Did you know that August is National Wellness Month? National Wellness Month is focused on managing stress and creating routines that foster healthy lifestyles. The C&O Canal National Historical Park (NHP) offers a great location to explore stress management and healthy activities and routines.
Stress Management
Photo by Jon Wolz
Did you know that spending 20-30 minutes outdoors in nature has been found to significantly lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol? This has been researched by Harvard Medical School and many researchers agree that spending time in green spaces is a great way to give your brain a break and lower stress levels. The C&O Canal is a great place to go when you need to take a walk to clear your mind. One of the great things about the C&O Canal is that its 184.5-mile-long towpath gives millions of people access to nature.
Healthy Routines
Creating healthy routines is a great way to maintain your physical, mental, and social wellness. A healthy routine can be anything you put into practice that benefits your well-being. For example, one could set up a walking date with friends or family to benefit your social and physical wellness. To support mental and emotional health, you could take a walking break during your lunch break to help decompress from the workday’s stress. It is important to create routines that are enjoyable and attainable to ensure that they become routine. Choosing routines that are unenjoyable or difficult can impact the ability of the activity to become routine . By setting simple goals and sticking with them, your routine can grow with you.
Physical Wellness
Photo by Kelly Hilton
Physical Wellness is another aspect of well-being that involves taking care of your body. Recreation is a fantastic and fun way to care for physical wellness. The C&O Canal is a prime location for outdoor recreation with opportunities for walking, biking, paddling, and more!
Emotional Wellness
Your emotional wellness relies on your ability to understand and regulate your emotions. Healthy emotional wellness gives you the ability to adapt to new situations. Self-care is an integral part of emotional wellness as it gives you the time you need to check in on your feelings and do something that actively makes you feel better about yourself. It can be as simple as getting more sleep or taking a break or as involved as having an at-home spa day. The form self-care takes is dependent on your needs.
Mental Health
Mental Health/Well-being is the culmination of psychological, emotional, and social wellness. Mental Health is possibly the most important type of wellness as it determines our ability to successfully navigate our lives. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are all based on our mental health as it impacts everything we do. Our decision-making, ability to connect with others, and handle stress are all tied back to our mental health.
Social Wellness
Photo by Francis Grant-Suttie
Social Wellness is all about the connections we make in the world around us. Creating genuine connections with the people around us is beneficial to both our emotional and mental health. Social wellness can be cultivated by meeting up with friends, engaging in social activities, or getting involved within your community. It’s all about how you connect!
Do you want to connect with us?
Then bring your flashlight and a friend! On August 16, in celebration of Wellness Month, the C&O Canal Trust will lead a Walk and Talk event through the Paw Paw Tunnel, featuring a discussion on the tunnel’s stabilization project and how other NPS projects contribute to the safety of Park visitors and the preservation of canal history.
Header Image: Katie Rapp
