Physical Self-Care and Mental Wellness
Have you ever told someone that you are feeling down in the dumps? Have they responded with “just get up and go for a walk! Get some fresh air!”
Cue eye roll.
While responses of that nature may not be helpful to hear at the moment, they unfortunately do hold some weight…
Physical exercise has the potential to improve your mental health and wellbeing. It can help decrease cortisol levels as well which helps manage symptoms of stress. Exercise can also help manage and decrease your symptoms of anxiety and/or depression (Mahindru, Patil & Agrawal, 2023). The study reports that exercise can be comparable to, if not more effective than, traditional antidepressants. Please note that prescribed medication can be helpful and effective for many individuals – if this is something that you believe could be beneficial for you, make an appointment with your doctor.
Sleep deprivation has a negative impact on your mental health and wellbeing. It can impact your cognitive functioning and mood. Exercise is associated with better sleep and better mood. A study reports that individuals who consistently exercise reported improved quantity and quality of sleep (Ghrouz, et al., 2019).
Self-care can come in many different forms – physical self-care being one of them. Physical self-care does not only look like moving your body, but it also involves staying hydrated, eating nourishing meals, taking your medications consistently, and having a regular sleep schedule. All of these can be used as powerful tools to prevent burnout. By prioritizing your health and well-being and engaging in physical self-care, you are proving to yourself that you matter and that you can only take care of others in a sustainable way if you choose to take care of yourself, first.
Physical self-care can help build mindfulness in your daily routine. It can take some planning and commitment to consistently show up for yourself and find the time to engage in physical exercise. Exercising can easily become a mindfulness practice – especially if you choose to make that time screen-free. You might choose to create a playlist prior to starting to exercise. If you are going for a walk outdoors, you may choose to pay attention to your senses – what do you see on your walk? What sounds do you hear? What do you smell?
It can also help relieve feelings and emotions such as irritability or anger. We are not always taught how to appropriately deal with anger or irritability. As children, most of us were taught that it is not appropriate to feel and that we should do our best to shut it down without ever really dealing with it. It is possible that that anger or irritability has been pushed down for so long, and that it has been building up for months or even years!
Some folks can work with anger by breathing deeply, journaling, going for walks, or practicing yoga. Others may benefit from high intensity exercise – something that allows for bursts of energy to be released from the body and tiring out the body. This can look like going for a run, jumping on a trampoline, wall push-ups, boxing, or high intensity interval training.
Just in case these reasons were not enough to convince you that movement can be helpful for your mental health, physical exercise has a significant impact on your body image and self-esteem (Mahindru, Patil & Agrawal, 2023). Movement has the potential to help you reframe the relationship that you currently have with yourself, your body, and your brain. The relationship with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have. Why not make it the best that you can? Why not show up for yourself? You spend so much time investing in others and showing up for them, what might it look like to start and continue to invest in yourself, too?
Ghrouz, A. K., Noohu, M. M., Dilshad Manzar, M., Warren Spence, D., BaHammam, A. S., & Pandi-Perumal, S. R. (2019). Physical activity and sleep quality in relation to mental health among college students. Sleep and Breathing, 23, 627-634.
Mahindru, A., Patil, P., & Agrawal, V. (2023). Role of Physical Activity on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review. Cureus, 15(1), e33475. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.33475
