By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Life lessons were recently tucked into a day of yoga, slacklines and Jeopardy answers and questions at the Juvenile Residential Center of Northwest Ohio.
Richland (County) Public Health brought its Wellness Day to the young men, ages 12-18, who are living at the treatment facility, preparing for life back in the community.
The Wellness Day activities were part of the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) offered by Richland Public Health. While PREP is a comprehensive sexual education program designed for at-risk youth in Ohio, the wellness activities literally and figuratively focused on learning balance and mental stability.
The lessons seemed to resonate with the teens. At the close of the day’s events, most of the teens raised their hands, eager to share their appreciation to the presenters.
“I loved the yoga,” said one resident, whose statement was reiterated multiple times. “I never thought I would do it, and I didn’t know I could be in one position for that long, but I know that it made me feel more relaxed. The whole day was great, honestly.”
“What I remember most from today is a quote by (yoga instructor) Yo, ‘You can’t change your lifestyle if you don’t change your habits.’ It’s a good lesson for all of us,” another teen said.
“Thank you for letting us bring it today. We were starting out with slow music and basic stretches, but we threw those notes out the window and cranked it,” yoga instructor Shelley told the group. “You guys are athletic, and you have so many abilities. You did some high-level yoga today, and you weren’t complaining; you were having fun with it.”
The workouts on the slacklines proved to be the lesson in finding balance, mentally and physically, as one participant said, “I feel like the motivation really kind of got us balanced and on the right track, but I just feel like overall that’s been a really great day.”
The day proved as meaningful to the presenters as it was to the teens, said Catherine Rischar, health educator and District 1 PREP coordinator at Richland Public Health.
“This program exists because the lack of a comprehensive sexual health education program in the state is very poor across the board,” she said. Her job is to reach out to “youth-serving agencies like this to show them the curriculum and hopefully train their staff in the program.”
She trained JRC Executive Director Montana Crawford and the JRC staff. “Once they were trained they could teach it whenever it worked for their agency.”
The Wellness Day is a new, supplemental aspect of PREP, Rischar said. “Because it’s not always easy for an agency to welcome PREP on top of all the other things they’ve got going, the Wellness Day was added for the staff and to thank the youth for being vulnerable enough to be part of an education that might be a little sensitive for some folks.”
For Crawford, the PREP program was “a basic, sexual education and health component education piece that we’ve been missing for a while.” JRC offers sexual behavior treatment, “but for the guys who are here for substance use or general delinquency, they really miss that component of healthy boundaries and consent that the others get,” he said.
The PREP program “enhances what we already reinforce in JRC’s programs,” Crawford said. “The treatment isn’t just about group therapy or counseling. It’s really about enhancing the community that you have that supports you being successful.”
PREP’s Wellness Day helped provide age-appropriate experiences that are difficult to create in facilities such as JRC.
“Because they are not having those Friday night football game opportunities, we try to create experiences that they would otherwise be getting in the community,” he said. “It just sort of grounds them, makes them stop and think, “I am a normal teenager, just in a unique circumstance right now.’”
Making connections and building community is essential for these teens, said Crawford, who works hard with the staff to reach out to the community, expand their community service projects and bring people in to understand JRC’s unique environment that is not a prison or a detention center, but a treatment facility.
The wellness activities showed the youth that they already have the attributes for positive outcomes, Crawford said. Their participation proved they are able to have pro-social conversations with community members, engage in yoga that they’ve never thought about doing, or looking at a balance course and figuring out how to work their minds when they are stressed or need to focus.
“It’s essentially teaching them about balance, not so much just physical, but more about mental, paying attention to making your brain focus,” he said. “It’s about being to understand that they’re capable of being different. They’ve got the tools, and they just have to make the decisions.”
He and the staff share those lessons in so much of their regular programming, but hearing from outside people is affirming. “There’s some natural motivation that comes from hearing it from people they’ve never met before,” Crawford said.
The team that Rischar brought to the Bowling Green facility were “person-focused, individualizing what they were doing,” he said.
At each station the teens visited, the presenters connected with them. “They weren’t speaking just to everyone; they were speaking to each kid.”
One of the presenters told the group, “I wish I could make eye contact with each one of you here. You are all super bright and have a lot going for you. Keep moving forward and motivating yourself and each other.”
“Take this opportunity of being here and look at is as a pause. You get to take a break from your normal life and the demands, stresses and situations that you might find yourself in. Take this break to focus and figure out what you enjoy, what you want to do in life and pursue that,” yoga instructor Yo said.
