The unity of body and mind: the integration of leisure and religious practices by rural older women in the Chaoshan area of China

Abstract

Leisure activities are of great significance to the active aging processes of rural older individuals. This paper focuses on the leisure activities of rural older women in China. Interviews and observations were used to collect the experiences of older women who participated in the Nembutsu hand-clapping exercise (NHCE), a leisure activity with a religious component. We reached the following conclusions. The older individuals experienced three stages of the integration of leisure and religion, i.e., “religion as an additional function,” “religion embedded in leisure,” and “interdependence between religion and leisure.” The NHCE is suitable for older women and provides them with benefits such as gender empowerment, social capital, and identity. This paper expands the body of research on the relationship between religion and leisure and provides a study based on the Chinese context for the construction of leisure theory for rural older women.

Keywords:

• Leisure practice
• religion
• Nembutsu hand-clapping exercise
• rural older women
• Chaoshan area of china

Ethics statement

Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, as the national law “Regulations for Ethical Review of Biomedical Research Involving Humans” does not require the full review process for data collection from adults who have adequate decision-making capacity to agree to participate.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province (2021A1515011186); National Natural Science Foundation of China (42271237).