When you’re in your eighties you’ve lived a little—you’ve spent your whole life making connections; you’ve met a lot of people. The thing about being in your eighties and having lived through the COVID-19 pandemic is that your opportunity to socialise dwindles. People your age are still wary of cramped places with unfamiliar people. You then add into the mix a major, debilitating stroke and it may feel like socialising is a dream of the past—a nice-to-have but intangible-to-grasp wisp of a former life.

You might feel this way, but then you wouldn’t be Diane.

Diane has lived on and off in the bayside suburb of Wynnum since the 1960s when she was raising her family. She was living in Wynnum and volunteering at a local shop when she suffered a stroke last year that saw her lose the ability to speak and walk. For most people, that would temper their social spark.

For Diane, talking to anyone and everyone, “chatting” to people in her home suburb is part of her character. When the stroke took that away, Diane was determined to rehabilitate her health.

She spent 3 months in intensive rehabilitation staying at her daughter’s house on the other side of Brisbane. This was a period of her life when physios, occupational health therapists, stroke specialists, and speech therapists comprised her social circle and her movement was limited to walking assisted to the end of the driveway and back.

Fast forward to today, only 6 months after the stroke, and Diane is a regular visitor to the Y Wynnum Community Centre and a welcoming member of the Y’s chair yoga classes. She stumbled upon the Y by being social and chatting with the ladies at the curtain shop.

“I just walked into the curtain shop one day and started chatting and one of the ladies there, she told me about the yoga that the Y puts on,” Diane said, having regained her ability to talk.

The yoga the women were referring to was chair yoga—a modified form of a practice that dates back thousands of years. A 2022 study of rehab patients revealed even just 12 weeks of attending chair yoga classes resulted in improvements in mobility, body awareness, and pain levels. It's also known to improve several physiological and psychological stress markers.

Diane was intrigued, running it past her stroke specialist and GP. “They said it would be good to do. So, I started going to the chair yoga classes and now I mention it to most people if I think they would be interested.”

The Y chair yoga teacher, Carmel, has since realised that there a lot of people interested in chair yoga.

“Diane has introduced quite a few of our growing chair yoga class,” Carmel said.

“There’s a couple, who are friends of Diane—the wife comes as a social outing and the husband, who has dementia, finds the chair yoga therapeutic. We cater to people who don’t want their mobility issues to completely restrict their functional movement or their time to see others and socialise.

“I saw Diane leaving the Y one time and she struck up a conversation with a lady in a wheelchair. Next class, that lady attended and now she’s a regular. It’s wonderful to see the Y’s chair yoga as a social highlight of people’s week,” Carmel said.

Being a community hub, a gathering place for people to come and share the same space and their time in a social setting, is what continues to ground the Y in the bedrock of Queensland communities.

The Y offers services throughout Queensland and has done so since its formation in 1844 as YMCA. These services cater to Queenslanders in all stages of life from childcare and vacation care services, fitness, affordable housing, vocational schooling, education and training, Op Shops, and the Queensland Youth Parliament.

The Y’s services provide inclusive spaces for people in the community to socialise, learn, connect, be empowered, and feel engaged.

For Diane, her days are full of activities and connection.

“I don’t need to make friends, I have plenty. I talk to everyone, I’m not lonely,” she said.

But Diane is an outlier in our increasingly fast-paced and isolated world where digital connection masquerades as an antidote to loneliness.

Since 2019, the frequency of social contact for people aged over 65-years-old has steadily decreased, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), with many averaging only 2-3 social interactions a month.

Loneliness is being described as an epidemic contributing to public health concerns—"the risk of premature death associated with social isolation and loneliness is similar to the risk of premature death associated with well-known risk factors such as obesity,” according to academic meta-analysis reported in the ABS.

“A desire for social connection—and, conversely, an aversion to social disconnection—is part of our evolutionary heritage,” The Conversation shared, “A lone individual without the protection of a social group would be at greater risk of injury, and it therefore makes sense that the immune system would respond by preparing itself to battle off infection. This inflammatory response protects you in the short term. However, it is not ideal for your body to be in this stressed state for a prolonged period, and it could exert a toll on your physical health over time.”

Having a healthy social life contributes to a healthy mind and body and the Y understands its importance as a place for real connections to be made.

The Y community hubs can provide spaces for community groups to gather through facility hire opportunities, as well as being a space for Y-led activities such as movie nights, traineeship programs, yoga classes, games days and bingo, tech education, ‘cuppa and chat’ sessions, craft lessons, multicultural youth nights, the list goes on.

Diane sings the Y’s praises describing the Wynnum Community Centre as “the best thing that has happened to Wynnum”.

With 10 Y Community Centres throughout Queensland, there are plenty of “best things” in communities hoping to meet the next Diane and strengthen the community through connections and socialisation—keeping loneliness away from impacting the heart of Queensland communities.

If you would like to see how you can become involved at your local Y, check out our services here: https://ymcaqueensland.org.au/services