Workouts for mental health can be beneficial for the body. Do you know that there are kinetic activities that can boost mental health? Here’s the thing: when we do workouts, we allow our bodies to move. Doing a physicall routine can be part of our everyday list for mental health wellness. This is because it riggers emotion-inducing hormones such as dopamine and serotonin. These hormones help elevate our mood as well as keep our body in shape. Exercising is an effective anti-anxiety and depression treatment with body-building benefits.
If you want to get fit mentally, then you should do workouts for mental health. When you do this, you also get fit physically as both of them go together. The first hurdle you have to overcome is the willpower to get yourself moving and sweating. You know the reasons why mental health is important so a few workouts per week might help. Exercising is a healthy coping method to overcome common mental health symptoms such as mood and anxiety disorders. In this blog, we’ll be delving deep about what are the workouts that will improve mental health wellness.
7 Workouts for Mental Health
Do you know that within 5 minutes of workouts, your mood instantly brightens? This is one of the findings of recent researches surrounding mental health and exercise. One of the latest studies from 2018 says that working out has been found to significantly reduce mental health symptoms.
If you’re serious about improving your mental health for the better, maybe you should try doing one or two of these exercises:
- Jogging – this is probably the easiest way to destress and thus, improving your mental health. Jogging is an aerobic activity that involves the use of legs and feet to move around from one place to another. When it comes to jogging, the exercise means that you have to trot or run at a slow pace. The benefits of jogging include burning twice as many calories as walking, getting sufficient vitamin D from the sun. It also helps in increasing mood-elevating hormones such as endorphins and serotonin. These brain chemicals can improve mental health.
- Yoga – a popular leisurely exercise that involves body movements and meditation techniques. It is common among the female population as well as the elderly. An effective treatment against stress, yoga incorporates mind and body aspects. There are different styles of yoga depending on your instructor. These types can either be physically involved or a calm activity that is geared towards physical and mental wellness. As yoga’s first purpose is to increase self-awareness and discernment it is definitely beneficial for mental health.
- Cycling – a fun, leisurely activity that targets the improvement of your legs and feet. It also boosts your coordination skills as well as posture. Cycling is also a sport that’s practiced best with like-minded cyclists. These can be your friends and family who are also into cycling. In the aspect of mental health, it can reduce stress and anxiety levels. Like jogging, it involves light to heavy physical movements and can release happy chemicals to boost mood.
- Swimming – do you know that when we swim, we’re actually capable of sweating underwater? Our body can break down sweat in whatever rigorous activity that we do. Getting yourself to swim on the water even if it’s just for an hour can improve the quality of sleep and mimimize depression and anxiety. A study also says that swimming or dipping yourself in the water can improve blood flow inside the brain. Particularly, it releases one of the happy hormones of the body called endorphins.
- Boxing – this may be a rough sport but it’s perfect to release stress through displacement., a redirection of negative emotion to something or someone else. When you’re boxing, you’re most likely hitting the punching bag or a boxing partner with the proper paraphernalia. Boxing helps you to be “here and now.” It focuses the mind and does not let it wander off to the past or future. The physical and mental benefits of boxing are limitless.
Workouts That May Seem Like Not Workouts (But It Is!)
6. Dancing – this is a fun and expressive activity where you put some moves to your groove, When dancing, you get to focus and be creative on your choreography to go with the beat. It also helps you sweat out and release stress. There are different genres of dancing like hip-hop, jazz, and even classical music dancing and all of them work. Moreover, this activity also helps you become more confident.
7. Singing – not all people may know about this, but singing is a reflexive exercise. It is an effective stress reliever and a strong vocal cord exercise. This activity is popular among Filipino households as they hold a karaoke. Singing takes a lot of emotions out and regulates proper breathing techniques. When singing in a group or choir, it provides a sense of belongingness It also elicits emotions depending on the genre that you’re singing. To boost mental health, select genres that have happy or inspiring lyrics and not the sad ones. This will worsen the mood and deepen feelings of anxiety and depression. It’s alright to feel these emotions, but not doing something about it will hurt in the long run. Sing no matter the tune as long as it makes you feel better.
So there you have it. These are seven workouts that you can do to help improve your mental health. Some other activities also include walking or playing field games but they’re not really known as rigorous physical workouts–but hey, they still count us sweat-inducing bodily movements. We understand that it takes a lot of effort to continue workout sessions. It’s almost the same way with therapy, too but minus the sweat and muscle cramps. But hey, you can do it
Get That Physical and Mental Health Wellness
Which ones are you already doing? And what are the things you’re going to try out? We’re ready to know them in the comments below.
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