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Jumpstarting the Body-Mind Connection |
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Book Review |
Raymond Arsenault, Ph.D. Move Your Body Tone Your Mood |
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Psst! Over here. Have I got a deal for you: “Suppose you could take a magic pill that would make you feel happy if you were sad, settle you down if you were stressed, calm your fears and increase your self esteem.” Sound good? Well, there’s more. How would you like to become a more effective psychologist? Perhaps you’d like an alternative to referring clients for medication? Interested in being prepared to treat what the Surgeon General has declared to be a national health crisis? Still uncertain? Ok, what if it’s even better than a magic pill? Entirely legal, cheaper than medication, in fact, virtually free, with side effects that are not only mood-enhancing, but health-enhancing? We’re talking, of course, about exercise. The quote in the paragraph above is from Move Your Body Tone Your Mood by Dr. Kate Hays. It teaches us how to use exercise to accomplish all I describe and more. Hey wait! I know what you might be thinking. “Oh no! Not another exercise book!” Yes Virginia, there is another exercise book. But this one is special. First of all, Move Your Body Tone Your Mood is easy to read. Kate Hays uses a three-pronged presentation that …well, … keeps things moving. She’s done her research and the scientist in all of us will be satisfied. But there is no pedantic presentation of data. We get our facts dispensed in a pleasing manner, and quickly get to apply them to something of interest…ourselves. Hays asks the reader to commit to keeping a journal. This approach transforms sections of chapters into worksheets and creates a friendly interactive tone to the work. Finally, she regularly supplements her points with mini case histories, which she refers to as “stories.” These vignettes coupled with the scientific data and our own idiographic rating scales, work very effectively. We have the data, we have examples of the data in action, and we gather an ever-growing compilation of our own relationship to exercise and to the body-mind connection. “Body-mind connection” is the operative concept here, as opposed to the more familiar “mind-body connection.” As practitioners we are accustomed to treating various physiological symptoms. Most of our training involves getting clients to use their minds to relieve symptoms. Hays now shows us how to approach this from the opposite direction. Teach clients to use their bodies to relieve symptoms. Use the body-mind connection to feel better. I can see that “Ho hum, Ray” look in your eye. You think you already know about the benefits or exercise? Well, so did I. Park the car at the far end of the lot. Take the stairs and stay fit. But if most of us already accept that exercise has multiple benefits, why don’t more of us exercise regularly? It is estimated that 61% of the nation is overweight, so it seems pretty clear that most of us are not exercising enough. And how often do we think to recommend exercise to a client? Prior to reading this work, when I thought of the benefits of exercise I thought almost entirely in terms of physical benefits. We exercise to be fit. The transient psychological changes of exercise seemed like a nice bonus. Sort of like the temporary lift we get when a tedious task is finally completed. But here’s the clincher. Hays presents a compelling case for profound and lasting psychological benefits. In fact, she convincingly makes the case that exercise can markedly improve the very clinical conditions that comprise most of our caseload. For example, in a study of treatment for depression those subjects assigned to an exercise group at follow-up were more likely to be partially or fully recovered than those who had been treated with medication. And research has shown that those who exercise regularly “recover more rapidly from stress, experience decreased stress responses, and experience fewer symptoms of physical illness in the face of negative life events.” Studies have shown that for subjects suffering from panic disorder exercise actually can be used to help overcome panic. Research has correlated exercise with optimism, increased self-esteem and cognitive improvement. Now truthfully, did you already know all that? Take a moment to pause and reflect upon the ease and regularity with which psychotherapy clients have been directed toward medication. Many clients don’t want to take medication, and for some, medication doesn’t work well enough. And if they knew that exercise offers a well-proven method of mood regulation, many might choose exercise instead of or in addition to medication. Furthermore, unlike medication, the side effects of exercise are overwhelmingly positive and health-enhancing. Now doesn’t that seem better than the situation we have all encountered in clinical work whereby a medication is prescribed… and then a second medication gets prescribed to control the side effects of the first prescription? Exercise regulates mood, reduces stress, elevates self-esteem, raises energy level, and improves thinking. Move Your Body Tone Your Mood makes this very clear, and since it is written for a general audience, it could be recommended to many clients as an adjunct to therapy. Furthermore, because of the many exercise and mood logs, the book can provide another measure of therapeutic progress, slippage and resistance, all of which a skillful clinician could easily incorporate into treatment. So is it a deal then? We agree that exercise can lead to significant improvement in psychological functioning. Great! But how can we get people to exercise? Move Your Body Tone Your Mood not only helps us discover how regular exercise can improve crucial aspects of life; it then helps us tackle resistance and …get moving. Hays employs Prochaska’s Stages of Change model and applies it to exercise. Through answering a series of questions we get a fix on our present level of exercise resistance. Then Dr. Hays presents us with a fill-in-the-blanks section designed to help us move up the Stages of Change scale toward the Action and Maintenance stages of regular exercise. She anticipates the obvious resistances such as “I don’t have time to exercise” or “I get plenty of exercise typing posts to the Division 42 listserv,” and she helps us strategize to address these kinds of resistances more directly. The book also provides a record-keeping system to insure that the exercise occurs and even helps readers link the positive changes to their exercise program, thereby working toward Maintenance. Not long ago on National Public Radio I heard a discussion regarding the American labor force. We are working more hours than ever before, and longer work weeks than other nations. Our culture is making tremendous demands on its work force. I have seen a dramatic rise in referrals that ultimately turn out to involve job-related stress. The forty-hour week and the nine-to-five job have bloated into ten-hour days with frequent evenings and weekends. Yet Hays reports that on average we burn off 800 fewer calories a day than did our parents. So Americans are working harder and exercising less. We know that higher stress, less exercise and less free time simply can’t be healthy. And it isn’t. The Surgeon General has very recently announced some alarming data regarding weight. He attributes three hundred thousand deaths a year to obesity. It is expected that obesity will soon overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death. In response, the pharmaceutical companies will doubtlessly develop the next Fen-Phen. Physicians will write prescriptions and also offer weight loss through various surgical procedures. Eventually the FDA may insist that Happy Meals carry a cartoon warning label. The public will experiment with trendy diets, unaware that these will most often exacerbate their condition. And some will figure it out and decide to exercise, but be unable to succeed. As psychologists we would do well to be prepared to help. In fact, part of the Surgeon General’s plan for the obesity epidemic calls for the education of health care providers. Move Your Body Tone Your Mood is an excellent place to start. And I guess I should warn you. After reading Move Your Body Tone Your Mood those of us not already engaged in a regular exercise program will find it difficult to pretend that exercise is really not all that important, or that we wish we could exercise but simply can’t fit it into our schedule. In fact, it’s now difficult for me to think of exercise as even optional. Hays has moved me up a notch or two toward Action. And I thought I’d do the same for you, and for your clients. That’s the deal. |
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