The library isn’t necessarily the first place you think of when you’re trying to improve your health. But the Santa Clara City Library Foundation and Friends sponsors a lot of activities and also sells a lot of books about food, exercise, and wellness.
Santa Clara cares about its health, and we support that!
Getting active and maintaining muscle
The NIH’s top two items on its 6 strategies for improving your physical health are getting active and maintaining muscle.
The library can help you be more active with its hiking collection. We’ve sponsored large parts of this set of resources. You can check out hiking backpacks, guidebooks, and even a parking pass for the California State Parks! In warmer weather, the library hosts programs to help you learn more about how to be out in nature safely, so keep an eye out!
Finding a weight that works for you
Everyone has a different ideal weight for them. Everyone’s metabolism and lifestyles are different. Not everyone needs to lose weight, but maintaining the healthiest body can be challenging. This January, Kaiser Permanente is hosting a class with the library to help you learn about weight management tools. It’s online, during lunchtime, and can be a resource to help you better maintain your health.
Eating well
Which gets us to eating well. The Friends of the Library bookstore and the book nook always have lots of cookbooks, often for specific diets. The library does too! You can find salad cookbooks, recipes for diseases like diabetes, and so, so much more. This is always a popular category of book for both checking out at the library or buying from the Friends.
The Foundation and Friends also partnered with Kaiser Permanente to fund the Healthy You, Healthy Me series of cooking classes at the library this last fall. There’s one more coming up, in February at the Mission Library – Veggies are Sweet. Come to this class to learn more about incorporating more vegetables in your meal plan.
And keep an eye out for more cooking classes. They’re popular with the library’s patrons.
Is gardening about eating well? Maybe, maybe not. But you do often raise fruits and vegetables when you garden, and getting out and working in your green space isn’t bad for your health. Come learn about pruning and taking care of the fruit trees in your yard this weekend!
The Santa Clara City Library also hosts The Santa Clara Seed Share, which we have sponsored off and on throughout the years. This is a seed library where you can come and get seeds for things you want to grow from scratch. These could be in containers inside an apartment or condo, or in your yard. The library typically refreshes the seeds available in the spring, but the seeds are always available on the second floor of the Central Park Library.
Reducing your stress
Is there anything harder to improving your health than reducing your stress? The best ways to reduce your stress are often changing the biggest things in your life (eg switching your job, moving somewhere more affordable).
But there are also small things you can do, like improving your sleep, meditating more, or improving your focus. These are also worthwhile and can make a noticeable difference in your mood and your health.
You can find books for all of these in our Amazon store and in the library.
Being more social
We’ll cover more in an upcoming week about how the library can help you better connect with your family, friends, and community. But a couple of quick things now are: volunteer and just come to the library.
First, volunteering can be a great way to meet people and learn more about the place you live, especially if you’re new. We get a lot of volunteers who are new to Santa Clara and Silicon Valley and want to meet people. Selling books, especially if you love books, can be a great way to make connections with other people who also enjoy reading.
Secondly, studies have shown that even light, social chatting with people can improve your mood and health. To that end, coming to the library to do your daily work, to take part in a class or event, or even just being around other people can make you healthier.
Overall health
If you’re not sure where to start in taking care of your health – there are a lot of places to start here – maybe you need to make a vision board? The Northside Library is hosting a Wellness Vision Board activity with a certified wellness and life coach on Thursday January 11 at 5:30pm.
Not to mention the library has a specific Health and Wellness collection that annual grants from Kaiser Permanente, facilitated by the Foundation and Friends, have helped them build up over the years. If there’s something you’re looking to learn more about, come to the library! The librarians are great at helping you find what you’re looking for.