Establishing healthy habits, including diet and regular exercise help to maintain positive mental health. Making changes to your diet can help to improve your mood and focus, giving you more energy and motivation to incorporate exercise into your lifestyle.
Practices like the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM® method and mindful eating encourage you to understand the relationship between mind and body. Incorporating elements of mindfulness into your diet and exercise offers a more measured, conscious understanding of the physical and internal mechanisms that are at work during eating and exercise. You can recognise when your body and mind are truly healthy and nourished or, take steps towards achieving that state.
Many studies have shown that exercise can improve mental health. It encourages better sleep, releases feel-good hormones and manages stress or anxiety by giving you something productive to focus on.
Mind.org.uk has useful advice about physical activity, diet and positive mental health. Here are some of their handy tips on how to get started with exercise for positive mental health:
1. Start small
If you’re just starting on your exercise journey (even if you are more experienced) remember to be kind to yourself. Don’t compare yourself to others. Focus on your own goals and work with your highs and lows.
2. Everyday things count
All kinds of physical activity make a difference! Whether that’s walking the dogs, gardening or doing housework.
3. Clear your head.
Physical activity often helps divert your attention from unwanted or negative thoughts and helps you focus on something productive.
When we understand the relationship between exercise and feeling good, we begin to recognise the internal mechanisms at work in our bodies. When we feel stressed, we feel physical symptoms such increased heart-rate, sweating etc. Exercise such as the Gyrotonic Method helps us to focus and use our breath to combat these physical symptoms and return to a calm state. The Gyrotonic Expansion Method focuses on the collaboration of the mind and body working effectively together and is a holistic approach to movement that creates coordinated strength and flexibility without joint compression, injury or over-exertion.
Hayley Oxley creates personalised sessions tailored to each client with one-to-one session working towards your own goals.
Whether you’re just starting your exercise journey or love exercise and want to try something new, why not see if finding routine with The Gyrotonic Method could work for you?