Woke up, had a meltdown, did yoga
On the realities of movement for mental health
I was determined to have a productive, wholesome Sunday. I woke up at 8am, sat cross legged on the rug in my living room and breathed through a seven minute meditation. I opened my laptop at my desk and proceeded to have a meltdown. It was one of those why is nothing I’m writing making any sense moments that I’m sure every creative experiences, but it spiralled into a voice that told me I was a failure, awful at my job, etc etc. The frustration fizzed in my stomach. It bubbled in my throat. I felt itchy and uncontrollable.
There are a lot of things I could have done in that moment to deal with those feelings - and lots of things I’ve tried in the past. I could just sit in it and let it stew. I could cry and scream. I could get out my phone and scroll on Instagram. I chose to move (OK, I chose that after I cried and threatened to throw something at the wall), rolling out my yoga mat on my balcony and moving through a 20-minute ‘yoga for anger’ YouTube video. I was in pyjama bottoms and the first sports bra I pulled from my drawer and my hair was still wet from my shower.
Ironically, I had been trying to write something about Mental Health Awareness Week, and my complicated relationship with this year’s theme: movement for the mind. As just demonstrated, movement can work wonders for improving our mood. I now feel calmer, more creative and less out of control - but it’s not always as simple as the Instagram-perfect stories we’re offered.
Typically, these tales position movement as exercise: we see gritty videos of sweaty people throwing heavy weights around to demonstrate their physical and mental toughness. Or we see sunshine-lit photos of people smiling mid-run, showing how bright and happy they are now they’re moving their body. But exercise - and exercise culture - is pretty uninspiring and unnecessary for a lot of people.
The benefits of movement are reaped from yoga in your flat wearing pyjamas to dancing around your kitchen or taking the long route on your walk to the shops. A lot of the time, slowing down is actually the best thing we can do for minds that are made to race at a million miles per hour, and a HIIT class can just as stressful as your inbox. Movement can be whatever you want it to be - fast, slow, intense, soft, long, short. We’re over-sold it as something intense and glamorous.
However you move, know that your mood is entirely different to your mental health. Today, yoga helped me shake out anger, which was a momentary feeling, not a diagnosable mental illness. On the other hand, I exercise pretty much every day - ranging from an intentional walk to a 12k run or an hour in the weights room at the gym - and I still have generalised anxiety disorder.
Exercise is not a cure for mental illness, despite what we are told (even the Mental Health Foundation referred to exercise a “miracle cure” when writing about this year’s awareness week, in a sentence that made my eyelashes reach my eyebrows in astonishment). There is no cure for mental illness. There are treatments and management tools, but there is nothing that can indefinitely clear our minds from sickness. Not medication, not therapy, not diet, not exercise.
Someone who uses exercise to boost their mood telling someone with a mental illness that “a run will help!!” is tone deaf. I often exercise in spite of my mental health in order to reap the other benefits it gives. I end runs just as anxious as when I started them. I can do that because I have the privilege of disposable income, time, age and other factors that mean I’ve found a way to move despite mental illness - a lot of other people can’t experiment with that.
There’s also no failsafe prevention for anxiety, depression, OCD or any other mental health condition. Even someone who has a toolkit full of the best practices can experience circumstances that mean their brain stops working at its best - whether it’s heartbreak, grief, poverty or addiction. Sometimes, the chemicals just flatline for no obvious reason. Movement can potentially help to shallow the depths of illness, but it won’t stop deep waters from existing.
Exactly why we put exercise on a pedestal comes down to a lovely blend of neo-liberalism and individualism, optimisation-culture and fatphobia. But forcing the narrative that being fit is a solution to poor minds hides the fact that the pursuit of fitness can actually cause poor mental health.
It’s not surprising that obsessive exercise is seen as a good trait - a sign of dedication - but it’s just as bad for you as other hyper-fixations. I say this as someone who routinely falls into the trap of believing that regimented movement is a good step to take for my mental health: whenever I sense the initial lethargy of burnout or acceleration of anxiety, I start plotting in ‘stress-beating’ exercise. Often, that comes at the expense of seeing friends or sleeping well (two other important tools for better mental health). It’s obviously a subconscious way to garner a sense of control during overwhelming times, and guess what? It doesn’t work. My mental health likely gets worse than it would have anyway because my world has become so much smaller. It’s a retaliation I’m working to detach from, as someone who, for a long time, used my body as a cover for other sadness in my life. Then, my mental health also worsened because of the physiological changes that my exercise routine had on my body: declining hormones, low energy availability.
I love moving my body. It is the antidote to the desk-bound, in-our-heads lives that we lead. Dropping down into our bodies is often the release we need to lift our moods. On days I feel antsy, raising my heart rate and burning my muscles helps silence my racing thoughts, each heavy exhale releasing pent-up energy and worry. (Nerd moment, but one of my favourite facts about movement is that engaging our core changes how the brain and the adrenal glands - which sit just above our kidneys and are responsible for producing the stress hormone cortisol - communicate. It makes perfect sense that this would be the case: we’re physically stimulating the glands when we crunch our midsection, but it’s also quite a mind-blowing connection.) And long-term movement can teach you about trusting yourself, feeling confident and finding community. But exercise doesn’t always deserve its pedestal. Move regularly, however you see fit, to look after your mood. Use it to find joy - but not to cure you.
Thank you so much for reading Gray’s Anatomy. Phew, this is a big subject and I’d love to know your take on it - please share a comment below with your thoughts.
Love this ❤️ You’re so right that movement can help you move through a rut but it won’t necessarily solve it altogether xxx