Fly-fishing dates back at least to the second century A.D., when the Roman author Claudius Aelianus recorded the technique as employed by Macedonian fishermen.
Almost ever since, fly-fishing has been considered as much therapeutic exercise as sporting endeavor. Dr. Herbert Benson, mind body medicine professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, spoke this past summer about fly-fishing’s therapeutic properties.
“What better example of this than fly-fishing, with the repetitive back-and-forth motion of the rod and line and fly?” he said. “You’re focusing on where that fly is going to land on the water, and that breaks the train of everyday thought.”…