Another week flies by...!

Last assignment of the health education course was to prepare a short "class/lecture" for our classmates about something beneficial to our health, preferably with a practical exercise to go with it...anything goes (sort of), be creative! :) Main idea behind it is the planning and assessment of the work, a way of preparing to plan our time "out in the field" later on in the term.

There's been two full days (another half to go!) of classmate's, more or less interesting and more or less successful, "classes". My brain actually feels fried after all the relaxation exercises, what to eat and not and how our health/mood is affected by colour, yoga, balancing of chakras and the benefits of green tea and that's just the tip of the ice berg! ;) Good fun but...I think a group assignment (even if we'd done it in pairs) would have saved us an awful lot of time, 'cause it get tiring to just sit an listen to all these different things... Having to do just half the time would have kept all our interest up a bit better...feeling a bit sorry for the poor classmates that still have theirs left to do! :/ We were all a bit tired at the end of the day today, even though I think Helena did a good (?) job of balancing our chakras (?)... :)

My "class" was about mindfulness, to not dwell on the past or stress about the future but to try and live more in the moment. A fairly new concept in modern medicine where it is used to reduce stress, chronic pain etc. but practiced in Buddhism for thousands of years...

I heard the concept of mindfulness for the first time this year when I was looking into different types of therapy available for S and his bipolarity. I was reading about DBT (Dialectical behavior therapy), which is mainly for patients with borderline personality disorder but the mindfulness information that I found struck a cord with me. As something perfectly natural, for me, and something almost non-existing, for Stephen.

Since I was very young, I've strived to live by the motto "Carpe Diem" (seize the day) and to seize the moments of the day. To hear the birds, smell the coffee, feel the rain...it comes "naturally" to me.

There's a whole lot of other stuff to the mindfulness concept too but the core of it is to be able to pay attention (nonjudgmentally) to the present moment and to fully experience your emotions and senses, with perspective. ...Something that Stephen's always had a hard time to do...he's (as good as) always in the past or ahead of himself in the future. Whenever he is "in the moment" it's virtually impossible for him to step outside of himself and see what's going on from someone elses point of view. I'm not meaning to sound harsh! :) It's just the way it is and it made me very curious that there was an actual concept about something so...natural...! :)

I think my little lesson went over well with my classmates and from the assessments I got back seem like it was something they felt would be useful for them in the future, which feels good. :)

On Friday it's CPR (HLR) on the schedule...interesting! We're also getting to learn how to use an AED. I've done a course on how to do CPR on children before but not one for adults...

Sweet dreams!

E.