Remember this eagle?

That eagle went around the Internet a few years ago taking a stupid walk for its stupid mental health. It’s a concept I found very attractive, for addressing rage exercising and also for focusing on mental fitness.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mental health these days. I’ve always been an advocate, particularly in supporting women’s mental health generally and post partum mental health particularly. It was an issue I returned to during the pandemic when life seemed overwhelming in its uncertainty.

Recent events south of the Canadian border have caused considerable stress and distress as millions of historically marginalized people — women, Black, Indigenous, trans to name a few — are being systematically targetted and disenfranchised.

The work of resistance is draining, the fear is immobilizing, and the rage is exhausting. And yet we persist, on multiple fronts as disruptors and as allies.

How to replenish? to fill the tank of resolve? to keep putting one foot in front of the other? I turned to research and found lots of clear, specific and achievable approaches to build our mental fitness.

We understand why we need physical activity — movement keeps our hearts healthy, our bones strong, and our muscles flexible. Mental fitness helps in multiple ways too. Calm.com says mental fitness gives us multiple benefits including enhanced emotional resilience, reduced anxiety and depression, improved self-awareness, increased wellbeing, and enhanced cognitive function.

Working on your mental health

Incorporating activities that boost your mental health makes a difference. It need not cost money, but it does take time. Attaching your mental fitness exercise to something you do every day can help keep you on that path to mental wellness. Here are things that can help:

• Mindfulness: Practicing mindfulness has many benefits and is an effective approach to reducing stress. At its simplest, mindfulness is about noticing, or being aware of what is happening around you and how you are responding or reacting. One approach I like is taking five minutes when I wake up to track the information I receive through my five senses.
• Meditation: Mindfulness is part of a meditative practice. Meditation allows you to go deeper into your internal exploration. You can combine meditation with activity, like walking a labyrinth or by swimming laps. Meditation calms your body because it focuses on emptying your mind of distractions. I find simple deep breathing calming, while others find focusing on breathing patterns very helpful.
• Nature: There’s been lots written about the benefits of connecting with nature, such as forest bathing or watching ocean waves roll in and out. It’s winter now where I live and unless it’s blowing a gale, I make a point of opening my windows on a daily basis to get fresh air, or getting outside for five minutes in the morning to see what’s happened overnight. Over the holidays, I rediscovered the joys of extended play recordings of a real fire in a woodstove as background sound while reading.
• Human contact: Connecting with other people can be hard especially in a pandemic where we were conditioned to avoid hugs, handshakes and coffee chats. Periodically I buy a package of stamps and send postcards or notes to friends. There’s something rather pleasing about putting an actual pen to paper. How deeply we connect is up to us and our comfort level, but connect nonethless.
• Movement: As much as I joke about my stupid walks, there is solid evidence that shows physical activity is hugely beneficial to our mental health. Yoga, aerobic exercise and dancing are the top three most frequently mentioned forms of movement. I’m not surprised. Yoga helps us unknot tension, aerobic exercise gets our heart pumping and dancing brings us joy.
• Cognitive reframing: Changing our mindset from negative to positive is more than just putting on a happy face. Shifting consciously to a different perspective forces us to create new pathways in our brains. We can do this by writing a gratitude journal where we find three good things about our day. They need not be big or momentous but things that bring us joy and energy. Another way to shift our mindset is to learn or try something new. Learn a new skill, like knitting, or learn a new word in a different language.
• Sleep: The research is abundant and clear: getting enough good sleep can improve your mood, memory, and ability to handle stress. Good sleep has also been linked to reducing your risk for developing dementias like Alzheimer’s disease. When we are rested, we can think clearly and we are less likely to lose focus. If you find sleeping difficult and doom scrolling has become your nighttime habit, assess your sleeping environment and behaviours. Is your room too warm? Do you have too many blankets or too few? Is your pillow too soft or too hard? While you may have to channel your inner Goldilocks until you find out what’s right for you, ensuring you are getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night will offer huge health benefits in return.

My focus this month is on getting better sleep and dancing more (especially when no one is watching!). How about you: what will you try this month to help your mental fitness and well being? Let us know in the comments.

I started talking about sketchy single-track when I did my first off-road ride with friends from the Guelph Coalition for Active Transit. I was surprised that I managed to ride over tree roots and rocks around turns in little gulleys.

To be clear these are trails that would be fine for pretty much any rider on a mountain bike.  My issue is that I’m not riding a mountain bike and I don’t have very much off road experience.

My history in cycling is pretty much all pavement (or concrete or wood!) bike commuting, triathlon, road riding and racing, and velodrome. But as gravel trails have become more popular and I’m happier away from cars, I’m spending more time on more challenging trails. I have an “adventure road” bike for commuting and an even more adventurous gravel bike with wider tires that’s here with me in New Zealand. What we don’t have are mountain bkes.

Sarah and I have been pushing our limits this trip on our gravel bikes. I think the first ride was scarier for her. The second one was scarier for me. But both were fun, and we didn’t crash and no one died.

Ride 1

The Kaikoura Trail is a actually a connected series of trails, looping together country roads, a beach side path (the Whale Trail), gravel roads, and river-side mountain bike trail.

We had a blast riding it but the river-side mountain bike section was definitely challenging. It was single track but allowed traffic in both directions so we had to do a bit of moving to the left when there was oncoming bike traffic. It was also downhill so there was some moderating of our speed required.

We had the map but I think we glossed over the “mountain bike required” and “basic off road skills” bits.

Ride 2

Our second ride was a) in the rain, and b) on a mountain bike trail alongside the beach just north of Westport where we were freedom camping in our campervan.

It was scarier because it was one-way only (so no backing out once you’d started) and it had the feel of a track that he been designed by the local mtb club for maximum curviness and bumpiness, with added trees, sand, mud, and rocks. You needed speed to get up and over the bumps easily but I was nervous making it through the corners at speed. I stopped unexpectedly a few time and Sarah had to brake quickly. Sorry!

We exited part way through and rode some of the way back to our campervan on the road,  in the rain.

Again, fun, challeneging on our def not mountain bikes, and we didn’t die.

Here’s what Strava had to say about the ride: