A Beginner’s Guide to Joyful Movement

If you’ve read my post about the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating, you might remember that one of those principles focuses on movement and physical activity. Unfortunately, exercise can feel like a chore or a punishment for a lot of people. After all, if you’ve ever exercised to burn calories or work off what you ate, exercise probably isn’t at the top of your list of fun things to do.

I know first-hand how this can feel. I started healing my relationship with food long before I healed my relationship with exercise, and to be honest, I’m still learning to find the “sweet spot” with exercise. But just as you’ll find freedom when you make peace with food, making peace with exercise and instead focusing on joyful movement can be life changing.

What is Joyful Movement?

Joyful movement is the polar opposite of exercising to change your body. Rather than being a tool used to manipulate, it’s a way of exercising that can create joy and pleasure. It’s about shifting your mindset from seeing exercise as a punishment and something you have to do, to seeing exercise for all of the amazing benefits it can give you.

Another important aspect of joyful movement is choice. Joyful movement sees all types of movement as equal. One type of movement is not better than another. While it’s true that different types of exercise will provide different health benefits, this does not make cardio morally better than yoga. All types of movement are good movement, and having the choice about what kind of exercise to do is incredibly empowering.

One of the best things about joyful movement is that it helps us let go of the “all-or-nothing” way of thinking that is often drilled into us by diet culture. Plus, by focusing on the enjoyment we can get from exercising, we’re actually more likely to find an exercise routine we can stick to. After all, if it’s something you enjoy, you’ll look forward to it and commit to it rather than dreading it.

What are the Benefits of Exercise?

There are so many different benefits of movement and exercise, including:

·       Better bone health

·       Improved mood and stress tolerance

·       Reduced blood pressure

·       Reduced risk for chronic diseases

·       Increased heart and lung strength

·       Better energy levels

·       Better sleep

·       Improved learning and memory

What’s really great about all of these benefits is that they can be achieved independent of weight loss. In other words? No more slaving away on the treadmill just to burn calories. If that’s what you feel like, great! But if not, know that there are plenty of other types of exercise out there for you.

Rediscover the Joy of Movement

Want to reconnect with the joy of movement but not sure where to start? Here are four tips for incorporating more joyful movement into your life.

Identify the types of movement that feel best for you

If you’ve had a negative relationship with exercise in the past, this step may feel very challenging. And that’s ok! You don’t need to decide what kind of movement you enjoy right away. Instead, be curious and open to trying new things. By trying out different types of activity that you’ve never tried before, you open yourself up to finding something that feels fun and accessible to you.

Try this thought experiment as a way to hone in on what you enjoy. Imagine that all forms of exercise burned the same number of calories. What would you choose to do? Would you dance? Walk? Play Ultimate Frisbee? Practice yoga? It’s completely up to you. The point is to find a variety of activities that you enjoy so that movement doesn’t feel like a punishment.

Ease into it

If you haven’t been engaging in physical activity for a while, it can be tempting to go “all-in” and burn yourself out at the beginning. This is diet and hustle culture talking. Instead, think about what a realistic number of times per week is for you. Only you know your body, so don’t feel pressured to exercise a certain number of times per week just because some “fitness guru” on the internet does. Do what works for your body and your schedule.

If joyful feels out of reach, aim for gentle movement

I get it. For a lot of people, movement can feel the furthest thing from joyful. If finding joyful movement feels out of reach, focus instead on gentle movement.

Gentle movement focuses on breaking up sitting time while still being accessible. Research shows that sitting for long periods of time can increase risk of death, so breaking up sitting time with some gentle movement is a great way to combat that risk.

Some good examples of gentle movement include yin or chair yoga, gentle stretching, slow dancing with your special someone, gardening, or walking your dog.

Take a break

For some people, the best thing they can do is take a break from movement. Wait, what? Didn’t you just say that we should try to incorporate movement into our lives?

Well, yes. But if you’re currently stuck in a bad relationship with exercise, it might be worth taking a break for a while. Many people use exercise to cope with negative thoughts and emotions.

Now, there’s absolutely no problem with using exercise as a coping mechanism. In fact, it can be an incredibly healthy way of coping. But if exercise becomes compulsive and you struggle to take days off, that’s a problem.

By taking a break from exercise, you’ll start to learn other ways of sitting with and coping with negative emotions. If this feels challenging, it’s worth working with a therapist who can help you navigate the process.

Final Thoughts

When you shift your mindset from exercise as a punishment to exercise as a source of joy, something beautiful happens. Once you see all forms of exercise as morally equal, you open yourself up to experiencing forms of movement that you may previously have dismissed because they weren’t “real” exercise.

This certainly doesn’t mean that you’ll be happy to engage in movement 100% of the time. You won’t. But what joyful movement does allow is the freedom to make the choice that feels most authentic to YOU in the moment. You’re not a better or worse person just because you decided to incorporate some movement into your day. You are good regardless of whether you move your body.

And one last thing. I’ve seen arguments that exercise SHOULD be hard. That it SHOULD be painful. And guess what? If sprinting stairs or lifting heavy weights is what brings you joy (even if it’s not particularly pleasant while you’re doing it), that’s great. No one ever said that joyful movement shouldn’t be challenging or get your heart rate up.

What we are saying is that it doesn’t have to do that to be meaningful. Movement is so much more than fitness. It can do wonders for our mental health. In a fast-paced society, it can be a radical act of self-care to take 20 minutes out of your busy day to give back to yourself. While fitness is certainly important, it’s only one of the things that makes physical activity so wonderful.

What’s your favourite type of movement? Let me know in the comments below!