"Movement Hunger" Signals
When your physical sensations and emotions are requests (from you!) to move your body
When my children were young, they didn’t understand that their feelings—especially when they went reeling or reacted strongly to something that didn’t usually bother them—could often be tied to fatigue, hunger, too much (or too little) sensory stimulation. Through language and experimentation (“Eat this and let’s wait ten minutes to see if you feel the same way,” or “Let’s take a rest and see if this continues to be frustrating”), they—and who am I kidding, me, still, today—continue to learn that often the way they’re mentally connecting with the world is influenced by the body asking for something it requires but is not getting.
We understand this phenomenon well in relation to food. You have learned that the gnawing sensation (or straight up growling noise) in your abdomen is a “time to eat” communication. And who hasn’t felt emotionally altered after a huge dose of sugar or gotten hangry now and then? But there’s less understanding of our hunger for movement, the signals it creates, and how it can have just as drastic an effect on our mental wellbeing.
Learning to communicate with your body takes time. The signals the body uses are primitive and unspecific. For example, at forty-nine years old, it’s still hard for me to remember that feeling cranky and as though everyone around me is super-annoying or hurtful almost always relates to the fact that I’ve been sitting inside most of the day. Remembering (or being gently reminded or even invited by a loved one) to take a quick walk around the block almost always makes those feelings evaporate. Is everyone getting together to decide to stop bugging me so much once I get back from my walk? Not sure. Either way, I’ve learned to reframe “everyone and everything is bothering me” as “this is how my body tells me I need to move.”
A friend says that for years she always thought “I look disgusting” when she sat around, and when she took a walk it changed her thoughts to “I look fine, actually.” It took her years to realize that the language she linked to the feeling came through years of conditioning to think about her body only in terms of the way that it looked. Decades later she speaks her body’s language better and can hear the request to get moving without a side of shame.
Body signals are there, but they are primitive, developed during a time when humans lived very different lives, and are therefore easily misinterpreted. But by paying more attention, you can learn to hear and interpret the body’s language.
Just as being aware of hanger as a real thing can help us react less to the negative feelings even when we can’t eat right away, being aware of movement’s effect on our emotions and mood can be helpful even if we can’t change our habits and better meet our needs just yet. Knowing that movement is part of how we work, and tuning in—can help explain why the world feels to us way it does.
This is not to downplay the serious diseases and traumatic experiences some people have. Not all sadness or depression, for example, can be tied to not meeting our movement needs, just as not all anger can be tied to hunger. I’m not trying to position movement as the sole medicine for mental health issues. And there is a compounding factor: getting moving, even when it could make things a little better, can be more difficult because of a mental health issue. Still, we know from our own experiences and a large body of research that the body’s daily needs are there, all the time, affecting all parts of our experiences (including serious diseases and trauma), and one of those needs is to get your body moving.
We’re more versed in the ways movement affects parts like our heart, lungs, arms and legs, etc., and less aware why physical activity is so important to our mental health too. If movement affects your physical performance or appearance in a way that feels positively motivating, so be it, but physical appearance doesn’t have to be the reason we focus on movement individually or collectively: we can move for our minds. Moving your body is simply another way to feed your body—and all its parts, including the invisible ones—what it needs.
MOVES TO TRY WHEN YOU FEEL FROZEN OR *ahem* STUCK ONLINE READING ARTICLES
• Put on a song and let yourself dance for a few minutes.
• Get up to take out the trash or start a load of laundry. Do any chore that has a lift or heave to it! Bonus if it gets you outside for a few minutes.
• Give yourself a round of applause. Either put music on and clap to the beat or just start your own rhythm; bonus points if you add some foot stamping.
• Stand up and take your spine through six simple movements: bend forward while reaching for your toes, arch back, lean to the right and left, and twist to the right and left. Take a deep breath in each shape.
• Walk up and down a flight of stairs or steps in your home or workplace ten times.
VITAMIN COMMUNITY: What other ideas do you think should be on this list? Leave a comment to inspire someone else.
This article is a modified essay from my book, Rethink Your Position. Read more on “fitness psychology” in I Know I Should Exercise, But….
I have definitely exercised a modern spin on the ages-old threat "I WILL PULL THIS CAR OVER!" Several times during my years of parenting have I responded to getting angry while driving by pulling over, exiting the car, and walking for a few (or quite a few) minutes. One-hundred percent of the time I return to the car in a much better state than when I left. While the children certainly have their own response to the situation, for me the most important thing is that walk can get me regulated again-- I dont even have to "think" my way through it while walking -- the walk alone is all I need.