Tag: #LO6

Most of our service partners that visit us to do yoga are people with intellectual disabilities. I initially thought that doing yog could be hard for some of our clients butI now know that our service is important to clients because it not only provides with them a mental and physical benefit but the partnership and interaction with us which guide them on how to interact with others and easily integrate into society. This service also give them an opportunity to go against the stigmas and stereotypes associated with intellectual disabilities. Majority of people treat people with intellectual disabilities differently without even noticing. This makes those with intellectual disabilities isolate themselves from social groups/ society. It is important for them to realise that there is an opportunity for them to take roles in our society and to learn how to behave when interacting with people. By taking roles as a instructor that teaches yoga to our partner, we could learn how to communicate with people with intellectual disabilities and sometimes had difficulties understanding their words and gesture. Especially my partner did not even try to listen to me at first and she kept saying she wanted to go to the restroom. I did not know what to do and it was hard to communicate with her.  After manny trials and errors of my attempt to communicate,  I realised that every single partners has different level of yoga skills and communication skills  that I shouldn’t treat all of them the same as help/support they need are all different. It was also an important learning for me as when I first started the service, I had some worries such as “what if I cannot understand what our partner is saying in the middle of the yoga sessions?” However, I learnt how to persuade them to stay and as I tried my best to do so,  they started accepting my request.

The circumstances around us over the past few months have been very different from what we would normally expect our school life to look like. Our service being a local service, we couldn’t have interaction with our service partners. As face-to-face interaction is important aspect of our service, it was so sad that we could not actually do what we are usually supposed to do in our service. During quarantine life, I have been quite busy working on many internal assessments and I barely exercised to be honest. I sometimes did some stretching and that was all. After few months of life like this, I realised the importance of moving my body and staying active. Especially Yoga or pilates are important as they help our body relax. As a person who realised the importance of staying active myself, I hoped we could call our partners and have yoga sessions to help our partners stay active too, but it was hard to do so. I think changing the way things work is just really hard for both students and teachers as it is our first time experiencing online learning and lockdown. Even though we could not meet our partners and do yoga with them, I think the discussions we had online about our sessions so far on how we could support and keep in touch with our partners were very meaningful and important. If some of us continue to be part of this service and we still cannot invite our partners to school, our backup plans and ideas we discussed will be very helpful in designing our service program next year. Looking back, what I really liked about my service is the warm atmosphere that my peers, Ms Veron, and our service partners create. Some of our partners could not speak English. As a person who learned English as my second language in high school, I have experienced difficulty in communicating with people with enough clarity and  I initially thought that the language barrier might hinder the effective communication. There were some hardships when I could not clearly understand what my partner was saying, but through many interactive sessions I could understand her words by her body language and I realised that with body languages and facial expressions, we can still communicate and interact well. To conclude, I would like to talk about how my opinion on or view of people with down syndrome has changed.  I think it is now time for any people in the world to see the real superb personalities and chartacters of people with down syndrome and try to include them more into our society. To be honest, I have heard about down syndrome but I had no experience of having interacted with people with down syndrome. When we visited MINDS center at the beginning of the year, I was unsure how to approach/introduce myself to them and I just did not know how to interact. I think it was because I was too careful as I did not want to do anything that might make them unhappy or offend them. But later on during our sessions, I could see how sweet they are and I realised that they are very social and love interactions. I initially thought learning yoga to them might be a challenge for them. but now I understand how important it is for both our service students and our clients to spend time stretching our body and relaxing our mind.  when I go to university, I would like to involve in or create the same activity. Looking back, one huge challenge and pressure I had was trying to make my partner be more happy during the sessions which I think I managed to do even if the change was not that obvious. I still saw in the very last session how she did moves by herself without much guidance.