Sibshop Saturday

Working with kids has been something I've wanted to do for the longest time. I don't know when it started. I'm the oldest child in my family but it's Definitely Not my siblings who made me want to be around kids. (No offence guys!) Anywho, I looked up some volunteer opportunities in my area that involved working with children and I was lucky enough to find one thing!

Just last weekend, I volunteered for a "Sibshop" hosted by the Children's Therapy Service in Barrie this past weekend. This was the first ever "Sibshop", a workshop for children who have siblings with developmental disabilities, that they were holding. Our crew was quite small: just me, two high school student volunteers and the woman leading the session from the Children's Therapy Service. 10 children from ages 6-10 joined us for some games and group discussion that afternoon and it was lots of fun! I was literally playing games with children for an afternoon. =)

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others

The title of this blog post is a quote by Gautama Buddha that I really like. I've started to read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's‎ Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and I really hope I can follow through and finish this book before classes start. I've been meaning to read this book For The Longest Time ♫! (Yes, in my mind, I sang that last bit.) Not only because the concept is so relevant to OT work, but also because Flow has always been of interest to me ever since I first heard of it in my undergrad Positive Psychology class. Recent meet ups with friends and hearing about everyone at different stages of their lives (masters student vs. recent graduate and soon to be professional with a secured position vs. traveller on contract employment vs. newly accepted Med student whose relationship will soon be long distance etc.) has gotten me to rethink, no, more like Revisit my own concept of Happiness.

Governments taking citizen's well-being seriously?!

As I procrastinate doing my own writing (letter writing, blog writing...), I've been doing some reading and stumbled upon an online magazine called Aeon.

CBT is not the answer to a "Good Life",
but having these programs accessible is a good idea!

One of the pieces, in their "Living Together" section is titled Their Good Life. Jules Evans writes about governments now providing free psychotherapy to citizens. An initiative called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) has been launched in the UK, with hopes of training 6000 new therapists in talking therapies such as CBT! Sweden is also following their lead with a similar program.

I thought this was very much related to occupational therapy and it made me giddy with excitement on the inside. =)

I Beat Beethoven!

This post is way overdue. Studying for exams has gotten in the way of my blogging. And since I finished all my reflections for my PE lab portfolio, I needed to take a break from blogging for a while.

On June 2, 2013, I ran Kingston's Beat Beethoven run and finished 8K with a time of 42 mins and 37 seconds. My goal was to finish within 42-43 mins, so I was spot on! It felt great to finish the run, but the last ~1.5K was definitely difficult.

How do I Express Myself Creatively?

[Lab 10- May 24: Enabling Change Through Expression]

My Painted Representation of My Inner Self

Definitely one of the most enjoyable PE Labs yet! I felt like a little kid again! (The last time I said that was when our family went to Universal Studios and Disney World)

In this lab, we engaged in creating portraits of our inner self, what we think others perceive us as, and express our emotions through painting, sculpture and music respectively. When was the last time I did any of this type of personal expression??

Photography Allows Me to Express Emotions 
that I Can't Find Words For.

When I think of what I do for artistic expression, I think back to my days in the high school band. Music was my first and foremost way of expressing myself. I was part of my high school band as a flute player for 4 straight years, was also in the violin ensemble for one year and learned to play the alto saxophone so I could play in the jazz band one year. Sadly my engagement with music as a musician stopped after I auditioned for the wind ensemble in university and didn't get in.

Having the Client's Best Interests at Heart

[Lab 9- May 17: CEC- Lived experience interviews]

In our lab today, we were given the choice of 3 assessments to administer to a volunteer client at the Clinical  Education Center: Role Checklist, Interest Checklist and the Engagement in Meaningful Activities Survey (EMAS). Immediately, my past failure in administering the Interest Checklist floated into the forefront of my mind and I did not want to do the Interest Checklist. However, I ended up choosing the Interest Checklist because I wanted to, for lack of better words, "overcome my fear" of administering it. Let me take this moment to reflect on my first experience with the Interest Checklist:

How Do I Self-Regulate?

[Lab 8- May 10: Enabling Occupation Through Self-Regulation]

This lab made me ask questions that I would't intuitively ask myself. What are my sensory preferences? What are my emotional regulation strategies? Definitely Not questions I've ever asked myself and at first glance, I genuinely think that I don't know how to answer!

Throughout the lab, I thought back to that stressful situation that I blogged about in my previous reflection on the lab about Cognitive Strategies (Appying the TIC TOC Technique), I realized that I know how I self-regulate better than I thought! There are...