Walking is a meaningful and important occupation to me, but…

2024/2/8

In my last posts I have talked about my experience.

I wrote that I punched to challenges from the environment

using my familiar occupation (the first occupation was aerobics exercise

and the second was walking) to get health and well-being,

when I suffered with poor physical conditions then

I had academic stress and anxiety as an international student.

Walking has been my important occupation without which

I couldn’t live my life.

Today I write what happened next to my walking.

Walking is a meaningful and important occupation to me, but…

since I came back to Japan from my international student life, I had been

involved in doing many time-consuming required things for my job.

Time for walking and stretching disappeared from my life.

Then I began to have lower back pain again.

I started doing my stretching exercise

before going to bed but I still didn’t find

enough time for walking on a regular basis.

But I didn’t completely give up walking because of for its quality,

benefits and meaning to me.

I started walking on weekends and then, in the summertime,

with less of a workload, I added after dinner walks.

Until my retirement, walking and stretching supported me,

busy with job related activities, providing health and well-being.

For the first years after I retired, I spent plenty of time

enjoying walking and stretching.

However, after a year, I decided to have my mother,

who now needed my help, move in and live with me.

I became busy with moving tasks, doing errands and doing housework

as well as helping my mother reorganize her life and medical care.

I found that with this new life challenge, I needed to have an occupation

to help me get refreshed.

Once again, I planned time so that I enjoyed walking

in the university campus, the park and the station building

in my neighborhood in the evening.

Walking has been one of my most meaningful occupations

for twenty years, an essential part of my life.

Appearing, disappearing and then reappearing as I punch

the environmental challenges in my life, walking has supported my life.

But, once again, it has recently disappeared.

In spring of 2023, I had frozen shoulder syndrome.

I was not able to move my left shoulder and as a result, couldn’t sleep well either.

I went to out Physical Therapy treatment and did self-exercise for 6 months.

In August I was also sick with COVID 19 and slept for almost two weeks

and didn’t want to eat.

I was in poor physical and psychological condition for two months

after then, although I tried to continue stretching exercise

so as not to get lower back pain in addition to my mother problems.

However, I was not well enough to go walking and had no time to do so.

Initially, in November I started recovering. I started getting hungry

and tried to enjoy nutritional food.   

I resumed going walking once-twice a week.

Walking outside, I actually felt refreshed.

In a nearby big park, I enjoy walking and happily watch the birds

in the trees and the dogs playing with a smile on my face.

I get excited by, once again, “ punching” back at the environmental challenges

and looking forward to doing well tomorrow.