Connecting with OTs: Season Two Invitations and Insight

 Welcome to the new season of "Animals and Aquatics in Occupational Therapy" with hosts Gina and Ryan. They own a private practice in New Jersey and are passionate about helping OTs and OTAs incorporate animals or aquatics in their therapy journey. The hosts share their experiences, challenges, and valuable insights to build a supportive community for fellow practitioners. Season two promises more series, engaging interviews, invitations to connect, and a special freebie on finding your unique OT niche. Get ready for a season full of learning, reflection, and practical advice.
Freebie for Nail you Niche

Transcript

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Hi, welcome to animals and aquatics. I'm Gina. And I'm glad to be your host and happy to be back for a new season of animals and aquatics and occupational therapy. Animals and aquatics in occupational therapy is a podcast for other OTs and OTAs who are interested in incorporating animals or aquatics in their occupational therapy journey. Ryan and I are husband and wife team. We own a private practice in New Jersey. And we're also interested in helping other occupational therapy providers along their journey with animals and aquatics. We certainly have found some challenges along the way, and we want to share what we have learned, and we want to network with others who are on this journey with us. So welcome. I'm so excited to be back for the second season of animals and aquatics and occupational therapy. Last year when we started this, it was just kind of a thought of starting a podcast to help others find out some information that we had really struggled with when we were getting started. And. We went through the whole season, which was amazing and more than many podcasts are able to do and survive. So we are back now starting with season two. So if you are new to us, certainly go back and have a listen to season one. But if you have been catching up on back episodes, congratulations. We'll now be publishing every week on Tuesday, or at least every week that we can on Tuesday. And we're so excited to get started with this season. If you've been wondering at all about what we did over our time off. Well, One of the reasons why it was important for us to take that little break. Right. In December and January was that the first two weeks of December are always really super crazy for me. Because I am an adjunct professor for an occupational therapy assistant program. And those first two weeks in December are always when finals are going to happen. And it just, it takes me a lot of preparation to get ready for finals and for the students to make sure all the grading and everything is going to be done. And I just really wanted to be able to focus on that. Really well and not feel. Distracted. By worrying about whether I would have another episode done for the podcast. And that was a really good planning decision for me because it did allow me a little bit of breathing room. I was kind of able to wrap everything up in November. Take a big deep breath and then step into December. Ready to focus on the things that I really didn't need to pay attention to. So those first two weeks in December for finals were really important, but I also had the 20, 24 planning party, which is a free event that I've done. Actually now for the last three years to. Help OTs and OTAs who are getting ready to start or grow their programming in the next year. And so we'd like to get together. We go through some planning exercises and. Think about where we need to put our focus, what our strengths are, what our support and community is going to be. And what we're really gonna focus on for the new year. So it helps me personally, to block off a couple hours, myself, to put some time in the schedule for planning. And I just love doing it with other people because it's a lot more fun to sit down and kind of talk about planning when there's some other people there. We had the planning party on December six. That was a lot of fun and definitely helped me get my new year off to the right start. Then after that. Grandparents from out of town came in. So that was about two weeks right around the holidays. Uh, we have three young children ages six and under. And this time with grandparents is really special for us. So being able to carve out that time was, was nice. It also allowed us to slow down a little bit around the holidays and the holidays can be really hectic, but we really ended up with a full house for a little while of having, my mom and her husband come and Ryan's mom here. And the kids and us, and just really sinking into the holidays. And it's so magical, when your kids are really little around Christmas time, Because they're they're so into everything and we were making homemade presents for one another. And we really wanted to take that time. Those of you have been listening in, maybe have picked up on that we are following a Waldorf. Curriculum in our homeschool journey with our children. And one of the things with that is a lot of hand work or handcrafts. And so that was part of our holidays was working on making some handmade gifts for one another. So during that time we had, some extra time to slow down. Spend time with the kids make those gifts. And it was really nice again, having that time with family, having that time to slow down. And then as the holidays really turned into the new year there was still some breathing room. There was a little time off before I was heading back. To the college to teach again. So having those few weeks with the kids, trying to get the new year planning done and really wrapped up. I like to do both a personal year end review that's really looking at. Personally, where am I at? But then we also do our business planning and you're in review. We're going to be preparing for taxes and tax season. So it's really a lot of just getting all those things together. Ryan. And I we've been doing a lot of planning for our own business on our Friday business meetings and for the podcast as well. So I just want to share a few sneak peaks into this year. If you're curious about what we've been thinking about and planning. Specifically for the podcast this year. The number one thing is doing more series. I really love doing the horses and mental health series last year. And for me, it was a great way to do planning and. It allowed me to take a bit of a deeper dive into that information. So this year we are planning a few series and we're excited that we get to. Dive into a topic, but keep it in a short like bite-size or commute sized episode. So you're getting more information, but it's keeping it relatively manageable by doing it in a series and allows us to really look at something from a number of different angles. So. That's one of the things that we're prioritizing or putting together as part of our planning, rather than having certain topics that you might have one in one month, and then you might have a, another topic on, or another episode on that topic. Leader. We're really focusing on putting those together in a series where you can just listen along or you can follow along for those couple episodes and get what you need. Get a real, take-home message out of those. Of course for this year, we are planning some awesome interviews. We have some amazing guests lined up this season to talk about a variety of OT centric topics. So. We think it's really important that we're taking that OT approach. When we're covering topics like animals, aquatics, hippotherapy, business planning intervention session planning, clinical reasoning. Because in some of the areas, there's more information about PT and that physical therapy approach is already out there and well-documented, and while you're searching or Googling for an intervention, you might come more across the PT side of things, but for us, it's really important that we're bringing that holistic view to things and we're coming at it from a real OT lens. And I think that applies to everything. Even when we're talking about business. Certainly, whether we're running a physical therapy, private practice or an OT, private practice, or a speech language pathology, private practice, there are some things that are going to be very much the same, but there are some things that are kind of OT centric, or maybe it's just the flavor. I think that is a little bit different. And, occupational therapy providers are just such a welcoming bunch. And so it's been fantastic to reach out to people and see if they want to be on the podcast and, get those interviews plan because I think it brings something extra when you have those extra perspective. So we're really excited to get our interviews on the calendar and get those recordings done. This season, so season two, we're excited to bring more invitations to connect and to work together or meeting in real life at conferences or through internships and coaching. We think it's important that we're not just speaking out into the void, which is sometimes the feeling when you're podcasting and you're recording and then you're publishing it. But if it's not a two-way communication, your voice is just going out there and we really want. Want to open up those doors to connection and working together because we see such value when we network with others, when we connect with others and we want to make sure that that's going to be in the forefront of this year. So I just want to give you a little insight into how we're kicking off 2024 for the podcast. We're actually going to get started with a series. And I also have a freebie to share with you. That's a little bit fun. So. Our first four episodes will be about getting started. And we've had a lot of questions about how we got started and specific questions about getting started if you're using hippotherapy in your OT practice or getting started, if you're using aquatics in your OT practice, and we want to cover those getting started questions right at the beginning of the year. So if you are thinking about getting started this year, that's going to be a great thing for you to get that information right at the beginning of the year, that way you can start to put. Some of our experiences to use for you. So we're going to be reflecting on some of our wins and definitely our learning moments and give you our best advice for getting started in 2024. Plus over the break, I made a fun little learning course called nail your unique OT niche. So that's my fun little freebie. It will take you through four areas of OT. Goodness. So hippotherapy, animal assisted therapy, aquatics and nature-based OT. To help you find the specialty that is the best fit for you. So I will leave the link for that in the show notes for you. If you're interested. In learning a little bit about what might be the best fit for you if you are thinking about working in a unique OT niche. And might be interested in, want to learn a little bit more about what those areas entail. It will go really well with our getting started series and is definitely a little bit of fun. So I'm super glad to be back in the podcasting seat and talking about all the things that I love about OT. I'm glad to be back for a new season. We're excited to share with you. Learn alongside you and help you on your journey with animals and aquatics in OT.