When you spend time in a Laundromat, as I have done for the last two years, one thing is immediately obvious: almost everyone there smokes, most are overweight, and many are eating junk food and drinking colas. The need to use a Laundromat is generally a sign of limited financial resources; the behavioral side suggests limited health literacy.
For home re-location and professional transition reasons, I coincidentally found myself in this environment to observe both. Continue Reading →
Emotive Storytelling:
Narrative is a powerful strategy for influencing health behavior.
With the increasing interest in the use of narrative communication as a strategy for influencing health behavior, there has been an effort to develop standardized protocols for creating engaging stories and to determine the successful components of an effective story. Continue Reading →
It’s valuable to share your story.
You and others will be healed by doing so..
– Teresa Lynne
Life has taught me the importance of telling my story. I can’t afford not to now. Sharing it, I discovered I had value and a purpose. A personal commitment to help others helped me learn that. In the process I affirmed myself. But that’s not where I started.
Let me tell you a story about what a guy named Peter Guber has learned about storytelling. Peter Guber is a successful film producer whose films have earned over 3 billion dollars and have captured 50 Academy Award nominations. He is also an owner of two major league sports franchises. So he’s got some cred. Continue Reading →
We’d like to show you an additional example of emotive storytelling. This time we will focus on how an emotive story can develop a powerful climatic scene. Continue Reading →
To win hearts and minds, it might help to meet the “other guys” somewhere in the middle.
Is it safe yet to talk about Trayvon Martin? Will it ever be? In the aftermath of the shooting—and even more so after the trial and not guilty verdict—the social media and blogosphere were ablaze with angry rhetoric and rebuttals.
Two opposing camps quickly established themselves, each with its own story to tell. Continue Reading →
Nature abhors a vacuum and so do we.
Nature abhors a vacuum and so do we. Nature filled the original void with stars, planets and galaxies. When we encounter a gap in our knowledge, we tend to fill it with stories. Not surprisingly, our most enduring stories focus on the origins of our universe—and ourselves.
Most religions include a creation story—the most familiar, of course, being “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Continue Reading →
We’d like to show you an example of a small part of an emotive story that we’ve developed. Healing stories, like most stories, have three elements of plot: Conflict — which identifies the problem to be solved; Climax — the point of highest tension, — and Resolution.
In this clip you’ll see the conflict of a young veteran who is struggling with PTSD. Continue Reading →
