Physical Wellness as an Emotional Skill

Your physical wellness is important – and not just for your physical health. Our physical well-being also has an important role to play in our mental and emotional health. I’m sure you have experienced the effects of this to some extent. For example, have you ever noticed yourself feeling extra irritable after a night of poor sleep? Or felt elated after a really awesome workout?

Our bodies and minds are two parts of our whole selves. Oftentimes when one starts to become unhealthy, the other suffers as a result. It is critically important that we attend to each in order to maintain well-being and effective functioning. However, sometimes we find it hard to know where to start with emotional coping. (Though – hopefully you’re finding helpful tips here!) It is sometimes easier to focus our effort on our physical health at first.

By focusing on our physical wellness, we are helping our body’s nervous system in ways that benefit our emotional baseline – the state you are in when you are not feeling any intense emotions. The way we experience emotions are often first physical. Think about what it’s like to feel anxious – your heart races, your breathing becomes rapid, you start sweating, etc. Or think about what it’s like to feel sad – you feel lethargic, you feel unenergetic, your body feels like it’s shutting down. Engaging in physical wellness strategies can help to counteract these symptoms to get us back to an emotional baseline. The more we engage in such strategies, the more likely we are to stay close to our baseline or at the very least feel more adept at managing intensely high or low emotions.

So what are these physical wellness strategies that can help our emotional well-being? The first is sleep. Sleep is a critical function of the human body, and many important skills can be affected when we don’t sleep well. Here are some simple tips for improving your sleep quality:

Keep a regular schedule. Varying your sleep and wake times confuses your body’s internal clock. Try to stay as consistent as possible – and yes, that means even on weekends.
Limit your naps. If you do nap, try to keep it to about 20-30 minutes, and not too close to bedtime. If you nap longer than 20-30 minutes, you are allowing your body to get too deep into your sleep cycle, which also disrupts your internal clock.
Reduce your blue-light exposure close to bedtime. Blue-light is emitted by most electronics, and prevents your brain from releasing important sleep hormones, including melatonin.
If you cannot fall asleep in bed within 30 minutes, get up and try again later. The more time you spend in bed doing things other than sleep, the more likely your brain will associate your bed with “not sleep.” Get up, engage in something relaxing or boring, and once you feel sleepy, try going back to bed.

Another important piece of physical well-being that can affect your emotional health is exercise. Exercise helps to produce neurotransmitters and hormones that can boost our mood or reduce stress and anxiety. A regular exercise practice helps our emotional baseline stay stable. Try to get in about 20 minutes of some type of exercise per day. This does not have to be anything intense or extremely difficult. Try a simple online yoga class, or go for a walk around the block! Check out our “Free Things to Do” tab for recommendations and resources that can help you build a more consistent exercise regimen.

Finally, the way we feed our body can also influence our mental well-being. Make sure you are getting a balanced diet that includes fresh fruits and vegetables with the nutrients your body needs. Be intentional about eating full meals, rather than just snacking throughout the day. Practice moderation with comfort food, and stay attuned to how you feel physically and emotionally after you eat meals or snacks. Avoid foods that make you feel emotionally or physically uncomfortable. Check out these videos for some more information about food’s connection to mental well-being:

How the Food You Eat Affects Your Brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyQY8a-ng6g

How Sugar Affects the Brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEXBxijQREo

How to Manage Your Mood with Food: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSHO9VdVRfg

If this topic of the connection of physical wellness and emotional health was interesting to you, check out this video to get some more tips for managing the link between emotional and physical health specifically applied to the COVID-19 pandemic!

Lockdown Productivity: Spaceship You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck