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COPING WITH TRANSITIONS AND IMPROVING RESILIENCY

Whether you are in transition or have recently suffered a loss, or work with people in those situations, leisure training, guidance and coaching can offer important benefits. It can guide people in using leisure to adapt to change.

Periods of transition and loss are times of heightened stress, which increase the risk of physical and emotional illness. Research shows specific benefits from physical recreation that may help offset this increased risk: enhanced immune systems, lower body fat and better cardiovascular health for those who participate than those who do not.

The literature also suggests that participation in leisure activities is associated with lower rates of depression in some groups. Greater leisure satisfaction and leisure participation are associated with lower levels of anxiety.

The Leisure Link provides leisure education that helps people make use of leisure as both a diversion, and an empowerment. By making time for leisure, choosing activities and planning to make them happen, people increase the sense of having control over their lives, a sense which is often challenged in times of loss or significant transition.

For example, leisure education can help:
  • Recent graduates to think through the relationship between their leisure preferences and their career opportunities
  • Those with a new job or new school to re-examine the relationship between their school or employment lives and their leisure needs and time
  • Seasonal occupation employees and freelancers in identifying ways to make fulfilling use of their non-work time, even when they don’t have full control over their work schedules
  • The unemployed in finding a balance between job search activities and the leisure that provides the energy and inspiration to continue the search
  • Retirees in transferring skills from work and life into this new period of “full time leisure.”
  • People who have recently moved to a new city or town to find leisure resources that meet their needs, in their new environment
  • Immigrants in finding leisure activities that connect them to their culture of origin, and others that help them integrate into their new society.
  • New or “expecting” parents to consider ways to continue meeting their leisure needs with very different demands on their time, and empty-nesters to look at the same issue from the opposite perspective.
  • People who are suffering significant loss, whether that is a divorce or the ending of a relationship, a serious illness or lasting injury, or bereavement. While people may be resistant to looking at leisure issues at such times, appropriate leisure counseling can lead them to choose restorative leisure activities that are consistent with their feelings. At the same time, it can help people in these situations to grasp the reins of their own lives again.

Learn how services from The Leisure Link can help you have fulfilling leisure time and have time for yourself.

See relevant TLL case studies.

 

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