I take real issue with this, for a very personal reason. A few years ago I had a valve in my heart fail due to a birth defect, and my lungs filled full of blood. It was initially misdiagnosed as pneumonia, and I wound up in a coma for several days with blood O2 as low as 30%. I was fortunate and they figured out what was wrong with me before I was gone, stopped the bleeding and they repaired the valve. I didn’t wake up after until all this was done, talk about confused. When I woke up I couldn’t even breathe on my own for a week. I spent a month in the hospital, most of that time in intensive care. Even after the hospital, my recovery was very long, I had to use supplemental oxygen for several weeks. I had trouble doing a variety of day to day things. Nobody knew what to expect since its pretty hard on almost everything in your body when blood O2 drops that low for long, a lot of neurons died. Lots of physical therapy slowly improved things.
The most annoying long term outcomes of this has been that my short term memory has been terrible, it used to be very good. And my balance and coordination were all out of sorts. Bad enough I couldn’t trust myself on a ladder, even the slightest tumble could send me sprawling. I didn’t dare drive a nail with a hammer, because I’d almost certainly miss very badly. After a couple years I had made some improvement, but nowhere close to where I used to be. I had mostly resigned myself and just kept telling myself I’m lucky to be alive. But I was struggling with serious depression, I felt like an old man while still in my 40’s.
Enter yoyos. As I’ve mentioned before I was inspired to to really get back into yoyos when I saw Evan’s championship performance on an off chance. I got my old yoyos out and tried hitting tricks I used to be able to do reliably, I could hardly catch the darn thing on a normal gravity pull, forget landing a trapeze. But it lit a fire in me, I ordered my first new yoyos since the early 2000’s, including an Edge Beyond which was my first bimetal. The EB gave me enough spin time and catch zone I could start managing things. For the last year I have practiced every day, and I can do most of yoyo tricks first 50, and some more advanced tricks. It takes me a lot of time and repetition, but as time goes by I’m finding that time is slowly dropping.
The most amazing part of this is my general coordination and balance have improved massively. This weekend I did a number of things outside the house on a ladder, and never once felt even the slightest bit unstable. If I stumble on a something I don’t fall on my face or flail wildly around trying not to fall. I can turn my head quickly to look at something and not get dizzy.
The only thing I can figure is that the entire business of doing yoyo tricks really works on your whole awareness of what your body is doing in space, the large motor skills required to get a fast smooth throw, the space perception to keep track of a small object moving fast in 3D space, managing the plane, the coordination between both hands and eyes required to land anything beyond the most basic tricks, the split second timing. I’ve had to really focus on every aspect of this. But I think it all really worked to force my brain and senses to rewire themselves to work together again. Even my memory has been improving. I’m sure the fact that I love doing it really helps too. I’m very happy with where I’m at now, but I can tell I’m still improving.
No sir, for me a yoyo is not a toy. This is all strictly anecdotal, limited to a case study of 1, YMMV, etc, but yoyos helped me recover my mental and physical well being to a far greater extent than what anybody expected. Having more of them must help, right? 