“I’m very passionate about healthy, active living. Growing up, I never met a form of physical activity I didn’t enjoy. I’m always looking for new ways to be active and that’s why I’m very grateful that I connected with Dr. Rebecca Lloyd. My experience working with the IA4L team so far has been very eye-opening. I have always known movement as an objective entity that should be perfected through the display of specific characteristics and skills. When I first started participating in this project, I found it hard to disconnect from previous notions that society embedded into my way of thinking about movement. However, I am now beginning to notice my perspective of physical activity broadening as we examine movement through a relational lens. I am a soccer player. I always saw success in my sport as being the collection of very refined skills. However, I am beginning to see something I always knew was there, but never realized. That is, to be successful in my sport, you need to understand your teammates in a way that you can predict where they are going next, you must engage in relational movement to work together as a team. For example, when my team is playing defence in a game, we work together as one unit by always being aware of where our teammates are positionally on the field and constantly adjusting our position appropriately in relation to theirs. In order to work together as a unit, you really need to get a feeling for your teammates in a way that you can read and respond to subtle relational cues of facial expressions, gestures, body positions and variations in force and timing. I am very excited to see where this journey takes me because I believe this shift in perspective will allow me to implement instructional practices that provide students with the tools necessary to become physically literate and to inspire them to be active for life.”
– Anika Littlemore
“So far, this project has allowed me to explore different applications of the curriculum. I have strayed away from the traditional sports model and opened myself up to the possibility of a new paradigm where physical fitness and social-emotional wellbeing are synchronized. Before partaking in IA4L, I considered the mental aspect of sport as a separate entity. The interactivities I have partaken in with Rebecca combine mechanistic factors and experiential factors. They have changed my understanding of the active-for-life model in that I no longer think about being active-for-life as a desirable future state, or something prescribed in order to prevent disease, rather I have begun to consider the model as being active for life itself. When you use movement to experience life, it brings about a new moment-to-moment awareness. The interactivities I have participated in or created with the IA4L team have allowed me to consider ideas of living and how they relate to my own life (e.g., the balance between giving and receiving support, consent, principles of following and leading, and being observant to my partner’s needs). These broader ideas were formed by doing simple relational movement tasks but have caused me to be more reflective in my own life – how I conduct myself, how I take or give control, or how I depend on or support within relationships. I now consider becoming interactive-for-life as something I can do to enhance my overall wellbeing opposed to something, I have to do to prevent the onset on every disease. I’m hoping in the upcoming months I will learn how to provoke the same thoughts in the students of my HPE class.”
– Christina Nyentap