Community health day slated for Saturday at Aspen Rec
Programming wraps up week of programming focused on ‘mental fitness’
A community health day at the Aspen Recreation Center on Saturday will cap a week’s worth of programming offered from Aspen to Battlement Mesa for “Mental Fitness Week” in the Roaring Fork Valley.
Saturday’s event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Morning sessions will focus on physical health and afternoon sessions will address mental health, with a midday family-friendly cooking demonstration. Shelley Roy, the programs supervisor for the city of Aspen recreation department, organized the event, which will feature exhibitors like Aspen Strong, AspenOUT, Mind Springs Health, the Aspen Hope Center and Stretch Zone.
Aspen Strong, a nonprofit advocacy organization, organized the Mental Fitness Week with and partnered with organizations like the Art Base, Sacred Cycle, Focused Kids, Pitkin County Library and recreation departments in Aspen and Battlement Mesa for programming.
The Mental Fitness Week offerings are tied into Mental Health Awareness Month, but focus on “fitness” to emphasize the positive connotations of the word, according to Aspen Strong Executive Director Angilina Taylor.
“When we do a presentation and we say, ‘What’s mental health?’ — the negative connotations of mental health come up … but when we say mental fitness, they think about all the positive attributes of taking care of your mental health,” Taylor said.
Programming so far has included a visual journaling art class, community cycling events, fitness classes and other recommended activities that people can complete at any time, like “a day to reflect” and a “ritual evening” that involves making plans to connect.
“Mental fitness is just really about providing different avenues for people to explore for them to add, maybe, a tool that they can access for themselves to use to kind of get themselves back at their baseline and be themselves,” Taylor said.
More events are scheduled through Saturday, when the week culminates with the community mental health day. For more information, visit aspenstrong.org/mfw.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note that Aspen Strong coordinated Mental Fitness Week and the city of Aspen recreation department organized the community health day at the Aspen Recreation Center.
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