Leisure: An overlooked component of health promotion

Leisure is an area often overlooked in broad, life-style change health promotion efforts. The intent of this article is to stimulate thought regarding leisure's contribution to health and wellness, to document preliminary evidence of how leisure and health are connected, and to suggest future research directions in the examination of the relationship between health and leisure. To accomplish this purpose, leisure is defined and its potential relationship with the various components of total health (psychological, physical, social, and spiritual) is examined empirically and theoretically. It is concluded that leisure may make a valuable contribution to all aspects of health due to short term benefits and, perhaps more importantly, as a result of the potential cumulative effects of life-long participation in leisure.