… aaaand “home”. I say this both since Poland certainly is this for me, and because of the relief I feel for writing up the final of my Baltic blogs: Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus done, it’s time to head to the a country as homely to me as my native Canada. About a week out …
Fresh out of Vilnius, our cousin took us on a genealogical adventure retracing the steps of our great-grandparents to where her sister now lives, in a tiny hamlet just outside the village of Svir in northern Belarus. We paused there for a few days to take in the atmosphere of a forest cottage where the …
October 5th: a day out of Riga and we immediately head out on a 4h bus ride for Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. That evening we’re already at the National Olympic Committee office downtown on the river Neris, where Lina Vaisetaitė is ready to greet us. Lina has a very impressive CV, with posts as a university …
Last fall I traveled with my sister through northeastern Europe, convincing her to turn her Euro tour into a genealogical and semi-professional adventure. In under two weeks we powered through Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Minsk, Kaliningrad, and Gdańsk, getting a smattering of flavour throughout as we inhaled our way through the Baltic States. Genealogy and culture …
Christopher Moyer is a counselling psychologist who specializes in the niche field that is where massage therapy and psychology intersect. I had already cited him in my thesis without realizing he had only started blazing trails in the field. When the RMTABC recommended I check out more of his work, I was thrilled to find …
Intouchables (1:48, 2010, 8.6, 75|93%) is a French drama based on the real events of a rich quadriplegic and his unlikely, tough immigrant caregiver. A strange name, but this is just because the original French title was left untranslated (meaning “untouchables”). This is a nod to how both the disabled and immigrants are often looked …
Black Swan (1:48, 2010, 8.0, 87|84%) is an American psychological thriller about Nina, a New York ballerina working until she bleeds to first land — and then perform — the main role of Swan Queen in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The film is very heavy and quite dark, and in the end you have trouble sifting …
Wrapping up my blog series summarizing guest lectures at Leipzig University, I present Professor Paul Wright from Northern Illinois University. He teaches in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education but, with a strong background in kinesiology and curriculum design, his focus is on creating and implementing physical activity programs promoting youth development and teaching …
The Big Blue (2:48, 1988, 7.7, 63|93%) is a heavily fictionalized account of the friendly rivalry between Frenchman Jacques Mayol and Italian Enzo Majorca (renamed “Molinari”) in the top tiers of free diving. The story focuses on Mayol’s life, and the sehnsucht he yearns for throughout it. The closest he feels to fulfilling this elusive …
Kimberley Dawson is a professor in the Kinesiology & Physical Education department at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario (coincidentally down the street from where I completed my undergrad). She specializes in understanding what drives an individual to participate in exercise, and has done quite a bit of work in the field where psychology meets …
Robert Weinberg is a professor at Miami University in Ohio. He is perhaps best known for his authorship of the pivotal Foundations of Sport & Exercise Psychology text, something of a bible in our field. He is also a past president of AASP, a past editor of JASP, and a fellow of NAK. His sport …
This is the second part of Stephanie Hanrahan’s lecture sum-ups. Here, her “sport psychology as life skills” interventions are described. Stephanie’s real forté was in running activities, where she harnesses classic sport psychology techniques to improve the quality of life of marginalized youth. She ran us through her comprehensive 10-week intervention in just two days; …