A therapist’s couch isn’t the only place to relieve stress and unpack years of deep emotions. The gym works, too. One of the fastest paths to healing, inside and out, is to start moving your body. Activity can lift your mood, rewire your brain, improve motivation, and increase your ability to face adversity – in and out of the gym.
Key Takeaways
- Daily stresses and trauma have negative health effects. Both can be treated with activity.
- Exercise improves mood, thinking, motivation, muscle tension, and pain tolerance.
- Being active can help with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and PTSD.
Carrying stress and trauma means more than just having a lot on your min. It’s a lot on your body, too. In 2014, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk released the best-selling book The Body Keeps The Score, where he proposed that emotional pain gets recorded – not only by the brain, but by your other tissues as well, leaving an impact on both.
A decade later, science is confirming van der Kolk’s theory and revealing the power of human movement to heal a person mentally and physically. So, while the body keeps the score, exercise can reset it.
If you’re already working out, great. It’s one of the best ways to manage feeling overwhelmed or to bounce back from tough challenges. And if you’re currently not as active as you’d like to be, or you see exercise as a burden in itself, hang on. This two-part series will show you how activity can be the highlight of your day, while making your other challenges feel that much easier.
We took a NOBULL look at the research connecting mind and body to prove that getting your butt moving is the least expensive and most accessible mental health treatment out there.
Your Issues Are In Your Tissues
Health issues associated with stress begin with the “fight-or-flight" response. When your brain perceives threats, it activates “fight-or-flight" – the survival instinct that gives you heightened awareness and energy to defend yourself or escape the situation.
You get a rush of adrenaline. Your heart beats harder. Your breathing accelerates, muscles tense up, and sight and hearing sharpen. All of this was helpful in the days when humans had to slay or flee from predators. And it’s still good in small doses. The problem comes when you stay in “fight-or-flight" for too long. And many of us do.
Problem is, our bodies aren’t great at distinguishing actual life-threatening situations from normal moments of stress, like getting stuck in traffic, having an argument, or speaking in public. And if you tend to have a lot of these moments throughout your day, your stress response is constantly working overtime. Not healthy.
According to Harvard Medical School, staying in “fight-or-flight" leads to chronic stress, triggering a cascade of health hazards.
How Chronic Stress Impacts Well-Being
Cortisol is a stress hormone. It spikes during “fight-or-flight" to help make you more alert. But when stress levels remain elevated, cortisol increases appetite and promotes body fat storage. And that extra blood pressure that gives you the power to move quickly? It can wear down your blood vessels and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Muscles that are ready to spring into action become chronically tense and tight. And those tight muscles can lead to recurring pain or discomfort. For example, chronically stiff muscles in the shoulders, neck, and head can result in tension headaches and migraines.
Just as the body can’t tell when you’re really in danger or just uncomfortable, it also doesn’t know if the perceived threat is immediate – or something from years ago that should be long forgotten.
A 2022 article in Brain Sciences explains that experiencing violence, bodily injury, fear, anger, sadness, abuse, and neglect can all leave a lasting imprint on you physically. And this is no half-baked theory – neuroscience experts call it “body memory.”
Here’s what happens:
How Trauma Gets Stored In Your Body
When something intense or overwhelming happens, your fight-or-flight response kicks in. The heightened state of arousal causes your brain to take a snapshot of everything in that moment. How you feel, what you see, and even what you’re smelling can be recorded.
Later on, little things that remind your brain of the event – even if you’re not conscious of them – can send you back. It can cause you to re-experience that initial traumatic moment and all that came with it. Your mind tries to move on, but your body remembers.
Let’s say you were bitten by a dog as a child. Years later, a dog runs up to you on the street. Without even realizing it, you begin to breathe heavily and brace for an attack. That’s body memory in motion.
The combination of life’s daily nuisances and your own unique history with trauma builds up. And that toll has been linked to conditions including everything from anxiety and depression, to cardiovascular disease, fatigue, immune deficiencies, insomnia, gut issues, and reproductive problems. Interestingly, arm and low-back pain have been found to relate specifically to job stress, while strong emotions associated with the death of a loved one can trigger an asthma attack.
Fortunately, there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that a variety of therapies can help you manage stress, both past and present, and resolve deep-seated emotional issues. The most widely studied and (in our opinion) the best of these, is exercise – which helps your body to heal old wounds and better handle stress going forward.
If you want to get healthier mentally, you have to get healthier physically – and vice versa.
The NOBULL Bottom Line:
– Any stressful event activates “fight-or-flight". Keeping it activated leads to chronic stress.
– Traumatic events can leave body memories – recurring physical sensations that add stress.
The Mental Health Benefits of Physical Activity
You know that being active can transform your body. But it can rewire your brain as well. Consistent exercise can improve your mood, thinking, self-discipline, and even pain tolerance.
Luckily, the type of exercise you choose doesn’t matter. The activity you do, the intensity, and the duration all impact the way your brain and body respond. But research shows that you can count on all of the following advantages (to some degree) when you’re active in any way you choose to be. And the more consistent you are, the bigger the benefit (1, 2).
Better Mood
Exercise promotes the release of serotonin and dopamine. These are two neurotransmitters that give the brain a sense of happiness and reward. Like when you’re having a bad day and you just say, “Screw it,” go outside for a walk, and come back feeling better? That’s those brain chemicals at work. (The more intense the exercise, generally, the greater the feeling. For example, the mood boost joggers know as the “runner’s high.”)
Activity also helps regulate the part of the nervous system that controls fight or flight, called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Keeping the HPA axis in check reduces chronic stress levels and helps you control emotions.
Intense workouts will put you in “fight-or-flight", but they also let you unwind afterward. The counterpart to the HPA axis is the parasympathetic nervous system, and it kicks in after activity to help you calm down and recover physically and mentally. This explains why people tend to sleep well after they work out.
Smarter Thinking
Exercise stimulates the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that supports the growth and resilience of nerve cells. BDNF contributes to neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new neural connections, which enhances your ability to think, learn, and remember. It’s funny that serious gym rats get called “meatheads” when training has been shown to improve executive function in the brain – the ability to focus, make decisions, plan, and solve problems. Activity also promotes impulse control, so you’re less likely to have knee-jerk reactions you live to regret.
Improved Discipline
If you feel you lack the determination to exercise regularly, we’ve got good news for you: exercise builds that muscle too. The changes in your brain that are driven by activity also help with motivation and the ability to form habits and set goals. They also reduce the incidence of distracting thoughts. So you can literally leave your excuses at the (gym) door.
Reduced Muscle Tension
Extra blood flow to the muscles and brain brings more oxygen and nutrition to support healthier tissue in general. Relaxation of the nervous system equates to looser muscles and subsequently less tension in your head, neck, and shoulders.
Greater Pain Tolerance
Workouts alter how your brain processes discomfort, enabling you to push through hard sessions. It’s not a matter of having to grit your teeth and get it over with – your workouts will seem (and truly become!) less daunting over time.
What Mental Health Concerns and Conditions Can Exercise Help With?
If exercise sounds as powerful as medicine, it’s because it is. Of course, it may not be enough to cure any problem entirely. But exercise has been shown to be part of effective treatment for people battling challenges such as anxiety, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Exercise and Anxiety
A 2024 review showed all types of exercise to be useful in reducing symptoms of anxiety. The researchers noted that exercise helped people sleep better, and sleep quality is often poor in anxiety sufferers. Also, the subjects’ workouts provided a distraction from anxious thoughts and promoted mindfulness – the ability to stay present.
Aerobics for Depression
A Harvard study found that a mere 15 minutes of running, or an hour’s walk, could reduce the risk of depression by 26%. What’s especially interesting is that data was pulled from hundreds of thousands of people, allowing researchers to see how genetic variations between people factored in. Depression is thought to be passed down genetically in many cases, but exercise was shown to reduce depression risk – independent of genetics.
Activity and ADHD
If you’re a parent, you’ve probably discovered that one of the best ways to get your kids to settle down is to tire them out first. And that’s exactly what a 2021 meta-analysis found. The children in the study experienced significantly reduced ADHD-related symptoms (including inattentiveness and hyperactive behavior) after riding bikes and playing outdoor games.
Adults who have ADHD may also want to hit the gym, track, or pool. A 2025 study found that physical activity, particularly aerobic exercise, reduced inattentive symptoms.
Mind-Body Practices for PTSD
Chinese Tai Chi and Qigong, often called mind-body exercise, are similar to yoga. They’ll have you performing bodyweight movements while breathing deeply and rhythmically. Imagine meditating while moving, and you’ll get the idea. A 2022 meta-analysis found that both styles are highly effective for relieving symptoms of PTSD, due to their calming of the nervous system.
The NOBULL Bottom Line:
– Any form of exercise can help to manage stress, improve mood, and support healthy brain function.
– Strength training, cardio, mind-body practices, yoga, and sports have been shown to help with mental health conditions.
What’s The Best Exercise For Mental Wellness?
Research doesn’t point to a single method of exercise as being a clear winner for overall mental health. The “best” exercise is really the one you enjoy doing most consistently. It’s ideal to perform a mix of activities to cover all your bases, including strength, cardiovascular health, and flexibility. Cross-training is a general term for a mix of disciplines, so it’s our pick of the bunch – no matter what you choose to include under that umbrella.
Multimodal exercise is the scientific blanket term for cross-training. And “functional training” (though somewhat vague) fits in here too, according to a 2022 review in Sports Medicine. They defined functional training as activities that mimic everyday movements to improve real-world functionality, such as squat and lunge exercises. It’s safe to say that most exercise classes would fall under multimodal as well.
The aforementioned review declared multimodal training to be the most effective type of exercise for alleviating depression symptoms.
See Part II, our follow-up piece, to find out how much exercise you really need and get tips on how to keep the motivation to stick with it.