In peace with yourself and with others

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Brazil has the largest number of depressed individuals in Latin America, with 11.5 million people diagnosed with the disease.

If you have been to the doctor and even though is feeling blue, with no motivation, you can attempt many techniques to feel better. Physical activity is one of them.

Ricardo Muotri, specialist in Adapted Physical Education and Health, states that exercise helps the self-knowledge, tests our own limits and increases the self-esteem.

You know when you lose a bid and the crowd sings: “ok, ok, we know it wouldn’t be possible”? This kind of support makes us learn to cope with the frustration of a defeat, thanks to the group care. Understanding the importance of teamwork is another lesson that can (and should) be taken to our daily life, to make everything lighter. In addition, we learn to cope with the differences what is also a personal victory of sport.

Most people care with aesthetics when thinking to change to a more active routine. However, for Yara Maria de Carvalho, teacher of the Department of Pedagogy of Movement of the Human Body, first you need to think about the values of sports. “I defend the sport that assigns values of cooperation, engagement and solidarity, and not exclusion and isolation”.

In each stage of life, we change, we have other needs and values and in this sense, the physical activity contributes in different ways. In childhood, it is basic to learn the limits of each other, so Ricardo believes that collective sport have more advantages in this age group, once it deals with socialization.

For seniors, physical activity is one of the ways to prevent the various diseases affecting this age group. The specialist says that individual practices are more interesting here, because it is easier to outline the exercise intensity and duration.

Now you know a few reasons to start, but in the middle of the process there is always something or excuse and you give up, Ricardo presented us a few tips to carry on practicing:

1. Find a sport that you enjoy or have a cool group to motivate you.
2. Plan small goals. Complex objectives can be frustrating.
3. Create individual motivations that may be the pleasure of the activity itself or a personal reward.

It is important to enjoy what you are doing. When we do it for pleasure, it becomes easier to create strategies for not giving up even if the day is cold, the laziness is at your door, a headache strikes or any other difficulty seems to be a barrier. According to Yara there are more than 300 body practices to try and many ways to care for the health: “the essential is not to impose physical limits but use the body intelligence”.