5 Ways to Improve Mental Health with Pilates

Pilates is very similar to Yoga in that it is a form of exercise to improve your physical strength and endurance, posture, flexibility, and mental health and awareness. This powerful form of exercise utilizes isometric elements as well as involves several apparatuses to help with specific actions involved in this process. Our focus, however, is not so much on the exercises and the devices themselves but the powerful benefits of Pilates on your mental health.

How can Pilates Improve Mental Health?

Here are five ways to better your mental health by practicing Pilates.

1. Maintains a Healthy Nervous System

When deciding to make any movements, our brains send out neurological signals to the rest of our bodies. More specifically, those parts involved in the desired action – allowing us then to move. This entire process happens so fast that no person could pinpoint precisely where it happens. When we move around a lot and keep our muscles active, like with exercise, we automatically keep our nervous system clean of toxins and well oiled. When our nervous systems function correctly and smoothly, it ensures better communication between your brain and your body. This development allows for better movement even with age where others might find that their joints are in pain or stiff and hard to move.

A healthy nervous system also produces and releases stress-fighting and mood-boosting hormones. These mood-boosting hormones dramatically influence other parts of our mental health, like insomnia, depression, stress, and anxiety.

2. Helps Fight Depression

Depression is one of the major mental illnesses combated by Pilates as, like with all exercise. It helps the brains release the necessary amount of serotonin and dopamine hormones needed to help us feel happy and energized. When our brains have a dip in the production of serotonin or dopamine, it can result in us feeling depressed with absolutely no will power to get up and do anything we are supposed to or even want to. There are, luckily, a vast number of ways to combat depression and anxiety, and most of them are covered when you’re doing Pilates.

3. Boost Cognitive Function

Another way of keeping depression at bay is always to keep your mind active. Pilates will most undoubtedly aid in that department. A significant part of doing Pilates is learning new movements and exercises. Learning new behaviors is known to keep your cognitive function running smoothly by working as a perfect challenge for your body and mind. Directly the action of learning and practicing something new that will take patients to learn, trains our brains to stay active and not have a chance to slow down any chemical production with age. It is very much the same type of neurological stimulation one can expect from starting an exciting and challenging new hobby. The thing about this type of exercise is that you don’t know you’re doing it. Which can be fun for when you’re lazy – but this can also mean that it is something straightforward to neglect.

4. Strengthen Neurogenesis and B.D.N.F Production

Not only does it keep your brain process healthy and running, but exercise through Pilates can also improve the process of neurogenesis – the creation of new brain cells. These new cells will then naturally enhance your memory and make you quicker in the long run. In addition to keeping your mind healthy, Pilates can also improve problem-solving skills and aid learning disabilities. Pilates also protects and enhances already existing brain cells by promoting B.D.N.F (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) production. This promotion is a nerve protecting chemical compound released by the brain. It may also drastically reduce your risk of mental diseases like Alzheimer’s disease.

5. Battle Insomnia

Pilates is also an excellent treatment for insomnia. When we exercise our body and our mind all at once, we end up being even more exhausted by the time we go to bed at night. Staying productive and moving around all day will boost the body’s production of melatonin. Melatonin is a chemical that is missing when we are having trouble sleeping. Naturally, like most mental illnesses that are linked, when we find an aid, for one thing, we see a relief for another – when we no longer have insomnia, the adverse effects like mood swings, anxiety, stress, and depression will eventually also fall away. Treating insomnia will have significant benefits for every day. Benefits like focus, mood stabilizing, and productivity during the day with an increased level of will power and energy.