The healing power of stories
Deepa Kiran
There is an old saying
“In many Shamanic societies
if you came to a medicine man
complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed,
he would ask one of these four questions:
When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
Stories and listening to stories is much loved the world over. It is used extensively by teachers, psychologists, shamans, and doctors for healing. We explore some of the healing aspects of storytelling.
Storytelling and healing
Do you remember as a child what you felt after listening to a story? May be you sighed, smiled, hugged or just felt lost and afloat. And maybe you went into your own storyland, which you’d either share or enjoy by yourself. Putting it simply, the act of listening to a story usually leaves us ‘feeling good’. And anything that makes you truly feel good must be healing you!
There are many reasons why:
Valuing another’s time
The act of sitting down and telling a story, tells the listener, “Hey I would like to spend time with you. I would like to have a conversation with you.” This acknowledgement holds much significance for any individual whatever their age, gender, and cultural background.
Listener the co-creator of art
Story listening is an active creative process where the listener has to creatively visualize and imagine the story in her mind. So along with the storyteller, the listener creates the story in her mind. She creates her own unique work of art. It is day dreaming, except that the listener has the license for it and it is channelized by the teller.
Art for art’s sake
This act of creation again is highly gratifying for the listener. Creating this art doesn’t bring marks, applause or any other reward except the joy of creating it. That is the primary purpose. As we are aware, ‘art for art’s sake’ is often recommended as a calming, meditative, reflective, and healing activity.
We looked at the healing possibilities in the telling of stories and now let us look at what is healing about stories themselves.
Stories and healing
Beyond words
With a story we travel through time and space on the wings of words. And yet we travel beyond words. We go into the world of emotions and experience the king, the kingdom the princess, the joys and the angst, and much more. This happens primarily because we receive ‘information’ in the narrative framework of a ‘story’. And therein lies the magic of stories…
Why the story format works
As a highly verbal society, we receive (and give) most information through words. However, the human mind constructs ‘stories’ out of the information and stores it as ‘stories’. Yesterday was a story, today is a story and tomorrow will be a story. Therefore, any information that is offered in the story format or the narrative framework holds intrinsic appeal. Even the cave man made paintings, which were nothing but the stories of his day, his achievements, and how he perceived his life.
Melting mind blocks
‘Healing’ is nothing but releasing the blocks within. Blocks created due to anxiety, world views, and other factors. And so through our blocks we see something as a “problem” or “reward”. We become happy if we see it as a reward. We get upset when we see it as a
problem and jump in anxiously either to resolve it/escape it.
A story or narrative is filled with analogies, metaphors, and symbols. These offer us opportunities to melt blocks which influence our perception and help us see the situation both neutrally and stoically.
Vicarious experience
A good story is always a ‘hero’s journey’. The ‘hero’/protagonist, encounters some problem and then resolves it. This is the crux of any good story. It is the crux of each of our life stories, of which we are the ‘hero’. And so it appeals to us deeply. We experience “our” journey through the story …but vicariously. This means that we step outside our life and experience it. We connect with the story but we can also step back and watch the story at the same time as an audience.
Brief switch to audience mode
That’s the healing possibility that stories offer. They offer a parallel experience and help us briefly step out from participating in our lives and become an audience who is watching it. This is of course one of the essential aspects of healing – (1) helping us step out and watch the situation (2) triggering realization that our choice of perspective can make a difference and (3) reminding us that we have a choice of response to our life situation.
Not consciously forced upon
We can lecture and give advice about stepping out, making a choice, etc., but that becomes a conscious enforced activity which the receiver may/may not be willing to receive. The structure of a story is such that it brings the listener to willingly ‘receive/listen’ and to reflect upon the messages without being overtly told to.
This is how stories strike a chord in the heart and consequently in the head.
A true story:
A child had joined grade four in a residential school. Sadly, the classmates gave him a cold shoulder for long. He was disheartened, being just 10 years old and new to the school and the country. The teacher noticed the problem and after a week of gently prodding her students and finding no change in their attitude to the new boy, she told them a story.
“Once upon a time a baby crow flew into a neighbouring forest. The baby crow was anxious as her parents were not there with her and she knew nobody around. She was looking to find some friends, one at least, but she found none. It was strange that nobody would befriend her. Strange… because she was a nice friendly crow just like the other crows except that she was grey in colour and not
black like the rest. She simply couldn’t understand what the problem was. All this made her very sad indeed. The other crows teased her and flew away. The little new crow flew up the branches and cried softly, hoping that one day she would find friends and warmth in this new place.”
The teacher said nothing after the story except this, “Children please open your notebooks and write down what you feel after listening to this story.”
It was no surprise that children wrote statements such as, “I think I know why ma’am shared this story with us today.” And needless to say the class invited the new student warmly into their fold.
****
This episode involved a story with an appropriate analogy, a relatable metaphor (a bird), and the experience of listening to a story, vicariously experiencing what it was like to be a new child in a classroom, thus melting away the children’s mind blocks and
reservations about interacting with a new student.
In fact one could make a story for the new student to see the situation differently too. There really are as many stories as there are people to tell them. I know many are doing this all the time. And I’m hoping many more will do so. You can make up or pick up stories and tell them for healing your listener and perhaps to heal yourself too!
The author is the founder of Story Arts India. She is a storyteller, education consultant, writer and voice-over artist. She holds her shows and workshops for children, teachers and all grown-ups across the country. Read up about her work on www.deepakiran.in. She can be reached at over2deepakiran@gmail.com.
