On Saturday, October 19, seniors from the RM of Ritchot will get the opportunity to participate in a day-long workshop aimed to help them improve their health. The event will bring together members of the community to help educate seniors on how they can improve their overall mental and physical wellbeing.

The Healthy Mind, Healthy Body Seniors Conference will teach seniors how to exercise their minds and bodies with the new challenges they may face as they age. The conference will bring in a variety of experts, such as RCMP officers and mental health professionals, to provide diverse representation.

“It touches on various aspects of mental and physical health, and physical wellbeing,” says Vivian Berube, one of the conference’s organizers. “It’s good to stay in good physical shape regardless of where you are and what age you are. The average [age] is probably 75 in our group.”

Some seminars of interest to take place at the conference is one on mindful movement, a grief support session, and a self-defence course taught by an RCMP officer and tailored to a senior audience.

The event will be hosted by the Vintage Club, a nonprofit organization serving the 50+ community. The group offers a variety of programs out of the TransCanada Centre in Île-des-Chênes, including watercolour painting, luncheons, and yoga classes.

The Vintage Club is part of the larger Ritchot Senior Services organization, which provides the surrounding communities with resources specific to the needs of senior residents.

The conference is inspired by a survey the club took during the last three months of 2018. Many participants of that survey noted their desire for an increase in senior education regarding their specific health needs.

“We collected information from our seniors at that point to get some sense of what type of interest there would be,” says Berube, who hopes for about 100 people to attend. “In the last 18 months, we’ve really spent the time trying to speak with seniors before and after programs to try to understand what other things they’d like to see.”

Many challenges are faced by members of the community as they age, but the Vintage Club anticipates that this event will bring the community closer together.

“What we’ve seen is folks in their late 60s and early 70s having bouts of depression that they’ve never, ever witnessed before,” says Berube. “It’s just adjusting to daily life.”

One of the workshops will feature two peers from the community discussing their personal experiences with mental health. They hope this way of discussing mental health will allow the community to feel more comfortable sharing uncomfortable emotions and conversation topics.