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Poetry therapy
It is a well known fact that a group of Indian labourers
survived in an unknown land in very hard circumstances with the help
of Ramcharitmanas, a wonderful poem by Tulasidas. They could develop
a beautiful country named Mauritius. Ramcharitmanas has surely been
an inspiration to freedom fighters and there is no doubt that this
book has given strength and courage to people in difficult times.
Some may connect Ramacharitmanas with faith and religion, but Manas
cannot be limited to a religion. It has to be taken as literature. .
In the same way in Kerala, in the period
July-August, coinciding with the Malayalam month of Karkatakam,
people read the Adhyatma Ramayanam daily . Karkitakam is a period
for taking care of health. Most people take Ayurvedic medcine and go
for ayurvedic treatment, but their day ends with the reading aloud
of Adhyatma Ramayanam. Can’t we relate health treatment with reading
poetry? And we know that Adhyatma Ramayanam is wonderful poetry as
well.
How can
poetry help people? What magic is there in poetry? In fact poetry
has the power to awaken and enlighten all senses. Poetry tells a lot
in minimum words. There will be space for imagination in poetry.
That is how a reader can involve himself with it completely. While
reading poetry, his brain becomes active in imagination. And this
activity gives strength to the reader to enrich himself with power.
Moreover poetry has greater freedom of expression than any other
medium, thus the reader gets rid of his rigidity while reading
poetry. He can adopt a poem as an expression of his own feeling with
ease. Dance and music are other forms capable of producing the same
effect as poetry. We can say that they are expansions of poetry. All
these forms enlighten our moods.
There is no doubt that poetry helps people in
the modern world in other ways as well. When every thing is judged
and evaluated in terms of money, how can a number of people continue
to write poetry But more research is needed to find out the proper
application of poetry therapy
Rati Saxena
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