Jog On: How Running Saved My Life

Product Information

In the years that followed, Bella’s anxiety escalated and she became bound by rituals; avoiding particular letters, numbers, colours and songs, and only travelling to self-designated ‘safe’ places. “There were loads of places I couldn’t go because I would panic on my own. You then become slightly agoraphobic – the world outside feels scary-unsafe,” she explains. Even while Bella was still a young child, she was very anxious. Everything scared her – from surreal pieces of art to specific songs to the noises generated from cars. Her stomach, as well as her chest, usually hurt with worry. When she attended school parties, she would get a strong sense of fear; something would just feel wrong. Chapter 5 – Working out in nature offers your mental health an additional boost –a thing Bella personally felt. Grace Bernard had taken it upon herself to exact revenge on her wealthy father’s family and committed several murders, which no one else would ever understand. She was determined to take them out one by one, no matter what the cost. But even with her successful operation, she was framed and imprisoned for a murder she did not commit. ‘How To Kill Your Family’ follows Grace’s journey as she seeks revenge and discovers the cost of her actions. Will she finally be able to get away with her crimes, or will she be forever punished for her decisions?

Now that she knows of these entire advantages, Bella attempts to run in nature as much as possible as she can. On one occasion, after a bad week where a close friend of hers had passed away, Bella jogged along the beautiful Irish coastline. Hit by the wind and seagulls for company, her morbid feelings of grief disappeared from her mind. Bella’s brilliant love letter to running turns into an extraordinarily brave and frank account of her battle with anxiety. A compassionate and important book’ Joe Lycett The stories of Bella and Sara’s are inspirational; however, they bring about a disturbing question as well: If running is really great, then what is the reason why more of us aren’t doing it? A photo posted by on Was it a more relaxing writing experience not having to recount your own life? As a very keen runner I was drawn to this book for that reason, however after reading it I felt it was better aimed at those struggling with their mental health than the hard core runner. I’m very fortunate to have never suffered with these issues so a lot of the text was a little wasted on me.

Saturday

When she discusses how jogging transformed her life, some individuals are cynical. Some people mention that she might have gotten better notwithstanding. However, science claims that workout does have an actual and useful effect on mental health. We go to a Yoga class given by a family friend. My mum, sister, Greg and I hurtle there late, feeling very frazzled and are taken into a dark room to stretch. I've never done Yoga because I have the attention span of a much younger millennial, but two hours without my phone doing deep breathing is actually quite nice, though I insist on running home because I'm still unsure if what I did would count as exercise. I am a brainwashed running idiot. At home, I eat pitta and hummus and imbibe my life-giving Diet Coke before we go out for dinner, where I eat so much truffle pasta and tiramisu that I fall into an uncomfortable indigestion sleep where I dream about moving to Richmond. I have never wanted to move to Richmond. It probably means I want a baby. I assume every dream post-35 means I subconsciously want a baby.” Sunday Also, exercise motivates anxiety sufferers to ponder on their symptoms differently. This is effective since the impacts of exercise on the body are really very related to the physical symptoms of anxiety. In both circumstances, you feel a racing heart, extreme sweating, and gushes of adrenaline. This entails that, when a person that is anxious embraces an exercise regime, he starts to have positive connections with these feelings. Afterward, when he feels anxiety symptoms, he’ll be less afraid of them and won’t panic that much. All of a sudden, she didn’t just saw alone; however, she also felt the beauty of her environments– the sea, the waves, a mountain. While running, she felt little but not unimportant. She understood that she was connected to the natural world, even though her place in it was tiny. As she paused to pay attention to the waves and feel the sun on her face, she was not thinking about the past or stressing about the future. Rather, she was eventually living in the here and now. There’s also too much politics and talk of privilege that I didn’t really come to the book to read, and to be honest… a skinny white middle class woman writing a book about exercise complaining that most of the representation of exercise from online content comes from skinny middle class women I found a bit irritating.

It’s a sad reality that 26% of the entire adults in England do lesser than 30 minutes of exercise per week. Also, the data reveal that women work out less than men. The cause for this gender imbalance may be seen in the preconceived notions we have about working out. Research has revealed that a lot of women and girls see sports as competitive, aggressive, and incompatible with being feminine. Together with the hormonal as well as cognitive advantages, there’s also proof that exercise transforms us on a much deeper, neurological level. A current study examined mice that lived in a stressful surrounding. So, some of these mice were permitted to exercise regularly, whereas the other mice were not allowed to exercise at all. Later, the researchers found out that, the active stressed mice had formed new connections in their hippocampus – the part of the brain in charge of emotions. Frequently, this female reluctance to sports begins young; a lot of teenage girls state feeling uncomfortable during mixed-gender gym sessions. One of the reasons is as a result of the comments that boys make during these classes. Sadly, these feelings of discomfort go with women into adulthood. When Cosmopolitan magazine conducted a survey, they discovered that most women felt threatened by gyms and that some were afraid of being criticized by men. At times, the sufferer develops compulsive behaviors as well–thinking that these behaviors are the only means to stop bad thoughts from becoming a reality. Bella used to think that the only means to stop her mom from dying was to switch off light switches in a certain manner. This made Bella use hours turning lights on and off until she sensed she had done it properly. At worst, I’ve looked in the mirror at my own face and not recognised it to be me, and not just because I had terrible hair and bad skin that morning. It’s a strange and awful experience. When I was trapped in a fug of anxiety and depression in my early 20s, disassociation made it feel as though the people around me were actors in a bad reality show. I couldn’t connect with loved ones; everything felt fake and staged.

Wednesday

Despite the unbearable sadness, the end of her marriage provided a tipping point. “When he left it was a catalyst. I had to move forward and break out of this,” Bella explains. However, what can be done if you stay in a city or town? Don’t stress–various studies have revealed that you don’t constantly have to work out in nature to get the advantages of it. Extraordinarily, research done by the University of Essex has discovered that just viewing images of lush, natural landscapes while you work out is sufficient to increase your self-esteem and decrease your blood pressure! She was very nervous to visit a gym or a park; therefore, she discovered a private alleyway near her home instead. She simply succeeded to run for just three minutes that evening she started, and she did more of walking in between. However, later on; she discovered something extraordinary: she hadn’t cried for a complete quarter of an hour.

When she hit 30 that year, she remembers thinking everything felt different. “I started running and continued seeing the therapist … all the worries and panic and irrational thoughts and not being able to get out of bed went away. I was able to live on my own for the first time and travel and do all the things I couldn’t do in my 20s. It felt like a new lease of life. I felt like a human being and not like a sad, empty shell pretending to be a human being which is what my 20s felt like”. After a couple of days of crying and drinking lots of wine, she chose to do a different thing. Rather than using the evening slumped in front of the television, she decided to go for a jog. She still doesn’t actually understand how she came to this choice– it only seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Enjoy the beauty around you Your anxiety can make you introverted, forcing your brain to see negative, scary things instead of your surroundings. Nearly every time I go for a run, I stop to take a longer look at a building, a poster, a sunset. My phone is full of photos of weird street names, beautiful views, and dogs I see along the way. Talking openly about mental health has really grown in the last decade. But I can clearly remember a frustrating period where depression was the only topic discussed. In the last few years anxiety has poked its anxious little head up and now there are many books about people’s experiences with anxiety, and it’s great to read similar experiences and coping mechanisms. Maybe I’ll write my own some day. I’m still giving it four stars though as it was very well written, with lots of interesting statistics on how running and exercise really does improve your well being and written in a humorous way to lighten the statistics and research load. If you suffer from anxiety and are looking for something in your day to day life that will help change your mindset, then I’d strongly recommend this book.

Tuesday

Anxiety affects everyone differently. You may experience intrusive and out-of-proportion thoughts, prolonged feelings of intense panic, fear and worry, but also physical symptoms of sweating, palpitations, and breathlessness, a change in appetite, tension headaches, dizziness and insomnia. I went into this book expecting a focus on running for newbies and its benefits to mental health that the author experienced. I could relate to a lot in this, both her history of anxiety and how helpful exercise has been for her. It was actually pretty meta listening to an audiobook about running for mental health while I was running for mental health. I had planned to finish it while running my first half marathon. But it didn’t quite pan out that way. I spent my 20s enjoying journalism but also knowing ‘I have slightly stumbled into this’. I knew lots of journalists, my dad was a journalist. I did it without thinking about it. And then I thought, ‘I don’t really know where I’m gonna go with this, because I’m not my dad ...’” She left journalism aged 33, to write Jog On and says that writing the book “felt like the beginning of my life”. There is no magical remedy for anxiety. There’s no medication you can use or work out you can do that will ensure that you never feel bothered or unhappy again. However, a running regime can assist you to cope with your symptoms and offer you the tools to live a more satisfying life. Therefore, tie your sneakers lace, and let go of your anxiety by allowing your body to fly down a – preferably nature-filled – path.