Poetry has a healing power and we don't have to be experts at writing.

Poetry-writing can help us find the spiritual depths in our experience.

Poetry mirrors spiritual growth, akin to a heroic journey with insights and empowerment.

Poetry therapy is often used nowadays in mental health settings for healing and growth. Patients read and write poetry to find new ways of being mindful or relaxed. Poetry can point to the work they can do on themselves. Poetry can open them to new ways of coping. A poem can lead safely into realms of the unconscious that might be frightening ordinarily. Poems open the imagination to see alternatives to the status quo or to chronic suffering. In fact, every poem takes us into a parallel universe.

The realization that poetry has healing power is ancient in the human psyche. Shamans intoned poems as prayers that could bring help to the tribe or to individuals. In Egypt, as early as the fourth millennium B.C., poetry was inscribed on papyrus, dissolved in a solution and ingested by patients so that their illness might subside. We recall in the Hebrew Bible that David soothed the depression of King Saul with his singing of poems in the form of psalms. A Roman physician, Soranus in the first century A.D., was known to prescribe drama—composed of poetry—for healing. He recommended attending tragedies for his manic patients and comedies for his depressed patients.

For many centuries, the connection between poetry and medicine remained in people’s........

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