By © Mary Louise Chown, BA, BEd, BFA Aphasia takes your words away…. and what do words do? Well, they give you a chance to transmit your knowledge, express your feelings, and share your heritage and history, so other people will learn from you. Language does much more for us than meeting our simple needs…this …
Life Participation through Storytelling: How People with Aphasia Come Alive with Stories
By Allison Cox. It is kismet. I take a break from editing storytelling articles to come to the IsleWilde Festival here on Vashon Island Washington, and stories are unfolding all around me. Artists of all kinds travel from near and far to join islanders in creating this weekend pageant where the line between audience and …
By Christopher Maier, M .A. People are starving for something that was meant to pass between them but is not presently passing. Call it a vibration if you like, or attention, or love. —Jacob Needleman I was in a university theater, and a man on a bare stage was telling stories. I was weeping quietly …
by Gail Rosen. Grief is complex, with many qualities, many dimensions, many feelings, and many colors. A number of researchers have tried to define it, or at least lay out the path so that we can walk it with a little more wisdom or peace. It was once thought that there were stages to grief …
by Laura Simms. A strong disease needs a strong medicine. – Mende proverb, Sierra Leone For 10 years, an unimaginable atrocity of civil war took place in Sierra Leone, a West African country, previously known for its hospitality, natural beauty and kind people. Hearing about what occurred there from the lips of children forced to …
by Shawn Small. Our small group of Boise, Idaho, high school students sat under the shadow of the ornate, white-chalk Comayagua Cathedral in central Honduras. We circled up on the ground, most cross-legged, creating an ideal atmosphere to process an exceptionally challenging yet remarkably fulfilling week in the summer of 2007. The soft breeze, brought …
by Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD. Major life shifts, including the curing of disease1, do occur following transformative spiritual experiences2. Spirituality has been defined as those aspects of human striving that relate to God, the Divine, the Universe or Largest Whole, Higher Beings, and/or those things that we have construed to be sacred. Spirituality is a …
by Fran Yardley. A number of years ago, a beloved storyteller named Nancy Duncan taught me a valuable technique for eliciting stories and poems from others. She said to start with the phrase “Once upon a time…” and explore what that brings up. Then move to “Then one day…” and do the same thing. Finally, …
From “Once Upon a Time” to “Now I Know”: Healing Story at the Adirondack Arts & Healing Retreat
by Sheila Wee. Every now and then storytellers may be asked to come up with a tale to address a very specific medical issue. In 2003，I was asked by the Singapore Health Promotion Board to create a story about asthma to perform at a Polyclinic (community health clinic) event for World Asthma Day. The story …
by Melany Cueva, R.N., Ed.D. The intent of the Readers’ Theatre, created for my doctoral dissertation, was to open hearts and minds of Alaskan residents to address cancer issues through the reading aloud of, and simultaneous listening to, a scripted conversation. As story, Readers’ Theatre embraces a holistic, interconnected process of living and learning as …
Stories Embrace: Readers’ Theatre for Cancer Education in Alaska
