Treadmill: 18th of Feb. '15

Although today is my last meeting for this CAS activity, I will have to keep on running to maintain my health. My supervisor too said that. It will be such a pity if I did not continue to maintain my health. I've come a long way to reach this point that I am at today so I should not just throw it away for granted by not practicing in the future. Although my exams are coming, I guess I still have to manage my time to exercise or at least stretch like what my supervisor has taught me to once every week.

Today I ran non-stop for 1.1km and below is a graph showing my progress throughout this CAS activity. As you can see, there is an increasing trend in the longest distance I continuously ran without stopping in each meeting. Thus, this shows that I have improved and that my stamina has become stronger.

Above all, I am grateful to have chosen this CAS activity. I have gained so much. I've not only improved my health through this CAS activity, but I have also learned to value more of my health. As I go through this CAS activity, I also often talk with my supervisor about other things besides health like about her life journey, and those conversations have truly opened my eyes about the vast world out there. Thanks to my supervisor, I believe that this CAS activity worth so much more than a mere running activity. 

Treadmill: 16th of Feb. '15

Phew! I reached 1.2 km today. Although I'm reaching my end in this CAS activity and I have not reached my original goal which is to run non-stop up to 2 km, at least I have improved from the first time I ran, which shows that my stamina has improved.

Treadmill: 13th of Feb. '15

Today I ran the longest for 1 km. My highest achievement yet. I really do feel like I am improving. I was not as tired as I was before when I ran today. Which is why today I could reach up to 1 km. I hope next week I can keep up this improvement. My statistics have been increasing for the last 2 weeks if I'm not mistaken and I hope to maintain it.

Treadmill: 11th of Feb. '15

So today finally after all these days I reached 0.9km, something higher than 0.8km! Pretty excited about this because it shows that I ammm improving. I hope that next week I will be able to achieve a higher "score". I think my stamina is getting better but still I need to maintain it in order to not worsen my stamina back again.

Treadmill: 4th of Feb. '15

So today I stretched and ran like usual. I only reached 0.8 km though. I guess at least I am still maintaining my high "score". I guess I have to be more motivated. It's getting quite boring. Sometimes I feel excited though but sometimes it's just really boring.

Treadmill: 30th of Jan. '15

Today was pretty frustrating in that I again like last week reached only up to 0.6km. This shows that I'm not improving, instead I'm getting worse. Oh no! I don't know why but today I get tired just that easily. I guess I wasn't feeling that well from the start today too.

Treadmill: 20th of Jan. '15

I do not think that I will have time tomorrow for this CAS activity, which is why I did this week's CAS meeting today, on a Tuesday. So today I stretched and ran like usual. I only reached 0.6 km though because maybe I am just getting less and less motivated with this CAS activity. It is quite boring now that I keep on not reaching a higher "score" than 0.8km.

Treadmill: 14th of Jan. '15

Today I am back with stretching and running. I reached my highest "score" again today, 0.8km but I am actually looking forward to improve and reach a higher "score". I still get tired a lot and when I get tired it is like for some time I cannot see anything. Everything goes black :s My parents say that it is because I have anaemia but after doing a lab check with my blood, the result came out saying that I do not have anaemia. So yea. Kind of weird. Anyway so of course I have to balance out my goal for this CAS activity and my health issue. I just hope that this CAS activity can actually improve my health and not the other way around. :/

Treadmill: 7th of Jan. '15

Like every Wednesday, I did the same thing today for this CAS activity. It actually gets quite boring after a while. Especially today I was not really feeling like doing this activity but I could not just do it because I was not feeling like it. So I stretched and ran on my treadmill today. With lack of motivation, I finally reached 0.7km. Today's meeting was I think quite ineffective because I rested for quite a long time. Hahaha I just hope that I will regain my motivation back :/ I still have a lot of meetings to do for this one particular activity.

Treadmill: 29th of Dec. '14

Today I stretched and ran again on my treadmill. My supervisor keeps on telling me to strive harder on achieving my ultimate goal. Well I guess that motivated me and made me able to reach a higher "score" today. I ran 0.8 km non-stop at a speed that sometimes is very slow but sometimes quite fast. Hahaha I think now I know that that is the trick. I should save my energy for the last bit when I can just boost my speed and boost the distance in which I ran.

Treadmill: 24th of Dec. '14

Like last week, I stretched and ran again. I was so determined in achieving a higher "score" than last week but apparently I still could not beat that "score". I ran the longest for again 0.5 km. I was just so tired. I know my strength sounds very lame. Oh well. Maybe it is true. But still, I am challenged to beat this score. I believe that with practice I can achieve my initial goal of reaching 1 km of running non-stop.

Treadmill: 17th of Dec. '14

Today is my first day doing sports in a long time. I realised that my stamina really sucks. The longest distance that I ran without stopping today was 0.5 km. I cannot believe that I was really tired when I reached that distance. I really need to practice running again.

Treadmill: Action Proposal

Please comment on how this activity will help you to achieve the Learning Outcomes as IB CAS requirement?

As said in my previous action proposal, heavy physical exercise is not for me. Plus, because I’m in grade 12 now, I don’t have the time to do time-consuming physical exercise. Thus, I chose to keep my physical health this year by running on my treadmill at home.

Learning Outcomes:

• Undertaken new challenges

I once reached 1km without stopping in my treadmill and it was exhausting. It was when I was still very fit too, before I got hepatitis. So I do have a target of at least getting up to 1km of running non-stop for the first few weeks and afterwards 2km and for the last few weeks if possible 3km.

• Shown perseverance and commitment in my activities

Of course committing to this activity will be hard for me because when I have set a target, I will have a strong desire to achieve it and achieving my targets will be hard. So committing to this activity will be hard.

• Developed new skills

Because the targets that I have set for myself are new to me, I will be able to develop new skills. For example, I will be able to understand how to control my breathing when doing the challenge of running for 2km non-stop.

Yoga: 11th of June '14

Today is my last yoga meeting. Even so, I will still keep on practicing my yoga movements because I think it would be such a pity if I worked very hard all these weeks but end up inflexible like I was previously before joining yoga.

At the end of this CAS activity, I feel like I have grown not just physically but also mentally. Through the meditation that I have to do in the beginning of every yoga class, I became more patient and more focused. I feel like I am now calmer in handling problems that I have in my life because I learned in yoga class that I have to let go of the worries that I have once in a while.

In the beginning of this CAS activity, I was questioning whether it is ethical to take yoga classes (because a lot of people think that yoga is a process where one needs to unite one's body, mind and soul to reach enlightenment). After going through this CAS activity, I think that yoga is a completely ethical sport. In yoga class, I never was asked to meditate for so long as to unite my body, mind and soul to achieve "freedom" or "peace". The only unordinary thing that I was asked to do was to practice improve my mental state like letting go of my worries. Yoga may not be a conventional sport, but why should a sport that improves mental health be considered unethical?

Above all, I learned a lot from yoga class and I am glad to have chosen yoga as my CAS activity.

Yoga: 5th of June '14

I'm reaching the end of this CAS activity. One more lesson, next week, I will be done with yoga. Although I will not be joining yoga class anymore after next week, my instructor told me to keep on practicing at home. I felt that after several times practicing yoga, I became more flexible and of course I do not want to be inflexible like I was in the beginning of yoga class. This is why, I have to keep on practicing at home although I am not going to be attending the yoga class anymore.

Today, only one of my "classmates" came to practice. The class was pretty quiet. It was not really fun. Plus, there was not anything different in today's practice. We did the same routine: meditation, sun greeting, cat pose, cobra pose, camel pose, etc. However, I did find some moments entertaining before. When I was doing the pose that required me to reach my toes, I could reach them quite easily. I felt really good about myself because I used to not be able to reach my toes, or at least it was really hard for me to reach my toes.

Although I learned a lot from yoga class, I decided not to continue the lesson because in every meeting, we always repeat the same pose (except once or twice when I did headstand). It gets boring and so I learn fewer every time I go to class. Nevertheless, I still recommend people to join yoga class (at least for a month) because they can learn a lot from it, not just physically but mentally.

Below is the picture of today's yoga practice:

Yoga: 28th of May '14

Today I did the same routine as I usually did on the other weeks. I did meditation, sun greeting, moon greeting, chakravakasana, cobra pose, child pose and many other poses. I think that today was a bit boring because there was nothing different during the lesson. However, I feel that the lesson is getting harder every week. I was sweating a lot before. Maybe it was also because of the room that was hot, but I think that I feel like the lesson is getting harder because my expectation to improve also gets higher.

Looking from the beginning of this lesson, I realised that I have actually improved. I have become more flexible. At first I could not reach the tip of my toes but now I can, although only for a while.

Yoga: 21st of May '14

Today's was just like any other lesson before, just that today I was alone in class. All of my "classmates" could not join the lesson today, which has its own strength and weakness. I can go through the lesson pretty quickly because I am alone and do not have to wait for my "classmates" but I felt pretty lonely being the only one in class.

Today I did the usual routine: meditate, did the sun greeting, moon greeting, cat and many more poses. I realised that I have actually been doing many poses in the wrong way. When doing the tree pose, I should have raised my chin. When doing several other poses, I also should have closed my eyes but I did not.

I also realised that closing my eyes makes the pose hard to do. My yoga instructor said that it is because people tend to be worried about things when they close their eyes and so they tend to lose their focus easily when they close their eyes.

After several times going through this lesson, I learned that yoga actually helps me both physically and mentally. Yoga helps me to stretch the muscles I usually don't use. For example, I usually work and sit in front of a computer all day. I do not really move my shoulders, but thanks to yoga class I put to use my shoulder muscles and reduce the risk of getting my muscles stiff. Besides that, yoga also helps me forget about my worries at school for a while. During the meditation, my yoga instructor said to only focus on the air that I breathe in and out. This actually helps me to forget about my anxiety and burden for a while, which I think is healthy.

Yoga: 14th of May '14

Yesterday was a tiresome yoga practice. My right arm was aching and so I could not do some of the poses that I usually do in class. Yesterday my classmates and I did a new activity to practice our focus. We were told to focus on 'breathing for a specific part of our body'. So we held our breath and focus on strengthening a part of our body (e.g. our hearts) and let our breath go after a while. I find this activity a bit weird though. I don't understand how focusing on a part of my body will help strengthen it and help improve my focus. But anyway, it was quite an interesting activity to do.

Yoga: 7th of May '14

For two hours, my "classmates" and I did the same thing we usually do in yoga class. We first meditate, then did several poses like cat and child pose, and finally finished by cooling down. Today's class time was really boring and unchallenging. One of my "classmates" kept on postponing the practices by either chatting or eating. The class could not move on to the next pose because we have to wait for her. This makes us have a lot of break times in between each pose, which is why today's class time may feel unchallenging for me. 

Next time, I should just keep her in focus to the lesson so that the class can be effective and time efficient. When she tries to procrastinate by chatting or eating, I should slip into the conversation something about the lesson so that she will unconsciously realise that we have to move on to the next pose. 

Yoga: 30th of Apr. '14

I came with a headache to today's yoga practice. I was going to try do the headstand again but I could not because of my condition. Thus, today I did the usual routine. Even doing the usual practices I could not focus. I think that today is my worst performance in yoga class so far. I could not balance myself and all I could think of during the lesson was when the lesson will finish. The only pose I enjoyed today was the lying down pose. We always spend quite a while on that pose. Only today was I really grateful for that pose and the length of time we spend on that pose.

For next week, I look forward to having a clear head. I hope that next week I will be able to do the yoga practices well without any hindrance from anything including from a headache.