It's a Bit Puzzling.....! Guildford Chiropractor Paula Hoivala will discuss....

It’s all a bit puzzling…!

Those who have recently visited us at the Burchatts Farm Barn know, we have a communal jigsaw puzzle in the Reception area for anyone to join whilst waiting for their appointments. Many end up staying for a minute or two of extra puzzle time after their treatments as well!

It has been a huge success and as soon as one is finished, we have a new one at the ready - we really whizz through them quickly.

Guildford Chiropractor

Not only is it fun, doing jigsaw puzzles is actually good for you. ‘Why?’ you may ask. Well, it has both physical and mental benefits.

As many find doing of puzzles relaxing, it may reduce your heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate (your breathing actually slows down as well, the more you relax). With frantic modern life, finding a moment to stay still and not focus on the stressors of your everyday is a real treat.

Doing puzzles can help improve and maintain your fine motor skills. This benefits people of all ages – children are still developing these skills and it’s good for adults to work on maintaining them. As we get older, these skills can get a bit rusty. So, fiddling with small puzzle pieces and finding their space is a fantastic way of training the finer touch and neural pathways of the muscles in your hands. This translates to handling smaller items such as bottle caps, pens, buttons and so on which we may use and need in daily living.

Puzzling is good for the brain! It takes perception as well as problem solving skills to solve a puzzle. It also requires short term memory whilst you find the right piece to put in the right place or recall where did you put the piece you had earlier, having now identified where is it to go.

It improves cognition as well as visual-spatial reasoning – the ability to tell where objects are in space (so, how far an item is from you for example). The same skill is the one that may prevent you from bumping into the coffee table; to judge how far the curb is when parking your car; where the football is when kicking it and so on. This is a skill than translates to pretty much everything we do. Have a desk job and sedentary lifestyle? You still need to know how far your keyboard, or your phone are from you…

And what a great way, making a puzzle is, to get away from the screens of electronic devices! Let’s be realistic here, we all could do with cutting our screen time a bit, couldn’t we?

So puzzle away, Candy Crush can wait!

But my main reason for taking part in making the communal puzzle? It’s just plain fun!

Whether you’re doing it by yourself and taking a moment of quite solitude, or making it with friends, family, colleagues and even strangers, to have quality time together, it’s a good time.

So next time you visit the Guildford Chiropractor, please help yourself to the puzzle table – though as chiropractor, I must remind you of the importance to keep good posture!