How sports literally rewrote my brain after a coma 🧠 #healingjourney #comebackstory #trauma

5 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:19

In this personal narrative, the speaker recounts how engaging in new sports—specifically pickleball and volleyball—served as a catalyst for cognitive and emotional recovery after a coma. He describes the novelty of learning pickleball, the different strategies it required, and how that mental challenge “got his brain going.” He then explains how he used Meetup and Facebook to locate local volleyball groups, attend organized events, and arrange informal practice sessions. The social dimension—meeting teammates at bars, sharing stories, and building friendships—provided a boost of endorphins and a renewed sense of excitement about life. Overall, the video illustrates how purposeful physical activity, combined with community connection, can stimulate brain function, improve mood, and rekindle enthusiasm for everyday living.

Chapters

And learning something new is exciting because I never kind of played pickleball before, but different way to hit, different way to think about the court. It got my brain going. And getting your brain going, injury or not, is good because you start feeling different. You start thinking about life differently. And it's exciting because life can be so exciting when you do that. And I really enjoyed it. And other than Meetup, I also use Facebook. So if you just go on Facebook, you search for volleyball meetups or volleyball near me, you might find these groups. And they have the same kind of thing where they listed for me events, times they met, events they had, and who's part of that. You could message them, you could find out where they're meeting, or you want to maybe meet outside of it just to practice bumping or practice Dinking the ball just to get better. And all these little things make you feel good, made me feel good. Maybe the endorphins kind of kicked up in my body. You're like, I am doing this. I am getting better at this sport and I'm making the connections. Because we would go outside of the event, we'd meet at a bar, we'd talk about the sport, we'd talk about what happened maybe that weekend, next weekend, where to go in the town that I was in. And it was exciting. Life can get exciting and life becomes more exciting with sports.