Mountains into Mole Hills: How Mental Health and Meditative Movement with a Kinesiologist Can Help

By Alex Bradshaw, Registered Kinesiologist

Every day we have a list of tasks, a pile to move, or a metaphorical mountain to climb. For some, these feel like mole hills and for others, it can feel overly cumbersome. Our mood and mental well-being depict the interactions with our environment and those around us. This is where working with a kinesiologist, like myself, can help shift one’s perspective on that mountain and bring it into a mole hill size. How? By meeting you with where you are at mentally, emotionally, and physically – and creating a safe and accessible space to move and engage with your body.

If engaging in physical activity does not sound like where your mind or body need to be, consider meditative movements. Meditative movement (MM) encompasses any movement practice that also aims to engage one’s sense of proprioception, interoception, and kinesthesis (Larkley et al., 2009). Engaging in meditative movement practices like yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais, and qigong to name a few, has shown to have similar benefits to more traditional and intensive aerobic practices (Wang et al., 2012). How? By reducing blood pressure, improving inflammatory biomarkers that coincide with stress, and assisting in mediating anxiety and depression symptoms (Chen et al., 2012).

Feeling empowered in one’s ability to move and connect with oneself is what drives me to provide engaging and fulfilling treatment sessions to my clients. Each session is centred around your health needs, making mental health a top priority. From assessment to goal-setting, to everyday practice at home, my hope is to enable clients with enough knowledge and enthusiasm to climb their mental mountains at their own speed.