While it may be taking a break during the cold winter months, a program designed to encourage mental and physical wellbeing has gotten off to a good first year in Fort Frances.
Held by the Fort Frances branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), and supported by a number of other organizations in the area, including the Northwestern Health Unit, the Mood Walk program has been a multi-week endeavour to get people out on their feet and walking as a group to promote physical health as well as mental health wellbeing. Each week, the group turned out to one outdoor location for a walk that lasted anywhere between an hour to an hour and a half.
Norma Reather is the geriatric mental health worker at CMHA Fort Frances and she explained the Mood Walk itself is a national program from the CMHA, which has slowly expanded through the country, with the CMHA branch in Atikokan having already run the program, with plans to expand the mood walks to Emo and Rainy River next year. Reather said they’ve been to several notable walking locations in this part of the district this year, with walks along the riverfront and at the Cranberry Bog Walk in Alberton. They’re also hopeful that future walks can include a local Anishinaabe elder who can walk with them and teach them about some of the area’s traditional medicines as they go.
“In Atikokan they had a retired biology teacher come out and shared and taught some stuff there,” she explained.
“It’s trying to include the strengths of the community.”
The walks themselves are also not designed to be strenuous. While some of the locations they have chosen and will choose may have terrain that would prevent some members of the public from participating, the walks themselves are not “power walks” as Reather said.
“We’ve kind of been staying at about five kilometres per hour,” she said.
“It’s open to the public, you don’t have to be a member of the CMHA or a client of the CMHA. We’ve said mothers and their kids can come out, as long as the mother stays with the kids. It’s not just about mental health; we all have it, it’s about how we take care of it.”
To incorporate that mental health aspect into the walk, Reather said that each session includes some lessons on mindfulness and other exercises to improve or focus on mental health.
“Some of the techniques we do are the five grounding techniques; focus on five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste,” Reather said.
“It’s just being aware as you’re walking, paying attention to the things you see and the things you hear rather than all the chatter that goes on in your head. And that’s the thing about mindfulness, it’s hard to stop the chatter but it’s about recognizing that, being aware that the chatter is happening, slowing down your mind and coming back to whatever it is we’re thinking about, whether it’s body scans or the rainbow colours of the leaves or a scavenger hunt.”
Mental health and the care of seems to have come into the forefront of a larger portion of the public’s perception since the COVID-19 pandemic and its related shutdowns that saw many people isolated from friends and family. Reather said that those pandemic induced mental health struggles, along with the ever-busier lifestyles many people seem to be living, is what prompted the need for a program like the mood walks, giving people an opportunity to unplug and get out into nature for a brief period of time during the workday. Indeed, Reather said she and colleague Tamara Robson, who is another geriatric mental health worker for the CMHA and helps run the mood walks, have considered writing letters to local businesses to ask them to consider allowing some employees to come out and join in on the walks during the business day. The point is to break the bad habits people have built up over the past few years, getting active and improving all aspects of their health.
“We have become so insular in our own lives,” she said.
“I can attest to that. You get home and you tend to stay home. We forget about our own physical health, which will affect our mental health. So coming out, socializing with people, doing the mindfulness, doing the walking, its all part of it. The nice thing is, people have been chatting, met for the first time or re-met after years of having previously. Our mental health is important. Physical and mental health go so much together, and we tend to focus on one and forget the other. This is kind of doing both.”
Robson agreed with Reather, adding the CMHA noticed the decline in the quality of people’s mental health during and following COVID, which in part led to the implementation of the mood walks. She said the response from those who have turned out to take part has been encouraging, which is extra motivation to expand the program to the western part of the district.
“We’ve had such good response from the people that have been involved with it, and commentary, and we’re hoping it will only get bigger and to take it to the west end of the district,” Robson said.
“And it’s kind of like practice what we preach, because we counsel and provide support for people, and we tell them it;s so important for your mental health to be social, to be participating in physical activity. It’s a way to actually get out there and do it and show people how important it is and how good it feels to do it.”
The CMHA Mood Walks program is on hiatus for the winter months, but keep an eye on their Facebook page and website to learn more about the Mood Walks and when they are planning to start up again in the Spring on 2024.
