It’s Mental Health Awareness week 2024: with the theme of “Movement: Moving more for our mental health”

So, how do we define movement? 

Well, it can be any type of movement that has a positive benefit on your social, emotional, and physical wellbeing. If it is meaningful, rewarding and you enjoy it, then you are more likely to repeat it. 

Engaging in any type of meaningful activity that gives a sense of pleasure, achievement and purpose will improve your mental health, reduce anxiety, depression, low mood and improve your self-esteem.  Participating in activity that we enjoy, such as exercise, whether it be walking in the fresh air, working out at a gym, or going to a yoga class, can have such positive effects on our wellbeing. 

If exercise isn’t for you, movement doesn’t need to be structured, it can be any type of physical activity, which increases your movement, which could include domestic chores, necessary tasks, playing football with your children, dancing around the house or walking to the shop.

However, sometimes this feels tricky if we are experiencing low mood and a loss of motivation. 

When this happens, we probably start to move less as we start to avoid engaging in some of our daily activities. As you avoid these activities, you then reduce your opportunity for social and personal activities that give you pleasure and achievement. 
Behavioural activation is a treatment technique used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help you to address avoidance and focus on activities to reestablish daily routines, increase pleasurable activities, and address important necessary tasks, therefore, increasing movement and supporting positive wellbeing. 

This strategy helps clients to re-engage in activities to improve their level of pleasure and achievement, improving their mood and improving their positive thoughts leading to an increase in motivation.

How do we overcome this:

• Make a list of activities that you’ve stopped doing (routine, pleasurable and necessary)
• Think about new activities that you might like to start
• Start small and try to plan and schedule activities into your day starting with the easiest, e.g., go for a daily walk
• Be consistent
• Regular small activities are better in the early stages to reduce procrastination and to encourage motivation.

Therefore… just try a little bit of extra movement and see the positive benefits on your wellbeing.

Find out more about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in Shean’s earlier blogLearn more about Shean and her approach to therapy with her clients