ANOKA, Minn. – (Jan. 7, 2016) – The annual Community Wellness Day will be held later this month and the organizers are hoping to make this year the biggest and best event to date.
“This is our 8th annual Community Wellness Day. It is put on by our community education department and this year it’s being hosted at Jackson Middle School in Champlin. We are very excited about this event this year. It continues to grow each year. Really what our hope is just to offer a free community event where employees and community members can come in and just see all the wellness resources we have here in the community” said Anoka-Hennepin School District wellness coordinator Jen Gilbert.
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Each year an average of 500 people attend the Community Wellness Day. Holding the event in January capitalizes on the renewed fitness focus that many in the community have at this time of the year. A part of the mission of wellness day is connecting people with the resources available. “We provide sample fitness classes. Everything from yoga with your kids to yoga for boomers. We have some great wellness classes. Things about expanding your brain elasticity, how to find foods that reduce stress, how to live life in the fast lane with all the carpooling and driving around and how you maintain that healthy balance with all the demands you have in a day. We have so many different resources for families,” said Gilbert.
One of the new activities this year will take willing participants outside for some fun on the snow. “I am really excited because in the past I have been one of those people who have suffered through winter and this year I was bound and determined to find a way to enjoy these few months and so I discovered snowshoeing. In that we were able to partner with Anoka County Parks. They are bringing snowshoes and offering three different sessions for people to come try out snowshoeing,” said Gilbert.
If snow shoeing isn’t for you don’t worry, Community Wellness Day is designed to have something for everyone from toddlers to seniors. “We have an ECFE room, it’s a little toddler/preschool room. They have inflatables for those kids and scooters and all exciting things for those kids. We have a back gym that’s going to be filled with yard games for families to come play in and teens to come have fun in. We have fitness classes that range from toddler to adult, boomers gentle yoga, we have health screenings for everyone. We get all ages in there, it’s a great event for everyone,” said Gilbert.
Besides fitness, eating habits will be another focus of the wellness day activities. “We are very excited for our keynote speaker this year, it is Chef Marshall O’Brien. He is going to be doing two different sessions. One of them is titled Bring the Delicious into Nutritious. Also, in a class called Foods that Reduce Stress he shows us how their is foods that actually reduce stress on our body as well as foods to stay away from that can increase stress levels or make it harder to deal with stress when we combat that during the day. We are very excited to have him this year for the first time,” said Gilbert.
With the resources and classes available to wellness day participants the cost is remarkably affordable. “It is free the entire day, everything is free. You can go snowshoeing, you can go to as many seminars as you want to, you can go to the vendors. A lot of them give away little gifts and it’s just a great day for everyone,” said Gilbert. Anoka-Hennepin firmly believes in wellness not only for its students and staff but for the whole community.
Providing this experience in the dead of winter is part of that overall mission. “People need something to do on a Saturday in January and they need a reason to get out of the house. We have found a way to get them out and get them excited about what they can do for the rest of the winter,” said Gilbert.
