Levels of anxiety, depression, and hopelessness have been steadily rising for years. In 2011, 28% of high school students experienced “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” By 2021, that number had risen 42%. Among the broader population, about 10% of Americans were being treated for depression in 2015. By 2023, that number had risen to 17.8%. It is essential that we do what we can to take care of ourselves and even embrace life.
There are many things we can do to enhance our psychological well-being. Of them, I bug my loved ones the most, when I talk about exercise.
We all know exercise provides benefits for our hearts, muscles, bones, blood pressure, and balance. However, physical movement is also one of the best things we can do for our psychological well-being.
Roughly 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates is purported to have said ‘If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.” Scientists like Dr. John Ratey have since confirmed that exercise promotes the release of important neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, which are crucial for mood regulation, focus, and overall cognitive function. When we move our bodies, dance or play, these and other chemical processes are triggered that boost brain health, improving learning, memory, mood, and stress reduction. Some of the biggest benefits of exercise, Ratey argues, occur “from the neck up.”
However even having read the research, somehow it continues to surprise when these effects are experienced directly. Ten minutes into a workout and any stress or sadness I have been feeling melts away. Of course, whatever was causing the strain is still there. However, I am more equipped to deal with those things. When I feel too overwhelmed to work out, it is usually a sure sign that it is time to work out.
The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who runs and swims every day, talks about that moment during exercise when your mood suddenly shifts: “I run to attain a void,” Murakami says.
And while physical activity can place us in this space where there is an almost immediate change in our mood, making exercise a habit has substantial lasting benefits for our psychological health.
Murakami trains like an athlete to build the mental and physical stamina necessary to sit in restrained concentration for hours every day, week-after-week, writing lengthy novels. It is for this reason Murakami says that “writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”
Chess grandmasters, who burn as much as 6,000 calories a day during a tournament, also understand the importance of physical training to develop their extreme mental stamina. Champions such as Bobby Fischer, Magnus Carlsen, and Fabiano Caruana are all known for their intense workout routines.
It is not just novelists and grandmasters who require heightened mental and physical strength.
What about the teacher who, after staying up late to grade papers and respond to the demands of parents, must stand for eight hours while being attentive to a room full of children, each with their own separate interests, distractions and needs? There is the salesperson who must remain optimistic and positive after repeated rejections, or the plant manager whose process improvements are continually discounted. There are the servers in a restaurant and workers on an assembly floor. Truckers navigate hours of traffic that would incite the rest of us to road rage. And social workers, who despite low pay and high bureaucratic hurdles, remain caring, watchful and kind to the people that we love the most.
Of course, there is the lawyer, who is required to raise the uncomfortable things no one else wants to talk about. The stress, contentiousness and tedium of her work leads to the highest levels heart disease, depression, and job dissatisfaction among any career.
We should train like athletes. Even though most will never stand on the podium at the Paris Olympics, it will be our psychological health that collects the gold. We should all act as if this sort of survival training is necessary for our lives. Because it is. And besides, if the poet Charles Wright is correct that “the supernatural travels in the void” we can use exercise as a means to go and find it.
References
Murakami, H. (2004). The art of fiction No. 182. The Paris Review, (170), Summer.
Murakami, H. (2008). What I talk about when I talk about running. Alfred A. Knopf.
Ratey, J. J., & Hagerman, E. (2008). Spark: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain. Little, Brown and Company.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press.
Wright, C. (2001). Body and soul II. In A Short History of the Shadow (p. 12). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Witters, Dan (2023, May 17). Depression rates reach new highs. Gallup, Inc. https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-new-highs.aspx
Insel, Thomas (2023, December 28). US Depression Rates Reach New Highs. The Pew Charitable Trusts. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/archive/fall-2023/americas-mental-health-crisis
“Exercise” created by the author using Playground AI
“School Board” by Gerd Altmann generously provided for public use via Pixabay