Corinne Austin | Personal Training

Exercise is Medication & Therapy

Did you know that if exercise were a drug it would be the most widely prescribed drug in the world?  I kid you not.  Exercise, and it’s fellow counterparts of movement and physical activity, can prevent, manage, reduce, or cure just about every disease known to man.

 

Yes, exercise is that powerful.

 

Movement is as crucial to our survival as medication and therapy, yet which is the most often prescribed?  We are habitual chasers of the quick fix; our generation longs for convenience – and so often (too often) being an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, or slapping on a band aid, overrides the more intelligent option of sourcing and fixing the actual problem.  Drugs are prescribed for just about every symptom under the sun, when the real solution is to simply reinstate some restorative act of health – such as getting up and moving more.  Oh just how many benefits and roll-on affects that would have!

 

We seem to have forgotten the lost art of movement, the liberating sensations of movement, the age-defying values of movement, the critical life force that is movement.

 

We need to move more, our health and the quality of our life depends on it.

 

Did you know that research now shows that a 60 minute exercise session doesn’t undo a sedentary occupation – no matter how regularly it’s done.  The new discovery has outlined that it isn’t just about how much we are not moving anymore, but that too much sitting down and being sedentary is very bad for our health too.  Even moderate activity i.e. standing work stations, or moving about at regular intervals can counteract the effects of too much time being sedentary.

 

Movement is therapy.  It produces a medicinal cascade of physiological, biological and chemicals reactions in the body that is almost beyond our comprehension, and this complex and critical process is side-stepped every time we choose docile behaviours over active ones.

 

And taking our movement into the outdoors is even more therapeutic.  We are almost always more active outside than we are inside.  There is a world outside our doors (and our screens) that is truly magnificent.  We live in a sphere of magic; one which provides a gigantic platform for us to discover a bounty of healthful opportunities.  The tingling feeling of vitamin D on our skin, the tickle of fresh air on our faces, the vigour of nature infecting our bodies, and the warmth and relaxation that comes with natural, invigorating movement – these are all sensations that are becoming more and more foreign to us.

 

Yes, as our world becomes more technologically advanced, we are unbecoming the masterpieces of physicality that we once were.  It’s time to move it, before we entirely lose it.