Time to move

During last year’s Mental Health Awareness Week, I delayed writing about my own experiences, mostly because I thought I didn’t have the right: I am not a medical professional, and I have no diagnosed mental health conditions. However, writing about a time when I experienced stress at work made me realise that mental health is a topic for everybody. It seems obvious to say that we all have a level of mental health, just as we all have a level of physical health, but we often don’t talk about it in that way: we only think about mental health when something is going wrong, rather than as a state of being.

This year feels easier, because the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is movement: a topic with an effect on mental health which I have felt directly in recent years.

I was not a sporty child. I would rather read a book than play football (that hasn’t changed: I would still rather read a book than play football - I don’t like football). Moreover, I dreaded PE lessons, would risk the consequences of ‘forgetting’ my kit before climbing a rope, and was the proverbially last picked person in team sports. I found a few physical activities which I enjoyed, including canoeing and kayaking, but never really committed to them. As a consequence, exercise did not become a habit in my adult life.

That has changed over the last 16 years, for two reasons, both related to those people around me.

First, after my mother sadly passed away in 2008, my father decided to move house to be nearer his grandchildren. When we were clearing out the family home, we came across a roof rack, which my Dad offered to me. At first, I was going to turn it down, but then I had an idea: if I had a roof rack, then I could buy a kayak. And, as I now lived near the sea, I could go kayaking at weekends. This idea turned into action, and on my first time on the water in many years I couldn’t help thinking: why did it take so long to do this again?

Kayaking and canoeing soon became part of my life, and I found that, as well as being directly enjoyable in the moment, the feeling of physical exercise, the contact with nature, and perspective of being at sea stayed with me long after I had dragged the boat home and hung it on its rack. Kayaking at the weekends made it much easier to cope with stress during the week.

Second, a few years later, my wife was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She took this diagnosis very seriously, changing her diet and engaging in regular exercise. I joined her in the diet, and lost a lot of weight as a result. But I couldn’t bring myself to join her at the gym. After all, I was still kayaking regularly, and I had a walk to work. What more did I need to do?

Then, after several years of this pattern, we were planning a holiday where we were going to try to learn snowboarding. My wife suggested that I try a workout with the trainer she was working with, and I reluctantly agreed. Halfway through the session, I had to call a timeout because I thought I was going to be ill. I was much less fit than I thought I was. That wasn’t the only surprise, though: the more profound surprise was that, after a few sessions, I found that I enjoyed exercise so much that I found a way to build it into my day.

And, just like kayaking, I found that it had an impact on my mental health. Starting the day with exercise increased my energy levels and made me feel brighter, even though it might be cold, dark morning outside.

The point of sharing these stories is not to show how wonderfully fit and active I am now. I am not: I am an indifferent, fair weather kayaker, and few people would find my exercise routine taxing. The point is that I didn’t realise the impact that regular exercise would have on my mental wellbeing as well as my physical wellbeing - and I wish I had started sooner.?

I realise that I write from a very fortunate position. I enjoy my work and realise that (most of the time) stress is an essential part of dealing with complex problems and difficult situations. I have the time, space, facilities and physical health to move and exercise in the ways that I choose. But I believe that I am even more fortunate that these events in my life triggered me to change my habits, and that I am more physically and mentally healthy as a result.

As I said at the beginning of this article I am not a medical professional, but I am very happy to take the advice of the professionals and specialists behind the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week: time to move.

(Views in this article are my own.)