Moving More for Our Mental Health

By Paul Saunders-Priem

Introduction

I first met Paul and his lovely wife Fiona in July 2018 on a bench overlooking Derwentwater in the English Lake District. We hit it off immediately and exchanged details before parting company. I had the pleasure to accompany them on one of their urban rambles around my home city of Newcastle a few years later. I recently shared a link on social media to the Mental Health Foundation’s positive mental health image library. Paul commented that “Walking is a great way to manage your mind wellbeing. Been doing that most of my life!” Not one to let the opportunity of a guest post escape me, I asked if he’d consider sharing his thoughts and experiences for Mental Health Awareness Week. This brilliant piece is the result. Thank you, Paul.

 

Moving More for Our Mental Health

By Paul Saunders-Priem

From birth you are overcoming the urge to be still. Think then move is the most basic human thing to do. This comes with a catch called choice which is where all the good stuff starts and the bad. I was walking in the hills years ago and chose to walk into a bog because it didn’t look like a bog! No matter what the choice though once the decision is made inertia is best overcome by simply taking the first steps. You’ve won! It might not be a big victory but it’s a win!

So now I’m moving. I look around but of course I’m thinking and best of all: feeling. No matter what mental ups and downs I have I’m on a higher plane than when I was not moving. A movement victory can bring negative feelings which are necessary because movement brings risk physical and mental. We always look when crossing a road. It’s obstacles all the way or steps up as I like to call them: opportunities to notice the movement achievement past present and future because no matter whether moving or not my mental state and the world around me is moving! We’re all on the living ride like it or not.

The decision to move is mental preparation for what comes next. No one knows what life puts in front of you big or little but after deciding to move that empowering feeling puts you in a good position to deal with it. I walked my family into a bog in the Pennines but stop and retreat came quickly because decision was forced on me and I was ready. Movement leads to mental awareness which brings more movement!

I’ve been a hiker most of my 67 years. I still urban ramble at least twice a week doing never less than 10 miles in total and 5 days of the week my movement is pacing around my backroom for exercise because you get stiff if you sit for too long, but even this limited activity with none of the outside stimulation of weather and scenery has a positive effect on thinking and feeling. I do this backroom pacing because I’m very engrossed in activities but the urge to move is always there pushed by my mind to take a break and coffee doesn’t move to me... I’ve got to do that myself! Coffee breaks are great movement points!

The move-rest rhythm always pushing us on the journey physical or mental is the natural organisation of life. You may feel good or bad but there it is: a problem, a potential, path or pleasure. Your mind is going to work on it. Moving that rhythm around through choice is the only freedom anyone has and the urge is always to feel better. So looking for better choices is our natural state. No one puts salt into coffee!

Getting on the move is choosing your problem not letting it choose you. Live your own rhythm. I’ve been physically handicapped (an injured arm from an accident) for over 60 years. I’ve never had a mental health problem because my inner life always has this focus on my damaged arm. It’s my permanent daily problem but it can be made better or worse. No choice here but healthy though, because people with mental health problems also have no choice. I’m no different from many other people. From typing to cooking for my family I always have to notice my physical handicap, like it or not. Just like life itself. But within my limitation I can live my own rhythm and if I want a better life: I have to.

So quality of movement is needed here. I can try various ways (movements) to adapt to my injured arm. Walks / exercise / movement is on a worse to better continuum and considering this alone is uplifting. You may feel like not being on the spectrum at all! But like it or lump it we all are so movement starts in the mind and not doing something about it feels like two failures: the one in the mind and the one your body hasn’t done.

The tension of choice always exists between getting going or not. No matter what problem I have it is there. So on top of what needs to be solved is that initial getting going problem. Inertia is a universal working against moving mentally and physically, whether it is a property of mental illness or in my case life itself. Whilst with my physical handicap I know I am different from those that are not, I draw a great strength knowing that I share with everyone the daily battle of deciding whether to get up and get going or not! What I call the universal grief or grin is always there!

Movement by walking is the number-one mood management tool. Any environment physical or mental is lived in up to a point and then it is time to do something else. I may not feel like doing that but walking as a habit is a way of life for me because I have been doing it since being a toddler where I escaped from the army compound I lived in in Hong Kong and wandered the city! It takes me into a new world which relieves the oppressive feeling that I need to make a change by doing something different. Walking does not have to be striding out in the hills or sprinting around the urban landscape it can simply be pacing in my own room.

All of what I have written is surrounded by time, and organising time within walking occurs whether an interval is set or not because eventually I will feel hungry or thirsty: the desire for coffee always lurks! Alongside walking is setting a time period which adds even more power and control over mood. Such goal setting at times to me seems almost petty and inconsequential but it is massively life enhancing. Goal setting is a form of hope. There are many little wins in daily life and I’ve found these wins built on a foundation of movement just make that daily struggle that bit better!

 

Photo of Paul in Whitby, by Fiona Saunders-Priem.

 

MOVE YOU YOUR WAY: A Few Thoughts on Movement and Self-Care for Mental Health Awareness Week

We tend to forget that baby steps still move you forward.
— Unknown

On the evening of my birthday back in March I was talking with my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson. Amongst other things we discussed our ideas for Mental Health Awareness Week and its theme of moving more for our mental health. I found it ironic given that I’d just posted an article – The Joy of Missing Out: Not Doing Things Is a Thing I Do Now – in which I shared how I no longer had much interest in “going out and doing things.” With a few exceptions I prefer to spend my personal time sitting in my favourite coffee shop, writing. Although this wasn’t as beneficial to my physical health as the walking I used to do on a regular basis, it did allow me to think things through and explore whatever was going on for me internally.

The very next day on my way into the office, I was presented with a choice. The second of my two trains was delayed. I could wait half an hour on the platform, take the five-minute train journey, then walk another ten minutes to the office. Or I could opt for a twenty-minute walk. The weather was mild and dry. I had no reason not to take the latter option. As I set off on what, pre-covid, had been a regular and valued part of my daily commute, I thought back to my conversation with Aimee. I smiled. Here I was, choosing to walk. To get a little physical exercise. To move.

I found myself enjoying that weird sense you get when you revisit somewhere you used to know on a regular, even daily, basis. Most things are the same but here and there you notice differences. Changes. In your surroundings, certainly. But in yourself too. I recalled how it was like that after covid. Not only were there changes in the world around me — social distancing, mask-wearing, rules, signage, behaviours — but also changes within me. One of the biggest internal changes was no longer feeling the need to travel far from home, if at all.

Before the pandemic I was in the office five days a week, and almost always walked to and from the train station. I still travel to the office on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but have walked it on no more than a handful of occassions. I have more to carry now, as I need to take my laptop back and forth every day. But that’s not much of a reason. It’s not even much of an excuse.

These thoughts and others were with me as I made my way into the office. I stopped a few times to jot down ideas for this blog post, but mostly I allowed my mind to wander wherever it would. I found myself recalling the people, relationships, and events that had occupied me on my walks in the past. Those twenty minutes had been a useful transition between home and work, as well as affording me a little physical exercise. I’ve not necessarily committed to walking each time I go in to the office, but I enjoyed the experience and may give it a go. I told Aimee later how our conversation had inspired me, not only to take the walk but to explore the theme for MHAW.

A few weeks later while researching an article about mental health non-profit To Write Love On Her Arms I came across one of their t-shirt designs with the following message emblazoned across it in huge letters: LOVE IS THE MOVEMENT. It got me thinking about movement as self-love, self-care. And how self-care isn’t only physical things like going for a walk. It’s taking time and making space for whatever you most need at that moment. The insight helped with one of the problems I’d been having with this year’s theme. The idea that if you’re depressed or anxious or living with some other form of mental health issue, all you need to do is get up and go for a walk. Preferably in nature. In the woods, maybe. Or on the beach. And you’ll be fine. That’s not how the organisers of MHAW intend it, I know, but it’s something I see all too often online.

Physical exercise can be helpful to our mental health, but it’s not the panacea it’s sometimes made out to be. It’s also neither appropriate nor suitable for everyone at all times. Disability, chronic fatigue, insomnia, pain, the utterly debilitating inertia of depression, the lack of safe, affordable access to the outdoors, and any of a hundred other factors can make “get up and go for a walk, you’ll feel better” challenging at best and toxic at worst. Even taking a shower, washing the dishes, or making the bed may be too much on some days.

LOVE IS THE MOVEMENT helped me see that any and all means of self-care are capable of moving us forward. That might include going out for a walk or to the gym, but it also includes meeting a friend for a chat, in person or on the phone. It includes taking that shower or making the bed if you’re up for it. But it equally includes taking your meds, booking an appointment, asking for help, curling up with a book or the TV, or deciding on a day of extreme rest. Anything that takes you from today to tomorrow, from this hour to the next, from this moment to the next moment is meaningful.

So yes, movement is good, but don’t feel pressured to do more than you’re comfortable with, or guilt-tripped into other people’s ideas of what kind of movement is or isn’t valid. Move you, your way.

 

Further Reading

Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 will take place from 13 to 19 May, on the theme of “Movement: Moving more for our mental health.” For more information check out the Mental Health Foundation and Rethink Mental Illness. Also check out our collection of articles we’ve shared for MHAW in previous years, as well as other awareness days and events.

 

Photo by Martin Adams at Unsplash.