One of the items on my Top 100 List of Ways to Love Myself is to make time to curl up with a cup of tea and read a good book (fuzzy red socks optional depending on the season). Reading makes me feel happy and according to a recent New York Times article there’s more to it than just feeling relaxed.
Writer Ceridwen Dovey says, “For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading books can be good for your mental health and your relationships with others, but exactly why and how is now becoming clearer, thanks to new research on reading’s effects on the brain. Since the discovery, in the mid-nineties, of “mirror neurons”—neurons that fire in our brains both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see an action performed by someone else—the neuroscience of empathy has become clearer. A 2011 study published in the Annual Review of Psychology, based on analysis of brain scans of participants, showed that, when people read about an experience, they display stimulation within the same neurological regions as when they go through that experience themselves. We draw on the same brain networks when we’re reading stories and when we’re trying to guess at another person’s feelings.”
I don’t need science to confirm that I feel better after taking time out to relax and read. I always thought it was because I had taken much needed time for myself, escaping the stresses of life by immersing myself into the lives of the story’s characters. Now it seems, pardon the pun, there’s more to the story.
Evidently the research shows that reading fiction in particular is good for the soul.
“Keith Oatley, a novelist and emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, has for many years run a research group interested in the psychology of fiction. “We have started to show how identification with fictional characters occurs, how literary art can improve social abilities, how it can move us emotionally, and can prompt changes of self-hood,” he wrote in his 2011 book, “Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction.” “Fiction is a kind of simulation, one that runs not on computers but on minds: a simulation of selves in their interactions with others in the social world…based in experience, and involving being able to think of possible futures.” This idea echoes a long-held belief among both writers and readers that books are the best kinds of friends; they give us a chance to rehearse for interactions with others in the world, without doing any lasting damage.”
Ms. Dovey writes, “So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers. “Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines,” the author Jeanette Winterson has written. “What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.””
I don’t know about you, but I feel even better now about taking that much needed break to curl up with a good book with my fuzzy red socks.
See the entire article here to find out what a bibliotherapist is and how one can work through life’s challenges with just the right stack of books on your nightstand: newyorkerceridwendovey