Overwhelmed? Discover How Moving Your Body Can Calm Your Mind as an HSP

  By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how simple movements can help you calm your mind, reduce overwhelm, and help you thrive as a highly sensitive person.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover the science behind exercise and stress reduction, how much exercise is needed to reduce stress in your life, and the kinds of exercise that are best for stress reduction. This is an edition of Strategy Fridays, where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.

I was talking with my nephew a few weeks ago at a family get together. He’s a big guy, real alpha guy, and we were just standing, chatting passing the time. And I mentioned that my podcast was doing well, and he says, Oh, what’s your podcast about? And so I said, It’s about stress management. And he thought about it for a minute, and he said, it’s just exercise.

He said, Exercise that takes care of stress. And I was like, Wow, okay, this is interesting. And My mind tends to go to, yeah, inner work takes care of stress, meditation takes care of stress there are a lot of things that take care of stress sleep even, and of course I know exercise is an important factor, but he was actually right.

There’s a lot of effectiveness to exercise. And I think for HSPs, myself included it’s one of the last places I look for getting any kind of relief or getting any kind of reduction in stress. And it’s actually one of the most scientifically documented and extremely effective. So let’s look a little closer at the world of exercise, the world of moving your body, and how effective that is in getting rid of stress.

First of all, just on a conceptual level, when you think about it, a lot of stress is dealing with the mind and the emotions. And when the mind is really busy or when the emotions are engaged they take all the energy and they can get into a little loop and it’s hard to break out of it. What exercise does is it puts you into your body, puts you into your body.

And what’s interesting in a meditative way, is it puts you into the now, here and now, you’re just moving your body. And this gets your breathing, this gets your moving, your blood flowing. And you tend to forget about the thing that’s running in your mind, or the emotion that’s running in your emotions.

And it, because the body, or I should say the mind can’t really hang on to two things at once very well. It tends to be a focus tends to focus on one thing at a time. And so when you start focusing on the body, which you have to when you’re exercising, it requires your attention, it pulls you away from that focus on mind or emotion.

But let’s take a look at some of the science behind using exercise as stress reduction. One of the first things people always talk about when they look at the scientific studies on exercise is that it produces endorphins. Now, endorphins are these natural feel good kind of chemicals that improve mood.

Now, why would I avoid doing something that would actually make me feel good? If I’m looking for stress release, this is a really perfect setup. Get the body moving, release some of these endorphins, get that feeling, that good feeling, and then And it actually can make you stand taller, it can make you, give you confidence, it can make you feel like you’re actually feeling good, strangely enough.

That’s number one. Another thing that really comes as a result of exercise is what they call neurogenesis, which means It’s exercise promotes the growth of new brain cells, especially in areas of the brain, like associated with stress regulation, like the hippocampus and these things, these brain cells actually grow, they actually develop as a result of exercise and so it has a direct effect on your ability to handle stress.

You’re, again, strengthening the horse and so you’re able to carry more load When you’re dealing with any kind of stress and then over time another thing that’s been shown over and over again is that If you rex, rex, if you exercise regularly, it decreases your baseline cortisol level. And cortisol is a stress hormone, and so as you exercise regularly that it just starts going down and down.

And that is a result of nothing other than physical exercise. Of course, there are other ways to reduce cortisol. Meditation is excellent at that. Doing your taking care of your. inner work, doing that kind of inner work is also very helpful as well. But why not use all the tools at your disposal? And then finally, one of the side benefits of good exercise and regular exercise is that it enhances your sleep quality.

You’re tired, body’s physically tired. And so it lies down and it wants to fall asleep quicker. It wants to sleep deeper. And whenever you are sleeping deeper, that is a major factor in managing stress because we process all of our stresses when we sleep. And so exercise, especially when it’s done regularly, can be a super big help for sleep and therefore for reducing stress.

So these are just a few of the big points. of how science validates the idea that my nephew is talking about that it’s all just exercise. Just do your exercise and you’ll be fine. Let’s look a little more closely at exercise. And the question comes up of how much exercise is needed to reduce stress in your life?

My big worry is I’ve got a lot of different priorities. I don’t have time to dedicate to, a lot of time for exercise, and so how much is needed? What do I need to do to start making a difference in my stress load because of exercise? One way or one kind of recommendation that I’ve seen is to aim for around 30 minutes a day, five days a week, something like 150 minutes in that range per week of moderate intensity exercise.

And that would be like brisk walking, cycling, dancing, swimming, something that’s moderate, but it’s not like too intense. And this. Actually becomes aerobic exercise. Aerobic means that you’re actually starting to work with less oxygen and it strengthens the body. This aerobic exercises, exercise reduces cortisol the stress hormone, boosts endorphins, and elevates mood, reduces anxiety.

Minutes a day I don’t know, could I fit 30 minutes a day in my life? Not easy at first, but you can start small, you can start even with 10 minutes a day and then build up depending on what you would like to do. But even shooting for 30 minutes a day and beginning to build that into a practice could make a significant difference in your overall experience of stress.

And then ideally, if you could add in some higher intensity aerobic exercise, maybe for 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, maybe 75 minutes a week. That’s like vigorous intensity exercise, like running or high intensity interval training or bicycling those kinds of things. That really gets the blood pumping and can add another level of stress release.

It can actually be cathartic because it can release stress very quickly. You’re focused as, you’re very focused. on the energy of the body and moving the body. And this can be super helpful. Strength training is also something that can be very helpful. Maybe a couple of times a week if possible focusing on all the different major muscle groups and doesn’t have to be weightlifting, although it can be like resistance band exercises or my favorite is body weight training.

I have a little app. That allows me to have little workouts, just a 15, 20 minute workout, sometimes as much as a 30 minute workout where I’m just doing different body weight exercises. That means like pushups, pull ups all kinds of things like that. And it’s amazing. I actually gained 20 pounds of muscle using that over several years.

And this helps, again, with all the same reasons of combating stress by focusing on the body and building that, that energy inside of the, putting the energy inside of the muscles rather than instead of inside of the brain. 10 15 minutes. Those small sessions of exercise can be amazing, maybe 10 15 minutes in the morning, 10 15 minutes in the evening.

You’ve got a real exercise program going. And if it can be more, great. If it can’t, fine. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. But This is one thing can make it doable to bring exercise into your life. So the next question is, what kinds of exercise are best for stress reduction? Obviously, aerobic activities are very helpful.

They get your heart rate up, they build your cardiac endurance, and they reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. These are great for long term stress reduction, and it can be a very effective approach. There are also what I like to call mind body exercises, like yoga or tai chi. These kinds of things work with the breath, the mind, the mindfulness.

The physical movement and these are very coordinating and they can be done slowly, deliberately, and they reduce physical tension. Yoga is amazing. I’ve done yoga off and on throughout my entire life and it’s always something that I love. It feels like a meditation by the time you’re done. Walking, especially in nature, is another really powerful kind of, green exercise where you’re walking outdoors.

in a natural setting and you’re naturally reducing your cholesterol, your cortisol, your blood pressure, you’re taking in the energy of all the natural surroundings and it’s calming and it’s of course enjoyable. And we HSPs love this kind of thing. One thing I’d like to bring up for highly sensitive people, it’s obvious things like yoga and things like even aerobic activity may be unnatural because it’s all done individually.

And we HSPs tend to do things individually a lot. One thing that really can be an interesting stress reliever is to do some things that are team sports or group classes. Things where you can reduce loneliness at the same time that you’re developing your physi physical ability. And I started playing pickleball some years ago, and it’s just so much fun.

And so you don’t even know you’re getting exercise until afterwards. And it’s just like play. And I think things like that can be a super support for HSPs. I also find that, being social is not always easy for us, but when I’m social in a focused way, with a particular thing that I’m focused on, a particular job to do, it’s much easier.

So if I’m playing a sport. with others and I’m focused on the ball and I know the what has to be done. There’s rules, there’s a structure that can actually be super helpful for building social ability even without being just freeform social, which is the most challenging kind of social, so social skill to build.

And then finally, I just want to bring up the value of course of stretching and flexibility work. This can include, again, yoga or static stretching, Pilates mobility work. All these things can reduce muscle tension, and those, that as a result can reduce stress as well. Again, gentle is important.

Doing it consistently is also important. It’s the program over time that makes a difference. Yes. Getting a little bit of intensity extra exercise right away can reduce stress in the moment. But if you can build it as a practice, then your chances of reducing the baseline of stress are much higher.

Another thing that can help when you’re doing exercise is just to be more mindful of that movement. Put your attention there. I’m playing pickleball. I’m going to really look at the ball. Watch my paddle hit the ball, and it feels like a meditation, actually. And that can be the same for whatever form of exercise you’re doing.

And then just a caution to all of us HSPs that it’s important not to overtrain or to, to excess physical exertion because that can become, of course, an additional stressor. So you can do it too far, you can go too far with it. And we need less sometimes as HSPs, and so just keep that in mind as you go into any kind of exercise program.

And of course, if you can, combine this with other stress reducing habits meditation, journaling, doing the work all the kinds of things that we talk about here on this podcast. Exercise is just one aspect of it. It takes care of a lot. But it’s not the whole thing, and so keep it in balance. In this episode, we looked at the science behind exercise and stress reduction, and we saw that exercise produces endorphins, neurogenesis, new brain cells, it reduces cortisol levels, and it improves sleep.

And we also looked at how much exercise is needed to reduce stress in your life. And we were playing with some ideas. in the range of something like maybe 30 minutes a day maybe another 15 minutes of aerobic exercise, high intensity aerobic exercise mixing in a little strength training, and it can be even short sessions.

It’s, there’s no exact science there, there’s no exact amount and it’s also important to not overdo it as a highly sensitive person. And then finally we looked at the kinds of exercise that are best for stress reduction and sometimes gentle exercises are good for HSPs, but also it’s important to get the body moving and get into the aerobic type of exercise.

to help move that stress out of the body. We also looked at mind body exercises like yoga, tai chi, walking in nature, team sports, as well as stretching and flexibility. So it’s a big area. It’s a another area to play in. It’s not something that you have to be stressed about in any way. But, it’s a chance to be in your human body and use it, and who knows, you may reduce a little stress along the way.

So thanks for listening, it’s always a pleasure to think about these things with you, and I look forward to more sessions, and in the meantime, have a great rest of your day.

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