How Exercise And Meditation Supports Your Mental Health

Time and again, research has shown that physical exercise and meditation have tremendous benefits for mental health. They can boost our mood, reduce blood pressure, improve sleep, and help manage stress, anxiety, and depression. 

We've rounded up the benefits of physical activity and meditation to your mental health to help you get started on ‘lifting your wellbeing’ and incorporating physical exercise and meditation into your daily routine.

How Exercise Supports Your Mental Health

There are many reasons people exercise — weight loss, social connection and reducing risk of illness, to name a few. But one primary reason why working out, whether at home or in the gym, is a mainstay in people's routine is that it makes them feel good. 

When you exercise, your brain secretes all sort of wonderful chemicals that support us to feel happy and motivated. You may have heard of a ‘runners high’, this describes the kind of euphoria runners feel after and even during a run. It’s believed to originate from hunter and gatherer days when our brain word reward us for our hard work hunting and give us a happy feeling to encourage us to do it again. Now don’t worry if you don’t like running, we can all experience this same high through forms of exercise that we enjoy.

So what do we know about exercise and it’s positive impact on mental health?

Depression

Studies suggest that exercise can help manage mild to moderate depression as effectively as medication. For example, a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health reports that walking for an hour or running for 15 minutes every day can reduce the risk of major depression by 26%. Whilst maintaining an exercise routine can also help you avoid relapsing. 

Anxiety

Physical activity and exercise can relieve stress and tension by releasing endorphins and keeping your mind off things that cause you anxiety. By doing so, you are breaking the cycle of negative thoughts and giving way to more productive and positive thoughts, which will relieve stress and anxiety. 

Stress

When you're stressed, your body is tense, often in the neck, head, and shoulders areas. No wonder you complain of headaches, back pains, and stiff neck when under a lot of stress. Aside from this, you may also experience chest pains, sleep troubles, and stomach aches. These physical symptoms cause more stress, making it a vicious cycle. A great way to break this cycle is to stay active. Exercise, even in small and low intensity doses can relieve the tension in your body and relax your mind.

ADHD

Exercise improves motivation, focus, mood, and memory by boosting the brain's serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine levels. These hormones affect attention and concentration. 

How Meditation Supports Your Mental Health

Meditation has been a practice for thousands of years. Now known to be a great way to relax and reduce stress, meditation was originally practiced to profoundly understand the mystical and sacred forces of life. 

Some have the misconception that meditation is the absence of thought. But, meditation is focusing — concentrating on one thing, letting the ideas flow, then releasing those thoughts as they come.

Integrating meditation into your lifestyle can reap many benefits. Here are some of them:

Handling stress

Whether work-related stress or brought about by your personal life, stress has adverse effects on your overall health, such as tension, muscle pain, headaches, and gastrointestinal problems. Mindfulness meditation can lower the levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Researchers analyzed about 200 studies on meditation and found that it is an effective way to reduce stress. At the same time, meditating and repeating a mantra — whether a word or a phrase — has a calming effect and can help you divert your attention away from harmful and intrusive thoughts. 

Managing anxiety and depression

The goal of meditation is to keep you grounded in the moment. This saves you from wallowing in pressing worries about the future, contributing to depressive feelings. A JAMA Internal Medicine article reports that mindfulness meditation helps manage anxiety and depression and should be part of a patient's mental health treatment plan. Research has also supported that mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy helps patients with anxiety calm their nerves and reduce symptoms of depression, such as low mood, sleep problems, and fluctuating appetite.

Improving self-awareness and self-esteem

Mindfulness meditation allows you to closely monitor your thoughts and feelings without judgment, making you more self-aware. With self-awareness, you can also discover positive attributes that you would otherwise not acknowledge. For example, the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy published a study in 2009 that showed that participants suffering from anxiety after participating in a meditation program reported improved self-esteem and decreased stress levels. 

Focusing and concentrating

Meditation helps you stay and focus on the present. Researchers from Harvard Medical School conducted a study in 2011 examining how meditation affects the brain. After looking at the brain activity of 17 individuals, scans showed an increase in gray matter in the parts of the brain involved in memory, learning, and emotional regulation. 

Final Thoughts

Physical exercise and meditation are two of the most remarkable ways to improve one's mental health. Both have profound benefits to mind, body, and spirit. Staying physically active and practicing meditation can help improve your mental health and will benefit you in ways that extend to all other aspects of your life.

The Lift Your Wellbeing digital wellbeing platform ( click here for your free trial), offers all of your employees daily live stream classes in exercise, yoga and pilates as well as 100s of shorter on-demand videos. The platform gives your team the opportunities to integrate more exercise and mindfulness into their busy lifestyles and as such you as a workplace are playing a huge role in supporting their mental health.

If you would like to learn more about our mental health and wellbeing training sessions as well as our digital wellbeing platform with daily live stream classes then click on the button below.

Written by Sophia Young