe and private spot, so that you can freely express anything you need, without censoring yourself.

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