Nicola Powell is the Training and Wellbeing Officer for the Open University’s Students Association, a Mindapples Champion, a keen traveller, cook and music aficionado! You can find out more about Nicola, the way she uses our training, tools and resources in her work at the Open University and what her mindapples are – the activities she does to take care of her mind (including a fig roll resurgence!).
Other than that, the only time the monkeys were quiet was when I was travelling around Hong Kong and stood beneath the 34-metre-tall Tian Tan Buddha on Lantua Island and just looked around me…
Lo-Fi helps too, as the monkeys sit and chill out to that!
Having sons and grandsons, I am glad men are now talking about their mental health openly, and so glad it’s now part of education in schools.
4. How have you used Mindapples in your work or your organisation?
Since doing my Mindapples Champion training in January 2020, just before the chaos and worry of the pandemic, I had to pivot from delivering face to face modules such as ‘Feed your mind’ to online. This turned out to have several advantages, the main one being, a session could be delivered to OU students and our student volunteers who were taking part from other parts of the world!
The staff at the OU Students Association are all still working from our homes, and wellbeing has become even more important to us, and our Mindapples are helping us every step of the way.
I now have a Mindapples tree in my home office, and during our Wellbeing Week, I will populate it with Mindapples cards from my colleagues and student volunteers, ready to display when we are back together.
I also cook, again with a flavour of travel. I immerse myself in Mexican, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, and Indian nights, cook the delicious vegetables and fish of the country, stream the music, and set the table to reflect the cuisine.
Cycling and yoga keep me going too! And this last difficult year, I rediscovered the fig roll. Simply delicious!
