Tag Archives: Health

Health and Wellbeing

Summer Small Group Training is here – get in now!

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Are you looking for a short, sweet hit of exercise to get you moving through the silly season?  The RecCentre has just the answer, in our popular SGT courses for summer.

Getting started is the hard part.  As humans, doing anything uncomfortable is, well, uncomfortable.  If it’s too hard, we will easily find a way to not do it.   Exercise is no different.  It’s all too easy to plan to do your exercise and then when something else comes up, it’s the first thing to be dropped.  The funny thing is, once you get over the starting phase and start to see results, and feel the benefits, you’ll begin to look forward to your exercise and it will feel comfortable and easy.  You’ll also prioritise it, but how do we get to that point?

Well, there are lots of ways.  One really good way is to join a group of like-minded individuals and meet every week at the same time for your exercise hit. The Small Group Training courses on offer at the RecCentre offer this, in addition to qualified and experienced instructors to ensure you get off to a great start. Anyone can partake, but being a RecCentre member gets you discounts off our already below market prices. 

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So, if you’d like to get a head start on the silly season, and maybe learn something new or meet some new people, head over to our SGT webpages for more information.  We’ve got five different courses ready to go for summer, including Barre, Boxing, Boxing Plus,  and Bootcamp. All courses are four weeks, starting the week beginning 20 November. It’s just one session per week, except Bootcamp which is two, but we reckon you’ll be so motivated so quickly you’ll add a few more sessions in between.

What are you waiting for?  Courses start at just $30 for members, so head to our website to check out the details or call into reception to register for your spot now!

Happy Summer!
UC RecCentre

Updates from UC staff

Good grades don’t equal self-worth

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A few weeks back I was “The Cook’n Chaplain” for a 6 day emotional health course I’d organised for 24 students. And so while I was madly panicking in the kitchen making 50 hamburgers, everyone else were learning life changing things about making friends with their own mental health. As they chowed down on my Spankburgers™ (personal note: other people don’t love beetroot as much as I do) loads of them would tell me about how much pressure and anxiety they were feeling about their upcoming exams. “If I fail this paper, I don’t know what I’ll do! It’s just not worth thinking about…”

Sadly, most students I meet seem to believe the lie that their self worth is something they must constantly work hard to earn. Be it through good grades, securing a high paying job, or keeping their parents happy. Remove one of them and they feel their personal self worth begin to shrivel up. But as the famous monk Father Henri Nouwen put it “You are not what you do, you are not what you have, and you are not what others think of you. No! You are the beloved child of a loving creator.”

Now – you may not buy that last sentence, but regardless of your spiritual beliefs his big point is, you don’t need to earn your worth by passing some exam. Seriously. Because whether you feel it or not, you really are someone of huge worth. Without doing a thing.
Of course failure never feels very good. In the depths of disappointment it can feel like we’re nothing more than a sad garden slug being stood on by a giant academic boot, as we feel our hopes ooze out of us. But sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and get some perspective because despite what some people might imply – getting good grades really isn’t the meaning of life.
You are a person of infinite worth, and a D- or A+ means absolutely nothing on that score. So take a deep breath, remember you are so much more than the grades you get at Uni and remind yourself that in the bigger scheme of things (and if you allow it to), this experience will only make you stronger.

Rev Spanky Moore, Uni Chaplain
spanky.moore@canterbury.ac.nz

UC Community Gardens

Take a break – Okeover community garden

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With Mental Health Awareness Week just finished, this year’s theme could not have been more relevant. This year, MHAW was all about celebrating ‘Nature is Key’, and what better way to take a break than an afternoon spent in the community garden?

If you need a break from your study and exam stress this year (or, at any time of year!) our garden is the perfect place to chill out. Bring your lunch, bring a book, have a nap… and if you feel like getting your hands dirty, our regular working bees are on every Friday from 1-5pm, throughout summer. Check out the Community Garden Facebook page for updates on working bees, and other events on during the year.

Another good page to follow (if you don’t already) is UC DigSoc – our official gardening club on campus. Check them out on Facebook too, and you’ll never miss a chance to garden (or eat pizza, if that’s more your thing).

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At the end of term we held a pizza party for our valued volunteers. A huge thank you to all our wonderful volunteers – whether you have come once, or come every week, we couldn’t do it without you!

This message was brought to you by the UC Sustainability Office. Connect with us through Facebook or Instagram. Or email us: sustainability@canterbury.ac.nz