Being, Becoming, & Belonging

This week I attended my second class and thus continuing the journey of my aerial yoga! I decided to look up some yoga poses online before class with week. People have certainly gotten creative in their ability to hang from the ceiling in a silk sling but it’s super awesome to see all the different poses that can be done! It made me want to venture out and test my abilities! Already I feel a little more relaxed and I know that as I continue to do this it will become more natural feeling to me. We tried a couple different poses this week, but many of them are similar so a lot of them feel the same or essentially work the same muscles. The ending is definitely the best part because I just get to lay in the hammock and relax for a couple minutes and it’s very soothing! Overall, I’m still very excited about my new occupation and it’s something that I look forward to doing every week!

There are numerous definitions of occupation with some being vague and others being more detailed. The first definition of occupation given was defined by Yerxa and states that occupation is “the ordinary and familiar things that people do every day.” My first thought is that aerial yoga seems anything but ordinary and is uncommon enough that I wouldn’t consider it just a normal part of one’s daily life. However, Yerxa expanded the definition by further stating that occupation is “self-initiated, self-directed, adaptive, purposeful, culturally relevant, organized activity.” This definition I feel better suits my choice of occupation, even though it is more detailed, the occupation I have chosen seems to apply to it much better than the first. Even more so, the definition proposed by Law, Polatajko, Baptiste, and Townsend gets into further detail regarding occupation essentially agreeing with Yerxa but then adding “occupation is everything people do to occupy themselves, including looking after themselves (self-care), enjoying life (leisure), and contributing to the societal and economic fabric of their communities (productivity). This occupation I think would certainly fall under the category of leisure better than the other given two.

“Doing + being, belonging, becoming = survival and health”

I thought this model was pretty intriguing because it certainly proposed a view of occupation in a way that I’d never thought of before. I think there are definitely aspects of this model that fit my new occupation. I am “doing” something new and as a result, I am “becoming” or changing into a more mindful and relaxed “being” through aerial yoga. There is a sense of “belonging” as I build relationships with the instructor, as well as others within the class. Aerial yoga is a form of exercise, which in turn is considered an activity that is beneficial to my health. However, I’m not sure I like the term survival that is proposed within the model. Not that it’s to say that survival is never part of this equation, I just feel like it’s something that would be less often as a part of the equation. I mean obviously aerial yoga is something that adds a little extra meaning to my life, but I certainly wouldn’t deem it as something I can’t live without. Occupations that we deem as meaningful are obviously important to our life but the word survival just seems a bit intimidating to me, I guess!

Aerial Yoga: The Beginning

I was pretty excited when I found out that I had an excuse to try something new for this class and I began racking my brain of what exactly it was that I wanted to try. There were a few new occupations I was considering, but after exchanging some ideas with Laura, I remembered something that I’d heard about around a year ago and I instantly knew what it was that I wanted do. Last Tuesday, I began my new chosen occupation of aerial yoga and I think it’s safe to say that I already love it!

Even though yoga has been around for thousands of years, it’s something that within recent years has definitely become a more popular form of exercise within our modern western society. I took my first yoga class my freshman year of college and knew from the first couple classes that yoga was going to be a meaningful part of my life. I continued the yoga class for about a year until I moved, but I have kept up on doing simple poses for stretching within my workout at the gym. Another important and meaningful part of my life was gymnastics. It was the main sport that I did for ten years and was something that I really enjoyed and looked forward to doing on a daily basis. The reason aerial yoga was so appealing to me to begin with was because it reminded me of both yoga and gymnastics. This occupation took something that I enjoy doing now and is somewhat meaningful (yoga) and combined it with something that I used to enjoy years ago and was super meaningful (gymnastics)! So as far as placing this new occupation on the continuum of influence of self vs. society, I would place this on the end closer to self because of the depth of experience I have doing occupations regarding similar circumstances. Because I have yet to engage in the occupation more than once it still lies a bit towards the societal side, as well. However, I know as I continue to partake in this new occupation and hopefully continue to enjoy it, it will become something more meaningful each time and thus closer to the self-side of the continuum.

Much like placement on the continuum, my two modes of human thought regarding calculative and meditative thinking will also change as I continue aerial yoga. As of I right now, I would deem my thought process towards my new occupation to be more calculative because I am still thinking of planning and investigating aspect of how I’m going to accomplish this endeavor. As I am still learning and progressing, I will still need to formulate much of the “how” aspect of things regarding poses and positions. As I continue to learn however, I know that my thinking will further progress and begin to shift to a more meditative form of thinking. This will allow me to reflect and build meaning to this new interest of mine and start to ask not so much “how” but more along the lines of “why?”