Be Happier, Live Longer – Go Paddleboarding!

Words by Lizzi Larbalestier goingcoastal.blue

Why ‘Red meets Blue’? What was the project looking to uncover?

As regular paddleboarders, we all know that paddling has positive effects. But as this sport is still relatively young, there hasn’t been any professional research carried out to confirm this association. We wanted to explore the wider ripple effects that the paddleboarding adventures of our Red SUP community had on their wellbeing. The project aimed to uncover qualitative data and quantifiable statistics, with the hope that our robust findings would encourage more people to take up the activity and experience these health benefits. 

What did the research process involve?

We invited around 200 participants to join the study over 18 months, completing five online surveys reviewing the seasons as they paddled, swam or interacted in and around the water. We wanted to hear from a broad range of paddlers from around the globe to take part in the study. Participants initially applied and told us why they wanted to take part and were selected by myself and the Red Research team.

The plan was to run an independent citizen science project, and we wanted to measure the impact that SUP-based lake, river, and marine connections had on their psychological and social wellbeing. We wanted to explore and learn how far-reaching the benefits of paddleboarding are. It turns out they go a long way.

What learnings did you find about SUP and nature connectedness?

One area we wanted to uncover was how these interactions on the water encourage people to value our blue spaces even more and inspire others to experience these benefits for themselves. We know there is scientific evidence that awe and wonder promote increased levels of oxytocin and as a result are likely to bring about pro-social behaviour. The wildlife and scenery experienced when paddling offer immediate access to this kind of awe. 

We asked people to score how they perceived their relationship with nature both before and after taking up paddling – and our findings were pretty compelling.

Not one person recorded a reduction in nature connectedness. So whilst we could intuitively guess this to be the case, it was great to see our stats confirm this.

The most significant result was a notable change from people initially “not feeling at one” with nature (before paddleboarding) to feeling “significantly connected” with nature after paddleboarding. We also know through a range of scientific research that those with higher scores when asked to assess their levels of “nature connectedness” are more likely to act and protect nature or to advocate on behalf of nature. In the words of Jacques Cousteau: “Protecting what we love”. It was interesting and heart-warming to note that from our Red community, a large number of comments such as “What litter I find I take with me” and “CSO spills stop me paddling” or similar comments, indicating that Red is attracting and building a community of paddlers who care about the environment. There is a clear awareness of water quality and pollution challenges and campaigns – with references made to Environment Agency advisory notices and how these had impacted paddling.

So, tell us, does paddleboarding make you happier?

The study explored mood in two facets: Arousal (energy) and Valence (happiness).

We asked participants to score their mood by applying these measures both before paddling and after paddling. 

We saw a greater difference in Valence compared to that of Arousal – which is to be expected. If we imagine somebody arrives for their paddle in a high energy negative (ie; tense and irritable) state of mind, spending time on the water might lower their energy whilst increasing their positivity (making them mellow and calm). So, energy (Arousal) does not always increase yet still has a positive impact.

Valence (happiness) on the other hand, as we expected and noted always increased. 

Averages are all well and good, but we wanted to follow the journey of some individual paddlers to explore the potential impact of paddling. Five paddlers who regularly logged more paddles showed consistent improvements in Arousal and Valence.

From their feedback, we could conclude that frequent paddling influenced an improvement in mental health and happiness. Based on our stats we can confidently say that paddleboarding made our paddlers 30% happier.

Our top three motivators for paddleboarding were:

• Enjoying scenery and wildlife
• Improving health and taking exercise
• Relaxing, unwinding and letting off steam

What are the next steps? And how can our community get involved?

We would love to support you in really diving into the many ways SUP can positively impact your life and your world. The Blue Health App launches this summer and Red Paddlers will be amongst the first to be invited to hear when version 1 becomes available. The app already has a series of ‘pebbles’ (zones) to visit – and when designing the Blue Health App, we had in mind a few ways that tracking blue insights might be beneficial. 

For individual paddlers, it is fascinating to see ‘exactly’ how a dose of SUP can become a valuable part of a mental health regime. The app allows people to track (in detail) blue time, record blue mood and make blue notes to reflect upon.

Pausing to consciously pay attention to how time in blue spaces changes our mind, mood and behaviour not only improves nature connectedness but can also enable a proactive approach to managing happiness and energy.

The blue inspiration pebble offers creative ways to connect with water, whilst for those unable to access their blue spaces for any reason, the blue mindfulness and blue tones pebbles within the app offer reflection and relaxation. The blue space pebble provides self-coaching questions inspired by nature, to consider whether on or off your board. 

For those running water-based blue health programs aimed at promoting psychological and social wellness, there’s functionality too. Through the app, participants can provide data by sharing their blue insights to assess the impact of your program, which in turn can help with social prescribing and measuring social return on investment. Patterns within these blue insights can also form group and one-to-one discussions and coaching.

What’s next?

We already have exciting developments planned for version 2 and will continue to work closely with our Red (meets Blue) community. We would love to take you on this journey with us, so watch this space…

Words by Lizzi Larbalestier goingcoastal.blue

Find out more and get involved via our Red meets Blue page.