There are many therapeutic techniques that can help you manage anxiety and your mental health. But did you know that movement can be therapeutic too? Your brain and your body are far more connected than you may realize and when you can leverage the mind-body connection, you support your mental and physical health. Read on to learn 3 ways you can use movement to start healing your anxiety, then pick a challenge to kick start your progress!
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What Causes Anxiety?
I’m not a Mental Health Professional, so I can’t speak to all the clinical causes and presentations of anxiety. But what I can talk about is the most basic, and most common cause of anxiety in today’s society: Stress.
Physical stress, mental stress, it doesn’t truly matter. What matters is that our bodies and minds are so over-stressed that they don’t feel safe. And that is when anxiety becomes a chronic, life-changing issue.
The Mind-Body Connection
Even though mental health and physical health are treated separately in today’s western medicine, our bodies and minds are connected.
What happens to one will affect the other. That’s why mental stress can trigger physical symptoms. Like when you stayed up late trying to finish that project for work and were met with a nasty headache the next day. Or if you’re in a chronically stressful work environment, you may wake up feeling nauseous if you dread the day.
Conversely, if you’ve stressed yourself physically, you might notice your brain isn’t working so well. If you’ve had a big day of travel or exciting activity, your brain might have a hard time settling down for sleep, or you might experience brain fog the next day.
The Link Between Hypermobility and Anxiety
Here’s a really interesting example of how the mind and body are linked: Anxiety occurs at a much higher rate in people with hypermobility disorders (like me!). In the general population, anxiety occurs at a rate of about 18%. In people with hypermobility, up to 70% also deal with anxiety.
This population struggles with severe joint laxity – meaning their connective tissues are extra stretchy and struggle to hold their bones and joints together. They tend to have a higher pain perception and are more aware of environmental stimuli, which means their brains tend to be on higher alert. Because their brains are constantly on high alert, this makes them more susceptible to stress-induced anxiety.
Conversely, patients with anxiety and other mental health disorders are 16 times more likely to have an underlying hypermobility disorder. That should tell you how under-diagnosed hypermobility is, and how strong the mind-body connection truly is.
Regardless of whether you have a hypermobility disorder or not, if you are struggling with anxiety and stress, it is definitely worth treating your mind and your body as one to maximize your ability to heal!
Leveraging the Mind-Body Connection to Heal Anxiety
If you’ve been living with anxiety for a while, it might be hard to pinpoint exactly what stressors are causing it. We’re so inundated with stress every day, that it might not be just one thing.
So, treat your anxiety by leveraging the mind-body connection. When you start creating a healthy, calm and SAFE environment for both your mind and body, you can begin to relieve your anxiety.
More specifically, 2 things need to happen:
1. Calm your sympathetic nervous system (aka your fight or flight response)
2. Boost your parasympathetic nervous system (hello rest and digest response!)
Now, there are a LOT of amazing techniques for making those 2 things happen that you will learn if you work with a Mental Health Professional. But like I said, I’m not a Mental Health Professional. I’m a Health & Fitness Coach and Corrective Exercise Specialist and I specialize in helping people create a healthy lifestyle while managing health issues that can get in the way.
So I’m here to tell you how you can start healing your anxiety through movement. Because if we’re talking about leveraging the mind-body connection, you better believe I’m going to teach you 3 amazing, simple techniques that involve moving your body to heal your mind.
What happens to your mind when you move your body
For healing anxiety through movement, there are 2 ways of moving your body that are most important.
1. Breathing
Yes, breathing counts as movement. Breathing is also the most important, primal action you can possibly do. If you don’t breathe, you don’t live. So, breathing makes your brain and your body feel really happy and safe.
To get a little more nerdy on you, breathing – especially slow, deep breathing that involves really MOVING your ribs and trunk muscles – activates your parasympathetic nervous system and calms that fight or flight response.
Breathing is hands-down the most important coping mechanism you could possibly practice to better handle stressful situations.
Don’t believe me? Go ask any Mental Health Professional. One of the first things they’ll teach you is to be able to recognize if you’re holding your breath when you’re feeling anxious, scared, or angry.
2. Low to Moderate Intensity Exercise
This is so important: I am NOT talking about high intensity exercise! I DO NOT recommend high intensity exercise if you are dealing with chronic anxiety, chronic stress, and chronic fatigue.
Yes, there is legitimate scientific evidence that high intensity exercise can be a useful outlet for an acute anxiety attack. ACUTE being the key word. If CHRONIC applies more to you, then all you are doing is engaging in yet another high-stress activity that is ultimately perpetuating the problem.
Exercise can help pump out excess stress hormones from your body, including a good sweat-inducing workout. But high intensity exercise is still perceived by the brain as high stress, so you’re still risking triggering more stress hormones to be released.
Why? Your primal brain doesn’t know you’re just doing box jumps. Nope. Your primal brain thinks you’re trying to jump over rocks to escape the animal that’s trying to eat you. So, it activates your fight or flight response and dumps more stress hormones into your system, ruining the entire point of doing the workout!
So until you’ve gotten a better handle on the stress and anxiety in your life, please avoid high intensity exercise for a bit!
What about low to moderate intensity exercise?
That’s exercise that you can do while breathing fully and deeply so it won’t trigger that fight or flight response. And when it’s a rhythmic exercise like walking, you’ll get the most health benefits!
In fact, if you’re able to breathe fully while exercising – you’ll be pumping out excess stress hormones while triggering the release of amazing, healing neurotransmitters!
These include GABA, Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Endorphins, Serotonin and BDNF. They are the natural chemicals that your body creates which anti-depressant pharmaceuticals are trying to supplement. These little chemicals do some seriously amazing things for your body including:
- Boost mood
- Mood stabilization
- Repair damage from stress and depression
- Build immunity and resilience against stress
- Improve mental function
- Promotes mental and physical sensation of well-being
- Provides pain relief
- Boosts your immune system for overall improved health
They do all that WITHOUT any side effects because they are made in your body!
*Please note: This is not me saying you shouldn’t take medications prescribed by your doctor. Just know that your body can synthesize these chemicals and many studies show that over time, people have been able to reduce or discontinue their medications after establishing a consistent exercise habit. So please check in with your doctor regularly!
So how can you start healing your anxiety through movement?
I promised you 3 techniques:
1. Start breathing more
We spend so much time being stressed that it makes it hard to be calm. Which makes it hard to fall asleep, get the rest we need, or even react calmly to stressful situations. To get better at being calm and breathing, you have to practice.
One client came to me stressed and exhausted. She couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time before her brain would wake her up. We started a breathing habit where she would take 5 minutes several times a day to PRACTICE breathing and being calm. Within 2 weeks, she was sleeping through the night!
Remember – breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system so you can successfully stay calm in stressful situations. And breathing done properly will move and work your muscles and joints in your trunk in a rhythmic low-intensity exercise.
Have you heard all about “breathing properly” but still aren’t sure if you’re doing it right? Get the Engage Your Core training where I’ll teach you EXACTLY how to finally breathe properly!
2. Start Moving Rhythmically
Rhythmic movement creates a pump-action in your muscles that helps your body pump out the excess stress hormones. And it activates your lymph system which boosts your immune function, in addition to the benefits you’re getting from your neurotransmitters.
When you combine breathing with rhythmic movement, you will maximize your mental and physical health benefits!
I created a Getting Started with Cardio Challenge that was originally designed to teach proper breathing mechanics so you can enjoy cardio without dealing with the burning lungs and side stitches. But as people started trying this Challenge, they shared some seriously interesting results. Apparently, this method has the amazing side-effects of increasing your calm, relieving fatigue, boosting mental function, and improving overall resilience to stress. And when you stop and think about the mind-body connection – it makes perfect sense!
Join the Getting Started with Cardio Challenge to start experiencing these benefits today!
3. Move More & Enjoy It!
You have to create a consistent habit to get the amazing benefits of healing your anxiety through movement. And to create a successful habit, you need to enjoy what you’re doing.
Don’t think that you HAVE to exercise in one particular way. Your body was made to move, so experiment and find ways to move that feel good. This will support your health and well-being mentally & physically.
Read More:
Using a Movement Habit to Dramatically Improve Your Health and Fitness
Want to learn 4 different ways you can move your body to get amazing health benefits? Join the 5 Day Movement Habit Challenge!
Healing your anxiety through movement
Leverage the mind-body connection and start moving your body in ways that feel good while breathing fully to decrease your stress and improve your health while ultimately healing your anxiety.
Disclaimer: Before starting any workout program, get clearance from your doctor and use common sense to reduce and avoid injury. The information shared by Jess Roe Fitness and StudyInFitness.com is for educational purposes only. By performing any fitness exercises, you are performing them at your own risk. Jess Roe Health & Fitness and StudyInFitness.com will not be responsible or liable for any injury or harm you sustain as a result of any program, online videos, or information shared on our website. Use of any of the information shared on our site does not constitute the creation of a client contract. This includes emails, videos and text. Thanks for your understanding. View my full Disclaimer here.
Sheryl
Just wanted to let you know that this post was a readers’ fav on my Twitter feed for this week and I’ve listed it here. Keep up the great work! 🙂
https://www.achronicvoice.com/2020/06/12/migraine-217/
Jess
Wow that’s so awesome! Thank you so much for sharing!