Senior Honors Project Spring '23

Move Your Mind:

How Exercise Can Change Self-Image

The Positive and Negative Effects that Physical Activity has on Mental Health

Madisen Shayne Valdez

Jicarilla Apache Nation

The first article is about the Okanagan community (British Columbia) and their teachings. The perspective is from a community member, Jeannette Armstrong. Armstrong talks about the Okanagan life teachings and their four selves. They are the physical self, emotional self, thinking intellectual self and the spiritual self. All of which we contain as humans. The physical self teaches that the body is Earth; Emotional self connects to other parts of our larger selves, our mind; Thinking intellectual is “the spark the ignites”; the spiritual self is the larger self moving outwards, just energy.

This article tells about how the Okanagan teach and their ideas that have to do with the outside world and their obligations to their community. They teach that community comes first, then family then ourselves and that you share more than a place with people, going back to the four selves. They use the phrase “Our one skin” that reinforces the importance of community. Their teachings and idea come from Earth, the land teaches them their language, everything connects back to Earth.

Armstrong, Jeanette. “Sharing One Skin: The Okanagan Community,” in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (eds), The Case Against the Global Economy. San Francisco, CA, Sierra Club Books, 1996. Pp 460-470.

The second article is about the Dine’ culture and their names, memories that tie to the landscape that were hindered by colonization. I learned about the different teachings and oral traditions that the culture has. Like their sacred sites, how they name their landscapes and how they were effected by the western ideas and their colonization.

The article also covers the ideas about western ideas and colonization. Like the names of places, how they’re named after a settler and named after men. This is against their culture because of the idea that you cannot say a dead person’s name because you may call them back or disturb their journey. Repeating these names also go back to the indigenous peoples’ dispossession of their homelands and sacred sites that we may not have access to or control over anymore. Their identities were effected by these names, by the difference of ideas and the reinforcement.

Toastie, B. “How place names impact the way we see landscape.” High Country News: Know the West, 1 May 2022, https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.5/people-places-how-place-names-impact-the-way-we-see-landscape. Accessed 27 August 2022.

The first article that I found was by TrueSport and this article was about the mental wellness of a student-athlete. The article talks about the pressures that a student-athlete has from school, maintaining grades and the pressures of performing well in their sport. The USADA’s youth sport outreach program hosted a virtual event to address mental health stressors that face student-athletes. With this, they had a panel of current and former student-athletes to talk about their experience with the topic. This event allowed student-athletes to find new ways to cope with stress or to improve mental-wellness.

What I took away from this article, I like that mental-wellness for student-athletes is being addressed. It is an important topic that I feel like is avoided by student-athetes and their peers. Most of the time, this could be because they could be too busy, they have so many expectations to meet or just don’t want to face the issue.

Infrontadmin. “TrueSport Hosts Student-Athlete Mental Wellness Conference.” TrueSport, 16 Nov. 2022, https://truesport.org/media/student-athlete-mental-wellness/.

The second article was from the same source as the first one. This article was about teaching a student-athlete how to build emotional, physical and mental strength. Understanding and identifying strengths of the student-athlete is a very important step in accomplishing the goal of building a stronger mind. Also recongnizing what is bothering, using the strengths to fight this, allowing the student-athlete to fight this after helping them find their strengths is important.

This article is very helpful to the average student-athlete because many of the sports that we have access to are very draining mentally and physically. Being resilient physically also requires the athlete to be resilient mentally. Learning how to balance both and use them as strengths is something that not a lot of student-athletes tend to be able to do.

Infrontadmin. “Use Athlete Strengths to Build Physical & Emotional Resilience.” TrueSport, 14 Dec. 2021, https://truesport.org/mental-wellness/athlete-strengths-build-resilience/.

In this video, it talks about self respect and sports can hinder your self-respect. It puts you in an uncomfortable spot to push yourself, not knowing if you’re capable unless you try. In team sports, everyone has value, everyone contributes in one way or another. Sally Roberts talks about how sport effects the person's life even outside of sports, it can teach them life lessons or teach them more about themselves or their peers may also learn more about the athlete, the teammates learn more about each other.

I agree with everything that was being said in this video. Self-respect is something that is developed and something that is very important in sports. When you’re really competitive or when you may have a lot of pressure on you, you tend to let mistake define you, you let your mistakes limit your performance for the rest of the game, it alters your mood or how your night will go and I think that is something that a lot of student-athletes struggle with so greatly. This is where the sense of community somes in, a union of self-respect develops into a resilient team.

Infrontadmin. “TrueSport Champions - Sally Roberts on Self-Respect.” TrueSport, 15 Dec. 2020, https://truesport.org/respect-accountability/sally-roberts-self-respect/.

Action Plan: Part 1