Escape Rooms have gained popularity in many parts of the world since the first time a live escape game was opened in Japan in 2007. It might have taken several years for people to embrace the game but all over the world, from the UK to Europe, escape rooms are slowly becoming the new trend. The number of escape rooms currently in the UK is over 1500 and every month there is a rise in the number of new rooms.
Escape rooms provide not just for fun and entertainment, but they also allow the players to experience a movie like set up where they can solve puzzles and other physical challenges to escape the room. They also enhance your communication skills as you engage with other participants to escape. According to research, they have several surprising health benefits.
Surprising Health Benefits of Escape Rooms
Better communication and social skills
With escape rooms, all the participants need to work together to escape the room. This means that you need to communicate well with your team for you to solve problems making it great and popular for team building. Solving puzzles entails listening to every participant’s ideas and allowing their contribution in finding a way to exit the room.
Chances that you will not escape are too high in case you don’t speak to each other. Once you develop better communication skills, the skills are very beneficial even outside the escape room since you can transfer them to everyday life and improve on how you communicate with others in general.
Improves your memory capacity
The game involves solving puzzles, riddles and challenges and by solving these you can improve your memory since they are similar to doing brain training exercises. Some of the puzzles used, especially those with symbols, language and codes are effective at boosting your memory skills. You need to have a sharp memory with the ability to recall something that you’ve seen or interacted with at a certain stage of the game and according to studies, this increases your memory capacity.
Ability to learn new things
Escape rooms take you into an immersive and interactive environment where you have to make use of critical thinking from one stage to another until you exit the room. You will need to apply some skills throughout the entire game for you to escape the rooms. Apart from making use of the skills that you already possess, you’ll also learn new knowledge and skills that are transferable to real-world situations.
Enhances your fine and gross motor skills
Fine motor skills like hand-eye coordination can be enhanced by playing escape rooms. On the other hand, players can also enhance their gross motor skills and improve things like their balance or walking.
Enhanced brain function
Puzzles trigger your brain to think, spiking dopamine levels which motivate you to find more difficult challenges and puzzles to solve during the game. When dopamine is released it positively influences your mood, leads to sharper concentration, improves your memory and heightens your social skills.
The release of dopamine into your brain’s system not only motivates you, but it also helps you feel energized and less fatigued. As a result, you will find that most escape room participants often find themselves eager to solve tough puzzles and find the next best escape adventure.
Helps with stress relief
Once dopamine has been released into your brain it elevates your mood and a highly motivated individual full of positive energy tends to be less stressed. This leads to stress relief. Also, the fact that escape rooms do not involve the use of technology, means that you can get away from your daily and usual life and escape from it all for some time.
In the escape room, you will be in an immersive world where you get to experience a new world while leaving behind all of your everyday stresses. This is perfect for stress relief, especially if you are searching for something different from a very busy daily life.
Great for physical exercise
Part of a healthy lifestyle involves doing at least 30-40 minutes of moderate to intensive workouts every day. With an escape room, you can double this. If you’re doing an escape room properly, the chances are that you’ll be darting around, exploring high and low and keeping your heart rate up for an extended time.
Enhances your problem-solving skills
It’s been said that if you want to get better at something then you should engage in an activity that helps improve your skills at performing that thing. The same thing applies when you want to improve your problem-solving skills. If you want to be better at solving puzzles and finding solutions, do escape rooms.
Each of the unique puzzles in the escape room requires you to think outside of the box and find alternative ways of coming up with a way out. In turn, these skills will go a long way to equip you with alternate ways to solve problems even in your everyday life.
Improve your time-management skills
Escape room puzzles have a set timeframe to complete. You are usually given at least 1 hour to complete most of the puzzles with around 30 puzzles to solve in a single room. You need to learn how to figure out solutions to the puzzles to avoid running out of time which could be your downfall. To manage your time well, spend your time constructively when in the room.
Conclusion
You can see from the many benefits above that escape rooms can be good for your health in various ways. It’s not just healthy for your brain but the relief and interaction with other people can also be beneficial in solving practical life situations. Book your experience in an escape room and get ready for an immersive and eye-opening experience.
