You’ve definitely heard exercise reduces stress, but I found that anxiety and depression often make it really hard to get a fitness routine rolling in the first place. I’ve even found that, sometimes, anxiety stops me dead in my tracks when exercising — I have regularly had full-blown panic attacks in class, on the trail or at home trying to force myself to work out.
Although we all know how exercise reduces stress, I haven’t found many people who talk about how anxiety and depression can not only be a hurdle to getting fit, but how forcing the physical benefits of exercise on our bodies can at times be a stressor in and of itself. I’ve found that trying to get fit can unwittingly become a hurdle to reaping the emotional benefits exercise endorphins are supposed to bring.
I had to figure out why.
I used to be an anxious girl who couldn’t run.
Before I gained a bunch of weight, I wanted to be a professional dancer. In those times, ballet dancers were told running was the worst thing you could possibly do. The result? I never ran.
One mid-semester October morning, my birthday, I woke up and grabbed my phone: the first post on social was a picture of a friend of mine hiking a 6k trail around a lake in my town. I had previously bought running shoes (just for hiking) on the advice of a marathon running friend who had similar feet to mine. I decided to throw those bad boys on, grab a pumpkin spiced latte, and hit the trail to enjoy the morning my personal New Year.
On that trail something happened that I had never experienced before: I wanted to run. I thought “what the hell, no one is here watching” and I did it. I made it about one block before getting puffed and anxious. I walked a bit, caught my breath and started running another block. I probably ran about 3 blocks out of 6k that day, but it sparked something in me. Unbeknownst to me, I was starting my journey to becoming an avid runner.
The stress of running almost took its toll… on my body.
I didn’t tell anyone about my little fun-run. I honestly thought it was a childish thing to sprint around unable to endure much farther than a stone’s throw. But, I kept going back. It was amazing how quickly I progressed. I had no idea why I kept going back, but I felt a draw to that forest every week, and — using my yogic breathing — I’d drop so far into this zone of activity that it felt like I could do anything. I started running the whole 6k pretty shortly, but something else started happening quite quickly too… something far less enthralling.
I started having full blown physical panic attacks.
I would double over in cramps, barely able to walk, feeling like I would probably die out there at that park. And the only thing that would help me get back on the trail was is if I could calm my body down enough to … poop.
Ya, poop.
Exercise reduced my stress to a point, and then it skyrocketed it.
Thanks to my freakishly high yogic/meditative/academic ability to calm my mind, my body went full panic on its own. That saying “so scared I almost crapped myself” is describing legit biology. My anxiety then came from my gut and took over my mind from there … through the back door.
Mental, and even emotional training was not enough to deal with anxiety.
There’s a whole bunch of research now surfacing about the gut-depression link, and I can vouch that my anxiety is intricately woven into the healthy functioning of my tum-tum.
The weirdest, not-so-weird, thing helped me out a tonne: anti-inflammatories. Along with my yoga breath, they prevented the fight or flight response from taking over my nervous system. Just an ibuprofen or two meant steady sailing for me on my runs on that trail! I even moved to a local liquid fresh turmeric juice elixir and it stamped out my panic attacks flat.
After training with the anti-inflammatories for a time, I was all good to run 6k, 10k even 12k without a problem. And on the trail I was comfortable on, with other runners, I could run no problem. For a long time I was great, but even that wasn’t the end of exercise-induced anxiety for me.
Social exercise brought a new challenge — panic and anxiety.
I was in Malaysia without a place to run trail. So I used the gym. I thought the treadmill was recording in kilometres, when it was in miles, and so I was pushing my body quite hard to keep what I thought was a decent pace. No matter what I did beforehand, ibuprofen, turmeric, whatever, I regularly had panic attacks.
I moved to Australia, where I could only run on the open beach, having people around meant — even if I took anti-inflammatories — I regularly had panic attacks.
I started working out hard in pilates classes, when I wasn’t allowed to use my BODi MODi methods in class, when the teacher pushed too hard, I had panic attacks.
Keeping my nervous system cool with anti-inflammation supplements was clearly not enough. I needed a solution.
How I kicked exercise induced anxiety to the curb: Soulset.
Naturally, I was researching these attacks from the onset. First, I asked other runners, then took to the internet. At first I thought it was normal thing that happened to runners (which is true, your guts speed up and people have to go poop during races sometimes) but it didn’t explain my pain and panic. I thought my muscles in my stomach for running weren’t developed for running (from avoiding it) for a very long time, but that should have passed after awhile.
Then I started recognizing social exercise (exercise around people) was poignantly distressful for me. I started catching that there was more to this trouble than just my body while not being able to run with my new partner without panic, and having anxiety on the beach in the open (instead of closed in by the canopy of trees on the trail).
My environment made a big difference to my stress response.
Pushing myself physically, even unknowingly, running faster on a treadmill marked in miles instead of kilometres — even when no one else was there — still had the same effect.
Mixing the two: pushing very hard physically while in a social setting was especially taxing.
There was, and is, an internal + external element to play in my panic; the key to using exercise to reduce stress instead of increase it is Soulset.
What is Soulset? The key to using exercise to reduce stress.
What is Soulset? It’s your energy. Your energy is made up of the energy you are creating and the energy your are experiencing. It is a mix and the 2 things are never separate. Feel clearer very early in the morning or late at night? That’s because few people are up. Want to throw a pie at the person who snobbishly says “good vibes only” looking down their nose at you in a bad mood? That’s because their vibe is oh-so-not-good and set on making your vibe worse.
Your Soulset is creating and protecting you. And although you only have sway over half of it, you can program it to create for your benefit. What’s more, you can use what comes up to program it. I’ll get back to that further down.
Soulset is 1 of the 4 pillars of … everything in your life (including your body)
Consider Mindset for a moment. Oxford Dictionary defines Mindset as:
Mindset, simply put, is the kind of programming and reflection your thoughts routinely run through.
Soulset is the routine way the energy you are putting out and taking in is processed. My Soulset was programmed to be fearful of being out of control of the energy around me and/or harmful experiences coming my way. It was on guard. Therefore, my Soulset reflected being puffed, hyped up, or being physically challenged as a real danger.
Without my conscious knowledge, my fearful Soulset took charge of my physical body.
You can see Oxford’s “mindset” examples above are political and cultural. One is influenced by an ideology (conservatism), the other by an experience (having computers growing up).
This is a crucial point: Mindset, like the Heartset and other 2 sets, is set BY something. It’s programmed.
Heartset is how you habitually FEEL. Feelings, like thoughts, happen according to a pattern. And as Oxford notes, these patterns are “difficult to change“.
From “Heartset” by Laura-Lee on LaLeeLifestyle.com
This is how my Soulset responded after years, and years, of training to release that programming… Soulset can also be behind every discomfort pertaining to a fitness activity, every unease when thinking about trying a new healthy habit or exercise class, every distraction, every excuse, every morsel of lost motivation, every resolution forgotten or buried in shame.
That is all Soulset programming, and it can be changed.
3 Steps to Reprogram Healthy Soulset for Stress Relief
Like I said in “Curing Emotional eating w/ Heartset”:
The cure is in the pattern behind the behaviour, not the food.
Laura-Lee Bowers
The answer of how to use exercise to reduce and relieve stress (even if stress is a major player preventing you from getting fit and active) is to reveal the pattern behind it. Then, as all my students at UpRoots Wellness learn: we HEAL, GROW & STRENGTHEN a mf healthy Soulset.
1. Take the time to HEAL
i. Yoga
As I mentioned, yoga was a game-changer for me managing severe anxiety. I knew that throughout my career, but what I learned over years of practice was that yoga was/is so much more than just a healthy way to cope with stress. Yoga is a legitimate way to reprogram stress responses.
It’s my opinion that this is why and how yoga is proven to aid weight loss. Science does not yet understand why or how yoga creates long-lasting weight loss in practitioners, just that it does.
Being an advocate for holistic healing to lose weight, I firmly believe that addressing our energy, our Soulset, is a crucial step to getting into our most natural and best body through a lifestyle we love.
Yoga — practiced properly — is the only exercise apart from my BODi MODi that actually walks you through how to reprogram your stress responses. No matter what practice you are doing, even Yin (when done correctly), should be mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually challenging. ie. Yoga is stress in a controlled (ie. safe) environment.
Yoga fires off our fight or flight response during practice then walks you through learning how to manage it. This is what the breathwork is for. Get some proper instruction on yogic breathing before going to a class because I have had very, very few (next to no) teachers in class focus on breath. The breath is the foundation. If you are not being taught breath first, but you still love the classes, find that insight for yourself to get the benefits yoga offers.
Regulate the breathing and therefore control the mind.
BKS Iyengar
2. Make your own GROW toolkit
ii. EFT Tapping
Listen, I don’t know why this works and I do not have any hard-knowledge about energy meridians or anything else like that, but EFT tapping works, it is an American Psychology Association ratified clinical therapy, and if you must understand: think of it as a pointed meditation and leave it at that.
Try this practice out to feel phenomenal before a workout (or anytime really).
3. STRENGTHEN your new healthy self
iii. Sustain Motivation
Taking control of your health via Mindset, Heartset, Soulset or BODiset is a daily task. Until you build healthy new habits you can ride on, you will have to come up against all kinds of challenges. From the small “Niggles” (little no-I-don’t-want-to‘s) to the big “Reality IQ Divots” (from the I-can’t and it’s impossible push-backs to the unconscious distraction techniques your Soulset Tools are programmed with), you will have to sustain motivation and you are not always even going to know when or why you’ll have to.
My advice is to employ what I call a “Bookending Technique”. This is where you use scientifically ratified spiritual tools (like yoga, meditation, journalling etc.) as part of your daily morning and evening routine. That way you are “bookended” against stress and “propped up” by daily support for healthy Soulset processing (ie. self-motivation). I practice MIDi in the morning and RUMi at night; this is enough to keep my Mindset, Heartset and even Soulset happy and healthy all day long — and protects me against stress before it even starts.
You can get my Ideal Body, Ideal Day Planner here (at no cost) and start reprogramming your Soulset for free. Call on the energy of your mentors
