Looking ahead to the 20th

Dear HEALers:

It is great to see the Blogs starting to take form.  Jacqueline will join us on the 21st to provide further assistance in this regard.

I have attached three of the readings for our next class which focus on wellness and vitality.  I'll refer to passages from the "Peak Vitality" text that provide some broad terms of reference for us, particularly in relation to energies, emotions/motions and healing, so don't worry about accessing this text.  The three attached readings track a somewhat focused understanding of vitality and its particular health and physical activity applications.

We will, of course, make our own sense of these readings when we meet.  The first one is the overview piece.  We'll address some of the historical and philosophical issues that are raised in it.  The other two pieces can be skimmed.  They serve merely as a prompt for your own curricular, instructional and work place applications of vitality promotion.

** Smith & Lloyd (2006).  Promoting vitality in health and physical education.

** Lloyd & Smith (2005).  A ‘vitality’ approach to health-related, physical education programs.

** Smith & Lloyd (2007).  The assessment of vitality: An alternative to quantifying the health-related fitness experience.

If you are particularly interested in such 'vitality' renditions of health education, health promotion and health care, you may wish to venture into the work of Daniel Stern.  His most recent text is titled "Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy, and Development" (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2010).

Of course, attention paid to the psychology and phenomenology of 'vitality' needs to find some register of meaning in the "social determinants of health."  We need to reconcile notions of individual agency with the affordances and limitations of social, institutional and political life.  That, too, is something we will pick up in our next classes.

Please review the chapters in Part Two, on "Income security and employment in Canada," in Raphael's text on the "Social Determinants of Health."  This will allow us to have a good discussion in the first of our seminars which Marie, Sunita and Paula will lead.   

You can download as a PDF from the internet, and as a companion piece to the Raphael text, the "Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts, A public health primer" by Juha Mikkonen and Dennis Raphael, 2010.

http://www.thecanadianfacts.org/people.html

At our next class I shall talk more about the "first-person description of an event, incident or encounter" that provides the opener for your paper on the self-chosen topic of health education and active living.  Just try to draft a one-pager that you can bring to class to work on.  The piece I shared with you on "Operating on a child's heart: A Pedagogical view of hospitalization" is just an example of how I used such first-person writing to create an extended topical piece.  You'll create your own essay as determined by the topic, issue or question that you've indicated experientially. 
  
I look forward to meeting with you again on the 20th and the 21st.  It is clear we have a wealth of knowledge and experience within our HEAL group upon which to draw.

And...amidst all the readings, writings and musings, let's not forgo the active living.  

Cheers,

Stephen