I was born with Cerebral Palsy – a disability that affects both my motor coordination and balance. Normally, I don’t think about my disability. On occasion, I tested gravity but, generally, I adapted to my disability. My motto is, “I have Cerebral Palsy, but it doesn’t have me.”
This positive attitude helped me to take a leap of faith and attend Hillcrest Christian College. This changed the trajectory of my life. I met Virginia Sherman, Dean of Women, who encouraged me to pursue a higher education, which I did! I started off small and worked slowly through my degrees. Finally, I achieved my Master’s Degree of Psychology, specializing in Counselling Psychology at University of Calgary. Huzzah! Unfortunately, I spent most of my time studying rather than keeping connections with other people, gaining employment experience, and maintaining my overall health. After my studies, when I moved to Medicine Hat, I gained real world employment experience and connections. I am grateful to all my employers who trained and supported me. You are all truly woke! I joined several groups, such as a community book club, recovery group, and writing class to balance out my social, mental, and emotional health.
However, I neglected one area – my physical health. It wasn’t until I noticed a decline in my coordination and balance that I realized that I needed to take proactive steps to recover my physical health. It was difficult. When I began to take walks, I fell often because of a decline in my motor coordination and balance. Still, I knew from previous experience, walking was the safest exercise to recover muscle coordination and balance. It was a catch 22! Walking was hard because I would fall; but, without walking, I would continue to decline. So, I began to take physiotherapy and searched for a safe way to start walking, and thereby improve my mobility. The easiest way for me to achieve both goals was to walk on the spot. It worked well for a short time, but then boredom raised its ugly head. I don’t know if you noticed it but walking in one place for even ten minutes can become tedious pretty darn fast. That’s what happened to me. I found myself looking at my Fitbit every thirty seconds. Because of boredom, I would start and stop my walking. One day, I had enough: I was tired of attempting a goal and failing. I knew that I needed a concrete way to stay motivated.
This is when I discovered “virtual walking”. I don’t recall exactly when and where I discovered it, but I do know it wasn’t my idea. Virtual walking is an activity that I could complete by using a treadmill, stationary bike, or elliptical machine. I bought my first elliptical at a garage sale for a whooping $20.00. I started off with small goals, such as “I will walk 20 km in a month.” Once I completed this goal, I would examine how long it took me to complete it. If it took less than a month, I would increase the number of kilometers – usually by increments of 5.
After a year of working with distance goals, I decided to switch it up by using walking apps that increased the amount of time. My favorite app is “Walking for Weight Loss” by ABISHKKING LIMITED. With this app, I began at the beginner level and worked my way up to the advanced level. Each level has a twelve-week time, where I slowly increased my time until I reached the twelfth week on that level. Then, I moved on to the next level. The whole idea is that if I slowly increased my time, I would become fitter and burn more calories and lose weight. I loved the challenge of increased time because I could tell that I was achieving a concrete goal. Also, after a year, I lost some weight. With this app, I could determine whether I was improving my daily time and weekly time. The developers include feedback emojis of “too hard”, “perfect”, or “too easy.” If a day of training was “too hard”, I could repeat it until it was “perfect”, or, even better, “too easy”. It was an objective way, outside of my own wishful thinking, to see actual improvement. I also could combine distance with this app to feel like I was getting somewhere.
My next venture was to virtually travel to a town or city. For my first “virtual walk” with a destination, I chose to go from Medicine Hat to Lethbridge on my elliptical machine. I researched the total distance in kilometers between Medicine Hat and Lethbridge and subtracted from total number each time I used my elliptical during the week. My favorite part was to record the small towns along the way. For example, when I “virtually walked” to Bow Island, I wrote down its name on my map.
I continued “visiting” small towns until I got to my end goal – Lethbridge. After completing my goal, in bold, block letters, I mark the “virtual walk” as DONE. I next took other “virtual walks” to cities, such as Calgary and Edmonton. I repeated the same procedure on these walks. Currently, I am walking across Canada with the same method as when I virtually walked to Lethbridge, Calgary, and Edmonton.
Virtual walking awakened my competitive streak, gave me a feeling of accomplishment, and helped me to learn about geography. When I began virtual walking, I didn’t realize that to get to Lethbridge or Calgary, most people left Medicine Hat on two different highways – Highway no. 1 for Calgary and Highway no. 3 for Lethbridge. Since I didn’t drive, I didn’t need learn different routes to different places. Currently, I am learning where towns and cities are on the map. In short, virtual walking enabled to become more active and physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy. And isn’t that the most important goal?
