How Can Stretching Help with Depression?

Stretching, in its ease of use and portability, can be a great solution in the fight against depression. How? Behold some of the many potential effects:

• Stretching just before bed can lead to a better night’s sleep. This in turn will help your body balance its hormones, including cortisol. We now know that cortisol is a hormone associated with stress, being fearful, depression, and a host of other undesirable states. Worse – and not surprisingly, studies are indicating that elevated cortisol levels seem to increase our cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods. Which leads to the next bullet point…
• By helping you get a better night’s sleep and thus regulating your hormone levels, stretching can also offer the extended effect of helping you maintain your weight. None of us needs a study to know that when our weight is at a level we feel comfortable, we are far happier and far more resilient against feeling depressed.
• While a good night’s sleep is one way to regulate our cortisol (see first bullet point), slow stretching and yoga in of themselves help to reduce cortisol levels as well, through the stress-reduction benefit of lengthening and consciously relaxing our muscles, and breathing smoothly. And when you’re less stressed, you’re probably also less depressed. Or, at the very least, you know that if you are MORE stressed, almost certainly you are vulnerable to be more depressed!
• Mindfulness – that is, being mindful and engaged in life’s activities (all of them, including the more mundane) – tends to be quite the opposite state of mind than that of depression. When you’re mindful, you are focused, aware, calm, and involved. When you’re depressed, you’re blah, stressed, and detached. So any activity, such as yoga or stretching, that can momentarily pull you into that mindful state, can also help keep you there and prevent you from returning to that depressed state.
• Stretching, by virtue of it alleviating physical stiffness, increasing blood flow, calming the central nervous system, and refreshing weary and fatigued muscles, can only help relieve the physical sensations associated with depression, leading to a sense of increased sense of well-being and the ability to extract joy and pleasure from what you’re doing.
• It’s been shown that an increase in gratitude can help offset feelings of depression and in fact elevate one’s happiness. What better way to cultivate that gratitude than in becoming attuned to the miracle of your body’s abilities through stretching? Feeling your muscles stretch, listening to yourself breathe, watching small improvements from one stretch session to the next, sensing an improved posture in yourself…..all of these things serve to interrupt the bombardment of outside information and bring us back to the sweet simplicity of re-connecting to that inner dialogue with your own body and mind.
• Finally, stretching simply FEELS GOOD. It’s one activity that we can all do for ourselves, any time, any day, in any number of ways, and best of all, the relief is almost immediate!

taken from http://www.theflexibilitycoach.com/articles/Articles_PDF/Can_Stretching_Alleviate_Depression.pdf

Here at Complete Wellness Chiropractic, we offer a comprehensive stretching program called Functional Movement that works one-on-one with you to establish good stretching habits and routines. We work on balance, posture, flexibility, strength and coordination through a series of stretches that you can weave into your already existing daily routines. This is a great way to get yourself moving and to maintain all of your progress!

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