A week has gone by since the end of my #summerofmove and #teamgsd movement challenge. For details check out this previous post.
What were the benefits of participating in a nationwide challenge to document physical activity, role model being active, and trying to inspire others along the way?
1. I spent the last half of the summer moving A LOT...lots of walking, yoga at home, and gym workouts when I wasn't traveling. Since my walking in Spain, I have found I crave walking, its like my brain actually understands that I am resetting cortisol levels, and despite a low stress summer, clearly I benefit from this reset. Others have written about this, and I am happy to say that I am still benefiting from all that time spent in nature walking in the beginning of the summer.
2. I became connected to a community of physical therapists, most of whom do not practice in the area that I do...and yet, we were connected via social media. Creation of that online community is very supportive, and I found out about other groups like the Academy of Prevention and Health Promotion. One of there activities included a tweet chat on how to address, support and promote public health agendas that benefit all people, the barriers and facilitators. A lot of thought leaders on that
3. These therapists, whom I connected to online, shared a common passion, and that is, to address our public health problems by leading by example, sharing information and drawing attention to the importance of physical activity. And, we all experienced the same challenges of maintaining our physical activity levels that our patients do...so perhaps it made us more sympathetic?
4. In an effort to raise funds for a pediatric physical therapy clinic in Haiti, we were challenged to do repetitions of 100 to increase funds I created the 100 second plank challenge, and I offered to donate $2 per person who planked in a 48 hour time period. I inspired 70 planks, from my gym, from schools I work in, from the UVA Dance Team and VCU rowing team (it helps to have physically active college aged children!); I planked with anyone who did it so I ended up doing many in those 48 hours.
A number of folks donated in my name, because they knew it was a good cause and they wanted to support the mission. That ended up being quite a few bucks donated.
So what should we be doing? I encourage you to follow @freetheyoke and @APHPT on twitter or FB, they are working hard to lead the charge of bringing awareness to health promotion efforts to support public health. Lead by example. Inspire. Speak to increasing physical activity wherever and whenever asked. Advocate for physical activity opportunities and access for all people with disabilities. Participate in #summerofmove2018. And remember strength training too, more on that in the coming weeks :)
