{"id":36493,"date":"2023-01-02T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-02T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/holiday-season-a-good-time-to-focus-on-the-health-of-mind-body-and-spirit\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:31:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:31:50","slug":"holiday-season-a-good-time-to-focus-on-the-health-of-mind-body-and-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/holiday-season-a-good-time-to-focus-on-the-health-of-mind-body-and-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday season a good time to focus on the health of mind, body and spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Personal
Personal Trainer Kevin Kephart of Durango works out at the Durango Fitness Club. He credits regular exercise for helping him to get through hard times and maintain his overall sense of well-being. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

While the hope for the holidays is fun with family, decadent dinners and good tidings to all \u2013 the season can also ring in a time of anxiety, stress, extra pounds and depression.<\/p>\n

And while the extra pounds seem to garner the most attention as New Year\u2019s resolutions are made and local gyms surge with new members, what is often overlooked is the positive affect that exercise and movement have on reducing anxiety and stress \u2013 and helping to root out depression.<\/p>\n

Personal trainer Kevin Kephart of Durango credits regular exercise for helping him to get through rough times as well as maintain his overall sense of well-being.<\/p>\n

Kephart was 16 when his 19-year-old sister died in a car accident. A year later his stepdad, who served in Desert Storm, committed suicide. A year after that his biological father died, followed a few months later by his grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd all those people were pretty close to me,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd people will relate PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) to warfare or being a veteran, but the reality is it\u2019s not just warfare, it can come from traumatizing events like that. I think I have some form of that and it\u2019s given me anxiety and depression. But a habit that I started at a young age was weightlifting and exercise, and it\u2019s always been something to bring me back from times of depression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"When
When Kevin Kephart squared off with PTSD symptoms at an early age, he turned to fitness to balance body, mind and spirit. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Making a habit of exercising, cardio combined with some resistance training, is ideal Kephart said, and just like bad habits, good habits become ingrained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt produces endorphins and you get an increase in those good hormones,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s just a proven scientific fact that exercise and resistance training improves depression and anxiety. And on a personal level, I strongly believe exercise has kept me alive. Exercise and speaking to a doctor about depression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kephart encourages people to be intentional when they work out and not to just go through the motions.<\/p>\n

\u201cResistance training is very mindful, it\u2019s like a meditation for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI like how Arnold Schwarzenegger puts it. When you\u2019re lifting, your mind is in the muscle. You\u2019re focusing on that muscle and not thinking about anything else. You\u2019re meditating on that muscle and kind of visualizing the contraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melissa Knight-Maloney, a professor in the Health and Human Performance Department at Fort Lewis College, said exercise absolutely helps with anxiety, stress and depression.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of evidence that exercise helps improve self-esteem and self-efficacy and things like that,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen muscles contract, there are a lot of things released that travel through your body. The technical term is myokines, and they have a lot of different effects. So when we look at things like mood, cognitive function and memory, we see a lot of positive effects from exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Kephart
Kephart suggests finding a balance between resistance training and cardio workouts. Every individual is different in their needs and abilities so finding the right exercises is crucial. And just like bad habits, staying the course with regular workouts of some sort, will form a good habit that will spill over into other parts of life. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In the short term, exercise creates \u201coxidative stress and inflammation\u201d but in the long term it actually decreases chronic inflammation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there is an association with chronic inflammation and things like depression, stress and anxiety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Exercise also decreases the release of stress hormones, Knight-Maloney said, and when stress hormones are high, a lot of our neurotransmitters that make us feel good like serotonin and norepinephrine can be decreased.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo chronic stress can disrupt communication of some of the neurotransmitters in our brain,\u201d she said. \u201cCurrent research also shows that increased circulation from exercise affects endocannabinoids in the brain, which gives off a similar affect to getting high. So the runner\u2019s high might really be a high.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American College of Sports Medicine advises 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise every week, Knight-Maloney said. \u201cWhich works out to somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes three or four times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knight-Maloney passed the proverbial baton when asked if yoga offered the same benefits as the types of exercise mentioned by her and Kephart.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just say that yoga is a different form of exercise,\u201d she said. \u201cBut any time you get a repetitive contraction of your muscle, you get the benefits I\u2019ve mentioned. And that\u2019s the biggest thing that we have a hard time describing to people is the whole thing with individuality. One of the most frustrating things when we try to look at fitness and what\u2019s going on is that everybody responds to different stimuli differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kephart emphasized that fact as well, noting that having a personal trainer is good for exactly that reason, because while something like Cross Fit might be great for one person, it can be all wrong for another.<\/p>\n

Cat Morrison owns the Sweaty Buddha Hot Yoga Studio where she still teaches on occasion. She is also the nurse at Miller Middle School.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a direct link between the practice of yoga and our nervous system,\u201d she said. \u201cThe different poses, which we call asanas, affect the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The parasympathetic is rest and digest and the sympathetic is like our fight or flight. So there is a balance in our body between those two nervous systems. So oftentimes as a nurse, I guide people to relieve anxiety and stress by doing some of those poses.\u201d<\/p>\n

People who practice hot yoga often mention getting the same effect as a runner\u2019s high, where you are working hard but also feeling a release of stress and anxiety. And while they get people in the door because hot yoga creates fit bodies, there really is more to it, Morrison said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly, so much of yoga is the mental and spiritual piece,\u201d she said. \u201cBut for sure, the practice is science based. It is improving your nervous system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doing yoga regularly is really about being in the present, being in your body in the moment, not thinking about the past or the future, Morrison said. The goal is to stay in the present.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s when we practice mindfulness and presence that we can truly experience the joy of being in our bodies and being alive,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd this takes you out of that place of anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said \u2018if you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

gjaros@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exercise touted as a great way to shed the holiday pounds, but it is also good for reducing anxiety, stress and depression<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83362,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36493\/revisions\/83362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36493"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}