Health - Equality and Equity Between Culture !

To search for a place/area that’s composed of cultural and non-cultural belonging; relating to equity and equality. 

I felt like I lacked to understand the cultural representation in our community, but I do know Glen Innes is interactive with all ethnicities and nationalities. 

My group included myself, Maya, Paikea, Tiana, and Chastyti. Before taking off, we noted a few places to go to, and en-route, we thought of a couple more areas. Our first destination was around the Ruopotaka Marae, Te Oro (G.I Library), along with the Police Department - the environment involved several patterned rocks and walls that contributed to our Maori chronicles. Afterward, we headed toward a small area right beside Countdown, it had a walkway that embraced Maori culture possessing carved wooden statues and seats - the Countdown itself possessed no cultural belonging. Also, the Panmure train station comprised identical Polynesian detail on many objects.  

Throughout this amazing experience, I managed to capture key information that will cooperate with my Health classes and my knowledge for our society. My team could improvise on having a specific time-line to spend at each location. This will ensure we collect equal amounts of data, without wasting time. Overall, I will cherish this learning style and hopefully receive the opportunity to re-do it.

Akomanga Kaihanga Posters !

 

Click here for Poster !

The Power of Gratitude

Throughout the corona virus lock down, all schools in New Zealand up to college continued learning; but online. Nothing was going to interrupt our learning time! Especially my health class with the one and only tutor, Whaea Kata. She and our class (9KME) did multiple activities individually and together. We talked and learnt a  lot of gratitude: what is it? How do we grow and use it? And much more. Two of those activities were to create a gratitude box and also create the blog post you’re currently reading. I’ll be explaining what gratitude means to me and how much power that’s within it!

I thought gratitude was just being thankful for something in appreciation, it is, but there's so much more to it. Gratitude is a small thing but makes a huge impact on a person. It can do so many things to help improve your well beings and release negative attention, believe it or not. It helps control our moods and feelings towards things. You develop capabilities to become a person people would want to be around. It activates relaxation in sleeps and calm thoughts. It also allows you to be more self-disciplined with your actions and beliefs. To grow our gratitude furthermore, we use the 3 E's 

- Exercise, Emote and Extend. 

This is my personal routine of the 3 E's of gratitude:

Exercise: Whenever I decide to go to bed, I’ll grab my paper, pen, and gratitude box and start my 5 minutes of gratitude time before I drift into sleep. To ensure I remember to do this, I’ll leave a paper on my pillow in the morning saying ‘GRATITUDE’ to remind me when I come back in the evening.

Emote: I’ll make sure I’m in a peaceful and comfortable position before I start. I’ll also play some relaxing music to calm my thoughts then I’ll focus and imagine what I’m writing. 

Extend: Anything I’m grateful for I’ll physically take action to benefit someone or something, even if it’s small.

Practising a gratitude exercise the correct way enables us to access neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity means: having the ability of the brain to form and recognise synaptic connection, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury. It reveals that we can physically relocate connections between our brain cells.

The image below is my gratitude box, I call it Toks because it gives me the vibes and slang of a Tongan. I decorated it using a durag and an NBL headband to make it look as cool as possible. I use this box to put pieces of paper with written things I am grateful for each day.

After learning more about gratitude and the great deeds it has, I now think of it as a significant gift. We don't notice how much it can help us, but it removes barriers & negative thoughts & actions. It allows us to appreciate all the good in our lives in a way where usually we may have hidden it previously.

Siaosi Kava - Te Whare Tapa Wha - Hauora

 

Here are the four dimensions: spiritual - taha wairua, physical - taha tinana, social - taha whanau and mental/emotional - taha hinengaro. You’re probably wondering “what the heck are the 4 dimensions?” or “what’s the meaning of these words?” 

We’ll begin with physical well-being (taha tinana). Your physical well-being is what you act in real life, things you physically do using your arms, legs, eyes, etc. There are millions of things that can affect your physical well-being positively: going to the gym, brushing your teeth or drinking a nutrition milkshake every morning. There are also negatives about your physical well-being like dislocating an arm, getting a cramp in your leg or getting a disease. That’s your physical well-being.

Everyone has spiritual well-being (taha wairua), whether you think you do or not. It could be your sense of achievement or your purpose in life. Your spiritual well-being could be a huge part of your life, I go church and worship God, you might worship something/someone else, it doesn’t have to be religious. Some people believe that Minecraft is better than Fortnite, that could also be your spiritual well-being or your belief. 

Next is your social well-being (taha whanau). Being actively social could make a big impact on all the other dimensions. Communicating and listening to others is key to improve this well-being, you learn the goods and bads in life. There are many positive and negative things that could affect your social life/well-being: relationships, family, friends, compassion, caring, relating with others, sense of belonging, etc. These could also cause some of your other dimensions to fall; you get in arguments with the closest ones to you, it weakens your mental/emotional well-being and possibly your spiritual well-being too. 

The fourth and last dimension is your mental/emotional well-being (taha hinengaro). This is a strong wall that plays a huge part in your Hauora. These are your feelings, thoughts, and emotions. If your state for mental/emotional isn’t as good, then your other well-beings will be heavily affected negatively. Being excited, joyful or happy are part of your positive mental/emotional well-being; being tired, stressed or sad are your negatives, this is what leads people to depression and further issues in life. 

These dimensions are critical for your health and well-being, it’s basically what makes up your whole life. But at some point in your life, you’ll crash, you’ll struggle, it will be irresistible to change what happened, but you can’t; but what you can change is your response. Respond strong, respond with happiness, will, and strength. Don’t sit there doing nothing, make a change in your life!

My Class - Akomanga Kaihanga - The Poly's Project

THIS IS ME, MY TEAM, MY TEACHER!