The Role of Movement in Mental Health

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Since I was a kid, I feel like I have always had some form of physical movement in my life. I can remember engaging in a variety of sports, riding my bike constantly, playing backyard football with friends, and more. Nowadays, I enjoy and appreciate the benefits of what I will call “daily movement,” whether it’s working out with weights, walking, going for a casual bike ride, or even doing yardwork. Movement for me is a staple of my life and has been for a long time. I appreciate the way it makes me feel, and the emotional content it encourages.

Over the years, though, I have also noticed a very important phenomenon that takes place in me when I don’t engage in some form of daily intentional movement or exercise. It is a subtle mental and emotional toll, accompanied by a physical and mental lag, as though my own mental processing becomes encumbered and more vulnerable to small shifts in mood, even more susceptible to “negative” perspective. This negative emotional cognitive shift is something I started to notice early on in my life when movement was absent.

As a therapist and researcher, I have come to see the relevance of movement and exercise to one’s mental health. In fact, during my initial intake interview with a prospective patient, I will inquire about a person’s level of daily physical activity. Here is why that element becomes so pivotal.

What we know so far

Humans are made for movement. Our body parts are designed in an extraordinarily productive way to move, to transport us, to advance our potential, and to help us survive. I won’t go as far back as our primitive beginnings to authenticate this, but we can assume that we are here now because that very first person to ever exist was required to move and hunt to stay alive. Advance that notion centuries later and ask what has changed?

We live today in a way that is vastly different from how our ancestors lived. In contrast to our paleolithic predecessors, much of our modern society now spends an inordinate amount of time tethered to technology, entertainment, excessive amounts of food, and other things. This has altered how we use and engage with our bodies. And yet, some things remain true from our first ancestors, and that is the nonnegotiable imperative of “movement” to our experience of life.

The "polypill" effect of movement

Movement

Source: "Gibster/Adobe Photostock", "Pills arranged to form a silhouette of a running figure, symbolizing health and movement./licensed for use".

Maintaining an active lifestyle has long been linked to good health, but the notion of exercise as medicine has now gained even more substantial momentum. Many current studies relate the lack of daily movement and stressors to the impacts on mental health, especially in terms of brain health (Mian et al., 2024).

Some experts describe physical exercise as a transdiagnostic device, or a “polypill,” that offers up numerous benefits in preventing and managing a variety of diseases. Yes, exercise has the potential to work across a spectrum of issues. And unlike traditional medical treatments, exercise comes with the minimal risk of adverse effects, serving as a cost-effective alternative to medications, surgeries, and hospitalizations (Deslandes, 2014).

Research tells us now that healthy daily movement can benefit individuals with a wide range of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and even schizophrenia.

• In a study by Dishman et al. (2021), the researchers found that any level of physical activity mitigates depression risk.
• Movement or exercise encourages self-reflection, enhances introspective awareness, and improves emotion regulation, promotes endorphin secretion, and positively enhances mood (Wu et al., 2025).
• Exercise can help people with cancer diagnoses by alleviating the associated anxiety and depression, thus fortifying the body’s immune system during treatments (Wu et al., 2025).
• For schizophrenia patients who are stable on antipsychotic medications, yoga has been shown to improve their psychopathology and improve quality of life (Yang et al., 2024).

Movement is crucial, down to the very fiber of our cells. In fact, a tiny organelle proves this aspect in the relationship between exercise and mental health.

Movement and mitochondria

Mitochondria (the cell's powerhouse) and mitochondrial biogenesis—the process by which cells generate new mitochondria—are implicated factors for mental health (Pradeepkiran et al., 2025). To break this down, mitochondria are tiny structures within each cell that can be regarded as the cell's internal power plant. These powerhouses help with things like cell signaling, managing cell growth, and even controlling when a cell should self-destruct, a process called apoptosis (Li et al., 2025). They are essential for keeping your cells, and by extension, your body and mind, healthy and functioning properly.

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Mitochondria also work at mitigating issues like neutralizing harmful stress-related chemicals, helping regulate immune responses, reducing inflammation, detecting damage, and protecting brain cells. Dysfunctional mitochondria, the unhealthy counterparts, have been linked to issues like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and even schizophrenia (Giménez-Palomo et al., 2021).

And guess what helps our mitochondria continue to function optimally? You guessed it, physical movement. In fact, physical activity can:

• Help enhance mitochondria’s energy production, reducing harmful stress-linked chemicals and stimulating mood-enhancing neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.
• Encourage autophagy, the process whereby damaged mitochondria are removed and replaced with healthier ones.
• Stimulate signals to boost biogenesis, with activities like walking, running, cycling, and dancing, and encourage your cells to generate additional mitochondria.

As psychological research continues to uncover the powerful connection between physical activity and mental health, the potential for new insights and applications continues to grow.

Movement and the MAP mentality

Moving with Yoga as example

Source: "Daria Lukoiko/Adobe Photostock", "A young woman in a yoga pose/licensed for use".

You will notice I have used the word “movement” in place of exercise at times throughout this post. Over the years, the word exercise hasn't sat so well with some of my clients. It conjures notions of things they have experienced or seen in their lives, grueling pronouncements that exercise equates to strain, injury, hurt, dieting, and more. But the word “movement” is a much less affecting term that allows for a larger and healthier set of alternatives.

One of the things I incorporate into my days is a MAP (Move, Amplify, Perform) mentality for everything, including exercise. Let’s say I have a full week, with lots of meetings, deadlines, and other things. Thinking about a run, or even a walk, might immediately block in my mind a full allocated hour that I may not have, and my energy levels might also be extremely tapped. But if I mentally improvise, I can easily, and probably joyfully, embrace a quick walk or a condensed bike ride around the block that may last only 15 minutes or less. That would be considered my “move.” At the end of my day, I always feel better because I can say to myself that although it wasn’t at the amplify or perform levels, I did embrace the move level.

And if it continues similarly for the week, then so be it. It is our ability to at least embrace the prospects for movement that we should seek. You can try this MAP approach to encourage yourself to simply move in your day for better mental health.