Exercise Makes You Smarter

Bob Livingstone -

holding on to emotional pain can cause mental and physical harm.

The Body Mind Soul Solution can set you free

Author of "The Mind, Body, Soul Soulution" - Healing Emotional Pain Through Exercise

Exercise Makes You Smarter

By Bob Livingstone, LCSW

eDiets Contributor

Updated: May 14, 2007

A Newsweek article titled Exercise and the Brain describes how exercise increases brainpower. I feel that I have certainly experienced this phenomenon by running five days a week, five miles a day for many years. I have recently added two days of cycling and subtracted two running days from my weekly workout. I feel that physical exercise has improved the clarity of my thoughts and has opened pathways that have greatly increased my capacity for knowledge.

Perhaps the greatest discovery of my life is that exercise heals emotional pain. When I workout, the endorphins kick in and this creates a calm state that allows me to bravely face issues that are troubling. Dealing with this trauma doesn't seem possible while sedentary. This discovery has been crucial during several points in my life. I have found this process extremely helpful in healing the emotional pain surrounding the deaths of both of my parents.

Steps for using exercise to heal emotional pain:

1. Prepare an emotional pain question before you work out. This question can be one of the following: "Why am I feeling so sad?" "How do I feel about my divorce?" "How do I feel about being abused as a child?" This process works best during an aerobic exercise. You will notice a calmness in your body and mind shortly after you begin your workout. You can capture the confidence in order to take a direct look at your personal pain. If you can face your emotional pain, there is a high possibility you can work through it. During your workouts, you may begin to feel sadness, anger, grief or disappointment that had been deeply buried for years. It's not unusual to achieve progress during the first work out.
2. Journal your thoughts and feelings immediately after exercising. It is important to write down your thoughts, feelings and memories while they are fresh in your mind. Journaling will also allow you to advance the new insights that you gained from the work out. It will also help you increase your understanding the origins of your emotional pain.
3. If it is safe to do so, use a voice recorder to express your thoughts and feelings while exercising. Often times the thoughts and feelings come so fast and furious that it is difficult to remember all that transpires. The voice recorder takes away the burden of remembering. When it is time to journal, you can listen to your own words that took place in real time.
4. If it is safe to do so, listen to music that will evoke strong feelings while working out. You may decide to choose music that brings up memories that create an internal visual image. These images may be of traumatic child hood memories or they may be of lovers who left abruptly. Listening to music, with the purpose of healing emotional pain while exercising, may speed up the grieving process. This occurs because the music makes the memories and feelings more immediate. A previously hazy memory may be replaced with a clear one that enhances healing.
5. Re-read your journal immediately before your next work out in order to prepare an emotional pain question. This will reinforce your working through process and it will also provide you with information about how to formulate your next question.

Utilizing these techniques will enable you to heal emotional pain through exercise. This process is helpful for those who have recent trauma as well as those who have been "stuck" for many years. It is known as The Body-Mind-Soul Solution and it can set you free.

Bob Livingstone, LCSW, has been a psychotherapist in private practice for almost 20 years. He works with adults, teenagers and children who have experienced traumas such as family violence, neglect and divorce. He works with men around anger issues and adults in recovery from child abuse. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Redemption of the Shattered: A Teenager’s Healing Journey through Sandtray Therapy and the upcoming The Body-Mind-Soul Solution: Healing Emotional Pain through Exercise (Pegasus Books, Aug. 2007). For more information visit www.boblivingstone.com.

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