As someone with a chronic condition of overthinking and anxiety like me (please note that I have never been formally and medically diagnosed, so I’m not going to say that I have an anxiety disorder. That said, yes, I tend to worry about everything), it has been difficult for me to find a suitable exercise to keep me healthy. People have been mentioning about “runners’ high” or “dopamine hits”, but not me. I have never been able to find the joy in jogging, let alone running. I loathe zumba class (I attended to a couple of sessions until I decided to quit), and I avoid gym sessions. I always ended up tired, pissed, sweaty, stinky, even more pissed because I got sweaty and stinky, and hungry.

Swimming helped me a bit… ish. Yes, it’s quite relaxing as you glide in the water and feel the cool water around you when it’s summer and hot outside, but I always got that small voice in the back of my mind, nagging, with its tiny squeaky voice, “what if…?” or “hey, you forgot this…”

Recently, though, I saw a video on Instagram (I forgot to save it) that mentioning something about exercising for people with “a lot of thoughts in their mind”. I remember the vlogger mentioned something along the line of, “what they need to do is to regulate their nervous system so their brain won’t have the time to ask questions. Doing repetitive simple movements that not making them push themselves physically too hard usually helps.” What the vlogger said then reminded me of Qi Gong type of exercise. I’m quite familiar with this type of exercise, thanks to Xiaohongshu and watching older folks moving during my morning walk in the park.

I then decided to give the exercise a try. It did help, though. I usually do the simple movements when I feel everything is too much for me, be it mentally or physically. Be it reading too much bad news about Indonesia or a really late bedtime. I feel that rather than not doing anything with the excuse of “I feel tired because I slept super late/I feel hopeless after reading another horrible news from Indonesia”, I could do something, such as waving my arms left and right while doing a tiptoe movements on my legs. I usually feel better afterwards, and more energized. Sometimes, I followed it with a quick simple yoga session or a walking pad session.

In case you are curious, you can check out this video:

I also found that the routine taught me to be more patient with myself. Some days, I could only managed to do a 10-minutes simple routine. Some days, I could do a yoga session without forcing and pushing myself. Today is one of those days.