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Areas › Your body › Moving your body
This matters most when you are already doing other things and still struggling. Walking, cycling, swimming, anything that lifts your heart rate for a decent stretch, all of it counts. Nobody is suggesting you drop what already helps. The point is that movement belongs in the same category as the rest, worth planning for rather than fitting in if there happens to be time.
Take action, God will see your actions (Quran 9:105). Effort made with the body is counted as something done, not as a lesser way of getting better.
التوبة
وَقُلِ ٱعۡمَلُواْ فَسَيَرَى ٱللَّهُ عَمَلَكُمۡ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَۖ وَسَتُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ عَٰلِمِ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ وَٱلشَّهَٰدَةِ فَيُنَبِّئُكُم بِمَا كُنتُمۡ تَعۡمَلُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘Take action! God will see your actions- as will His Messenger and the believers- and then you will be returned to Him who knows what is seen and unseen, and He will tell you what you have been doing
Qur’an 9:105read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pooling randomised trials of exercise for depression and correcting for the tendency of positive results to get published, researchers still found a moderate antidepressant effect, larger in supervised higher intensity programmes. A Cochrane review of 39 trials agrees that exercise beats no treatment by a moderate margin, while noting that against therapy or medication the difference in the highest quality trials was small and not statistically significant. A real treatment, then, but not a replacement for the others.
Schuch FB, Vancampfort D, Richards J, Rosenbaum S, Ward PB, Stubbs B. (2016). Exercise as a treatment for depression: A meta-analysis adjusting for publication bias.. Journal of psychiatric research doi
Cooney GM, Dwan K, Greig CA, Lawlor DA, Rimer J, Waugh FR, McMurdo M, Mead GE. (2013). Exercise for depression.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Regular exertion changes the body chemistry that mood runs on, so the effect is physical and not only a matter of distraction.
If you are under care for a heart or joint problem, ask what is safe for you before increasing what you do.
A few sessions give you an effect that fades. A few months of it starts to change your baseline. Plan for the longer version if you can.
If a child is climbing the walls, green space helps most, a walk down a busy street helps a bit, and staying in the room helps least. Any of the three beats none.
Children need to move before school, during it and after it. Keeping a child in at break until the work is finished takes the movement away from the very child whose finishing depended on it.