How to Become More In Tune with your Body!

Critical and Reflective Practice in Education

Week 1

Mindfulness

On January 12th, Dr. Lorayne Robertson dedicated most of the class to getting to know all the participants in her course while reviewing the course outline.  However, at the end of the session, Lorayne also managed to introduce the concepts of "the learning log", "personalized learning reflection" and "mindfulness".  It is the short description of mindfulness which I would like to reflect back on especially about becoming more in tune with your body.

On this particular day, I was excited to attend Lorayne's first class but also little distracted because of something that happened to one of my closest friends over the holidays.   My friend Mike, who is also in his early 40s, started to complain about headaches and blurred vision a few days before Christmas which led to a complete loss of his sight in both eyes on Christmas morning.  To this day, he remains completely blind despite visits to different doctors/clinics/specialists who are trying to determine what has happened to his vision. Of course, my friend's situation has been preoccupying my thoughts so far in 2016 and Lorayne's description of mindfulness really hit home for me. 

As the old adage goes, "We all take our health for granted", and until something of this gravity happens to you, a family member or friend people have a tendency not to think about it. My friend Mike is employeed as a head plumber for a company in Sault Ste Marie and is responsible for quality of his crew's work.  This is very stressful for him as he is constantly training new apprentices and be at the job site both day and night.  The last few times I talked to him, before this incident, he told me that he hadn't been sleeping or eating well and feeling very exhausted from all the overtime he had been putting in.  

For my job, I have similar workload issues as I have to keep irregular hours and also take on a considerable amount of responsibility.  My goal for 2016 is to listen more to my body and start putting more focus on eating/sleeping better.  As Lorayne mentioned in her talk, just concentrating on your breathing patterns for 5-10 minutes every morning can be a good start to a healthier living.    

I will be reading more about mindfulness during this course and I would like to reflect more on this topic in a later post.

I really enjoyed the first class.