IIN: The Halfway Point

Not long ago I passed the halfway mark of my IIN experience. I decided it was time to write about it all, but I've been sitting here trying to come up with the right words and I'm not sure that I could sum it all up in just a few of them.

20 weeks is a long time: it's 20 modules of learning material, hundreds of hours of audio, video and written content, so many new (to me) and important faces and voices to remember from the health community and just as many opinions about the right way of eating.

With almost every speaker that I listen to, he or she becomes my new favourite and I want to remember every detail of what they said. I feel my mind expanding every week and with every speech, and I get so much pride in knowing that I am a (minuscule) part of this inspiring worldwide community.

As wonderful as it has been, I can't say that it's been an easy experience - after all, Mr. Rosenthal, the founder of the school, advises us to treat it like medical school! My beliefs and points of view on nutrition have been challenged on more than a few occasions. At times, I even felt the need to take a break so I can wrap my head around what I had just learned and figure out how it fits into my own views on nutrition. In those moments, I'm reminded of one of the main principles of this school, the principle of bio-individuality, which says that one person's medicine can be another person's poison, which I know for myself to be true, and that is how I gain perspective once again.

But this school has been about so much more than nutrition, and it's been that part of it that I think has been and will continue to be the biggest learning point for me. My shy and introverted self has been encouraged and nudged to connect with peers, to learn how to communicate in meaningful ways with future clients and with people in general (which, surprisingly enough, has more to do with proper listening than actual talking) as well as how (and why!) not to push my own views and preferences on them. Thankfully, many of these things are included in the graduation requirements. I say thankfully because if they weren't required, I would have likely found a way to skip them. I know that this is the part of the school that is challenging me the most and that I have to work on the most, but I also know that it is what will help me grow the most - personally, professionally and any other way possible.

I'm looking forward to whatever the second half of this program will bring.

A Student Again

This week is the fifth one in a new adventure for me. At the beginning of the year, an idea sparked inside my mind, and by mid-January I was ready to act on it by enrolling back into school, so right now I am completing my fifth week of being a student again. After what was the longest break from school that I've had since I started first grade all those years ago, it feels good to be back at it. For those 13 months of not being a student, life felt really odd. Sure, part of it was adjusting to a new life as an adult and a working girl, but on some level I knew that I wasn't done with school yet. I don't know if I will ever feel like I am completely done with school, because being a student has been such a big part of my identity. But right now, I'm not thinking that far ahead, I'm just happy to fully delve into the subject of my course. Especially since this time, for the first time in a very long time, I'm studying something that I'm so very passionate about.

To end an unnecessarily long introduction, for five weeks now, I've been a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. At its core, it is indeed a nutrition school, but in effect it is so much more than that, because the word "nutrition" refers to more than just the food we eat; it includes other important things that feed us in different ways, things like social life, spirituality and career pursuits, and most impressively, it deals with all of them in a neutral way, so that the students can choose their own path. Like it was pointed out in one of the lectures I was just listening to today, they don't teach us what to think, they teach us how to think.

I've known about IIN for maybe 2 or 3 years now, and never really had an interest in becoming a health coach. Sure I've been really enthusiastic about eating and living healthy for a while, but I figured that my introversion, shyness and youth means that health coaching might not be a wise career choice for me. After this last year of work experience though, I've realized that there are many things about this career that I would enjoy, and along the way I could learn to work through all my weaknesses too. Something inside of me told me that I just had to enroll this year. So I did - and I'm really happy about it. During these past five weeks, I've absorbed so much information. I'm learning and growing every day, and I can't wait to see what the next 11 months will bring and how this one choice will shape my future, but I'd love to share my journey in this space as well.

Here's to new beginnings and a bright future ahead! I'm so looking forward to all of it.