- How are you feeling? What are you seeing?
I feel quite comfortable and confident when doing the service. My experience spent with my client taught me a lot about teaching and communicating with special needs others and I personally consider we had good times when doing yoga together. I see progress in my client that he gets more confident to do the session with me and others as well. He was initially shy but now more outgoing.
- What are you learning so far?
Through the service, I learned to care as an important skill when trying to carry out a session with my client. It helps me to develop success when communicating with him. Being caring can solve a lot of issues that appear due to misunderstanding also when my client is not focusing enough. It can resolve the problem gradually and successfully. This also develops me on the usage of body language. I realized that not only words can be effective, instead, but body language can also be an even stronger tool when trying to explain things towards them. Also, different than the season before, I recognized what words or sentences can direct him efficiently because of his better understanding of or interesting in the sentence. So I may apply a few of them to help him find the position even quicker than usual. From all these trying I learned that keep on trying things in different ways or from various perspectives definitely helps in solving problems.
- What impacts are your actions having?
My actions are bringing positive effects on my clients for helping them get into a better physical condition possible at the same time learn to interact with other people properly. He was a bit shy to speak with me or to do sounds during the session along with others. However, he is now more familiar with the people and me that he gets more involved and enjoyed the session than the beginning. He even sometimes speaks to me in a few words where our communication becomes more and more like partners than me helping on a client.
- What knowledge and skill or understanding might you develop and how might you know?
He tends to do postures a bit ahead of others sometimes. I may need to develop his abilities in listening to the instructions from the teacher more carefully and remain the same posture for a longer time. For that, I can keep on doing everything right next to him together and use words to tell him to hold onto the pose constantly. I am able to use words successfully whether along with or without body language is a big change comparing to before.
- Are your initial goals still meaningful?
The goal was to build a strong and close connection or relationship between each of us and our clients and help them in their yoga session at the same time practice our skills in teaching them. It still means that all those criteria can still go deeper to a higher level of achievement. However, if considered reaching the goal, I already achieve them somehow. Now, it is for getting a tighter relationship with my client and dive even deeper as an effective partner doing yoga with him. Maybe get stronger trust from him and between us can be the next goal which can be achieved from more communication and useful assists during the session.
- What evidence do you have to show your progress?
I built a stronger relationship with my client than before for sure. At the time he gets distracted or does something wrong I can point it out for him and demonstrate it for him by telling him in words along with body language such as pointing at my or his feet. This way of demonstrating can gain his understanding and attention strongly where he can understand right after it. He is more confident to speak or join the session with others and spend time with me. Now, he does not need me to hold on to his hands for the demonstration at all. He can even do it without relying on my actions.
- Is there any other form of evidence to show your progress?
Ever since I have got this experience, I become a more caring person that every time meeting an issue needed to be solved I am willing to spend a longer period of time on it than before because I developed myself into a more patient person when facing new things. What’s more, I tend to think things sideways to develop more possible ways for rather solving or brainstorming it.
LO 2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences
I am still on the way of becoming a more experienced person in serving special needs people for sure that I find a more efficient way of communication and the proper form of a conversation between me and them all the time. At the same time, I got to understand clients’ self-expression better and better as well. There is still space for me to grow in taking this challenge and therefore more growth. Besides, my constant contribution and attendance to this service support me in further developing myself through this experience because only a longterm continuous experience can benefit people powerfully.
