Earlier today I felt flat.
Low energy.
Low mood.
A little lonely.
Nothing dramatic — just that familiar, heavy, slightly muted state where the world feels dimmer and your thoughts turn inward. I listened to To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra and felt myself getting emotional, close to tears, without really knowing why.
Instead of analysing it, I decided to move.
First, a walk.
Then, the gym.
By the time I got home, the shift was unmistakable. I felt lighter. More positive. Energised. Excited. Not just “less bad” — genuinely good. I was suddenly happy to be spending time alone rather than interpreting solitude as loneliness.
Same day. Same life. Same circumstances.
Completely different internal world.
That experience reminded me of something simple and profound:
Mood is not just a mental phenomenon. It’s a physical state.
Mood lives in the body before it lives in the mind
When we feel low, we often assume something is wrong with our thinking.
But most of the time, what we’re experiencing isn’t a thought problem — it’s a state problem.
States are driven by things like:
Nervous system activation
Hormones and neurotransmitters
Blood flow
Breathing patterns
Muscle tension and posture
Energy availability
Movement changes all of these almost immediately.
A walk increases blood flow to the brain, regulates stress hormones, and gently signals safety and exploration to the nervous system.
Strength training releases dopamine, endorphins, and testosterone — chemicals associated with motivation, confidence, and vitality. It also creates a powerful feedback loop: I chose to do something hard → I completed it → I feel capable.
What changed my mood wasn’t positive thinking.
It was physiology.
Why movement dissolves loneliness
One of the most interesting parts of the shift was how my sense of loneliness disappeared.
Nothing about my social situation changed. I was still alone.
What changed was my internal energy.
When energy is low, the mind contracts:
Thoughts become more self-focused
Emotions feel heavier
Time slows down
Solitude feels imposed
After movement, the nervous system shifts toward approach:
Attention turns outward
Curiosity returns
Solitude feels chosen
Aliveness replaces self-monitoring
Loneliness, I’m learning, is often not about the absence of people — it’s about the absence of vitality.
The body really does keep the score
This experience also connects strongly to the ideas in The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.
The book is often framed as being “about trauma,” but its core insight applies far more broadly:
The body stores emotional patterns — and the body is also the fastest way to change them.
You don’t need to have experienced major trauma for this to be relevant.
All of us carry:
Stress residue
Emotional habits
Developmental imprints
The quiet tension of modern, sedentary, screen-based life
Talking and thinking are useful, but they’re top-down tools.
Movement works bottom-up — directly on the nervous system.
That’s why it’s so effective.
Not all movement does the same thing
I’ve noticed different types of movement shift different layers of mood:
Walking (especially outdoors):
Calms the nervous system
Reduces rumination
Gently lifts sadness
Integrates emotion
Strength training:
Restores agency
Builds confidence
Converts low mood into power
Reclaims a sense of self-trust
On this day, I intuitively did both. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense.
Positive psychology needs a body
Positive psychology often focuses on gratitude, reframing, meaning, and strengths.
Those are valuable — but they rely on one thing first: capacity.
If your nervous system is dysregulated, positive thinking feels forced. Gratitude becomes performative. Reframing feels hollow.
Movement creates the physiological foundation that allows psychological tools to work.
It doesn’t replace reflection — it enables it.
A simpler question to ask
Instead of asking:
“Why do I feel this way?”
I’m starting to ask:
What state am I in — and what movement shifts this state?
Some examples:
Low and lonely → walk in sunlight
Flat and lethargic → gym session
Anxious → slow walk, nasal breathing
Overstimulated → mobility, stretching, floor work
No overthinking.
No diagnosis.
Just state → movement → recalibration.
The deeper lesson
When my mood dips, I’m not broken.
I’m usually just under-moved.
Modern life pulls us into our heads — into screens, concepts, narratives, optimisation.
Movement brings us back into the body. Back into aliveness. Back into choice.
That’s why after training, I didn’t just feel better —
I felt at home with myself.
And that, more than productivity or fitness or discipline, feels like the real point.