My first true
bout of depression began sometime after our 2013 doctor’s appointment, maybe
even before then. The seeds from 2 plus years of trying without any answers had
started to plant themselves deep within me.
It came in
waves after that. I remember starting a new job that same year. A few weeks
into the new gig I remember walking back to my room and I felt like I had been
hit by truck, right in the center of my chest. My heart ached and all I wanted to do was cry. There
was no explanation. Just tears. I spent much of that next year just trying to
“find myself again”. By the end of 2014 I felt much closer to center. I felt
Hope again.
I contribute a
lot of that to my running journey. I could escape into music and left the
darkness and anger out every time I took a step or pushed harder through the
next mile.
“Exercise is an antidepressant,” says Brandon Alderman, an
associate professor of kinesiology and health and the director of the Exercise
Psychophysiology Lab at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey–New
Brunswick. However, most people who are depressed – as with the vast majority
of the general population – fall well short of meeting exercise guidelines that
adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week, and
many never lace up at all.
So how can one get on the path to healing, when it seems
impossible to even get to the trailhead? One possible approach, experts say, is
to incorporate mindfulness – staying focused on the
present moment – into your routine.” (Health.UsNews)
Running helped me stay focused in
the moment. It was something to concentrate on that didn’t cause anguish in my
soul. It was one foot in front of the other, that helped me keep going. I
prayed while I ran too. I found solutions to answers or I truly learned to let
things go, on a training run.
While running isn’t for everyone,
physical fitness and mindfulness should be.
“Research Alderman led, published in February
in the journal Translational Psychiatry, found participants with major
depressive disorder who did 30 minutes of focused-attention meditation and
then 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise – either running on
a treadmill or cycling on a
stationary bike – twice weekly for eight weeks reported significantly less
depressive symptoms and ruminative thoughts following the intervention. The
research suggests that combining the two disciplines, which have been
individually shown to reduce symptoms of depression, may enhance results. It
also offers a possible peak into how mindfulness may help a person get going
and stay on track when depression trips up efforts to exercise.”
I'll be back next week for part 2.
Blessings,
A
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