Facilitation for Women’s Hearth Paper

RCLS 445: Processes and Techniques in Therapeutic Recreation

Eastern Washington University

Aly Wells, Leah Edens, Lexi Bernardy

June 9, 2019
 Women’s Hearth is a day center for women of all kinds of backgrounds. The center helps

promote well-being and growth in mind, body and spirit. They have four key values; respect for

human dignity, community, growth and wholeness, and justice. Facilitating activities can make a

client’s day at Women’s Hearth and is important to be activity engaged and present with these

women while facilitating those activities.

We had many women in at Women’s Hearth that suffered from depression and anxiety

disorders. Depression symptoms are every day, there is no escape. Although, there are

things/activities that have been proven to make those symptoms easier on you. One example is

exercise. The women at Women’s Hearth could have greatly benefited from exercise. Exercise

can also build confidence and help you cope with your stress/anxiety, with the endorphins it

releases and boosts your serotonin inhibitors. We could have facilitated even a short walk around

the block and these women would have benefitted from that. During the walk, it would be

important to actively engage with the clients so that the clients not only feel comfortable talking

to you, but responding to one another as well. This gives them a social session that they may not

have had otherwise and can potentially build friendships based on similarities that were talked

about during the activity. We also could have facilitated a meditation session. Some may shy off

at this idea but those who would have wanted to participate, would have been impacted

physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and/or spiritually. Meditation can help interrupt

recurring negative thoughts and can also improve a negative mood and reduce stress. These

women at Women’s Hearth have been through more than most could ever imagine. Giving them

a good stress relieving activity could create a large significance in their lives. Yoga, like

meditation, can also work as a complementary treatment for depression. The women at Women’s

Hearth probably would have enjoyed yoga more so than mediation. These women can not only
practice it with us but it can also be a solo activity that they can do on their own, once learned.

This is important because if we are only there once a week, when the women are facing

symptoms of anxiety or depression, they can turn to yoga to temporarily or initially help relieve

some of their symptoms. In addition, socialization as a whole, can immensely help with

depression symptoms. Not only should we facilitate activities where socialization occurs but we

can also have an activity solely focusing on socialization. An activity such as going around the

circle and complementing each other or playing the two truths and a lie game would vastly

engage clients in socialization. This not only engages clients socially, cognitively and physically

but emotionally as well. Tying emotions into an activity allows the client to be one with their

emotions. Being in tune with your emotions allows you to be able to recognize your emotions,

think about what those emotions are and what triggers that emotion, and determine what you

need to do to relieve that emotion or produce that emotion more often.

Along with depression and anxiety, women at Women's Hearth have or are currently

suffering with substance abuse disorder. Substance abuse disorder is a pattern of repeated drug

and alcohol use that interferes with health, work and social relationships. The women that come

to Women's Hearth on the weekend when we volunteer have talked about their experience with

drug or alcohol use and how they are managing to stay sober. With other disorders, the women

have become homeless as the outcome of substance abuse, and some have become substance

dependent as the result to cope with being homeless.

For these women, the kind of facilitation that would benefit them is to get them

connected emotionally, spiritually, cognitively, socially, and physically to show them ways to

interact, and be involved in recreation that does not consist of drugs or alcohol. As mentioned

above, yoga would be an activity that is universal with disorders that it could benefit. These
women would get a physical, emotional, and spiritual outcome. We would facilitate this by just

gathering women that would like to participate and just do basic yoga positions. Through yoga,

individuals are able to connect with themselves and focus on breathing techniques. This also

allows for meditation to occur as well. This would be beneficial to the women at Women's

Hearth because it's an activity that tries to diminish all your worries and stress that is currently

boiling up in the body. The goal for this activity is for the women to feel more refreshed and

rejuvenated after.

Another activity that would require a more cognitive and emotional aspect is to have the

women create a ‘Self Box’ which is a more artistic activity. What the women would be doing is

decorating the box with words or images. The outside of the box would be covered with the

words and images that represent what you show others and the world. This can consist of

characteristics, roles in society you play, your personality that others see, etc. As for the inside of

the box, the words and images will represent what you keep hidden from others and the world.

Examples could be your values, your thoughts, your personality when you are alone, etc. This

will help the women see what they separate from the world. To make this have a social aspect,

they can share the words and images that are on the outside of the box. If they feel comfortable

enough with the group, they may also want to share what they have on the inside of the box. This

activity gives the women the opportunity to show that there is more to them other than just

stigmas or stereotypes as well as helps them learn more about themselves.

If we are working with a population that is bipolar, we can look at facilitating activities

that have something to do with artistic expression. I personally feel the idea of creating and

tending to a garden would greatly benefit those who are bipolar. First off, I believe it is important

to get a sense of your client’s hobbies and interests before conducting something that could be
far outside of what they would want to do. Although, if they don’t really have a sense of

anything they are particularly interested in, they may feel a sense of satisfaction for growing

something with their own efforts. By growing a garden, they can harvest what they grow and

learn how to care for themselves in a manic phase, as well as needing to care for a garden.

Without getting up and doing the maintenance such as watering, weeding, and fertilizing their

plants, they could die.

Community gardening with a bunch of clients who face struggles with anxiety,

depression and bipolar disorders can also be a good way for them to have some social structure

as well as the structure needed to grow a garden. Each client that chooses to partake in the

facilitation of growing a garden, can help one another with growing their plants, flowers,

vegetables, etc. At the end of the harvest, they can reflect on their good efforts and work it took

to get a result. If there wasn’t a positive outcome from the garden, there could be a debrief and

they could look into what could have been done differently to see a different outcome. This

facilitation technique can help a client improve; physically, because gardening can be hard work;

cognitively, because you need to have knowledge on what it takes to grow a garden; and

spiritually, gardening can help with discovering a sense of calmness and energy all in one. The

client may experience different emotions, maybe feeling frustrated, finding their patience, and

feeling excited at the end of the season. I think gardening is a great facilitation technique for

anyone, and as a therapeutic recreationalist, I would love to try this with any population. It has

all of the components we look for in a well-rounded activity geared toward helping and

improving client behaviors with goals and client outcomes involved.

 References

Transitions About Us. (n.d.). Retrieved June, 2019, from http://www.help4women.org/about-us