Taylor-LeighIt happened completely unexpectedly. I am a dancer turned new runner. Still a dancer though (always & of course). My intention with running wasn’t to change anything about myself, besides maybe improving my cardio endurance and stamina. And yet, it has started doing much more than that.
Noob Running Adventures Ep. 2 – The One About Mental Health
The Mind Body Connection
As I discuss in the first of my noob running adventures, I started running. It just kinda happened, and over time, it has started to feel good not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. As we know here on taylorleighadams.com, the mind and body are linked together in tandem. It’s hard to talk about one without talking about the other.
Without expecting it, running has, for me, opened up another portal to access bodily sensations. I didn’t start running as another way to “heal,” but as I naturally gravitated towards it, running has activated a sort of therapeutic affect that I didn’t know I needed.
As Bessel A. van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, “Healing, he told us, depends on experiential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions.”
Running has helped me tune into my body, and mindfulness has allowed me to self-assess myself as an entire entity- mind, body, and spirit.
Increase in Self Confidence
As a lifelong dancer and a very emotional and physical person, I always thought I was in tune with my body, but there is always a way to take it further. Running an increasing number of miles has challenged my body and my mental capacity. I have become more aware of both what my body is trying to tell me, and how strong she actually is. As endurance athletes know, it is mostly a mental game. The mind says no while the body says yes. Running has been a beneficial way of telling myself, “You can do it,” even when my self-confidence is lacking. Running with my partner has been great for that too. When I want to collapse, he grabs my hand and pulls me along, saying how proud of me is, aww.
Accomplishing a long run (which for me, is around 10 miles at the moment of writing this), or even getting myself up and outside to run at all, is a huge confidence boost. What’s that saying? You never regret a workout? Something like that. Before moving your body, you might feel sluggish, but after, you feel great (most of the time). Unless you need a rest day, in which case – take it. Recovery is also important!
Moving Forward
That sluggish feeling I just mentioned? Yea, I felt that most of the time for the past 3 years. I started running while I was transitioning out of my role as my grandmother’s caregiver. While I loved caring for my loved one, it has taken a toll on me.
Mostly, for the past 3 years I had felt stuck. Stuck in my body, stuck in my house, stuck in my life. I didn’t know what my future looked like or if I even had one. Running has, quite literally, made me move forward in time, in space, in distance. Sometimes I lace up my shoes and step outside with one goal: just keep going. Keep moving forward.
As you can already suppose, to keep moving forward physically easily translates to moving forward metaphorically. As someone who grew up with the discipline of dance training, I feel like running gives me something to train for and to work towards; whether it may be a race, a specific distance, or just getting outside and doing it.
While I go through this caregiver transition phase in my life, I am choosing to move through it, quite literally. I am moving through stuck emotions and sensations in my body like anxiety and grief and allowing myself to release them. Transitions have historically been difficult for me to navigate. In the past, I adopted unhealthy habits as coping skills. This time, running has been a healthy coping skill to navigate a transition.
Running + My Relationship to Dance
For those who may be wondering, why don’t I just dance? The answer is a little more complicated than the question. In short, the pandemic impacted the dance industry, and being a caregiver impacted my dance journey. My confidence in my dancing plummeted throughout the pandemic. When the world started “opening back up,” I felt like I was watching my peers get back into the industry while I was still stuck caregiving. Yes, being a caregiver was and is my choice. But I felt like I was regressing in my dance skills while I was gaining other life skills. Now I cherish those life lessons, and carry them with me into my life, into my craft.
Additionally, I live in a small-ish city, so adult classes for the experienced dancer are a bit hard to come by and are at least a 30-minute drive away from where I live. As an artist, my relationship with dance ebbs and flows. As I mentioned, I felt stuck in my body. Dance is not linear like running is. Often times, I get stuck inside my own head.
But thanks to running, I feel like moving again. I feel like dancing again. And I am so relieved about it. I feel similar to how I felt when I decided to become a dance major in college (after 3 years of back-and-forth decision making).
Running has offered both a point of connection to dance, and a healthy separation from it.
Getting Out of My Head
There are times when I am dancing that I can allow myself to just black out and let my body guide me, exploring the space. But with running, I feel like I can shut my mind off, or let it explore. Either way, I let my body take over and carry me forward, step by step. I can turn on music and pass the time, I can turn on a podcast and learn something new, I can talk to my partner if we are running together, or I can simply let my mind wonder into imaginative spaces and observe my surroundings.
When I slip out of my head and into my body, running becomes almost trance-like, a moving meditation.
Taking Care of My Body + Self
I laugh thinking about how I had teachers who said running “wasn’t good” for dancers because you’re using different muscles. Now, I feel that it is actually assisting my dancing body. I feel more athletic and agile. I have more stamina, and I feel more comfortable in my body. As long as it’s not hurting them, I personally feel that any form of cross training can be beneficial for dancers.
Running has also encouraged me to care for myself in a deeper way. I pay close attention to the foods that fuel me the best for energy and for recovery, and I especially notice how I feel on the days when I run in the evening after a day of eating.
I have been drinking significantly less, because I feel how heavy and slow I feel running the next day. I also know how much alcohol disrupts the gut microbiome and deep sleep, so I am all for reducing/ eliminating my alcohol intake!
Because running tends to tighten the leg muscles, I am taking extra time for flexibility and mobility, such as stretching and foam rolling.
If there are any unresolved issues with my partner and I, I have realized that we have to resolve them before running. Otherwise, I feel weak, like I want to collapse. When we discuss our feelings and release the tension, I feel free in my body because I feel free in my heart. This may be because we usually run together, and I am so thankful to have a supportive partner whom I can work as a team with.
Cardio’s Impact, Backed by Sources
To reiterate the benefit that running has had on my mental and physical health, a few books I have read recently have highlighted the impact of having a regime to help regulate our body:
In resilient grieving: Finding Strength and Embracing Life After a Loss That Changes Everything, author Lucy Hone, Ph.D. describes how the pain of grief is felt physically in our body and affects our thinking and behavior in the same way as fear. When our body is in a heightened state of alert, regulating our body supports us emotionally, with the more habitual the activity, the more effective it is. “Cardiovascular exercise,” Hone writes, “helps to ease the feeling of fear, such as running, walking, or any sport.”
Similarly, relaxation exercise such as meditation, and eating regularly without big spikes caused by processed foods, caffeine, or alcohol work in tandem with physical activity to regulate our nervous system (p. 215).
Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. writes “When people say, “Exercise is good for stress,” that is for realsie real” in her book, Come As You Are. Relating it to our primal instincts, Nagoski describes physical activity as being the “most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle and recalibrating your central nervous system into a calm state.” Why? Quite literally, when we were being chased by big animals back in the day, it was a life-or-death scenario to either run to get killed. Therefore, when our body is in a state of stress, cardiovascular activity creates the context that we need to run off, or elliptical off, or dance off our stressors, like being chased by a lion (120).
Like Hone writes in her book about grief, Nagoski also mentions completing the stress response cycle with sleep, affection, some form of relaxation, and having yourself a good cry or primal scream.
While I notice the benefits of my newfound appreciation of running consistently on myself, I love having researched information to back it up.
Hopefully this post inspires you to try some form of habitual physical activity that you can stick with an enjoy. While it is not the end all be all of physical and mental health, it clearly has a huge impact.
Happy running, skipping, walking, dancing, boxing, biking, or whatever you do!
