| Summary: |
Contrary to common belief, writing is an embodied activity. Notwithstanding, the bodily manifestations of the mind while writing have barely been studied. The studies proposed here entail that exploration by measuring electrodermal activity (EDA), electromyography (EMG), heart rate (HR), handwriting, and emotional vocabulary use while the mind is engaged in an expressive writing task. Expressive writing is particular form of writing in which a person engages in narrating a personal deeply charged emotional event, either negative (e.g., a trauma) or positive (e.g., a major achievement). Over the last thirty years, a wealth of research, championed by Pennebaker, has consistently shown that expressive writing triggers a considerable number of benefits on health, psychological well-being, and personal growth (for meta-analyses and recent review see 10, 14, and 28). Despite the numerous healing effects the mechanism through which expressive writing operates is still poorly understood. Here, we propose that mind-body interactions during writing (M-BW), has revealed by an exploration of psychophysiological indexes and linguistic markers, might prove instructive to further understanding of how expressive writing operates. |