I love mindfulness

I don't have strict plans to continue this occupation.  I'm mostly curious if I'm at a point where I'm intrinsically motivated to continue or whether I need strict external motivation like set practice times to continue.  I guess I'm going to experiment with that a bit and see where I lie.  I believe that it will be easy to continue over the summer when there is more time, but the challenge may lie more in next fall when things get very busy again.  

I'd like to evaluate the reasoning of the Mindfulness with Speech Therapy students presentation.  I clearly understood the purpose of the study, to evaluate whether mindfulness is an appropriate tool to counter burnout and boredom in students.  The question was stated and understood as such.  Similar studies were linked and related to other professions both in the school and in the professional environment.  The presenter was clear on the topics.  I could have used a little more elaboration on the five facets of mindfulness.  The presenter just provided one example of each, but this wasn't the focus of the study and time may have prohibited it.  I don't recall assumptions being presented with the data, such as other changes in lifestyle that could have also skewed the results.  The presenter, although faced with data that was not significant, did provide a clear line of reasoning for why the trends were worth noting.  I can't say with certainty that the presenter's point of view showed sensitivity to alternative points of view.  I think the point of the presentation was to show that mindfulness helps students avoid stress and burnout.  I don't think the presenter considered how other factors could have caused that.  Although, she did point out the small sample size.  i am not sure what the question regarding implications is asking.  So I can't confidently provide an opinion on whether the presenter showed a sensitivity to the implications and consequences of the position.  

I think the flow and mindfulness are very similar, though mindfulness in this study was just meditation. Mindfulness can be applied to any activity though.  They both states where one is very focused and the perception of time shifts.  

Also, I think mindfulness is very closely tied to motivation and autonomy.  I think mindfulness can increase a feeling of autonomy.  In mindfulness, one focuses on how one's perceptions and habits to external stimuli affect one's internal state.  You can feel more autonomous and in control of your life when you realize that you have the ability to change how your perceive the world.  Mindfulness can shift the lens from which you view the world and help you realize that you are the driver of your own experience. You have the ability to shift how you relate to the sufferings and hardships of life.  Life is hard.  But, with mindfulness, you can see the hardships in a completely different light and learn to appreciate them.  In this way, we feel like we have the choice to accept them and move forward with grace and strength, or fight them and continue with an internal struggle of sadness and self-pity.  It isn't to say that we ignore the emotion.  We allow the emotions deeply, but without judgement of their meaning or attachment of the emotion to our overall personality.  

In this sense, mindfulness affect's one self theories.  Mindfulness teaches us to accept an incremental self-theory, by teaching us to not judge ourselves.  An entity theorist does just that - judges oneself and capable or not.  An incremental theorist evaluates oneself as having worked enough to meet the challenge or not.  The incrementalist does judge oneself in failure, but not in the sense of judging the self, but judging the action.  This goes a long way in shifting self esteem.  

The ol' guitar is squeaking a little bit more this week

I'm working on my guitar skills for the show and tell.  I am trying to learn a fun song everyone will enjoy... seems like my favorite songs are kind of old and moody.  Also, I'm trying to up my strumming game.  I have only been down strumming but today decided it was time to upgrade to alternate strumming with a pick.  It sounds pretty rough.  I'm not sure I'll have it polished by the first week of May.

Thinking about hope in relation to my occupation is an interesting one.  I think I carry this bias that hope is most meaningful to those in the most dire of straits.  The examples given in the paper are those recovering from severe depression, a CVA, and a very invasive orthopedic procedure as well as adjusting to life in a new country.  Those are all life events that really make you question your drive to move on.  My hope in life wasn't challenged by this occupation or lack of learning the occupation.  I didn't pick up this occupation to overcome something and my hope is tied up more in other occupations in my life that correlate more with my identity or the roles I play in life (like graduating school, teaching my children well, finding vitality in my body which is easily overrun and stressed).  When I face set backs in those larger goals, yes, my hope is challenged.  In playing the guitar, it's not life or death, if I don't continue with this it wouldn't greatly affect my self-esteem or self-concept like not graduating school.  Some occupations are just more meaningful than others and playing the guitar is an occupation of leisure, not an ADL, IADL, social participation, education or work.  Maybe that is saying I don't value occupations of leisure as much as other occupations.  That being said, if playing the guitar initiated flow or was tied tightly to my identity, then loss of the occupation would really challenge my hope and I would have to dig deep to restore the emotional, cognitive and spiritual aspects of hope.  

If my occupation and I were a movie, I think it would be a cheesy love story about two people that were around each other lots and were platonic for a long time, maybe just a little flirty until they finalized realized how much fun they had and that life was better together.  I chose this analogy because it took a while for me to appreciate the guitar.  Also, I guess I see having a life partner and playing the guitar as not 100% necessary for survival but that they both make life more enjoyable in a deep soul-filling way.  Furthermore, both relationships and playing the guitar take some work and a bit of investment.

Lessons on Living

So I haven't played the guitar as much this week as I would have liked and when I finally picked it up, I struggled a bit with it.  My fingers felt awkward and slow.  It hurt again to really push the chords down.  It seems like it only takes a few days for those skills to leave me, which gives me a little more motivation to practice more regularly, even if not for the full hour. 

The information regarding Clark, Ennevor and Richardson's (1996) work relates to my new occupation in a few different ways.  I'm not incorporating this occupation into my life as I recover from a disability.  However, learning the guitar is embedded in my personal story.  I think it sticks out as an occupation unlike most I've done and excelled at before.  I don't have any other music related occupations in my life.  All other stints with musical instruments have been short lived.  So, it could be a turning point if I continue to which I ascribe meaning if it becomes the moemtn I started viewing myself as having slight musical ability (since I've always ascribed myself has having none).  

As I move forward with the occupation and if I choose to embed it into my daily life, I could make a  story about myself with this occupation in mind.  I don't have anyone coaching me through this and helping me evoke insights about myself but I do think that I can identify the symbolic dimensions of increased ability to perform the occupation and I think I can shft my personal identity and reconstruct it to include this occupation without help from an OT.   

In Lessons on Living, More Schwartz seemed to identify strongly with the occupation of social participation.  It seemed to me that it was his most meaningful occupation and he said that once he wasn't able to interact with others, he felt that would be a great signifier of the decline in his quality of life and perhaps it would be time to end his life then.  Once diagnosed, he spent his last months on the planet connecting with others, showing his love and compassion for others, and connecting and forming new relationships.  In his last days, he mentioned he took up a spiritual practice (meditation) to help him address the hard moments ahead so that he may find purpose and peace with the process.  He was able to shift his view or perspective to take on a larger one of being the ocean and not the wave - which exemplifies the idea of meditative thinking (versus calculative).  Despite his painful and trying time, he showed great resilience by not hiding from the topic of death but openly engaging in conversations about it.  He found a purpose in educating and raising awareness to the progression of the disease and spurning conversations around our nation about the process of dying.  All of these techniques made the process less painful and more personally satisfying, I'm sure not only to him but to all those he touched.  

Autonomy and Control

I'm just strumming away at my guitar.  I know I'm making progress but now as I watch other's play I'm completely amazed at their ability.  It has a brought a whole new appreciation to music.  

I haven't infused my occupation into my daily routine, per say.  I just play when I want a break from computer work.  But I think I waffle between autonomous and controlled motivation.  I began the class feeling controlled to practice.  Now I play because I enjoy it but there is the looming external pressure of having to for this class.  At this point in the semester, however, I understand that I probably could get away with not practicing an hour a week.  But I still have the motivation to do it.  I do find enjoyment in the activity.  It's relaxing to sing and play and recreate songs I love (as battered as they are).  The test will be when the class is over.  However, I think there will still be social expectations to practice from my family since they've come to expect it as part of our home or "place".  Specifically, it is part of the room that we spend most of our time in together. 

The Half Man, Full Life video was pretty fascinating.  I can't remember the man's name (Jesse?), but he determined to be fully engaged in life.  He did this through occupation - owning a business and installing satellite dishes, opening a thrift store, marrying, having a child, driving....  I think what related most to occupational science was his form, function and meaning to functional mobility.  Doctors thought it was in his best interest to have prosthetic legs because that was what he was physically missing.  But the reality, as he pointed out, was that they were way too cumbersome.  "Legs" didn't have meaning to him, but mobility and fitting in did.  The prosthetics inhibited his mobility instead of freeing it and while he may have looked a little more like a typical child, he could not move like one and struggled with other occupations like toileting.  While great in concept, the reality of the prosthetics was completely different.  He preferred other modes of moving himself through the environment and did so with great ease, doing things most could not imagine him physically capable of.