Occupational Therapy News OTnews January 2019 | Page 25

STUDENT EDUCATION FEATURE boarding and various team building activities at the university’s Lakeside Outdoor Activities campus. This article will focus on the third and final session at Lakeside campus helped them to learn how much more reflective a person can be when they are given permission and opportunity to do so. A second seminar session developed this thinking further by using reflective prompts to facilitate students’ learning from their Stepping into your clients’ shoes experiences with these activities and linking them to previous Fourteen second-year students, together with two occupational situations, with the aim of increasing self-knowledge and self- therapy lecturers, spent a full day at the outdoor activity centre, awareness. supported by centre staff. A day of paddle boarding, ropes courses We asked ‘What situations in the past have provoked similar and team building activities was divided by reflective seminar responses in you?’ and ‘What strategies have you used to manage sessions. or harness these responses?’ A reflective workbook was designed for the series of sessions, We then went on to encourage students to make links to with the aim of gradually developing students’ engagement with their practice, exploring how being more aware of your body could impact concerns or anxieties about the activities, through considering how practice. clients may feel when, as occupational therapists, we ask them to Students, who never cease to surprise us in the depth of their do something outside of their comfort zone. thinking and reasoning, were able to make powerful links with We wanted to support the practice, reflecting on how patients might feel when asked students in considering (diverse) to try something that they were not confident about We wanted to occupations as interventions, and being able to achieve, be it something apparently in using such occupations to help small, such as standing up from a seated support the students people achieve. We also wanted position, or something more major, such as in considering (diverse) to help them to develop their returning to work. occupations as professional reasoning, as well as their Students also reflected on feeling physically own self-awareness as part of this. at risk and how this may feel; one student interventions, and in using Finally, we wanted to encourage the spoke about her fear of falling – something such occupations to help students to ‘tune in’ to their bodies and that many other students had encountered in people achieve. how they were feeling. patients and clients on placement. We therefore began the day with The empowerment of overcoming fear and a moment of mindfulness – getting achieving something they previously did not think students to ‘listen’ to their bodily feelings and possible gave the students a clear understanding of the sensations, reminding them that in the words of French benefits of encouragement and positive action. philosopher, Maurice Merleau Ponty (1964) ‘the body is an ever- Predictably there were also gains around the experience of doing present gateway to understanding’. these challenging activities as a student group and they reflected He believed in the fundamental role of perception in engaging on the support received and given to one another, the ‘bonding’ with the world and emphasised the body as the primary tool for experience of the session, and the effect of being pushed out of their knowing the world. This is an alternative perspective to the one we comfort zone, as was intended. usually present to students, which privileges consciousness at the Students were quick to recognise the insight and self-awareness centre of the source of knowledge. that this could bring and to identify how this could be shared in We hoped that developing self-awareness would aid students in practice. increasing their understanding of the therapeutic use of self. Two months on from the experience, many of the students have found a new and beloved occupation in paddle boarding and A reflective process are spending their summer visiting lakes where it is available as a Students were encouraged to write reflectively in their work recreational activity. books about how they were feeling prior to the practical sessions As staff, we hope that they continue to feel connected to their beginning. Prompts to this reflective process were given by way of bodies as well as their peers through this participation and we are meaningful personal examples, such as ‘How does your body feel greatly looking forward to seeing how pushing the boundaries of when you are sick?’ or ‘What does it feel like when you exercise?’ their knowledge has helped to develop them into their final year of After taking part in either a paddle boarding or a ropes course study. session, students experienced a ‘walk and talk’ exercise, enabling We have thought at length about the high level of engagement them to benefit from the power of silence as they explained with reflection that the workbooks appeared to engender and are uninterrupted to their peers how they felt about the challenge of the looking at ways of incorporating this into future sessions. activities. This enabled them to practise a skill that occupational therapists Terri Grant and Alison Blank, senior lecturers in occupational frequently need to develop – being comfortable with silence – and therapy, University of Worcester. Email: [email protected] ‘‘ OTnews January 2019 25