“Rather than filling Friday night with errands or social plans, fredagsmys makes rest the focus. “Fredagsmys, literally ‘cozy Friday,’ is a Swedish tradition of staying in after work on Friday to spend time with friends and family, playing board games, watching TV, and having snacks,” says Eugene Grudnikoff, MD, staff psychiatrist at Radial. “Swedish tacos, blankets, and lit candles create a relaxed atmosphere to end the workweek and mindfully shift into the weekend.”
This weekly ritual in Sweden is especially common during the winter, when people are more inclined to intentionally slow down and stay indoors at the end of the workweek. “You let the lights down, wear comfortable clothes, eat some easy and comforting food, like snacks or take-out,” says Eleni Nicolaou, PhD, art therapist and creative wellness coach at Davincified. According to her, the ritual works because it creates a clear transition from work mode to resting mode that reinforces a sense of predictability and psychological safety.”
My two cents: While I am a big believer (for me, I know it’s not best for everyone) in working when I’m working and taking weekends off, and I like the idea of rituals to mark transitions, this sounds too cozy for me. What am I doing this Friday? Going into the big city for dinner with friends and a concert. Saturday I’ll ride my bike and go to a play. Sunday might be anti-gravity restorative yoga. There will definitely be dog walks. Barring an emergency on campus, there’ll be no work work, though there will be some cleaning and housework. Maybe what this tells me is that I don’t need help shifting into weekend mode. Weekend mode comes pretty naturally. I think if I could pick one summer Friday ritual it might be an after work bike ride and a backyard BBQ with friends after. How about you? What do you think of the cozy Friday idea?
Forget those images of lifeguards and swimmers with teeth sparkling white in their tanned faces. Apparently, swimmer’s teeth is a thing.
What is it and how does it happen? Apparently the chlorine and other pool chemicals can change the ph in your mouth, leading the discolouration, tartar, and even softened, cracked teeth. A swimmer friend brought it to my attention, and the consensus in our little group is that it can be a real issue.
All three of us have more than normal tartar at every dental check-up, and one has issues with discolouration and cracking. I’m curious about how many members of our respective swim clubs also suffer from it.
The advice to manage it all seems to boil down to: brush your teeth, especially before exercising; drink plenty of water; avoid sugary drinks and snacks; get to the dentist regularly.
This is good advice for everyone, so I’ll tuck this information away, keep up with my dental hygiene, and swim as often as possible in lakes or rivers.
A woman in a grey bathing cap and goggles shows off her smile from a pool with dark blue water.
I’ve been near and in water for as long as I can remember. I learned how to swim when I was age 4– my teenaged aunts took me to a local creek, put me in the water and taught me dog paddling, lying on my back and front, and how to hold my breath underwater. By age 6, I was able to swim in the deep end of the pool by myself with some confidence. My niece and nephews followed the same pattern: early swim exposure and lessons, and lots of trips to the pool and ocean. All my family are comfortable swimmers.
But not everyone is. In this article in the Economist, we read a short history of the race, class and income gaps that divide swimmers from non-swimmers. Here’s a graph they created from data gathered from the Centers for Disease Control (in 2023, the good ol’ days for the institution…)
A graph showing percentage of US non-swimmers by income. We see big racial gaps even controlling for income.
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, black children aged five to 14 are more than five times as likely to drown in a swimming pool as their white counterparts. Black adults are more than five times as likely as whites to report that they cannot swim.
Many colleges and universities used to have swim tests as a graduation requirement, but that has been in decline in the past decades. The most recent Ivy League school to drop the swim test is Dartmouth College. This spring will be the first year their graduating class will not consist entirely of people who either passed the swim test or passed a swim class. Why?
It’s complicated.
In addition to the cost and inconvenience if running a swim program for all students, the large racial gaps between swimmers and non-swimmers among college students make some college administrators uneasy. Here’s a quote from the article:
Williams College found that between 2013 and 2019, 81% of those who failed its 50-yard swim test were students of colour. After a university committee deemed this “problematic” in 2022 the faculty voted to scrap the requirement, citing its “disparate impact” on minority students. “You’re reinforcing systemic oppression in some ways,” the school’s athletic director told the Chronicle of Higher Education. When Dartmouth eliminated its own swim test later that year, school administrators offered a similar explanation, noting that those who failed were “overwhelmingly students of colour”.
At the same time, some colleges are leaning into the swim test as a way to “right historical wrongs”, in their view.
In 2024 a Cornell faculty committee voted to retain the university’s swim requirement. In its resolution the committee acknowledged racial disparities in swimming ability but argued that the test should remain precisely in order to help narrow them. “By providing formal swimming instruction”, the committee concluded, “Cornell is doing its small part to help right the wrongs of US history and close the racial gap in accidental drowning in this country.
MIT (my alma mater) has retained the swim test as well. Here’s what they have to say about it:
“We have a very intellectually bright population,” [MIT Director of Physical Education] Sampson Moore said. “Sometimes either they don’t have the time to do it as they’re growing up because they’re really focused on their studies, or they didn’t have access because they were an international student and it wasn’t as common.
“All of our students, I would bet my paycheck, are going to be leaders of something, right? Whether they’re a leader of their family or they’re leader of a department or a corporation, they can influence those around them,” she continued.
Is mandating a swim proficiency test imposing an undue burden on students who have been unduly burdened all their lives? Or is it a benefit, helping non-swimming students learn a valuable life skill?
I talked with a friend who is on Team NO-SWIM-TEST, citing how it can stigmatize and burden non-white students. I am on Team SWIM-TEST because, as a public health ethicist, I really want fewer US children, teenagers and adults to die from drowning.
And I admit, as a lifelong swimmer, I want everyone to have the chance to discover the joy of being a water creature, even temporarily.
But I see the complexity here.
If you find this topic interesting (as I certainly do), check out the book Contested Waters It’s a cultural and racial history of swimming pools in the US, documenting and analyzing the shifts from large numbers of public non-segregated bathing pools in urban areas to private, restricted recreational suburban pool clubs.
What do I wish we could do about this? Look to Australia– they have school-funded swimming and water-safety programs all over the country. However, even in Australia there isn’t full access to and implementation of swimming lessons for all school-age children. This is both a shame and a danger for people living in a country with 34,000 kilometers of coastline.
Readers, what do you think? Obvious, national funding for learn-to-swim programs for children would be a great solution. But in lieu of that, what about learning to swim in college? I’d love to hear from you.
International Women’s Day fell on the same day as many places switched to daylight saving time this year. It was coincidence, but felt particularly cruel at a time when women’s rights are being rolled back in many places, and violent conflict is putting increasing numbers of women and girls at risk.
Anne Cherkowski, Natalie Spooner, and Vanessa Upson traded their 24s for 23s in recognition of the 23-hour International Women’s Day. And the PEHL ran a $23 fundraiser to support helping girls get into and stay in hockey.
L to R: Vanessa Upson of the Minnesota Frost, Anne Cherkowsky of the New York Sirens, and Natalie Spooner of the Toronto Sceptres, in their special International Women’s Day jerseys. Photo courtesy of @thepwhlofficial.
Others had a slightly different take. One friend, who had been at the Beijing International Women’s Conference in 1995, reflected on how hopeful things had been then, and now here we are.
Another friend, who had also been at Beijing, didn’t even mention it. She was too busy being worried about friends who might be caught up in the war in the Middle East, where at least 165 Iranian school girls were killed in an attack on their school. That story has barely caused a ripple in Canada. Compare that with the massive international outcry over the Chibok school girls in 2014.
On top of the open conflicts, we have smaller attacks on women’s rights: whether it’s making proof of identity more difficult, thus locking women out of the right to vote, women being bullied for supposedly using the “wrong” washroom, the impact of return to office policies because women who carry a large burden of child care and other invisible labour must suddenly scramble to find daycare and elder care options that allow them to manage commutes on top of their paid workday.
I didn’t realize it had been so long since I wrote a Go Team post.
Sure, it has only been since January but I always find February to be such a slog that it feels like it has been aaaaaaages since I offered up some encouragement for us all.
So, Team, today I am inviting you to find ways to be even kinder to yourself.
Maybe that means giving yourself a break.
Maybe it means taking an extra rest day.
Maybe it means giving yourself a pep talk – or seeking someone else to give you one.
Maybe it means giving yourself as much time as possible to work out.
Maybe it means speeding things up a little today.
Perhaps it means using the punching bag instead of going to Zumba… or vice versa.
Perhaps it looks like more time meditating or journaling or listening to calming music.
Perhaps it looks like exercising on your own or maybe it looks like finding company.
Maybe it looks like packing your gym bag in the evening or rolling out your yoga mat before you go to bed.
Perhaps it means going to bed early or staying in bed a little longer in the morning and maybe it looks like the opposite of that.
Look, I know that there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world and that you are probably also facing a lot of challenges in your own life. In the face of all of that, it can seem pretty insignificant to bother trying to be kinder to yourself.
After all, what difference does it make if you journal or go to Zumba or take a bit of extra time with your tea?
It makes a BIG difference.
Sure, it’s not going to address all of the challenges you are facing and it’s not going to fix all of the problems in the world but it sure as hell is going to make it a little easier for you to do what you can to face those challenges and to help out in the world.
(And you can be damn sure that being less kind to yourself won’t make anything better.)
Choosing to be kind to yourself, to give your body and brain the things that you need, will not only be helpful to you in the moment but it will also leave you with more energy and more capacity to engage with others, to seek solutions, to be who you want to be in the world.
And sure, my examples above are all related to fitness and well-being but that’s because this is a fitness blog.
I hope you will apply the same ideas in every facet of your life.
Self-kindness is not self-indulgence, it is self-support.
It is not wasteful. It is not harmful. It is not pointless.
You matter.
Your efforts matter.
Being kind to yourself matters.
Please give it a whirl at your next possible opportunity.
And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts.
Wishing you ease, my friends.
Be kind to yourselves out there. Pretty please.
A star I made during a ‘Relaxing Creativity’ workshop I was leading on Monday night. Image description: a gold star drawn in shiny gold ‘art crayon’ against a pink background that is decorated with black lines that follow the same curves as the edges of the star. The drawing and the star are trimmed in black.
Bonus:
This video cheers me up every time I encounter it on Instagram. I thought it might do the same for you.
An Instagram post from addytok2022 with a closeup view of a little girl’s face. She has blonde hair in a topknot, and she is wearing pink glasses, and she is looking intently at the nail polish bottle she is trying to open. Her nails are painted bright pink and she is wearing a black sweatshirt with the Grinch on it.
Nap Day is celebrated on the Monday after the move to Daylight Saving Time. That’s today. Yawn!
Founded to encourage rest and combat lost sleep, this unofficial holiday promotes taking a 20-30 minute “power nap” to boost alertness, improve mood, and enhance productivity. You can read more about Nap Day here.
The Joy of Napping (March 10, 2023) — Guest poster Amy Smith on her love of napping and the question of who gets to nap in public.
Happy Nap Day! (March 11, 2024) — Sam’s roundup post for National Napping Day, linking to past nap posts and mentioning her Philosophy office nap setup (yoga mat, pillow, alpaca blanket).
This past week Sarah and I flew to Calgary. We then spent five days touring around the Rockies. We also visited the youngest of the adult kids. They are working at a ski resort out there.
Sarah did some skiing, but mostly we did a lot of walking. We had some beautiful hikes in the snow.
Here’s what that looks like on my Google Fit report.
But it looks much better in pictures.
Here we are walking on one of the trails at the Nordic Centre at Panorama Ski Resort, where Miles is working.
Here we are walking with a friend’s adult kid who is living outside Canmore. We had a great dog hike with her and with Sneetches, a retired sled dog.
And here’s Cheddar and me on our first day back. It was our first double-digit hike–sunny, windy, wet, and so much melting ice and snow. I’m excited about after-work dog walks now that the evening light is back, thanks to the time change.
Initially, I chose Stretch. I thought about Reach. You can spot a trend here. They all have in common a theme of growth, meeting new people, trying new things, learning new skills, and pushing out of my comfort zone.
That went so well that I’ve signed up for skating lessons. Sarah and I both think we need them after a wonderful weekend at Arrowhead, Sam’s winter weekend triathlon, where the cross-country skiing and the snowshoeing went very smoothly, but the skating not so much. It turns out, that for us at least, skating isn’t like riding a bike. And even riding a bike might not be like that for you.
Starting Tuesday evenings in April, we’re signed up for Skate Canada learn-to-skate here in Guelph at the rink near Exhibition Park.
It’s March, y’all. Where I live this means that almost every item of my wardrobe is on call for potential use, from short-sleeve shirts to merino wool base layers. This week, which is spring break for my university, features some higher temperatures than we’ve seen since early fall, but also some low lows and threat of snowflakes.
The upcoming forecast for my town– all over the place, as March tends to be.
But this is no news to anyone who’s lived through a March, especially in northern climes. We have to be willing and able to swing wide in our clothing selections, to be nimble in our accessory and footwear choices.
I wrote about this a bunch of years ago when we had a record high temperature in February (73F/23 C) and then a big freeze. You can read about it below, and hopefully just have to experience the March weather shifts vicariously, rather than in person. Enjoy…
