Live Longer! Tennis players outlive almost everyone, including swimmers, soccer players and cyclists
I
n a newly-released study, it has been shown that playing tennis can add years to your life-span. In fact, it seems that tennis is the sport that adds the most years, of any physical activity. Medical researchers followed 9,000 people from 1991 to 2017. They tracked which activities they participated in regularly, and calculated which ones were associated with increasing life expectancy. Compared with sedentary people, tennis players enjoy 9.7 extra years of life; badminton players, 6.2 years; soccer players, 4.7 years; cyclists, 3.7 years; swimmers, 3.4 years and joggers, 3.2 years. The study was published in December 2018 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a US-based peerreviewed medical journal. Here in Powell River, this will come
Dr. Jeff Lynskey
“Tennis is a great sport for fitness, balance and coordination. It is an activity that I can share with my wife and children now and for the rest of our lives!”
604-223-8704
Anthony van Samang
Cindy Stahl
“Since I’ve started “I was so happy when playing tennis regularly at the Centre, I found out we have I have noticed gains an indoor tennis in my endurance, my facility in Powell reaction/reflex time, River. Tennis in the as well as in my handwinter! Woo hoo!” eye coordination. It’s a sweet little break from everyday life blending athletic skill with mental tactics.”
prtennis.ca
Powell River Tennis Centre www.prtennis.ca
6
as no surprise to the hundreds of tennis players who already know the physical, mental and social benefits of the game. Tennis is great fun – a game the whole family can play! “I’ve seen the positive effects from tennis on many people’s lives,” said Gary Winter, the Head Coach and Director of Tennis for the Powell River Tennis Centre - where locals can play and learn yearround. “Tennis is a great game that can be started at any age and enjoyed throughout your life. And it’s very social. Come join us soon at the Tennis Centre.”
• march 2019 • prliving.ca
Declut BY PIETA WOOLLEY | pieta@rliving.ca
Marie Kondo is amazing. But the Japanese tidying magnate doesn’t understand North Americans.
So says Ranka Burzan, who moved to Powell River late in 2018, and brought her thriving home organization business, Solutions Organizing Simple, or S.O.S., with her from Vancouver. In the 16 years Ranka has entered other people’s homes to help them sort their stuff, she has seen it all. Middle-aged people drowning in their deceased parents’ antiques. Otherwise well-raised children incapable of cleaning their own rooms. Highly-educated and successful adults who simply cannot make decisions about their stuff. And families so attached to the chaos of mess, that the Province threatens to remove their children. These are not extreme examples, Ranka says. Rather, they’re everyday manifestations of the psychological challenges of North American life. “Keeping clutter can be about a fear of being poor,” says Ranka, who fled the former Yugoslavia as a teen, and deeply understands the anxiety behind many immigration stories. “It can come from difficult relationships with the relatives who died and left you their things. Or trauma from wars you’ve escaped in other countries. Or just a simple fear of change. Plus, here in North America, we just have so much space in our homes, much more than in other countries. And we are so emotionally attached to our stuff – it represents status. “You can help someone clean up, but unless you help them work through their attachment to clutter, their house will be full again the next week.” Now, Ranka’s business is right on
CHILDREN NEED CHORES
Ranka has noticed that many families spend their afternoons and evenings driving children around to activities, rather than mentoring them in managing the household. The intention is good, but she is concerned that essential skills and relationships are being lost. “True confidence comes from children being able to make a contribution to the household,” she says. “Order pizza, hold a family meeting and assign chores.”
trend. Marie Kondo has a popular new reality series on Netflix helping American families and has authored several internationally-bestselling books over the last four years. Powell River’s chief librarian, Rebecca Burbank, says tidying and cleaning books are flying off the shelves in Crossroads Village (see sidebar) – including the provocatively-titled 2018 tome, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. And, of course, as the local population ages and passes on, younger families are absorbing the accumulated clutter of the War Generation and Baby Boomers. Every mess has its own unique story, says Ranka. In a coffee shop interview, she is decked out in the tidiest of outfits: black and white checked jacket, orange blouse, bold silver necklace, and trendy eyeglasses. Decluttering is fundamentally about mental and emotional transformation, she says, and about reclaiming power. She uses herself as an example. Raised in poverty – surrounded by war-related dysfunction and profoundly vision-impaired – Ranka left the former Yugoslavia for Austria, and finally Canada. Hanging over her head was the social expectation that she would never amount to much, that she would be a “nuisance to society.” While she was never that – in Surrey, she
