Essential Question: How are the limitations on exercise and physical activity during the coronavirus pandemic impacting mental health?
Throughout the six weeks of senior project, my essential question has stayed the same. However, the aspects of my question that I explored and the ways that I went about answering it varied. I also ended up discovering lots of subquestions and questions that were related to my project that I didn’t anticipate in the beginning of this process. In the beginning of the six weeks, I was mainly focused on understanding the science behind how exercise impacts mental health. I felt that answering this aspect of my question would provide me with context to answer other parts of my question. Therefore, later in the project, I focused my research more on current events and how the coronavirus pandemic was impacting exercise and mental health.
About halfway through my project, I began to notice that, while the research portion of my project was going as I had expected, the experiential portion, including interviews and my personal experiments with trying different exercises, was going differently than I thought it would. During my interviews, I expected to hear that exercise was having an especially positive influence during this stressful time. As for myself, I expected to love all of the new workouts I was trying and feel extensive benefits for my mental health. However, this wasn’t always the case. While exercise was generally a positive experience for the people I interviewed, there were also ways that, especially due to current events, exercise was causing additional stress to their lives, which I hadn’t really considered before beginning this project. Some people felt nervous about maintaining social distancing and staying safe while exercising outside. Others found it difficult to find ways to exercise without having access to a gym. And some people simply weren’t enjoying their exercise like they used to, and wished they could go back to their pre-corona workout routine. I felt this way at times as well. While sometimes, exercising made me feel energized and positive, about halfway through my project I began feeling lazy, unmotivated and felt like exercising became a chore. I found that sometimes I was forcing myself to do exercise for the sake of my project, but I didn’t feel like I was getting any of the mental health benefits that I was researching.
This is when I discovered intuitive exercise, which I had never heard of before and definitely didn’t expect my project to go in this direction. Following intuitive exercise means that, instead of following certain rules or a strict schedule, you are listening to internal cues to decide the length, intensity, and type of exercise you engage in each day. This is meant to motivate you to do activities that bring you joy and prevent over-exercising or doing exercises that you dislike, which could counteract the mental health benefits of exercise. Once I started implementing this mindset into my project, and allowed myself to be more flexible rather than following a strict schedule, I found that I enjoyed exercising and felt less stress.
Not only has my senior project taught me about the science behind exercise and mental health, but it has also helped me find new healthy habits and a mindset that I hope to incorporate in my life moving forwards. I now have a better understanding of the importance of listening to your body and intuition, rather than outside influences. It was helpful to learn what types and amounts of exercise work best for me, especially since this can be so different for everyone. Although the current pandemic is still making exercise more difficult than usual, focusing on activities that are enjoyable can make it feel easier and relieve some of the pressure we put on ourselves when it comes to working out. I never expected my takeaways from this project to be so personal or introspective, however I think this was something that was important for me to learn and will be very helpful moving forwards.