Eclectic: Regina - Different Ella Courses Helping Our Brains — Part Three

By Regina Price

These are the ELLA courses that were on May, 2012. There were different courses in other years. People were asked about the courses at the end of the sessions each year and the program development committee then decided which courses to include this year because of the feedback of participants. There are various courses through each time slot.

The courses in the first class in the morning included those about religious issues, law and politics; the history and significance of childhood; writing and preserving your memories; the history of the concerto; another journey through science; tai chi; and working with photos on your computer. In the morning there are also two period art classes including intermediate watercolor painting; exploring your inner artist, and life studies and portraiture in pencil and paint. For me, it was too hard to choose but I ended up in the concerto class.

The second period included learning about the courses about values, ethics and sustainability; not just a fairy tale: forms and functions of fantasy; tracing tendencies in art; meet you at the agora; mobile tendencies and social media; and a joyful noise. Being in a class learning about singing and practising singing was important to me because I have problems with aphasia so I went to a joyful noise course.

After the noon speaker and lunch, students went to the afternoon classes. The choices were learning about new issues in Canadian foreign policy; Ukrainian culture; it’s all about books; water-the precious resource for life; cardio salsa, zumba gold; computer and internet basics; introduction to cartooning. Also, afternoon art classes were beginner watercolor; and beginner sketching and journaling. These classes were very interesting but I decided I needed to be out of a chair for a while and I ended up in cardio salsa class.

The final classes were: you’ve come a long way. baby; topics in Canadian Native history; iconic 20th century Canadian poets; hoarding culture: possessing the past; the Astronomical Universe; and a class of Hatha Yoga. I decided to take about hoarding the past which was very interesting and illuminating about museums around Europe. It helped my brain and I was very interested about learning about past art and culture items, which helped me to think about things I never thought about earlier in my life.

I wrote this article to emphasize that ELLA has very different, interesting courses which can help us through our 4 phases (for me--through these courses): spiritual (learning about the concerto), emotional (the joyful noise), physical (the cardio salsa) and mental (learning about hoarding the past). These phases come from the Aboriginal culture and it helped me immensely after and through my brain aneurysm (a kind of stroke). In the future, I will write about these 4 phases and how we can make our lives meaningful to us using these tools or phases.