Reclaiming your health and resilience: Part 2 - Movement
Transcript
What is health? I always start conversations with new clients with the question why are you here? What is it you hope to get out of this program? Almost every single one of them is there to improve some aspect of their health. Why else would you talk to a health coach or show up in a gym or a yoga class? They mean their overall health but what they talk about is a piece of it. Their physical health, like their weight or blood pressure or cholesterol. Or their mental health, like their stress levels or sometimes brain health. Rarely do people show up to a gym or even a yoga class with emotional or spiritual health as their number one motivator. But the thing is, all of those things are connected.
The word “health comes from old English meaning “whole”. So when you want to get healthy or healthier, you’re really trying to get whole. But it’s rare that people understand it that way. We tend to separate physical health and mental health and emotional health and spiritual health and treat them all differently. They may be struggling with food cravings that have led to out of control weight gain and are coming to you for exercise and a meal plan. They want someone to tell them what to do and what to eat so they can get results. But the real source of those issues could be unresolved trauma or a history of chronic stress and anxiety. Nothing we do will get them results until the underlying issues are addressed. This is what we call the bio-psycho-social-spiritual or simply the mind body connection. As a coach it’s part of our responsibility to help clients connect those dots.
Today is part 2 of our reclaim your health and resilience series where we explore the practical tools and skills that you can use anywhere anytime to influence your own health. There are 4 aspects we’re discussing. Last week was sleep, this week we’re looking at movement. I use the word movement on purpose instead of exercise because sometimes exercise can have a very prescriptive connotation. And because the body can’t really tell the difference between a walk on a treadmill at the gym and a walk around the block with your dog, we can include any and all activity as a valid choice to improve our overall health.
Movement of all kinds is a powerful influencer on all aspects of our health including of course our mighty nervous system. The reason of course is because all movement is accepted by the nervous system as a kind of challenge. And practice rising to that challenge in relative safety like with purposeful movement or exercise builds resilience across all bio-psycho-social-spiritual connections.
According to Health.gov to see lasting health benefits from movement
-adults need at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity
-muscle-strengthening activity, like lifting weights or doing push-ups, at least 2 days each week.
Does that sound like a lot to you? 150 minutes = 30 minute 5x per day 300 = 60 min 5 x a day
If we are stuck in the idea that we have to exercise at a gym, that may seem daunting. And it is for people starting out. Also what is moderate intensity aerobic activity? And what are the health benefits we should be seeing?
Most of the time when people think about starting to “workout” it’s because they want to see some kind of physical change in their body. Weight loss, or body composition (like fat loss) or to fit into a particular dress size. So let’s start there with what counts as movement and some of the reasons we should stay physically active.
“The first key guideline for adults is to move more and sit less. This recommendation is based on new evidence that shows a strong relationship between increased sedentary behavior and increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and all-cause mortality. All physical activity, especially moderate-to-vigorous activity, can help offset these risks.” Health.gov
Duh. Basically even “active” Americans today live a sedentary lifestyle. We tend to work at desks seated and we drive everywhere and we wonder why our hips and low back hurts all the time. Even if you do work out everyday, if that’s the only island of activity you get, and the rest of your day is seated you may not be getting enough movement for what your body needs.
Why do I say that? You can totally check that 150 or 300 minut a week box. Done and done. Let’s not forget that your body is supremely adaptable to whatever you ask it to do. If one hour a day you kill it at orange theory and you spend the other 23 hours seated at a desk, lounging on the couch or asleep your body will change to support you in those positions.
This is why it’s less important what you do for that one hour and more important that you move through the day.
Let's talk about that suggested intensity level. Moderate to vigorous. This is probably the hardest thing to teach to people. You can use a scale of 1-10 or 1-20 but until you develop awareness in your body of what those things mean it’s going to be a challenge. On top of that, because the body adapts and changes, intensity is relative. What feels vigorous today may be moderate tomorrow and vice versa. A good rule of thumb though is to use the talk test. You should be able to talk (even if you might not want to) but not be able to sing.
So think about activities that you could do that might get you there. Activities that you have access to outside of a gym. What do those look like?
Any activity counts, even if it doesn’t get you to the moderate to vigorous category. In fact all you need to get results from your movement is to understand that all activity improves your health in some way. We talked about some of the studies that prove how mindset and education affect health markers in a previous episode on mindset.
We know that exercise is good for us physically for all ages.
It reduces risk for all-cause mortality, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and depression; and improves bone health, physical function, and quality of life.
physical activity can decrease pain for those with osteoarthritis, reduce disease progression for hypertension and type 2 diabetes, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, and improve cognition for those with dementia, multiple sclerosis, ADHD, and Parkinson’s disease.
Reduces risk of 8 types of cancer bladder,* breast, colon, endometrium,* esophagus,* kidney,* stomach,* and lung*
New evidence shows that physical activity can help manage more health conditions that Americans already have. For example, physical activity can decrease pain for those with osteoarthritis, reduce disease progression for hypertension and type 2 diabetes, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, and improve cognition for those with dementia, multiple sclerosis, ADHD, and Parkinson’s disease.
Maybe that’s not enough incentive to try to get more activity in your life. We all know what we should be doing but sometimes it’s not that easy. So how can we use movement in intentional ways to get the health and wholeness that we want?
Let’s break this down into 4 categories and look at how movement affects them. Bio psycho social and spiritual. Keep in mind that we aren’t machines with interchangeable parts. Everything we do can and does affect every part of us so there is going to be overlap. Hopefully we’ll start to see some of that interconnectedness today.
Physical movement triggers strength, flexibility, balance and mobility improvements in muscles joints and facia. All of those things are connected also. You can’t improve balance without including flexibility and mobility. Strength gains can be limited by a lack of flexibility.
Weight bearing exercise is especially important as we age to maintain not just bone density but also muscle density. We know now that you can’t have one without the other. This is why strength training is so important as we age. The loss of estrogen production in menopause changes how women maintain muscle, so it can be very beneficial to lift heavy weight post menopause.
We talked about the cardiovascular recommendations but the real “why” here is because your heart is a muscle too. So find a way to challenge it in ways that will encourage it to become more efficient.
Psychologically, movement can have both immediate and long term benefits.
Many people use exercise as a way to combat stress. Maybe that’s because subconsciously we understand that the physical sensations that come up when we’re under stress, agitation, excitement, irritation, anxiety, anger, fear, panic, and others are really a demand for action coming straight for the nervous system. This is the fight or flight response in action, demanding some kind of physical action. So it makes sense that moving, any kind of activity or exercise can and does meet that need.
“New evidence shows that physical activity has immediate health benefits. For example, physical activity can reduce anxiety and blood pressure and improve quality of sleep and insulin sensitivity.”
For many people,a lack of awareness about the sensations that the nervous system uses to get us to act can be uncomfortable, even fear inducing. That uncertainty about what’s going on in the body can feel like a lack of control and lead to more anxiety and even panic attacks. But we can practice taking physical action in the moment to respond to those feelings and start to influence and rewire our stress response. This is one of the pathways we use in trauma release but you see it also in therapies like tapping, certain breathing techniques, emdr and others that harness the power of the body connection to communicate safety. Exercise can do the same thing. The stress response is general. All danger is life threatening. Everything looks like a tiger that’s going to eat you. These days, most of the time it's not a tiger, but the body still insists that you react like it is a tiger. Movement can mimic that. And have an immediate effect.
In the long term, regular physical activity has been shown to improve cognition, lower the risk of anxiety, depression, postpartum depression, and dementia including Alzheimers. There is definitely a strong correlation between activity and brain health.
Our mental and emotional health are closely tied to our nervous system state because part of the communication that goes on between the body and the brain ( a lot of it) has to do with how you are. Not just how you consciously feel about things but how you feel in your own skin. What does it feel like to BE you. Your gut (the gut brain axis) specifically the enteric nervous system does this job by sending 80% of the messages from the body to the brain. It does this through the vagus nerve. That’s the nerve that works so hard to bring you back to a resting and socially engaged state so you can digest and absorb good nutrition, so you can breathe well, detoxify, and think clearly. All the good stuff we associate with good health.
When that communication becomes dysregulated for any reason our emotions can become dysregulated. Any internal stress, inflammation, pain, illness, chronic gut pain, or injury will disrupt that communication and we can react emotionally to external situations before we even know it.
A simple example of this is hunger. Hunger triggers adrenaline so you’ll get up and go find food. If you’ve learned to ignore your hunger or stress has suppressed your appetite for too long you get “hangry” and lash out at people in seemingly irrational ways.
That’s what happens when we ignore a direct request from the body to move. When the body can’t trust us to give it what it needs when it needs it it will start to develop protective patterns. Some of those look like anxiety and depression, sometimes it feels like chronic pain or injury, sometimes it can look like autoimmune problems, allergies or simply suppressed immune responses (getting sick all the time).
Emotional health is closely tied to our social health. If we can’t trust what our body is telling us intrapersonally it’s very difficult to build trusting relationships with other people interpersonally. The ultimate goal of resilience training through the body is safe self regulation to the point where we can live in a socially engaged state.
All movement and activity gives you the opportunity to build awareness in your body and that in turn leads to better awareness mentally emotionally and eventually spiritually.
Spiritual health isn’t something we talk about a lot in the health coaching world but there is emerging research into the benefits of building spiritual connection to something. It doesn’t have to be any particular religion. In fact in my opinion spirituality and religion don’t have a lot in common. What you believe about yourself and the world around you can have a significant effect on your physical health and vice versa. I mentioned health /wellness beliefs earlier.
Movement of any kind done in the proper head space can become a spiritual experience. One example would be meditation. Most people think of meditation as sitting still but sometimes tapping into the rhythm of movement can become a kind of meditation or prayer. Walking, running, dancing, gardening, cleaning, biking, beach volleyball, playing at the park with the kids...whatever you’re into movement wise can become a place of celebration of gratitude and grace each and every day.
These types of movement can be considered active rest, which the body craves just as much as active activity. It’s the intention behind them that can expand the benefits beyond simply weight and cardiovascular health.
Movement doesn’t have to be a chore. It can and should be something fun. Something we look forward to. If it isn’t or it isn’t anymore, you have it within your power to choose something else. A different kind of activity. Something that feeds your soul. And brings you joy body mind and spirit.
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