135: Movement as Medicine for your Soul: Exercise as a Wellness Tool for Mental Health

In this episode of Feed Your Soul with Kim, we are talking about “movement as medicine,” reframing exercise from diet-culture goals like shrinking the body, burning calories, and punishment into intuitive, mind-body-spirit movement that supports mental health. 

We look at movement the ways movement can regulate the nervous system, improve mood and sleep, increase emotional resilience, and help process emotions by reducing stress hormones and boosting endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin. 

Join us on the Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast as we explore: 

•  What is the difference between exercise and movement?
• Why is movement so critical for your mind/body/spirit wellness?
• What are ways to get started on your movement journey?

00:00 Welcome and Topic
 
00:47 Reframing Exercise
 
02:46 Movement Basics
 
04:40 Why Movement Helps
 
06:19 Emotions and Regulation
 
09:18 Intuitive Movement
 
11:24 Start Small Today
 
12:42 When Motivation Fades
 
14:31 Move With Others
 
17:27 Self Love Mindset
 
18:48 Final Encouragement
 

Please note this podcast is not a substitute for mental health therapy or seeing your physician. Please see a qualified professional if you think you have mental health struggles.

 
Get your Downloadable copy of How to Choose Your Right Therapist
 
https://go.feedyoursoulunlimited.com/choosetherapist-completeguide


Connect with Kim

Therapy: https://feedyoursoultherapy.com/

Coaching: https://feedyoursoulunlimited.com/

You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTuSnNrSDhLvbhxoTMXZgog



Kim McLaughlin, MA

Kim McLaughlin is a psychotherapist. coach, speaker, and author. She helps people who feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and overloaded, and it shows up in feeling unsatisfied in your life. She has a Master of Arts Degree in Clinical Psychology. Kim is a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, helping people to gain peace with food.

We would love to get your feedback on this show and let us know what you would like to hear about in upcoming shows. Email us at info@FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com



Thank you for listening.
 
Please be sure to leave a review for others to find us and share this podcast with a friend.
 

Join us for more conversation at:

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/feedyoursoulunlimited/
@feedyoursoulunlimited

Website:
http://feedyoursoulunlimited.com/

We would love it if you would leave us a 5 star review on your favorite platform.

Thanks for listening to the Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast.

Transcript

 Welcome to The Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast. If you're looking to feel better in your life and want to feed your soul, you are in the right place. Here we believe life just doesn't have to be so hard. I'm Kim McLaughlin and I'm your host. I'm a psychotherapist, speaker, coach, and bestselling author. In today's podcast, we're discussing movement as medicine for your soul, exercise as a wellness tool for mental health. We've been talking in the podcast about different kinds of wellness tools, and I love this one, and I think it will give a lot of value to you about what you can do to increase, literally to increase your wellness pretty easily if you want to dig into this. Many of us, movement has been framed as something we should do as a tool to tr- shrink ourselves, to burn calories or to fix our bodies. And from a young age, I don't know about you, but I was taught that exercise is tied to discipline, punishment, and appearance, and that we're supposed to disconnect from our bodies and just dig into this type of exercise that really doesn't feel really good. And I wanna look at changing that idea up and having our come from be about our overall wellness. And moving away from having exercise that is about changing our body size and moving into movement, which is about our mental health. What we're looking at is seeing movement as a part of supporting your mental health, regulating your nervous system, and helping you feel more grounded, present, and alive in your daily life. And this shift, I invite you to do because it's moving for your wellness, not for weight loss, not for what you think your body should look like, but just literally moving for movement's sake. I have a lot of a history working with people who binge, eat, overeat, engage in some kind of eating disorder, and really exercise has always been tied up in the idea of losing weight. It wasn't about it being fun. It wasn't about engaging in this enjoyable activity. It was about having the results of losing weight. And I think now about exercise, which I now term movement as a mind, body, spirit-led action that really has been super beneficial to me and to the people that I work with. So let's start with some basics. I think it's good to get some ideas on the table about what my idea of these terms are and how you might look at them differently. So first, what is exercise? Everybody I talk to thinks, goes, "Ugh, exercise. It's hard. It's sweaty. It can hurt. It focuses on losing weight. It focuses on getting rid of calories and really about how your body looks afterwards, nothing else." And I like the idea of movement because movement is fun, it's active. Yes, it can be sweaty. Yes, it can be hard. And it's moving our body for the sake of moving our body. So we could enter into this reframing movement as literally a wellness tool. And when we step away from the diet culture, which is really performance-based thinking and exercise in the service of losing weight, we can come up with movement, which is really something different. Movement is an act of self-care. Movement is an act of love an act of self-love, a way to check in with yourself, and it's a resource you can return to when life feels heavy, overwhelming, and you just feel disconnected. I wanna bring up the idea that movement doesn't have to be intense or time-consuming to be meaningful. And by meaningful, using it as that wellness tool. Yes, movement could also increase your strength, increase your stamina, and increase your muscle tone. Yes. And I'm saying all of these can be included, and through that movement, you can have the benefit of mental and emotional wellbeing. You guys know the research, you've heard it before, about movement supports mood regulation. It reduces stress hormones. It improves sleep. It increases emotional resilience. And you don't need to know all the science to know. It just feels different and you feel better. And likely you've experienced it yourself, just like me, taking a short walk. It clears my mind. It clears my head. I stretch to just get that tension out of my body so I can be more enlivened and be more purposeful in what I do throughout the day. Movement could be dancing with music on just to get more connected into my body. This movement, this type of movement is about supporting your whole self through that use of our body. Let's talk about the mental and emotional benefits of movement, because that really is a powerful reason to move our body, and it has nothing to do with how you look. Movement can directly impact your brain and nervous system in a way that really supports your men- mental health. Moving your body increases your endorphins, your dopamine, your serotonin, all those feel good chemicals that help regulate your mood, reduce anxiety, and just increase your overall sense of wellbeing. Movement helps reduce cortisol, which is that stress hormone that stays elevated when we're overwhelmed and emotionally overloaded, and when we're constantly pushing ourselves. I think of movement also that it helps us process our emotions. It helps us process our emotions, because emotions are not just the thoughts. It's really this physical sensation that literally lives in your body. When we suppress our emotions, we ignore the tension that shows up, the fatigue that shows up, the irribility, the burnout, the overall stress. And I want to propose that gentle movement, increasing the movement gives those emotions a way to move out of your body instead of feeling stuck inside of your body. Movement can literally ground you in your body so that the emotions don't feel so overwhelming. Movement brings us into sensations of our breath, into rhythm, and to literally being feet on the floor, that grounding point that we just talked about a minute ago. It pulls us out of our heads and reconnecting back into our body, which we know is deeply regulating. I've had plenty of times where I go to the gym literally to regulate my emotions. I have gone to the gym when I'm feeling angry and I need to ... I just get on the treadmill and run really fast. I also have gone to the gym and done boxing, kickboxing, which I love and it feels like I'm getting that anger out on the bag through punching and kicking. And it feels really good. And when I leave, I don't feel so angry, even though I've done nothing to work out the anger in terms of anything other than moving my body. I also find that sadness moves out of my body with yoga. So yoga is a great place to go and be centered in my breath and centered in my muscles and centered on the floor, and that helps me release some sadness. Also, I find that walking helps reduce my anxiety and helps me get that anxiety, that kind of that physical tension out of my body. Exercise when it's centered on weight loss can feel like punishment. It can feel like punishment for eating too much, eating at all, and the need to make our body thinner. We push ourselves and override our signals and ignore our body's needs in pursuit of that outcome of a smaller body. I talk about this a lot in the other podcasts that we've done, especially around intuitive eating, where we talk about coming back into our body and really recognizing what kind of foods our body needs for that recognition of the body and really what it's calling for rather than that overall weight loss and dieting kind of mindset. So I invite you to approach movement with a mind body kind of approach, and that's a different relationship than with exercise, than exercise, right? So instead of asking, "How can I change my body?" I think we can move into asking, "What does my body need today? What would make my body feel good?" And those are really good questions because then you're moving into that, once again, like intuitive eating, this is really intuitive movement where you're asking your body, "What does it need? Does it need stretching, gentle yoga? Does it need more of a restful kind of movement? Or does it need a full-on hour doing kickboxing where you're really sweaty?" All of those, there could be room for all of those. And it, when you dig into what does my body really need today, then you're honoring the fluctuations in your energy and in your mood and in that inner capacity of what you might need. I find that women are managing all kinds of stress and they're giving caregiving and leadership and this emotional labor that they do, that we just need space to move our bodies. Once again, when we've been somebody who hasn't exercise or connected exercise with dieting and losing weight, there's really this lack of idea about what movement could really do for us and how it could be s- so helpful. And when we come from this approach, I find that this more intuitive movement builds a sense of self-trust, that we're listening to ourselves rather than forcing ourselves to do something. What I find is when we have a history of eating issues is that we just don't exercise, we don't do any kind of movement, and our bodies are made to move. We're in a physical form and we're made to move. So let's introduce and wonder about the idea of how can we start moving without feeling that kind of pressure. So if movement has felt complicated for you before let's start with something small and move into it move into it in a more gentle way, right? So questions I find are helpful is what type of movement feels supportive right now? What sounds like a gentle and doable type of movement today? The last one, I love this question. When I was a child, what movement did I enjoy? And these things get you back centered into your body and into what really could work for you right now, and really getting back into engaging with your body in terms of movement. You might start with five minutes. If you haven't done anything yet, go start with five minutes, take a short stretch, go stand up and just stretch your body, walk around the block is good do a little dance in your kitchen. These moments can add up to feeling more centered in your body, and then you start feeling that connection with being more open to engaging in more movement. And we're talking about this movement for lifetime. It's just not something that comes and goes whether you're on a diet. And what I think is important is to begin to look at what do you do when the motivation fades, when you just don't want to do it. And questions I literally ask myself is, and these actually get me going to be in, in more of that movement mindset and literally doing it is, do I feel calmer after I engage in this activity? Does my body feel better? Does my body feel open? Do I sleep better? Do I feel more emotionally regulated? And I can tell you that every time I have wondered about whether I should go to the gym or whether I should take a walk, I think about how will I feel in the end? Will I feel a little bit more joy? Will I feel a little bit more peaceful? Will I feel more centered in my body? And always the answer is yes. And so those help motivate me to want to get outside. So I look at that more long-term effect of, in the end, I will feel physically better and mind, body, spirit, I will feel better. So just know that whatever you do, it counts a little bit of walking counts, stretching counts, restorative movement counts. There's no hierarchy of better or worst kind of types of movement. I know that we have, there are all kinds of scales and scores about, if you do this much walking at this fast of a pace, you're going to burn this many calories. I'm encouraging you to move off of that and instead move into what would make my body feel better? Where would I feel calm afterwards? What could I do to feel calm afterwards and feel more centered in my body? The last thing I wanted to talk about was doing it with somebody else. I'm finding that people that I talk to want more and more connections with others. And I think movement is a fabulous place to have more connection. So you're not just connecting with your body, you're connecting with another person. Some of the activities that I like to do with friends or with my family is bike riding, yoga. I like to do walking and hiking, weightlifting, swimming and standup paddleboard. All those things are so fun with other people. I go to my yoga studio and I love being there because I'm there with the same people every day. We get to know each other and we love checking in and being in community with each other and having that kind of connection makes it a double win, the connection win, and also the movement win. I also like walking or hiking. My husband and I do that as often as possible. We love to go to our loc- local nature preserves and different kinds of recreational areas to hike. And we love being out in the sun and breathing the air. Oh my God, listening to the birds and feeling in touch with nature is so uplifting. And it's a form of movement, it's also a form of connection between me and my husband, but it's also a connection between us and the environment, and that is a win all the way around. So there are lots of ways to increase your overall mind, body, spirit, and it's just about looking at what are the options and what would you like to do? That, back to that question of what would help me feel calm right now? How do, how can I be more in touch with my body and how can I be more emotionally regulated that when we're coming from those perspectives, it's really opens up a whole new area of what we can do as our movement. 'Cause I find that when we look at exercise is really hard, really sweaty, in the gym a half, or I'm sorry, not a half hour, an hour at least, and you have to go at it really hard and really test yourself. And I don't mean that when we engage in movement that can't be part of it. That is often something that I love to do. I love to test my strength and see if I can do something a little bit more than what I did before. And I find that makes me feel happy at the end of my workout because I know that I engage my body in a way that feels really good and really tested my limits. And I like doing that. So I'm not saying don't do that. I'm saying let's lean into what your body needs at that moment and that the end result is about this increase in your mental and emotional and spiritual wellness. This is about moving from love, not from the takeaway of the negative. So it's about self-love. And when we're coming from a place of self-rub, love, you don't need to punish your body. You don't need to earn certain types of movement, that engaging in yoga or walking is just as valuable as going for a hard run or swimming fast. Like it's still valuable and it helps you out and it can change how you think about life and yourself and you don't have to be thin. You're allowed to move simply because it feels good for you. You're allowed to move simply because you feel more at home in your body. And I want to encourage you to redefine your relationship with movement and let this be your permission slip. Lean into movement, lean into what works for your body and focus on the win is the end result of feeling more connected with your body, more connected with your emotions, clarity in your mind. These are all super important positive outcomes, and I hope you use this wellness tool of movement. I would love for you to write in the comment section, what are you doing for your movement? What's something you can start doing? There are so many things that are really fun and enjoyable that you could get started on now. I invite you to move for your wellness. This is Kim McLaughlin from Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast. I look forward to talking with you again. Bye everyone.