Can you improve your physical health with a hobby? Absolutely! Listen to today’s episode and you’ll find out how!

You don’t have to love golf to improve your physical health with a hobby. Great news for people like me with two left feet and a hand full of thumbs. Participating in any kind of hobby will help improve your physical health. Grab a camera (or your cellphone) and wander around a park during your lunch break every day. Photograph whatever catches your fancy. Spend time once a week culling through your photos and analyzing what makes some photos pop and others fizz. Just the act of participating in the hobby can improve your physical health, according to researchers in Japan.

In order to take care of ourselves mentally, academically, physically, and spiritually, we need to discover and engage in hobbies. Why? Leisure-time activities help us unwind and forget stressful situations. According to WebMD, we all have stress in our lives. Reserachers divide stress into eustress (normal stress such as getting a new job or starting new projects) and distress (unrelenting negative stress). Distress causes a host of problems in all areas of our lives. Hobbies help us nurture ourselves by providing a break in the unrelenting stress so we can better deal with stressful situations.

In today’s podcast I’ll share five ways you can improve your physical health with a hobby. If you’ve grown up thinking having a hobby meant you wasted time, it’s time to listen to reason. God created us to be creative, and to take rests from our work. The beginning of the school year each August produces an abundance of stress (distress) in my life, and I’ve discovered a way to counteract it. I stand on my back porch for hours photographing hummingbirds. Hey, it works for me! What works for you?

This article lists reasons to engage in hobbies that require physical activity.

You can find research on leisure-time activities (hobbies) here.

Need ideas for hobbies to try? Check out this post!

If you need help with time management, this post might help.

If reading is your jam, check out Book Talk Tuesdays, a weekly series with book reviews.

One of my students experienced growth outside his comfort zone while canyoneering.

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