What Swimming Can Do For Your Mental Health…

What Swimming Can Do For Your Mental Health…
May 10, 2015
/By: BMH Magazine Edior

http://bmhmag.com/what-swimming-can-do-for-mental-health/

mental-benefits-of-swimmingGood mental health impacts just about every aspect of our lives. The way we deal with situations, such as stress, or manage physical conditions, such as chronic pain, can be improved significantly by maintaining good mental health. A big aspect of that is our physical health and wellbeing. Nutrition and physical activities are two aspects that we include in each issue of the magazine.

Many of us think of physical activity as something difficult or onerous. Going for a run or to the gym are fantastic but (if you’re anything like me) just too much like hard work. But it doesn’t have to be. A close friend of mine likes to swim. She prefers ocean swimming. An hour or so of swimming against waves in the open water is something she finds challenging physically and mentally. She was telling about it and I shook my head and admitted that it wasn’t for me. She laughed and said it didn’t have to be for me, but swimming even in the calm of a public pool is a great exercise.

She went on to ‘lecture’ me about all the benefits. Swimming is a great form of exercise. It’s good cardio and gets your heart going while being low impact so doesn’t cause physical strain on joints. It’s great for your muscles, heart and lungs. And it’s an all-over, full-body, complete workout that you can do at your own pace.

That’s all good. But swimming is also great for the mental health and wellbeing. It can be a relaxing and meditative exercise, it reduces stress (so long as you don’t have aquaphobia!), the weightlessness of water can have a calming effect on the mind, and it helps provide a distraction from life to improve mindfulness. And, for many people, it can be readily accessible without high gym fees or lots of equipment.