Well, this is my last inquiry post for EDCI 336! Overall, my inquiry went really well. My question (will doing yoga for 15 minutes daily help my mental health/anxiety) was pretty much answered. Doing yoga daily did not provide me with quick/right after benefits like I had thought it would, but rather provided me with a more lasting effect that made my overall mental health better in general (but not particularly right after doing yoga).

The best part of my inquiry is that it helped me to prioritize self-care during a busy semester of school. Without this inquiry, I likely would have continued to do my workouts, but I would not have really done any other form of self-care. 15 minutes was a reasonable amount of time to take out of my day to do the yoga, and it was obviously worth it (as it definitely helped with my mental health throughout the semester). Doing yoga also comes with benefits not related to mental health, and I have definitely experiences some of those over the last few months. A list of benefits to doing yoga can be found here.

One thing that did not go as well with my inquiry was that I felt like I didn’t always have much to say each week. Most weeks seemed to be about the same, until a few weeks ago, when I realized that my mental health was improving as a whole. Even after that though, all I had to say in my post was that I was feeling good and yoga was helping. If I repeated this process again, I think I would do updates less often, and only post when something changed or seemed worth it to mention.

I loved the format of this inquiry, as it gave us a ton of freedom and thus we could all choose topics/questions that we are interested in. I will definitely be using inquiry projects when I am a teacher. Depending on the age and the students, some student inquiries might need to be a little more guided by the teacher, but regardless, I enjoyed having the freedom in this course. I will definitely be incorporating inquiry based learning when I’m a teacher!

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