This Mental Health Awareness Week 2024, the theme is Mental Health Movement. In this article, MQ Ambassador, athlete, LGBTQ advocate and author Amazin LeThi shares with our editor how movement has been an integral part of her mental health journey.
Moving through childhood
Like many children, I started moving and doing athletics from a very young age, I was about five years old. But team sports were very hostile to me. I was criticized for being Asian. But I instantly realized the power of movement and how it made me feel inside, like a fire had been lit inside me and, that that Although I couldn’t verbalize, I understood the correlation between mental health and physical health. I didn’t know what mental health was to verbalize it, but I could understand the correlation of movement and how that made me feel.
I was very young when I started weight training. I was around six years old, and when I started going to the gym. That was the beginning of a journey of movement that will last a lifetime. I spent time just moving different machines, moving my body, watching people move and looking at them. I was able to see other people move with confidence, which gave me the confidence to be able to move.
Movement helped me in many different ways. It helped me see myself for the first time as a queer Asian kid, even though I couldn’t verbalize it. It also helped give me the self-esteem I needed.
You can’t get depressed and enjoy moving. There is a physical, psychological and chemical change that your body makes when you start moving and that makes you feel good. And at that moment you think, I can’t have a sad face. I’m in such a good place when I move.
Movement is mental well-being
When you feel depressed or depressed, for me it is like sitting still, my head is bowed, my shoulders are slumped and hunched over, my face is sad and I don’t move.
If someone is happy, what does it look like? If they are ecstatic and feel alive, they would be doing the superhero pose! They would be looking up, they would be smiling. They would be dancing. There would be movement.
Mental health is not a belief system. But if someone told you to close your eyes and remember the happiest moment you’ve had recently, you would see a physiological change in that person. And that person would start to feel better.
“When I feel physically exhausted and my mental health falters, I know that as an athlete I must keep going; When my body fails, my mind must take over.”
When I think about movements, for me it is yin yoga. It is about relaxing the body to train the mind, adopt the posture and simply maintain it. But even when you hold a posture, your body is still in motion. And at the same time, your mind is in motion to relax and release your thoughts and tension. Then you end up calm, in the present.
Celebrate small victories
Now I do a lot of breathing work within my own mental health, because that’s something you can do. Still, when you feel anxiety or panic or feel like your mental health starts to falter. You can take a few moments in silence and breathe deeply a few times. You may find a physiological and psychological change in you.
And I think another part of mental health is mood and movement. We forget to celebrate the small victories. We always aim for the Big Golden Nugget at the end, but for many of us, that is not attainable. But the movement could simply be getting out of bed. Let’s celebrate that victory. Because for the last few days maybe I haven’t been able to do that. That’s still movement.
The move could be taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking two blocks instead of one. It’s about celebrating those small victories along the way. AND that is because that Gratitude helps us recognize that we are doing much better than we thought.
Imagining the lessons learned
Movement has taught me about the correlation between mind, body and spirit. My mind can go back, thanks to my imagination, to all those times I have moved in a way that made me so happy and lifted my spirits. So when I have those moments where maybe I have a mental health issue and I can’t move, my imagination can create a physical and psychological change.
I am humbled by how important the movement has become to me and how it has saved me. Without movement, I wouldn’t be here today.
“In the journeys I’ve had with my mental health, movement really saved me because I was able to leverage those strengths as an athlete to keep me going.”
What I have learned over the years is the importance of preparing the body. There are key things I do to prepare my body, like in the morning, I do meditation, I do gratitude exercises, I think about the goals I am going to achieve that day. And then once I get out of bed, I do a lot of movement and prepare my body to create a different state. So if I had a mental health issue, once I do that preparation, my whole body lifts up. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s not easy, but then something changes.
It’s like, as an athlete, when you train, you get to the point where your muscles hurt and your mind is so exhausted that you feel like you can’t continue. But it’s like that push when you push yourself past the pain barrier, that’s when you start to see results.
The movement begins with the stop
During the pandemic, movement became everything, especially when nothing else can be done. I spent a lot of time training outdoors during the pandemic: moving my body, trying to connect with nature. I don’t take it for granted because I realize how quickly it can be taken away from you. For me the gym had become a place I could go every day. I never had I imagined a day when I couldn’t go to the gym. And then during the pandemic, obviously everything was closed around the world.
And now having a dog has changed me. Movement is not just going to the gym. Movement has become about going to the park for extended periods with my dog and really enjoying every moment of movement.
Movement can be standing still in a park, closing your eyes and letting the wind blow your hair, just feeling how good that feels for your mind and body. My body has helped me learn to appreciate the little movement you need to feel good. Rarely do we stand in a park and close our eyes or take off our shoes, staying grounded and simply wiggling our toes in the grass. How good those little things make you feel.
Since the pandemic, many people live and work differently. The time we didn’t have before ‘because I work non-stop in the office, I work until lunch!’ has changed. Many people work from home. This way you can give yourself time to move. We need to be more intentional about it.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we must stop and take time for self-care, to take those breaks. People might think, ‘I don’t have time to take breaks and take care of myself!’ but he does it. We make. You are allotted a lunch hour and even if it is just 5 minutes to stand outside and feel the sun on you and feel the movement of the air around you and within you.
Movement requires us to stop. Before we can start any movement, whether physical, ideological or political, we must first stop. And then make conscious decisions. But the movement begins by stopping.
Thanks to Amazin for sharing his story. Read more about Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 here.
Find out more about Amazin’s history here.
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