Cavs’ Kevin Love aids in backing of first gym for mental health, Coa

Cleveland Cavaliers big Kevin Love’s mental health efforts are well-documented.

Kevin Love has continually made a difference in spreading the awareness of the importance of mental health since he published his essay, “Everyone Is Going Through Something,” for The Players’ Tribune in March of 2018. That was centered on his struggle with mental health and issues with panic attacks.

Since opening up about that, though, the Cleveland Cavaliers stretch big has been at the forefront of again, spreading mental health awareness, created the Kevin Love Fund which was predicated on aiding those in relation to mental and physical health.

Also in regards to Love’s efforts, though, he’s made a number of donations to aid those in need.

And to help soften the blow of game then-postponements and eventually cancelations, Love seemingly began an amazing trend by donating $100,000 via his fund to go to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse workers and/or game event staff to help compensate them due to the then-novel coronavirus-induced hiatus for the NBA. The Cavs ultimately would have their season end to them not being an Orlando team, anyhow.

Again, Love’s efforts in helping make others’ lives around him better have been extensive, and his courage to share his mental health struggle affected countless people, assuredly. For his efforts off the floor, Love was rightfully awarded ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award, and shortly thereafter, he actually donated $500,000 to UCLA’s psychology department for mental health studies.

Love has made it apparent that his motivation for going public with his mental health struggles was seemingly as a result of DeMar DeRozan previously doing so before then.

Moving on from there, Love published a follow-up essay for The Players’ Tribune, too, entitled “To Anybody Going Through It,” more so predicated on how extensive his issues with depression have been/are, and that for so many, also related to COVID-19, those with mental health dilemmas are in an especially rough spot.

In addition, though, to seemingly further aid in mental and physical health for people, and also for the day-to-day, Love became one of the investors in the world’s first gym focused on mental health, Coa.

This also stresses how the Cavs big is so locked-in to helping others in what’s been such a difficult time.

As far as a few details involving the founding of Coa, here was more on that/the background of the idea by co-founder and CEO Alexa Meyer, via Inside Hook’s Evan Bleier.

"“Conceived of by company co-founder and CEO Alexa Meyer when she was walking around San Francisco and realized there were gyms catering to physical health on every corner but no visible options to work on emotional health, Coa offers both group classes and one-on-one mental fitness sessions with licensed therapists that have been specifically matched with their client.With backers including Casper founder Neil Parikh and several angel investors in addition to Love, Coa tested its emotional fitness curriculum at mental health pop-up gyms in cities like New York, San Francisco, L.A., Vancouver and Toronto, as well as offering employees at companies like Asana and Spotify the opportunity to take part in sessions.”"

Due to COVID-19, Bleier would then note how, while before therapy gyms were a key part of their plan after pop-up success, online options for group/individual sessions have been the move for Coa. But they’re doing so well, and as Bleier highlighted, per “Coa co-founder and chief clinical officer Dr. Emily Anhalt,” they’ve “seen a 900-percent increase in demand because of the pandemic.”

A crucial aspect for Coa, which the co-founders alluded to with Bleier, was, via Bleier, is “to eliminate the societal notion that unhealthy people need to work on their mental health and that healthy people do not.”

From there, Anhalt then emphasized via Bleier how being “more comfortable being uncomfortable,” and the strengthening of “resilience muscles” is essentially a significant part of what Coa is trying to instill in sessions over time, too.

So to me, hearing about this, it just drives home the fact that Love is so committed to helping others better their every day lives, and that mental health is so important for everyone, regardless of their situations. And Love helping provide funding for this Coa venture, as a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is awesome to learn about.

Love, who had 17.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists per contest last season for the Cavs, is seemingly proving to become more and more of a primary leadership presence for young pieces such as Darius Garland, Collin Sexton and Kevin Porter Jr. as well. That’s factoring in both on and off the floor.

Kevin Love’s participation in helping get Coa going again leads me to that sort of conclusion from the team dynamic, which is refreshing to me. And for further details about Coa, you can visit their website here.