Social distancing can be difficult, especially for very active people, who are not used to staying at home al day. When staying inside, people tend to be more sedentary and spend their time either watching movies on the couch or playing video games. And while there’s nothing wrong with that either, there is more that you can do at home, rather than sitting on the couch all day.

Keeping yourself both mentally and physically active during these troublesome times is very important if you want to avoid falling prey to sedentarism, which claims hundreds of thousands of lives yearly in the U.S. alone.

explore your mind yourself illustration

Explore Your Mind by MUTI

There are a lot of things you can do at home, and they only require a bit of creativity and minimum effort. If you have run out of ideas to keep both your mind and body running, below are some activities to keep yourself busy and learn something new in the meantime.

Indoor Physical Activity

If you like going to the gym or in the park for a run each morning, staying at home can be quite difficult. But just because you are stuck inside, it does not mean you can’t keep doing your exercise. You just need to adapt your routine to current conditions.

Yoga is a type of activity you can do at home, and all you need is a mat. There are plenty of courses on YouTube, as well as a number of yoga apps that offer free subscriptions for the following months.

If yoga is not for you, then you can start building an at-home workout routine that will keep your serotonin levels up. Be creative and learn how to incorporate elements form your home, such as walls, stairs, chairs, and water bottles.

Enroll In An Online Course

Keeping your mind just as active as your body is very important, and because now you have the time to work on yourself more, why not enroll in an online course to improve your skills or learn new ones? Is there something you wanted to learn for a while? Now is the time to do so.

Maybe you want to improve your business management skills, to better run your business, or you’ve always wanted to know a bit more about chemistry. You can find an online course for virtually anything you can think of, on various difficulty levels. All you need is a computer and a bit of motivation.

Set Your Creativity Free

If you’ve always wanted to be a bit more creative, but you never got enough time on your hands to do so, why not start now? Painting, dancing, taking out the old guitar that you haven’t used since high school or crafting some new décor for your house, there are unlimited ways to unleash your creativity.

You don’t need impressive art skills or expensive materials to do this. You can easily order supplies online or stick to what you can find at home. You can even consider digital art if you don’t want to get messy with paint and brushes. Just let your creativity take control and have fun with it. Art is about setting yourself free and experimenting.

Consider Gardening

If you like going outdoors, why not bring the outdoors into your home? If you have a back yard that’s waiting to be tended to, now is the time. Again, you can order all the supplies you need online and start working on your green oasis. Again, you can let your creativity go wild and experiment with colors, sizes, and types of flowers.

If you don’t have a back yard, you can still create a nature corner inside. Get some plants and start playing around. You can also add some art to your project by repainting the pots to fit with the aesthetic of your house.

Go On A Virtual Tour

Galleries and museums may be closed to the public, but many of them now provide virtual tours to art lovers. Amongst them, The National Gallery of Victoria, which gave online access to 90% of their artworks, the Louvre, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Met Gallery in New York.

The Royal Melbourne Zoo has set up live cameras around its premises, so instead of leaving the TV on for background noise, why not let the animals keep you company? Under each video, there are the names of each of the animals, to get to know them better.

Improve Your Cooking Skills

Since eating out is not an option anymore, why not take the time to better your cooking abilities? You can look out simple recipes online and follow them, or you can start mixing things up once you pick up the pace. Food does taste a hundred times better when you’ve been preparing it yourself, seasoning it to your own likings.

It is important to keep a balanced diet if you want to have a strong immune system. Red bell peppers, broccoli, garlic, ginger, and spinach are all great immunity boosters and can be easily integrated into many recipes.

Bond With Your Pet

If you have a pet, this is the time to give them more attention. Now that you are not leaving for work first thing in the morning and coming home late at night, you can finally spend more time with them. Pets are great therapists and can help give you a morale boost to get over these dreadful days.

With a bit of carefulness, you can even play fetch in the house, or tug of war. Both exercises are good at keeping dogs active and bonding with them. Some cats like to play fetch as well, so why not try it out now? Or simply get lazy on the couch with them and relax. There’s just something about pets that makes us a dozen times happier, a thing much needed in these uncertain times.

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