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Can hobbies help improve your health? Find out on this episode of Digest This.
Hello and welcome to Digest This. I’m Dr. Liz Cruz, and I’ve got Tina Nunziato sitting right by my side. Thank you so much for joining us. If you’re a regular listener, thank you for being on this journey with us. If you are a first-time listener, welcome. You found us. Congratulations. It’s about time. Where have you been?
So, can hobbies help improve our health? For sure. Diet helps, exercise helps, but hobbies can also help you de-stress, step away from daily life, and support your overall health. Let’s talk about some hobbies that can help you relax, reset, and feel better.
The first one on the list is birdwatching.
I actually took ornithology, the study of birds, when I was in college. There was a professor who was very well known for his birdwatching skills, and he would take groups of students on trips to go birdwatching. I decided to take the class, and at the time, I found it stressful. We had a book, and we had to be able to identify the exact bird we were looking at or hearing and then find it in the book.
Later, when I went to Thailand as an English teacher, I tried birdwatching again. One of my friends was very into it and very good at it. I remember buying every bird book we could get our hands on, and we saw some amazingly beautiful birds. I learned a lot, but I still found it stressful, so I didn’t continue.
Now, fast forward many years later, and I can appreciate birdwatching in a completely different way. At our house, we have sliding doors in the back that we open in the early morning, and I love listening to the birds. We have a very active bird community, and right now we even have a little hummingbird nest in our backyard. Listening to the birds and watching them do their thing can be incredibly relaxing.
If you just sit back, look up, and watch the birds without putting pressure on yourself to identify every single one, it can put you into a very calm state. Maybe now, many decades later, I would actually enjoy casually looking up what kind of bird I’m seeing.
There are even apps now that can help with this. You can record a bird sound, and the app can tell you what kind of bird it is. It may even show you a picture and give you information about that bird. That makes birdwatching feel much more accessible and fun.
Birdwatching helps you slow down, pay attention, and relax. That relaxation can help lower cortisol levels and move your body into a parasympathetic state, which is the calm “rest and digest” state that is so good for your health.
The second hobby is gardening.
Gardening can be high stress or low stress depending on how you approach it. Where you live, the environment, bugs, weeds, and pests can all play a role. But gardening can also be such a great hobby when you allow it to be simple and enjoyable.
We have four garden beds, and this season we planted tomatoes. It started with a little indoor garden box that had a tomato plant growing in it, and we moved that tomato plant outside. The amount of cherry tomatoes it produced was incredible.
Gardening can become frustrating if you get too intense or try to control everything perfectly. But if you go outside with the mindset of “whatever comes up, comes up,” it becomes much more relaxing. You put the soil in, plant what you want to plant, water it, and let it grow.
There is something very healing about getting your hands in the soil, digging with a little shovel, planting, and touching the earth. Gardening gives you emotional relaxation, a little physical activity, and, depending on what you grow, fresh whole food. How much healthier can you get?
The third hobby is hiking.
Hiking does not have to be fancy. You do not have to go into the deep woods or climb Mount Everest. It can be as simple as a nature walk in your own neighborhood. Many neighborhoods now have trails, walking paths, or green areas where you can spend time outside.
Even in cities, there are often places where you can walk, breathe fresh air, and be around some nature. The point is to get outside, move your body, and breathe deeply.
Walking helps build muscle and supports your lungs, but it also gives you fresh air, which is so important. Have you ever spent a long time outside and noticed that you sleep better that night? There is something about being outdoors, breathing fresh air, and moving your body that helps the body settle down.
The fourth hobby is photography.
Photography has been a part of my life since I was a teenager. When we moved to Orlando, I was about 12 or 13 years old, and the house my parents bought belonged to a couple where the husband was a photographer. He had a darkroom, and that was my first real exposure to photography.
Even before that, I had saved up my allowance and bought a Minolta camera. I always loved taking pictures. After we moved into that house, my sister and I spent hours in the darkroom. In high school, I took photography classes and continued with photography throughout the years.
Then we entered the digital age, and photography became something almost everyone could participate in. If you have a phone, you can take pictures. You can edit them, adjust them, and be creative with them. In a way, everyone is a photographer now.
Photography gives you a different perspective. It slows you down. We tend to move through the world so quickly that we do not always notice what is around us. But when you stop to take a picture, you focus on something for a moment. It pulls you deeper into that one thing. It is like stopping to smell the roses.
Over the years, as our kids were growing up, they often fought us when we wanted to take pictures of them. But now they are the ones who want to look at all those pictures. We have been able to enlarge many of those photos and put them up around our house, and that is really gratifying.
Photography is creative, meaningful, and it helps you capture moments that you may treasure later.
The next hobby is singing.
Singing can be formal, like joining a chorus, or it can be as simple as singing in your car or at home. You do not have to have a perfect voice to benefit from singing.
Singing is good for breath work, and it can also help you release emotions. Sometimes we just need to get things out. Maybe you feel frustrated, angry, sad, happy, or joyful, and you get in the car, turn on music, and sing. All of those emotions can come out through singing.
Another thing that is really good for you is humming. Humming can help your body calm down and move into a parasympathetic state. That is the state where your body is not in fight-or-flight mode, your cortisol levels can come down, and your nervous system can settle.
The vibration from humming is part of what makes it helpful. If you are somewhere where you cannot really sing but you need to calm down, most people can hum almost anywhere. If you do not want to sing because you feel like you do not have a great voice, hum your favorite song instead.
The next hobby is writing.
Writing and journaling can be incredibly healing. Most people do not write by hand as much anymore because we spend so much time typing on phones and computers. But there is something soothing about physically writing something out.
Even writing a to-do list by hand can feel grounding. Putting it on paper, seeing it in front of you, and checking things off can feel organized and calming.
Journaling is especially helpful because it gives you a way to get out the things you may be keeping inside. If you are frustrated, sad, angry, or overwhelmed, writing it down can help release some of that pressure.
Sometimes if you are upset with someone, you can write out everything you want to say. You do not have to send it. You can just get it out. There have been times when I wrote something out and thought I was going to send it, and Tina told me to sleep on it. Thankfully, I did not send many of those messages.
Writing can help you process things that are happening in your life or things that happened in the past. Many people talk about how healing journaling has been for them.
We also recently went to a workshop where we were asked to write a letter to ourselves. One letter was to our younger self, and one letter was to our adult self. It was very healing. You can write a letter to your younger self and tell yourself about everything you have done, accomplished, and overcome. You can also write a letter from your childhood self to your adult self and talk about your hopes and dreams. It can be a very meaningful exercise.
The last hobby is cooking.
Cooking can also be one of those hobbies that feels stressful or relaxing, depending on how you approach it. A lot of people find the kitchen stressful because of the ingredients, the measuring, and the steps involved. But it does not always have to be that way.
You can go into the kitchen and make something from the heart. Try new things. Experiment. Allow yourself to be creative. Cooking gives you an opportunity to make real food and take time to do something for yourself and the people you love.
Through our married life, Tina has done the majority of the cooking. But in the last few years, I wanted to feel more connected at home and do something that would connect me with the kids and with my wife. So I started cooking, and we agreed that I would cook a couple of times a week.
One thing I have found is how healing it can feel. Sometimes I want to make a certain dish, and Tina will remind me that it is a lot of work. But I do not always care how much work it takes because the act of doing it — getting the ingredients, cutting everything, preparing the meal — can feel relaxing. It feels like a process, and it allows me to unwind.
Baking can be the same way. Cooking and baking both allow you to explore your creative side. There is also something very gratifying about making a delicious meal you have never made before and feeling proud of yourself afterward.
Cooking can be relaxing, creative, rewarding, and a great way to bring more whole foods into your life.
So, get yourself some hobbies. Take a break from the day and do something different. Find out what works for you. Whether it is birdwatching, gardening, hiking, photography, singing, humming, writing, or cooking, hobbies can help calm the body, relax the mind, and support healing.
Do something for yourself. As you relax more, your body has more opportunity to heal and become healthier.
And don’t forget to download a birdwatching app. That really does sound like fun.
If you have any thoughts, ideas, or comments, please connect with us. You can find us on our website at drlizcruz.com. If you would like to schedule a free 30-minute wellness consult, you can do that on the homepage by clicking the magenta button. You can schedule from anywhere because the consult is done over the phone, and it is our gift to you.
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Thank you so much for joining us, and we will catch you on our next podcast.
