Dr. Jennifer Heisz | Move Your Body, Ease Your Mind
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2022
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We all know how exercise and fitness can impact and improve our physical health. But, what about what it can do for your mind? Your brain? Your experience of anxiety, depression, stress and more? Your relationships? Your ability to experience peace and ease?
Movement can be an astonishingly powerful prescription for the all-too-often heaviness and complexity of life. So, why is it so difficult sometimes to get up and move, even when we know what good it'll do for us? Turns out, our bodies and brains do this fascinating dance that sometimes supports us, and other times shuts us down, even when we know, rationally, we’d feel better making different choices. It makes me wonder what if the solution to start moving more isn't based on a doctor's orders or creating a rigorous workout plan but, instead, listening to our bodies and responding accordingly with movement in a way that brings all systems online? That's what we're talking about today with my guest, Dr. Jennifer Heisz.
She's an expert in brain health and the author of Move The Body, Heal The Mind: Overcome Anxiety, Depression, and Dementia and Improve Focus, Creativity, and Sleep. Dr. Hesiz is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Brain Health and Aging at McMaster University, where she directs the NeuroFit lab. Her award-winning research examines the intersections of physical and emotional health and how exercise helps ward off or treat depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health conditions.
Her new book explores her own research and the latest findings on how fitness and exercise can combat mental health conditions such as anxiety, dementia, ADHD, and depression, while improving productivity, creativity, and sleep. Get ready to hear us dive deeper into the relationships between fitness and mental health, creativity, and sleep and explore different strategies and approaches that anyone — with all levels of ability or disability, motivated or unmotivated — can tap to incorporate movement into their lives in a way that feels good. So excited to share this conversation with you.
You can find Jennifer at: Website | Instagram
If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Bessel van der Kolk, MD about the relationship between our minds and our bodies and how we need to harness both to unwind the mind, especially in the context of trauma.
Check out our offerings & partners:
- My New Book Sparked | My New Podcast SPARKED
- Visit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.
- Indeed: Connect with your talent audience so you can make more quality hires faster. And now Indeed's doing something no other job site has done. Now with Indeed, businesses only pay for quality applications matching the sponsored job description. Visit Indeed.com/GOODLIFE to to start hiring now. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey super fun, Cher. If you have been wondering what kind of work makes you come alive, my book |
| 0:05.7 | Spark is the perfect power tool to answer this question, especially as we head into the |
| 0:11.2 | New Year and for today only, that's Monday, November 28th. The ebook version is on sale for only |
| 0:18.7 | $2.99. That's an 80% discount at major booksellers everywhere, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple |
| 0:25.9 | Books, Cobo and Beyond. So grab your digital copy of Spark for only $2.99 and remember, the 80% |
| 0:32.4 | discount is good today only. So go live for Spark on your favorite ebook seller now. To make it easy, |
| 0:38.1 | you'll find a link in the show notes. Just sitting there and grinding it out is actually |
| 0:45.5 | counterproductive. It would be much better for you to go out and have like a nice walk. And when we |
| 0:52.1 | move and give space for the brain to bring up some creative ideas to the surface to bubble up to |
| 0:59.9 | the mind, then we can surprise ourselves. So we all know how exercise and fitness can impact and |
| 1:07.6 | improve our physical health. But what about what it can do for your mind, for your brain, for our |
| 1:14.8 | experience of anxiety or depression or stress and more, for our relationships, our ability to experience |
| 1:20.7 | peace and ease. And why do we resist it so much? Movement can be this astonishingly powerful |
| 1:27.5 | prescription for the all too often heaviness and complexity of life. Then why don't we do more of it? |
| 1:32.8 | What stops us from doing it? And how does it actually work beyond appearance and fitness and |
| 1:38.0 | performance? What does it do for us on a broader level? Well, turns out our bodies and brains do |
| 1:43.4 | this fascinating dance that sometimes supports us and other times shuts us down even when we know |
| 1:49.0 | rationally, we'd feel better making different choices. And it makes me wonder if the solution to |
| 1:54.4 | start moving more isn't based on doctors orders or some sort of cosmetic or performance aspiration |
| 2:00.7 | or creating a rigorous workout plan. But instead listening to our bodies and responding accordingly |
| 2:07.7 | with movement in a way that brings all systems online that treats and helps and heals on a |
| 2:14.0 | profoundly different level that radiates up to the brain changes the way that we perceive ourselves |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jonathan Fields / Acast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jonathan Fields / Acast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.