read write express offers workshops that involve a core of writing for well-being. Other movement, breathing, visualisation and voice exercises are also woven into the experience to create a rich fabric of tools to help you release and relax and to help you find meaning and direction in your life.
Following an initial activity, such as small group discussion of a piece of writing, you are then encouraged to write, possibly using a line you have chosen from the reading or from an image or object. Timed free writes in a group will encourage you to find words to express yourself, recover old memories and to find your way through writing choices quickly and fluidly.
There is then the option to read the writing to the group. Hearing yourself read your writing to others in a supportive setting can bring fresh insight to old ways of thinking or being. Participants enjoy the opportunity to write and learn from their own writing and that of others.
Writing is optionally shared with the group and participants are encouraged to respond from their own experience of hearing it as opposed to offering a critique. This is the main difference between writing for self-development and writing for literary development.
Writing and voicing writing in this way can be therapeutic but these workshops are not group therapy and participants need to be aware of this when choosing what to write or share.
Writing and voicing writing in this way can be therapeutic but these workshops are not group therapy and participants need to be aware of this when choosing what to write or share.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
