GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. - On Tuesday, Dr. Henry Emmons, Integrative Psychiatrist and co-founder of NaturalMentalHealth.com, talked about the importance of grounding.
Today, he talks about how movement can help manage stress.
“When your stress response kicks in, it's the fight or flight response, it is really telling your body to move,” says Dr. Emmons.
He says interval training is most ideal to interrupt the stress cycle.
“Whatever the activity is, you're doing it really fast just for a short spurt and then you slow down and rest for a minute or two, and then you do another short spurt,” Dr. Emmons says. “That’s a really great way to get some of that energy out.”
Interval training might be tough if you're at work all day, but even there, building in simple movement can really help.
“The worst thing we can do when we're really stressed is to stay sedentary. There actually is really good research that you get a lot of the benefits of movement by simply standing up every 15 to 20 minutes. You don't even have to do anything more than that,” Dr. Emmons says.
“Break it up so that you're not sitting for hours on end, but you're getting up every 20 minutes or so,” he adds. “Helps your sleep, helps your muscles relax a little bit, it warms your body up. It's just good for so many things.”
Tune in Thursday when Dr. Emmons talks about how important sleep is to help you manage stress.