How writing can improve your health


Memoir writing batch 2 with Dr. Oscar Penaranda

“Our capacity to move forward as developing beings rests on a healthy relationship with the past,” wrote Patricia Hempl. Studies have established a co-relation between writing about experiences, particularly stressful ones, and improved health. Based on a research published by the American Medical Association, raw catharsis has little to do with it. It isn’t so much about letting it all out as it is about the opportunities that writing, especially the writing of personal essays, journals, or memoirs, provides in terms of cognitive restructuring, putting things in new perspectives, or simply seeing problems, past or present, in a new way.

After the successful Memoir Writing workshop in July and August, a new memoir writing workshop is slated at Sunshine Place on Sept. 9, 2021.

The online workshop will have six sessions every Thursday from 10 a.m. to  noontime. The workshop will be conducted by Dr. Oscar Peñaranda, who also conducted the first batch of memoir writing workshops.

MEMOIRIST Oscar Peñaranda

Dr. Peñaranda, a Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas awardee, is an educator, author, and an advocate of Filipino and Filipino-American studies. His work Seasons by the Bay won a Global Filipino Literary Award and his Full Deck: Jokers Playing won the best book for poetry in 2005 from Philippine American Writers and Artists.

Raw catharsis has little to do with it, but it is the opportunities writing personal essays, journals, or memoirs provides in terms of cognitive restructuring, or seeing problems, past or present, in a new way.

The memoir writing workshop will teach participants how to tell their stories and put into writing moments that matter most in their lives.

Call Sunshine Place at +63 917 515 5656 or email [email protected].