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Mental Health Awareness Week
Moving more for our mental health
The theme of Mental Health Awareness Week this year is, moving more for our mental health, with the aim of encouraging everyone to incorporate more movement into their lives. Whether it’s taking the stairs instead of the lift, cycling to work, raking leaves, walking with your dog or playing with your children – every effort counts.
Incorporating moments of movement, physical activity or exercise into your daily routine will not only improve your physical health but will also have a significant positive impact on your mood, emotions, mental health and overall well-being too. It is important for everyone to understand that our mind and body are not separate, they are interconnected, this is also known as The Mind-Body Connection.
Join Dr Andrew Morrice for his 1-day workshop – The Mind-Body Connection: Emotion, Movement and calm.
Having a deeper understanding of the latest research into the effects on mental health of ‘physical’ factors – such as movement and exercise, time in Nature, ‘breathwork’ and real-time connection with others – enables us to tailor powerful therapeutic interventions and deliver more informed psycho-education.
Find out more
Getting our physical needs met healthily is just as important as ensuring that our innate emotional needs are met well, since our physical health impacts on our mental health and vice versa
Dr Andrew Morrice
Meeting your needs
You may experience feeling stressed, worried, sad or unmotivated because one or more of your emotional needs and/or physical needs aren’t being met well, or in balance, or because your innate resources which were designed to help us meet our needs aren’t functioning as they should (this is known as the human givens approach). By identifying and addressing the missing needs and learning to make the best use of your resources – your natural guidance system – will allow you to master effective ways to ensure yourself a better future.
Explore more about the human givens approach
Don’t let anxiety stand in your way
If you or someone you know suffers from high levels of anxiety and the thought of incorporating movement into a daily routine worries you, please take a moment to view our clear, practical and effective resources below – each can help to manage and reduce anxiety.
If you live or work with anxious people, we also offer a range of accredited mental health training courses – click here to find out more >
The power of ‘7/11’ breathing
On our Human Givens College training courses, we teach a technique which Joe Griffin named ‘7-11’ breathing, because it’s the most powerful technique we know.
Here is how you do it, and it is as easy as it sounds:
- Breathe in for a count of 7.
- Then breathe out for a count of 11.
If you find that it’s difficult to lengthen your breaths to a count of 11 or 7, then reduce the count to breathing in for 3 and out to 5, or whatever suits you best, as long as the out-breath is longer than the in-breath.
Continue in this way for 5-10 minutes or longer if you have time – and enjoy the calming effect it will have on your mind and body. An added bonus of 7-11 breathing is that the very act of counting to 7 or 11 is a distraction technique, taking your mind off your immediate concerns.
This 7/11 breathing technique for relaxing quickly is the most powerful we know and has been used for thousands of years throughout the world.
Make sure that when you are breathing in, you are doing deep ‘diaphragmatic breathing’ (your diaphragm moves down and pushes your stomach out as you take in a breath) rather than shallower higher lung breathing.
