It’s mental health awareness week, and this year’s theme is movement, a topic close to my heart as I’m sure you can imagine given that I write about yoga and other mind–body practices.
Movement has a positive effect on our mental health
There’s considerable evidence that movement can have a hugely positive effect on our mental health. I’m not just talking about yoga here, although of course there is a good body of research on this too (which I’ve written about before eg here and here). Moving your body in different ways, whether that’s walking, swimming, dancing or something else entirely, can change how you feel – there’s some really fascinating research in Move!, which I would strongly recommend reading (and which I’ve written about here).
In fact, a recent systematic review that I covered in my newsletter concluded that some forms of movement (walking, jogging and yoga) are actually more effective than medication, at least in major depression.
Having recently experienced a bereavement, I can say with some certainty that movement (and writing and social connections) has been hugely important for my mental health – at first all I could manage was simply going for walks, but that is still movement and is still hugely beneficial. I’m now back to enjoying my yoga practice, and if it weren’t for a small injury I would also be out running a couple of times a week too.
How do we get everyone to move more?
There’s an interesting mini-report accompanying this year’s campaign that has a bit of a behavioural science twist, as it explores the barriers to engaging in movement. I’ve written before about how behavioural science can help to support a healthier lifestyle – the idea is that by understanding what stops you doing something (the barriers), you can take action to remove these barriers and see the change you want to see (see also here about my glory pandemic days of running twice a week and practicing yoga every day).
It is clear (as frequently is) that education is not a solution here. The research reveals that awareness of the benefits of movement is high, so telling everyone that movement is good for them not going to have much of an effect.
Instead, motivation seems to, unsurprisingly, be the biggest challenge, whether that’s body image, stress or, I would argue, time. Yes, although time is theoretically an environmental barrier, I would argue that it is actually frequently a motivation one as we can always make some time (not to sound annoying but imagine how much time we could all save by not scrolling through social media and use it towards a short walk instead). A wise colleague once said to me that a 15 minute run is better than no run, so reframing what movement looks like could be a way to tackle that barrier.
This is a highly individual challenge, but small steps like reframing what movement should look like could have benefits for a wide range of people – whether that’s to do with how much time you should spend moving or how much money you should spend (none, you can just go for a 15 minute walk every day and that would be so much better than doing nothing).
Thoughts? And how valuable do you find movement for your mental health?
GEEKY YOGA 