GreenGym.org.uk promotes healthy lifestyle and environment conservation in UK
Title
Green Gym Homepage
Description
The Green Gym was thought up by Dr William Bird of Sonning Common Health Centre as a follow-on to his sucessful, and award-winning, Health Walks project. It was set up in conjunction with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV) with initial funding from Shell and the Countryside Commission (now The Countryside Agency). Participants' performance was monitored by Veronica Reynolds of Oxford Brookes University and has been the subject of a published report.
The objectives of the green gym are both preventative (prophylactic) and curative (therapeutic) and apply to both physical & mental conditions. As people age they become less mobile and become subject to conditions associated with ageing such as Osteoporosis. By engaging in vigorous activity in youth & middle age the body can be prepared to meet ageing with an advantage, mobility will be improved, bone density will be better and improved fitness will improve the performance of the heart. Patients who already suffer from conditions can, with medical guidance, benefit from the regime. We have all noticed that there is a feeling of well-being which comes from taking exercise; this is enhanced by being in the fresh air, and further enhanced by working in natural surroundings (the biophilia effect). To this we can add a feeling of acheivement when the exercise has an obvious visible result; this feeling being increased when the result is one generally regarded as worthwhile. Our programme is thus much more satisfying than an exercise regime in a conventional gym, participants acquire a pronounced feeling of "well-being" and hence participants are more likely to continue to attend.
For the first 15 months the project was run by Yvonne Trchalik (say "teKH-a-leek"), a full time officer of BTCV paid for by the funding. Since March 1999, the Green Gym has been run by its members in a totally self-funding operation. Yvonne has now gone on to set up a group in Portslade, near Brighton, with the support of the local health authority; the group is active on Thursdays & Sundays. We understand that groups are being activated in Kirklees and Northern Ireland. Efforts are also being made to set up further Green Gyms in Bristol and other locations.
