Introducing Laura, one of our Active Together Champions!

Keeping active has significantly helped me to feel good about myself and increased the level of positivity that I have felt following an accident I had last year. I love feeling happy and positive and being active throughout lockdown has not only benefitted myself but has helped others throughout what could have been such a difficult time. Keeping active has also helped me to create more ideas for my students that I work with at REAL Education.

I have always been active from a young age, but in recent years and leading up to my accident I struggled with low mood and was not particularly active. After my accident I started getting myself back to being physically active which has helped me focus on getting myself and my happiness back on track.

I genuinely feel very happy in myself, happy to be taking part in physical activity and happy to be able to have done what I have done, having so much determination to get over the psychological effects of my accident too. For me positivity is the key and exercise can help to deal with the different stressors in life.

When lockdown happened I started ‘dance in the street’ social dance sessions for my neighbours, twice a week in a morning and evening. I decided to live stream each and every session, sharing the live sessions between Facebook and Instagram. I even decided to build up a fitness account on Instagram, so that people can follow my journey and see my fitness/workouts as well as the dance sessions.

I know what it is like to feel down and I would have hated it if I had seen even more people getting upset and feeling low. I have always been one to want to help and it was lovely to see smiles all around on the days that I did these dance sessions. Everyone on the street has also said how close we have all become because it has brought us all together!

Obviously, lockdown could have been a huge barrier for me, everyone has days where they feel slightly down and that is normal and when the lockdown was initially announced in the moment, I thought to myself, ‘really, what else could happen’, but I woke up the next morning and I just thought, ‘this won’t be forever’. Yes, some days can be hard, and you feel de-motivated and down, but there’s always ways of bringing yourself/or others back up.