Believe it or not, you’re probably already doing this therapeutic approach in your everyday life for wellness. I have found immense value in the power of books and literature to provide and foster such wellness. Regardless of which form it takes (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, poetry, history book, libretto or have a keepsake of a specific text or quote), bibliotherapy is a great tool for emotional/mental/spiritual health.
You might find a text of meaning somewhere as close as your bookcase in your office or home. You might have stumbled across it while leafing through a magazine, seen a billboard or marketing ad or a book you have been meaning to read. Consider making time to read something for yourself, allow it to soak over you and hold it close to your heart/being.
My bibliotherapy practice for this post comes from an esteemed supervisor who gave me the book The Comfort Book by Matt Haig. I highly recommend it as an inspirational and meaningful read. What I did was simply open this book I already read and allowed the pages to spontaneously open to an unplanned excerpt. The excerpt below is titled “The universe is change” on pages 180-181. Full of thought and reflection, here’s what I’ll leave with you about Haig’s reflection of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, pondering the meaning/origins/value of the stars and sky:
It is not just the sky or the stars, then, that are important, but what we think when we look at them. Our connection to the shifting world around and above us. ‘The universe is change,’ wrote Marcus Aurelius. ‘Our life is what our thoughts make it.’ Even a man in charge of an empire could look at the stars and feel happily small in the grand universal order of things. The sky doesn’t start above us. There is no starting point for sky. We live in the sky. -- Matt Haig
What reading will you be inspired by today?
Lou Lim, LMHC, REAT is a licensed mental health counselor and registered expressive arts therapist (REAT) with a master's degree in Expressive Therapy and Mental Health Counseling from Lesley University. He is a member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association and on the committee for REAT credentialing. He has 13 years of experience in counseling and expressive therapy working with children, adolescents, teenagers, adults, and retirees.
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