dearJulius.com

The Best Exercise for Anxiety

The Best Exercise for Anxiety
© Photo: Getty Images/Gonalo Barriga exercise for anxiety

By Kells McPhillips, Well+Good

Workouts have so much to offer: Yoga “creates space” in the body, Pilates works the tiniest nooks of your body, and HIIT gets your heart racing. Exercise works wonders for your mental health, but when we asked a psychologist to name the absolute best exercise for anxiety, he said one outpaces all the rest: running.

“If you choose the right activities, exercise can be a distraction that allows the part of our brain that works in anxiety to cool off,” says Kevin Gilliland, PsyD, a licensed psychologist and executive director of Innovation360. This region of your brain is known as the limbic system, and it rules over your emotions and memory. “Anything that’s a compound, complex movement is ideal for helping out with anxiety, because there is no way I can worry about a project at work and, say, stand in a complicated yoga pose,” says Dr. Gilliland. And when it comes to providing that sweet, sweet neuro-distraction, no movement works quite as well as running.

Why, you ask? Dr. Gilliland says that running falls under a category of a movement known as “green exercise,” or any workout that’s done outdoors. “Green exercise requires us to use other parts of our brain. I’m looking for cars, other pedestrians. I’m running off of a trail, which means I’m using all of these other senses to know how the terrain changes. When we do that, we allow that anxious part of our brain to cool off and rest. That, neurochemically, is beneficial, because it’s not overheating with worry,” says Dr. Gilliland.

“Green exercise requires us to use other parts of our brain… When we do that, we allow that anxious part of our brain to cool off and rest.” —Kevin Gilliland, PsyD


As we log mile after mile, our brains continue playing the game of tweaking our strides based on the road ahead and it provides a pure and meditative form of distraction. “It’s even more than a distraction,” says Dr. Gilliland. “Distraction is ‘I’m not thinking about it,’ but in this kind of distractions, we’re also not dumping all of those stress hormones into our bodies, of which cortisol is the worst.” In fact, running produces those feel-good hormones (endorphins) that give you that extra pep in your step for the rest of the day.

It’s worth noting that to get this particular benefit from running, you need to take off outside with the help of a running app, a podcast, or a bop-filled playlist. And once you do get out into the sunshine, you can add extra (good) distractions to your workouts by playing little games with yourself, like counting the stop signs you pass, dropping and doing five push-ups anytime you see someone with a red T-shirt, or taking the uphills at an increased pace, then recovering on the downhills.

Wrap up your last mile, and ride those feel-good endorphins. You deserve them.

|Featured Content_$type=three$c=3$l=0$m=0$s=hide$rm=0


A Part of Julius LLC
Made with in NYC by Julius Choudhury
Name

Acne,1,Advice,47,AIDS,1,Alcohol,5,Allergy,5,Animal Health,1,Anxiety,8,Asthma,3,Autism,1,Back Pain,26,Birth Control,1,Blood Pressure,2,Blood Type,1,Cancer,78,Children's Health,19,Coronavirus,32,Dandruff,1,Dementia,8,Dental Health,29,Dentistry,1,Depression,26,Diabetes,30,Diet,136,Disease,117,Drink,26,Drugs,3,Ears,3,Eczema,1,Exercises,62,Eye Health,30,Fat Loss,74,Featured,102,Features,167,Fitness,659,Fitness & Exercise,218,Flu,3,Food,77,Fruits,4,General,7,Get Healthy,68,Gut Health,2,Halloween,2,Headache,24,heal,1,Health,284,Health & Fitness,267,Health Care,650,Health Insurance,1,Health Tips,9,Healthcare Tech,7,Healthy,12,Healthy Eating,204,Healthy Habits,258,Healthy Living,150,Hearing,7,HIV/AIDS,4,Legs,1,Life,1,LifeStyle,3,Massage,5,Meditation,31,Men & Women,18,Men's Health,12,Mental Health,353,Multiple Sclerosis,1,Muscle Gain,3,Nutrition,490,Oral,4,Pain,24,Posture,9,Pregnancy,71,Psoriasis,1,Psychology,1,Recipes,51,Safety,4,Self-care,29,Sex,7,Sexual Health,20,Skin Care,36,Sleep,74,Smile,1,Snacks,1,Special,6,Special Feature,111,Stress Relief,40,Stroke,4,Teeth,5,Therapy,2,Tips,104,True Health,5,Vegetables,4,Weight Gain,22,Weight Loss,492,Wellness,95,Women's Health,172,Workouts,93,Yoga,64,
ltr
item
Health Magazine: The Best Exercise for Anxiety
The Best Exercise for Anxiety
We asked a psychologist to name the absolute best exercise for anxiety, and he said one outpaces all the rest: running.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheqPkdqoNyh45zq5sgP5FBkmzREl4q4e7_mbngsj-zsnR6zAJXTBws2vXd9x4PWWiLkKk61lsDfynUFL917Xlxa8pC0AQjKR8rXlbaQKScOg0S6R7hSbtgKuDbuiCX1adr44xErv3Q1yWz/s1600/dearjulius.com.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheqPkdqoNyh45zq5sgP5FBkmzREl4q4e7_mbngsj-zsnR6zAJXTBws2vXd9x4PWWiLkKk61lsDfynUFL917Xlxa8pC0AQjKR8rXlbaQKScOg0S6R7hSbtgKuDbuiCX1adr44xErv3Q1yWz/s72-c/dearjulius.com.jpg
Health Magazine
https://health.dearjulius.com/2020/04/the-best-exercise-for-anxiety.html
https://health.dearjulius.com/
https://health.dearjulius.com/
https://health.dearjulius.com/2020/04/the-best-exercise-for-anxiety.html
true
3134246339347060015
UTF-8
Loaded All Posts Not found any posts VIEW ALL Read More Reply Cancel reply Delete By Home PAGES POSTS View All RECOMMENDED FOR YOU LABEL ARCHIVE SEARCH ALL POSTS Not found any post match with your request Back Home Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat January February March April May June July August September October November December Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec just now 1 minute ago $$1$$ minutes ago 1 hour ago $$1$$ hours ago Yesterday $$1$$ days ago $$1$$ weeks ago more than 5 weeks ago Followers Follow THIS PREMIUM CONTENT IS LOCKED STEP 1: Share to a social network STEP 2: Click the link on your social network Copy All Code Select All Code All codes were copied to your clipboard Can not copy the codes / texts, please press [CTRL]+[C] (or CMD+C with Mac) to copy Table of Content