Social Media & Health Promotion
The internship continues! I’m really enjoying it, despite the performance pressure I feel at some points - although I am really appreciating the opportunity to develop speaking and presentation skills and definitely feel an improvement and less anxiety as I keep practising.
The workshops have been going really well, and the positive feedback has been rewarding to hear, as well as rich with ideas for later improvements.
As in my internship objectives, I’ve been using social media as a means of promotion.
Putting the workbooks together and prepping for the workshops has been the most time-consuming and my main internship focus, but social media is an essential part of promotion. AOM has both a Facebook and Instagram page, where I’ve been providing some content for David to post (and he makes it all pretty ;) and observing how he goes about promoting these events and building a community.
I’ve also been doing wrap-up Instagram posts after each Workshop, which has not only been a good way to spark interest but a nice closure to re-cap each session and provide some info to those in the community not present at the workshop. Here are a few from my personal account that links back to the AOM account so you can get an idea of themes covered -
Workshop 1: Awareness.
Reppin' AOM @aom.yoga and so excited to have officially started our Wellness Journey with leading the first workshop on Awareness ✨💫Some things explored was the power of awareness when it comes to optimising our health, how it can transform our neurobiology and nervous system to be able to unhook from self-sabotaging behaviours and open doors to new levels of wellbeing 🌈🦋We also did practical exercises to uncover our own personal definition of wellness as well as a self-assessment so that we can take full ownership of our own process and learn how to listen to our body's biofeedback so we can work with it, not against it, and create a harmonious relationship that enables health to flourish 💚🌿Looking forward to see y'all at next weeks workshop: Eat! It will be delicious 😜🍒🥒#wellnessjourney #health #awareness #aomyoga#workshop #genevawellnesscommunity #creatinghealthandwellness#letsthrive #together
Workshop 2: Eat.
Just finished giving the second workshop in our @aom.yoga Wellness Journey workshop series ✨💓This week was: Eat! And explored nutrition and how food is far more than just calories but information to our cells, genes, microbiome and metabolism! We covered some guidelines that transcend any dietary dogma and provide a framework to find a nutritional approach that works for each persons unique bio-individuality, as well as some strategies that help balance hormones and pull the right metabolic switches so that we reduce cravings, increase energy and focus, and can thrive from the inside out! 🌈Looking forward to next week’s workshop: Move., where we’ll expand the circle of physical activity to much larger than “exercise” and see how to infuse more nutritious MOVEMENT into our lives! 💚💪#lovemyjob #genevawellnesscommunity #aomyoga#realfoodheals #metabolism #microbiome #nutrition #food #workshop#letsthrivetogether #eat
Workshop 3: Move.
(ooops, forgot to do this one - well, there you go!. We also experimented by doing a video series of this one using Facebook Live. Experienced difficulty as it kept cutting off at certain time points, so had to make it a 4-part series.)
Workshop 4: Sleep.
Today wraps up the 4th week of @aom.yoga Wellness Journey on Sleep (hopefully no-one fell asleep 🤣I find it a riveting subject! 😄)😴Possibly the most undervalued and neglected aspect to optimising health on all levels - to how we show up in the world with energy and vitality, to how our genes are expressed, to how our metabolism and immune systems function, to how we look, feel and think! We explored how far from being an indulgent luxury or a waste of time, high quality & adequate quantity sleep is a biological necessity that only enhances all other aspects we wish to optimise ✨We covered 4 essential strategies to optimise sleep & the melatonin/cortisol rhythm (from the effect of blue spectrum light, core body temperature, caffeine curfews and circadian rhythm resetting). Whether you want to look better, build muscle, lose fat, feel better, boost performance, be a nicer person!, make better choices, improve cognitive and executive function, prevent diabetes and lower cancer risk - prioritise sleep! The WHO now classifies night shift work as a class 2a carcinogen - translation: working overnight and sleep deprivation is a cancer-causing agent! The hours of 10pm-2am are the most critical in terms of hormone production and regeneration, the time you get the most bang for your buck in terms of sleep hours. Quality sleep is the closest thing we have to an anabolic substance that is 100% legal, natural and free! 🙌🌈🦄 #sleep #sleepsmarter#deeprest #circadianrhythms #melatonin #cortisol#functionalmedicine #globalhealth#genevawellnesscommunity #wellnessjourney#aomyoga
Workshop 4: Breathe.
I did this workshop yesterday after running a 20k race here in Geneva... it was perfect to be able to practice breathwork while running! :D Next week is the final workshop of this run of the programme, which will include final exercises and content, but I am also going to conduct a Focus Group to be able to collect data for my thesis.
Thesis Data Collection
As mentioned above, I am preparing to do the last feedback workshop as a focus group, to be able to collect data for my thesis. During the past weeks of internship, themes have emerged that I have found particularly interesting to explore - such as the role and attitude towards sleep, as well as different mindsets of looking at this whole concept of health, and how the “eat less, move more”/energy in, energy out model and message of public health recommendations isn’t just lacking and completely reductionistic but potentially damaging. There is so much more and going from an energy balance hypothesis to the more integrated and inclusive metabolic model has helped to connect the dots to how all of these fundamentals affect our health, body composition and subjective experience of wellness as a whole.
