Welcome to The Recreating
When I was in school to become a recreational therapist, my professors told me that it was important to have an elevator pitch. Recently, I mentioned this to a few people who assumed the pitch was to sell a service. “No,” I explained, “The elevator pitch is to explain to people what recreational therapy is.” As a recreational therapist, advocacy is part of your everyday work. I hardly meet someone who knows what recreational therapy is unless they are in the field themselves, know someone who is, have received recreational therapy services, or work in health care. It’s up to me to explain the work I, and recreational therapists across the world, do. I try to capture its value and purpose, including all its intricacies and nuances. I often fall short. How do you explain a concept that is brand new to most people in two minutes? I frequently feel like I’m doing a disservice to myself, my profession, and every single person who asks me this question. Especially because I truly believe recreational therapy is valuable to all people.
In Celeste Headlee’s Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, she lists attributes of human nature that “seem to be consistent across generations and cultures. These are the essential qualities of a human being: social skills and language, a need to belong that fosters empathy, rule-making, music, and play. We excel at these things, and we need them in order to be healthy.” Remarkably, most of these qualities are addressed through recreational therapy and/or music therapy, as well as other creative art therapies. Yet, there is little emphasis on their importance in our society. Instead, there is pressure to do more and work harder. This mentality to constantly achieve and work can put undue stress on people and can also be linked to poor mental health.*
Reading is one of my favorite antidotes to stress, bonus points if it’s outside.
If you’ve listened to the news in the last few decades, you know that we are in a mental health crisis. We’ve retreated into the internet and our phones, often cutting our physical selves off from one another and drawing into isolation. The social media that was supposed to make us feel more connected has made us feel more alone.
Solutions to this crisis have been slow coming, but there has been some significant change. Psychologists and mental health professionals have been doing amazing work to help people. They have also taken to the internet and social media to educate the public about their profession and the benefits of their services. This results in stigmas around mental health beginning to break, leading more people to seek out mental health therapists and psychologists. The advocacy work mental health professionals do inspires me. It’s partly out of this that The Recreating has been bred (shout out to mental health professionals!).
Another driving force behind The Recreating was a section of Katherine May’s Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. May wrote about how knitting helped her recover when she was ill. She referenced research by Knit For Peace, which discussed the health benefits of craft and attested that “craft should be available on prescription.” This sentence was both frustrating and validating to me as a recreational therapist.** I’m someone who can prescribe craft as a recreational therapy service or intervention. I wanted to email Katherine May right then and say, “We do this! Recreational therapists prescribe craft!” While this was my first inclination, eventually, I decided to focus on the validating aspects. A knitting organization conducted a literature review about the health benefits of leisure engagement and believes that craft ought to be prescribed. A best-selling author then found that information important enough to include in her book. All of this points to the value of recreational therapy. Let me repeat that: recreational therapy is valuable.
I see its value in my own life. I’ve long applied recreational therapy concepts and techniques to interactions with my family, friends, and myself. When I’m sad or angry, I journal or go outside to walk or bike. When I’m in pain, I draw out pictures of myself to illustrate where the pain is and how it feels. It helps me to process and verbalize the pain I’m feeling. My coping skills are recreation-based and benefit me in numerous ways. They bring me comfort.
I think many of us find solace in doing what brings us joy, but we become mired in checking off a myriad of tasks from our “to-do” lists or lose precious minutes and hours scrolling on our phones. How do we integrate the actions and creations that we love into our lives?
I love to bring people together for events in my home such as the one set up above. I suppose event planning is one of my hobbies and it certainly brings me joy and helps me feel less alone.
The Recreating is an attempt to solve this problem. With various pages and links, The Recreating aims to guide you to leisure activities of interest, affordable recreation supplies, 5-minute projects, and projects you can do on an ordinary day that may take a few hours. The Recreating is bolstered by research provided under the resources tab on the research page and in each piece of literature. The Recreating breaks down the benefits of hobbies and leisure pursuits. It outlines how they contribute to the physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual domains of our health and well-being using evidence-based research.
The Recreating blog will feature interviews with recreational therapists and other creative arts therapists (music, art, dance/movement, etc.) about the work they do and how their hobbies influence their lives. The blog will also feature thoughts and observations on recreational benefits, interviews with everyday people who are struggling to find time for themselves and their interests, people who are trying to balance it all and stay true to themselves, or people who see the value of recreation and its benefits in their lives.
Essentially, The Recreating is a living, breathing, evolving hub for recreation and the ways it can improve our lives, because I don’t see hobbies or leisure as a luxury but a necessity. Everyone deserves time to express themselves through activity and to rest in the joy of being themselves.
There so many types of recreation to try out, if there’s something that interests you, give it a go. :)
*Israa Nasir, MHC-LP talks about this extensively in her book, Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More. The book includes exercises and journal prompts to reflect on the role productivity has in your life.
**Knit for Peace did mention recreational therapy in their literature review!
Last thoughts:
- The Recreating aims to break down barriers and make recreation accessible to all. That being said, if you see any way that my site could be more accessible, please let me know in the contact form. I’m so appreciative of any and all feedback. I recognize that as a nondisabled, middle-class, cis white woman, I probably have some blinders up that I’m not aware of. Thank you in advance for your suggestions.
- You may be thinking, “Why is recreation important at a time like this? Isn’t it frivolous?”
I understand why you’d feel that way. There is so much happening in this world right now that is so bleak andit may seem silly to focus on recreation. Yet, the devastating tragedies of the world are exactly why we need recreation and could benefit from applying the concepts and theories of recreational therapy to our lives. Recreation pulls us out of our phones and towards each other. Maybe a leisure pursuit has led us to take a class, join our community garden, or collaborate with others. Recreation brings light and connection to our days and builds our resilience. In the midst of this darkness, we need each other and we need the light.
- The Recreating is meant to be a place for you. If there is anything you’d like to hear about, or if you have any suggestions, please use the contact form. I will try my best to respond to messages and provide information based on your suggestions. The content may take a while to surface as I’m currently a one-person operation and working a full-time job in addition to The Recreating.
- I’m looking forward to recreating with you all. :)
