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Activities ranging from making meals to washing dishes, to folding clothes, to vacuuming, to mopping the floor, to gardening and mowing the lawn… all require physical engagement and a variety of movement patterns. These are not only good for your body, but also your brain too!
Since movement is the best and most powerful way to activate the majority of your brain at any given time, these types of daily life activities can be a great way to give your brain additional cognitive support and benefit – above and beyond your regular fitness or exercise routines.
Technology, on the other hand, has made us more sedentary. Many people are not only spending the majority of their waking hours on their ‘devices’, but they are also out-sourcing regular household activities over to cleaning services, pre-ordered meal plans, and garden maintenance companies.
In some instances, this makes sense and will provide us with greater life balance and the opportunity to free up and allocate our time and attention into other important areas. If, however, it’s because we are simply becoming lazy, and not as accustomed to being physically active or doing manual labour, then it is an issue.
When we look at our ancestors – even just a couple of generations before us, they were far more physically active. As inheritors of their genes, we are meant to practise habits that were similar to theirs. Sitting all day in front of a computer screen is certainly not one of them!
Global monitoring data indicates that physical activity is well below recommended weekly levels, with people in high income countries more than twice as likely to be sedentary as those in low-income countries.
Since the pandemic, with the shift to more online work and being stuck on the home front, this issue has only become worse.
Thankfully, there are easy and common-sense ways to get more activity and movement into our daily lives, and the options may be closer to home than you realize!
Because housework involves preparing, planning, organizing, and physical activity, it is not only a fantastic form of brain-body engagement but also an excellent indicator of the ability of someone to effectively self manage and live independently.
Over the years, many studies have been performed on brain-body activity; and the results are quite impressive when it comes to the value a person can derive, simply by tidying up their abode!
