It’s the Remix: Healing through Motion

Smoking is the new sitting. A sentiment often shared by medical professionals as a stark warning to incorporate movement into our daily routines. A common characteristic of being a library worker, however, is sitting. How can we move more within the confines of our workplace environments and culture? Librarianship is a profession that looks different depending on the type of library, your role, and your personal work habits. Numerous studies have found that being sedentary is harmful to physical health. The Mayo Clinic has linked failure to move throughout the day to numerous medical issues, including increased blood pressure and high blood sugar. While these issues impact all Americans, they impact communities of color at disproportionately higher rates. A typical American work schedule, 5 days per week and 8 hours per day, leaves little time for extracurricular activities and hobbies, let alone exercise. Lack of time is often cited as one’s reason for not exercising. The physical consequences of not moving are too critical to ignore. Recently, medical professionals have also equated being still with poor mental health. The pandemic, coupled with the great resignation, and combined with the current state of societal affairs, has led to poor mental health conditions, including increased feelings of anxiety, burnout, and professional resentment, among other traits. This poster will review these studies on exercise and offer manageable solutions and practical ways to incorporate movement into the workday. Poster authors will discuss how they have incorporated movement into their daily routine, garnered administrative support for moving, lessons learned during this process, and anecdotal results of this work over the last year.