Relationship Between Physical Movement and Mental Health
At our “founders’ health” session we talked about the relationship between physical movement and emotional state. Importantly, how persistent improvements in mobility, strength, and balance can impact our ability to regulate our emotions.
I don’t know about you, but I have always found sitting quietly in a corner with my thoughts extremely challenging, and have always used exercising outdoors (like long distance running) as a much more effective emotional vent. This was particularly obvious during the pandemic when a combination of mental toll of the uncertainty of the situation and social distancing rules made it difficult to regulate my emotions the way I’m used to, and the outcome was nearly devastating.
Fast forward three years: this year I spent a lot of time getting more comfortable with being quiet with my thoughts in a corner, aka meditation and other cognitive exercises, but still nothing beats putting the shoes on, and going out for a nice jog in nature. I mostly used meditation, stretching, yoga, and things like those which require much more controlled and fine grained movements, if at all, as ways to recover and prevent injury. But interestingly, the combination of all the above, and the work we have done in “founders’ health” group, has drastically improved my mental health baseline. So, getting deeper into the mechanism powering this change was quite fun for me!
The following are (mostly) notes from Chapter 13, Movement Based Strategies for Emotion Regulation, “Handbook on Emotion Regulation” by Tal Shafir and “The Body Keeps the Score” by psychiatrist and author Bessel van der Kolk and my own synthesis of search results.
Emotion regulation is a set of processes by which individuals spontaneously influence their emotions: which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions (James Gross)
Models of eating disorders and alcohol abuse suggest that individuals with poorly regulated emotions often turn to food or alcohol to escape from, or down-regulate their emotions
Another example is trauma which is not just a mental experience; it is stored in our bodies. Movement and physical sensations play a crucial role in processing and releasing trauma. Practices like yoga, dance, and exercise can help individuals reconnect with their bodies and release stored tension.
And the final example: physical balance training is shown to improve memory and spatial cognition [ref].
There are many strategies that involve attention and cognitive processes, such as attention-bias modification, thoughts suppression, mindfulness, acceptance, problem solving and reappraisal, but these leave out the persistent and major effects our body has on our emotional state
"Somatic markers" are feelings in the body that are associated with emotions, such as the association of rapid heartbeat with anxiety or of nausea with disgust. According to the hypothesis, somatic markers strongly influence subsequent decision-making.
Somatic Markers Hypothesis (SMH): Over time, emotions and their corresponding bodily changes (somatic markers), become associated with particular situations and their past outcomes.
Body loop: Neural pathway through which emotions can be evoked by changes in the body that are projected to the brain (eg. increased heart rate when seeing a tiger).
As-if body loop: Neural pathway through which cognitive representations of the emotions (imagining an unpleasant situation "as if" you were in that particular situation) can be activated in the brain without being directly elicited by a sensory stimulus. The evolutionary purpose of this is for the brain to generalize without data (aka abstract thinking) for example to avoid danger or to seek reward.
These pathways in the brain can be strengthened through regular reinforcement or weakened if left alone. Good quality sleep and exercises are two ways that improve neuroplasticity in adult brains and therefore make the reinforcement of these pathways stronger.
SMH implies a corollary, that through deliberate control of motor behavior and its consequent proprioception (the sense of where your body is in space) and interoception (the sense of what is happening in your body), one could impact their feelings.
There are 2 categories of movement strategies tied to emotional regulation:
Quantitative changes in motor behavior, i.e., increased movement intensity for a period of time, such as during aerobic exercise, produce metabolic processes, which generate a myriad of physiological changes like alterations in the levels of hormones (eg. endorphin), neurotransmitters (eg. serotonin), trophic factors (cell growth and repair protein), endocannabinoids (mood enhancing chemicals) and immune system function, that contribute to the reduction of stress, anxiety and depression.
Exercise could have short term (immediately after a session) or long term (baseline improvements) impact on an individual's physiology.
Qualitative modifications of motor behavior such as engaging in specific facial expressions, postures and whole body movements which are associated with specific emotions, use proprioceptive input to the brain regarding the current state of the body‘s muscle activation pattern and joint configuration to produce the corresponding emotional response.
Yoga
Power pose
Progressive muscle relaxation
Breathing exercises
Another interesting dimension to add is “body language”. We often try to use our “theory of mind” to guess what the other person is feeling or thinking based on their posture and movements. I bet being good at all the above will improve our ability to be more empathetic partners, friends, co-workers, and generally human beings when it comes to interacting with others.
If you only skimmed all these notes, here is what you need to remember: your body retains a score of how you have felt in the past and uses that to give you data about what you are feeling now and what you are possibly about to feel. So, next time you feel angry, stressed, excited, happy, … take a note of how your body is moving in space and how it behaves internally, and if you ever want to call in the same feeling, it’s likely that the same movements would help you activate it. Plus, regular movements (quantitative like aerobic or qualitative like yoga) reinforces the brain pathways that help you get better at this.
