gold for group awareness

why to change sports education in schools 

One day in school my teacher discovered that I am quite good at running. And I loved to run. So it was obvious to send me to a junior sports club for athletics and train my skills.  I only must have been 11 years old, when I entered the training hall and met the trainer of that club. And still – I will never forget our first interaction we had: he asked me about my name – and about my results in running. My results? I had no idea what to answer on that question. My results in running so far were: running after somebody on the playground and trying to catch him. My results in jumping were: getting over the fence or not. My results in climbing a tree were: being on the top of the tree or falling down. My result in dancing was: enjoying the music or finding another one. I had no idea, that there might be other results I should care about. 

My trainer asked me to run around the gym in one circle. When I came back he said: 2:34 minutes. I had no idea how to process this information. It was irrelevant for me. But from there on I learned, that sports in our world is supposed to be about numbers: meters you can jump, distances you can run, minutes you spend swimming, points you receive for dancing. 

And the problem is: if you do not achieve a certain result, you are judged as “not sporty”, “bad” and “not enough”. It’s not the same as when you do not succeed in calculating math. Math is just a concept, it doesn’t belong to you and it’s not a part of your identity. 

The problem about judging people’s physicality is: when being judged in movement, your body is judged, and when your body is judged, then you are judged. And nobody wants to receive the stamp “not enough” for his own identity.

We define ourselves through our body. And the definition other people find for our body impacts our psychological status. Have you realized that people being good at sports very seldom get bullied at school? It makes sense: being sporty symbolizes health, power and courage. We do not confront those who show confidence and act strong. In terms of sports it means: being fast, coordinated and physically great.

Another point is: movement is mostly taught by those, who are selected as high achievers in our system: those who participated at contests, who passed the entry test for sports university and who have always been valued and encouraged in sports. What they miss is empathy for those, who sit on the other side of the river. People who have problems catching a ball or swimming in three different styles. 

Movement in our world is quantitative. Not qualitative. Qualitative would be: how do you like it? Why do you do it? How do you behave, when moving?

Imagine we would exchange our definitions on sports and use other words for it: cooperative, imaginative, passionate. 

The moment I realized that our concepts of movement can’t be useful happened during a long and cold winter day. Out of boredom I decided to have a run outside in the forest. I took my running shoes and left the house. There was no time, no limit, no estimated arrival and no judgment. It was the first time I realized how my breathing changed through the stages of running. I observed every tree passing by while my feet where floating on the ground. I let my thoughts travel and come back and started to understand what people mean, if they associate running with freedom. 

In this particular moment I learned a lesson, which I believe is crucial for the understanding of teaching movement: Nobody is allowed to tell my body how to move. My body knows it already. Once we implement this aspect in our system of sports education we draw a completely new picture of what we do.

School is the ideal environment to start developing a society wide culture of change. We should not play games which divide children into winners and losers. Instead, we should motivate children to create their own exercises and teach them to their classmates. We should build playgrounds out of wood and ask every child to find at least five different ways of crossing a parkour made of blankets. Children’s results in sports should not correlate with their achievements in running, but with their behavior and creativity during sports class: how much do they help children, who are not that fit? How well do they integrate in the group?

Some might say, children need a goal to reach or something to conquer about. That might be true. But – who said, that time and range is at the top of all triumphs? It’s about us, teachers, to set up values and concepts. 

Our world needs more patience, acceptance and valuation in movement. No pressure and no goals. Our world is already packed with stress, achievements, hate and disgust. The relation to our body and the way we communicate physicality between each other could be a microwave towards a bigger movement which impacts society, politics and ideals we have. So we should start it, while running around a gym hall.

understanding the world through space

„What are you doing?“

„I work in the space industry.“

“And what do you do there?”

“Trying sending people to Mars and stuff.”

“Seriously? You don’t have anything else to do?” 

I can understand why people react in a confused way, when I tell them about my work.  Turning the news on provides a five minutes long image of the problems we have on earth: refugees, wars, racism, sexism…the list is long. One should activate his resources and work on these problems and improve society. And what am I doing? Sending people to Mars. 

Especially as a psychologist, I have the best possibilities to support people in any situation: work with war victims on their trauma or treat people who suffer under depression or stress. Instead I am observing how people react when being confined in an artificial habitat somewhere in the desert.

Shouldn’t I do something else?

No!

(c) europeanspaceagency

Researching space means: analyzing how people behave when living isolated or confined for a longer duration. It means that we look at the cognitive changes of someone who suffers sensory deprivation. We try to understand how groups communicate and cooperate and what happens if we train them in a certain way.

Now look what happens on earth: the same! We find isolation and confinement in every hospital and old peoples care. The number of people living alone is increasing, especially in cities. We work in environments which demand a high level of communicative and social skills, group awareness and coping strategies.

To research these fields is difficult. Working environments are not consistent; many people follow different scenarios of living and working.  Space provides us a perfect paradigm, using people whose psychological condition has been analyzed and positively judged before being exposed to extreme situations. Space discriminates all confounding variables, such as free choice communication to earth, differing possibilities for entertainment, a comparable environment or variations in food. It allows us to produce a perfect laboratory creating the correlation between the healthiest human being and the most complex environmental condition.

How can we interpret our findings from space? Space, being extreme in its way, shows us extreme results and symbolizes a clear picture of what happens if we send people in these conditions. We can assume that there are variations and small aspects of these findings on earth - at any time in everyone’s life. Space allows us to form an obvious map of problems we won’t recognize on earth during our daily life.

Space seems far away and therefore invites us to see things from a different perspective in a compressed way. Once we zoom out of our daily life, we can understand how our world is shaped: with no borders, no limitation.

I often imagine how the world would be if many statesmen and important people would see earth from space. I believe we would have less wars and conflicts and more awareness about our environment. Yet, travelling into space is prohibited to only a few people. Nevertheless we all have the capacity to imagine how it would be and react in an appropriate way. Research is a baseline to support our understanding and transform into a ‘spacewise’ human being.

Say "Hi" to Mr. Depression

why we should integrate psychiatry into society 

When you want to receive therapy, you have to drive far! Psychiatries are buildings, hidden behind unknown villages and cut off from civilization in order to prevent human beings from understanding the mystery of humans working on their mental troubles. Psychiatry is a place we learned about in movies such as ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest’ – and let’s be honest Jack Nicholson is still the exemplary patient, when thinking about psychological disorders. Because we don’t know it better.

recovering reality

Psychiatry is a place which allows you to quit your normal daily life and reflect and restructure yourself. It creates a safe and careful environment to encourage patients in working on new experiences and different perspectives.

Reading through clinical studies – I’ve always noticed that many patients will pass through a backslide after being officially cured. Diagnosis doesn’t matter. The result is: after leaving the clinical environment and returning back to where they came from, many people collapse, fall back into old patterns and from there – restart the problematic behavior provoking regressions.

Clinical psychologist state that the disorder itself causes the regression, but – isn’t that way too easy?

transit times

Of course patients obtain ambulant therapy at home, but compared to the density of a clinical environment, a two hours conversation at some therapist’s place is not comparable to what they’ve received before. Plus, the environment itself could decrease the therapeutically effect. While the clinical world is structured and mostly prevented from negative affections, the quotidian life is filled with unaware family member, job routines, possibly bad living conditions and unexpected events.  

I have an example which might sound crucial to you, but it underlines my train of thoughts: remember last time when you came back from a long and intense holiday. You’ve skipped out your daily habits, met new people and also changed yourself in some ways. You return, full of optimism and curiosity – but compared to you, the faces on the street haven’t changed and other people’s attitude towards you might be the same. And then, your first day at work, you feel overwhelmed and confused. Imagine that plus suffering mental disorders.

Some weeks ago I experienced exactly that situation. A friend sent a friend of his to me and asked what to do. The friend is suffering from depression for ages and just returned home from a clinical period. Now, two month later, he is confronted with his daily life: an empty bank account, a sick and old mother and his properties are about to be removed from the state. Even for people without depression, that would be a hard job to do!

What is my personal conclusion after seeing that? I think psychiatry and society are two distinct worlds and the problem is – they don’t touch each other at all! That is what we have to change!

One ideal solution could be, that people leaving psychiatry receive daily monitoring and support from qualified therapists, who also interact with family and friends and arising problems. But of course – that is impossible to organize from states side, financial aspects and many more.

And then, I propose an even more ideal approach: WE have to do it!

My ideal would be, that psychiatry and people who are a part of it, are integrated in our lives. Imagine, someone leaving psychiatry would not just go home, but move into sort of a more generation house. There would be students, families with children and other people surrounding this person. They would look after him, maybe ask the right question or just share a meal together. Released patients would find support and integration into a daily life, in which they could follow a job and find help where they need it.

Integration of psychological issues into our daily lives would impact many aspects: if we share our life with people having disorders, we create more awareness and a normality towards them. To see that it’s okay if people don’t function might decrease the pressure on every one of us, to be perfect. And that might influence the number of disorders in total, which are caused by unrealistic expectations and inaccurate images of people’s biographies.

And the second point is, many disorders are caused by feelings of loneliness and disconnection. Sending people back into these circumstances would not support their healing process. Sharing our houses and time with them, is the first step towards an existence without word 'disorder'!