Individuals adopt healing techniques not because they are damaged, but because they allow them to express themselves. We choose a methodology that makes us feel comfortable and meets our requirements. Poetry is one of them, while many others choose reiki therapy, sound healing, expressive arts, or finger tapping techniques. Poetry is popular among artists and creative individuals, even used for its healing capacity.
Many individuals have an instinctive understanding that speech, and poetry in particular, may be therapeutic. We’ve all felt the warmth of calming words. Finding the right words to describe a distressing situation might provide solace. A letter with soft words exchanged between warring friends might help to restore a relationship that was wilting away.
People are frequently driven to create poems in times of adversity. Certain topics are taboo in mainstream society. For example, each of us will die, yet we don’t talk about it. We are all involved in the conversation about disease, death, and dying, whether we are aware of it. Poetry provides us methods to discuss it.
When we communicate, we employ pauses and wording. When we talk, we breathe. When writing poetry, we use punctuation and line breaks. The line breaks assist the reader discover the natural flow of poetry based on voice. Affirmations are frequently used in poetry.
When it comes to contemporary medicine or how your doctor interacts with you while you are undergoing treatment, they employ language embodied in voice as part of their medication. Doctors have encouraged patients to speak and write their truths, whether it was to assist them grasp the consequences of their diagnosis, to guide them through a painful event, or to help them find the words to compose their own stories and poems. At the same time, we all have the opportunity to learn from them. One of the pleasures that doctors have is the ability to be there in our patients’ life while they go through situations that we may not have had to confront ourselves.
Healing is often assumed to occur at the individual level. However, if healing is viewed as a process that restores us to wholeness, healing can occur not only within the individual patient, but also between patient and family members, between patient and the larger community of which they are a part, and even at the community level. Indeed, healing on several levels is frequently required at the same time.
In many indigenous cultures, disease is considered as the individual becoming out of sync with the community, and in order to treat the individual, their position in the broader order must also be restored. Many West African indigenous cultures use proverbs. In many West African traditional communities, proverbs are passed down orally through poetry. Kykosa Kajangu of the Congo gathered these proverbs and incorporated them into what he calls Wisdom Poetry (personal communication).
When a lady in one African tribe becomes pregnant, the community’s ladies gather in the bush to listen for the new child’s song. When they hear it, they carry it back into the community and perform it in public. When the baby is born, the hymn is sung again. It is repeated again as the youngster undergoes puberty and marriage ceremonies. When the child gets old and dies, the song is repeated. However, it is also performed when a youngster has disobeyed the community, committed a crime, or otherwise fallen out of harmony. People may restore harmony with the world by telling themselves and each other who they are in the grand scheme of things.
Poetry is not dead, how can it be? The definition of “they, you, and I” for death does not apply in poetry.
