Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Move a muscle, change a thought

Today, I was just feeling blah. Not sure whether it is the tiredness from the weekend that's still with me or whether I've got some anxiety just hanging around in my head. Anyway, I decided that the best thing to do was to get to the gym.

I've been a regular at the gym for many years but within the past month, I've found that I haven't been going as much and have worked during lunch. I know from articles I've read that aerobic exercise improves symptoms of mild to moderate depression. The toil of exercise has been proven to help manage emotions as well as providing a physiological tune up for the heart and vascular system.

So today I worked out for a good hour. It felt great to sweat and generally get rid of some of the stuff that was swirling around in my head. The saying of "move a muscle, change a thought" seemed to work. This doesn't mean that I'm just distracting myself so that the negative thoughts go away because of the distraction. It seems that by working out, I sweated all the negative stuff out of me. Maybe it's another twist on the theme that "I can't think my way into right action... but I can act (taking actions) my way into right thinking."

6 comments:

  1. You are right on the mark with this one. Move a muscle increase endorphins which in turn help fight depression and anxiety.

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  2. You and MC are exhausting!
    I just don't believe in sloshing my guts around by exercising. My organs are used to staying in one place ;)

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  3. yip! my walk with the dogs in the fresh morning air is good for the body and the mind. so i try not to think too much when i have to get up when i could slip in another half hour of shut-eye...

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  4. yep, just like I did and am going to do today again, sweat out the bad stuff :)

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