Healing Space | Why physical exercise also offers emotional release

There is no physical fitness without emotional and cognitive fitness, and vice versa. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

Forget the fitness goals of the body for a while, the weight you want to lose and the physical health goals you have set for yourself - the numbers, I mean. Go to the feeling of your body, its voice, its pain, and its resolution. Listen, I mean really listen, to your body this year.

To begin with, your body is the most powerful instrument of emotional self-expression that you have. Research tells us that aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart rate up, which includes activities such as gardening, has immense benefits for anxiety and depression. They elevate mood by increasing blood circulation and influencing the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis), which increases your capacity to handle the inevitable stresses of daily living and working. The HPA mediates with the amygdala, which controls your fear responses, flight or fright, and thus, your reactivity. Simply put, you are able to take more.

Listen to Stanford University professor and Huberman Lab founder Andrew Huberman’s podcast on how sunlight affects us, and you’ll realise why waking earlier in the day and having your eyes adjust to sunlight as the sun rises, for about 2-10 minutes is the best thing you can do for yourself. That and a fresh intake of air to the lungs.

That’s the science of it, but also from the emotional health point-of-view, quite simply, pain is the voice of your body and physical movement is its release.

Think back over the years to all the heavy emotions you have been carrying. Some of them, like grief at the loss of a family member or friend, have no apparent resolution. They just are. And they sit there like a rock on your heart, or a vacuum, whichever it may feel like to you.

Others, like unfairness, injustice, whether it’s being passed over for a promotion, denied credit, going unacknowledged, or having someone take what’s rightfully yours, like property, shares, business, are difficult to come to terms with.

Sometimes we do not feel empowered enough to combat it. So we keep it in. This can also extend to family concerns, like elders saying and doing things we don’t feel we can respond to or defend against at the time.

Where do these feelings go, especially when unexpressed?

Into the body.

They go into the body and take on the somatic structures of pain. They sit in the shoulders, on the hips, in the knees, spine, the tell-tale signs show up in how you grind your teeth, how clenched you hold your jawline, the tightness in your forehead and temples that feels like tightly stretched bands, the strain in your neck and shoulders (this is why you instinctively reach for these areas when stressed and making soothing gestures with your fingers, attempting to calm them down or ease out the stress accumulated there). Your body is aware of and reads your stress even before you do. Instinct and ingrained behaviour patterns can make us push things down like children who fall silent when an adult or teacher enters the room, without our even thinking about it.

Also read: Healing Space | Stop punishing your body

If you actually listen to your body, really hear what it is saying, this is what you should be hearing. When you take up an intensive course like ashtanga yoga, you’ll find your practice interrupted by a sudden rush of relief, an overflow of tears, and you don’t know where it has come from. It’s this hitting of hidden pockets held deep within. When you run, you might find yourself suddenly having an angry conversation with someone about a long-ago incident you thought you had let go of. This happens as the body brings up its stored emotional memory for release.

Understand that there is no physical fitness without emotional and cognitive fitness and vice versa. You may have a fantastically customised physical programme, but until you begin to address the repressed emotions and thoughts, all the smart repartees you have stored up for your unfair boss, all the times you have bitten your tongue, all the screaming you have held back in your throat, you will continue to feel pains and aches in your body. Becoming aware of this voice of the body is as vital to releasing you from old patterns of behaviour, cycles you get sucked into, and emotions you need to let go of as any physical fitness regime you set yourself up for.