Julia Roberson Guest Blog
Hello! My name is Julia Roberson. I am in my final month of school to become an occupational therapist. As occupational therapists (or OTs), we focus on helping people participate in their many occupations. Occupations are your hobbies, employment, education, play, managing your health, sleeping, everything you do to take care of yourself or others (shopping, showering, eating, getting dressed)—more simply, they are anything that fills some amount of time in your day. While we share many occupations with others (sleeping, eating, getting dressed), the complete list of occupations and what they look like can vary widely. Whatever your occupations entail, an OT’s goal is to help you participate in your life’s occupations, as fully as possible. This includes adapting or changing the environment, providing accommodations, or helping someone work on a specific skill or ability. So today I wanted to share about how mindfulness, yoga, and movement, what Open Up is all about, can improve participation in life according to some research!
How can mindfulness help your participation in life?
Mindfulness helps those with chronic pain participate in life more and experience improved quality of life. However, it does not directly improve the pain itself.
With breaks for mindfulness and movement, students’ attention and regulation improve. The breaks don’t need to be long, and this applies to students from elementary to high school.
Yoga can improve educational participation for students as well.
Yoga can help reduce anxiety which can limit participation in occupations.
Mindfulness can decrease job burnout!
As you can see, mindfulness and movement can have many positive impacts on participation in important occupations in your life! Try it out 😊
Julia is a student at the University of Pittsburgh. Julia likes to move be mindful in these ways: swing dancing and a hike/bird watching trips.