A big part of the CDL Community got together to celebrate the beginning of this new school year sharing a barbecue, some music, good moments and a lot of fun.

Here’s one of the reasons this is a special place to be 🙂

Muscle, speed, skill and team spirit granted us an honourable 3rd place 🙂

Still keeping within our first pillar of well-being, Nurturing Healthy Bodies and Minds, this week saw a particular focus on Exercise.

With busy activity schedules during the week and at weekends, alongside other hobbies, the level of exercise carried out by a large majority of our students is impressive. However, for those who may require more guidance, we continued to have a very positive and open discussion.

We started this weeks session by defining exercise and discussing the different ways it can be carried out. For example, different intensities, individual sports and group activities. We progressed our conversation and talked out the host of benefits which exercise can have on the body and the mind. We paid particular focus to strong links between exercise and happiness =).

Some of the boys shared with us which exercise they do and why they do it. The most common answers were that; it relaxes them, they enjoy the sport and predominantly for a healthy body. All really parts of this well-being pillar =).

It was a great interactive session and the boys can look forward to something a bit more proactive next week!

Sleeping patterns was the topic of this week’s Wellbeing session. Most boys admitted that they struggle to sleep and we have discussed how can we make little changes in order to maximise their sleeping time to a better level.

There is a lot of work to be done and it requires some individual and group discipline. They were asked that for a whole week, note down their bed times, sleeping hours and any disruptions… (difficulties to fall asleep, waking up in the middle of the night, etc… )

We also brainstormed about how what we eat before bed can affect this and they were surprised to know that there is a wellbeing kit in the House with infusions and other treats to help them relax before bed.

It was an interesting conversation which we will hope will improve things, even if just a little bit.

A few, only a few of the photos of the activities we have done this week-end in Leysin

On the menu… Mountain Biking, Via Ferrata, Orienteering, Living and cooking outdoors, Rock climbing, Camp fire, good fun…

🙂

Happy sweet seventeen to Amro. He is getting to celebrate in Leysen.

We wish you the best

With this topic, we officially started our new Big Project for our Boarding Community: The Wellbeing Program.

Specifically designed and conceived to raise awareness and deepen reflection on such an important element of our lives, we started up by discussing with the boys what we understand as “wellbeing”: we concluded that there is no right answer and it is something very personal which can differ from one person to the other.

In the next weeks our wellbeing sessions we will cover sleeping patterns, healthy eating habits, sports, meditation and any other ideas we find relevant in order to give tools to the boys to balance their lives and build up in a positive frame and with the structure needed to the achievement of their full potential.

As a first task, we got the boys to reflect on what little things they do to relax when they are under stress: eating, sleeping, sports were amongst the most common answers.

It was great to see that the spirits were relaxed and I believe these periods will be productive moments where we share and evolve together.

More to follow in the coming weeks