Have you ever felt that being in another’s shoes is easier said than done? Well, fear not. Welcome to bibliotherapy – where you deal with your life’s issues by ‘watching’ characters in a novel do the same thing, perhaps approaching the matter differently.
Bibliotherapy is a way to cope with whatever’s mentally ailing us by reading a novel, where the protagonist or any of the other characters face and manage situations similar to ours.
If you googled bibliotherapy, you would probably come across The School of Life in the UK, which runs a programme on the topic, helping participants relieve stress in their lives by reading the books ‘prescribed’ by the school’s bibliotherapists.
Closer home, there are such bibliotherapy services and programmes for children conducted by Hippocampus in Bangalore and Mindframes in Mumbai. In case you want to test the waters first, read the Indian version of ‘The Novel Cure‘, co-authored by Indrajit Hazra. It prescribes cures for ailments as varied as constipation and the fear of dogs.
And finally, if you would rather do this free of cost, join this online course on bibliotherapy, beginning in September. I will be there too!
While we don’t really need another reason to read, here’s to reading more novels and therefore, leading a stress-free life. We can now say, ‘A few pages a day, keep the psychotherapists at bay’. 🙂
The Reading Trail 