Physical movement is essential for enhancing resilience.
Any kind of movement, including walking, yoga, or more intense exercise, offers numerous health benefits—enhancing the flow of blood and lymph, releasing natural feel-good chemicals known as endorphins, and strengthening your body. It also helps route blood flow to your brain, increasing your physical and mental energy levels.
Research has found that moderate and regular exercise decreases cortisol levels, reduces anxiety, and increases daytime energy. “The association between stress-energy and salivary cortisol was affected by vigorous physical activity,” according to the research.
How Movement Enhances Health
Since your body is comprised of interconnected layers, movement benefits the following organ systems:
Brain: Movement and exercise help support healthy brain chemistry by increasing the release of happy hormones like endorphins, energizing hormones like epinephrine (adrenaline), and uplifting neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.
Movement can help increase brain circulation, which helps calm inflammation and enhance mood. Research has found that exercise improves cardiorespiratory fitness, cerebral blood flow regulation, and memory function in individuals with mild cognitive impairment.
Research shows that exercise helps improve symptoms of attention-deficit disorder (ADHD). The study found that exercise enhances motivation for tasks requiring focused thought, increased energy, and reduced feelings of confusion, fatigue, and depression.
Similar research has found that exercise reduces depressive symptoms and may boost mood by increasing a brain protein called BDNF, which helps nerve fibers grow. Walking, in particular, helps calm the mind due to the meditative repetition of steps. The left, right, left, right pattern helps lower stress and improve your mood.
Meditative movement, such as Qigong, tai chi, and certain forms of yoga, in which you pay close attention to your bodily sensations, position in space, and gut feelings (such as subtle changes in heart rate or breathing) as you move, has been shown to alleviate depressive symptoms. Changing your posture, breathing, and rhythm can all change your brain, thereby reducing stress, depression, and anxiety, and leading to a feeling of well-being.
Heart: Exercise improves your cardiovascular health, resulting in lower blood pressure, healthier cholesterol levels, and better blood sugar regulation. Research finds that exercise also promotes positive physiological changes, such as calming the sympathetic nervous system, strengthening muscles, and encouraging the heart’s arteries to dilate more readily.
Exercise improves your muscles’ ability to draw oxygen from the circulating blood. That reduces the need for the heart—a muscular organ itself—to work harder to pump more blood to the muscles.
Lungs: Exercise improves your respiratory endurance. The rhythmic motion of the lungs during normal breathing is a critical regulator of the clearance of bacteria and other noxious materials.
Research found that “regular endurance exercise training results in significant increases in work capacity of the ventilatory musculature.” Similar research found “a significant increase in respiratory muscle endurance.”
Lymph: Exercise and movement help stimulate the lymphatic system. Your lymphatic system and lymph fluid help transport waste and toxins out of your tissues and body.
As you may know, interstitial lymph fluid flows through the lymph nodes, where toxins are filtered out. Unlike the cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system lacks a heart to pump fluid through the body. The more you can help lymph fluid flow by moving your body, the more quickly you can remove toxins from the body.
Unlike your circulatory system, your lymph system cannot move itself. There is no pump. This matters because lymph is responsible for removing waste from your body. And if you don’t help it, guess what happens. The trash piles up.
Your lymphatic fluid can accumulate and stagnate. This stagnation can be caused by an overload of acidity, animal protein, gluten, infection, toxins, or adhesions in the connective tissue, such as scars. Your lymph system is also immune-supporting. If you don’t clean this up, it locks germs in without downtime to clean them out. The more toxins accumulate and remain, the more your immune system must expend its limited energy combating these toxins. Exercise and movement, such as yoga, dry brushing, rebounding, or even walking, help get the lymphatic system flowing.
Muscles: You have more than 600 muscles in your body that contribute to about 40% of your total body weight. By moving, you are strengthening your muscles, which improves stability, balance, and coordination. Your muscles are attached to bones with tendons, and tendons connect to two (or more) bones across a joint. When your muscle contracts, or shortens, the tendons pull on the bone, causing the joint to flex (bend) or extend (straighten). Exercise enhances muscle tone, strength, and resilience.
Bones: Movement helps build denser, more durable bones. Bone-building activities, such as resistance training (weights), weight-bearing exercises (jogging, walking, hiking), and balance training (yoga), can help support better bone density.
Essential Oils to Enhance Movement
Movement enhances circulation, which is crucial for delivering oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to the body and brain, while simultaneously carrying toxins and waste to the kidneys and liver for elimination.
Essential oils can help improve circulation by relaxing the blood vessels and improving the health of the blood vessels. This allows more blood to circulate through them, thereby improving circulation.
Essential oils can also be used to help the veins contract, stimulating blood flow. Essential oils may also help alleviate some of the triglycerides that can form and restrict blood flow.
Essential oils can also be used to enhance lymphatic system functionality, which helps flush out toxins and reduce inflammation in the blood vessels, thereby improving blood flow throughout the body.
For example, research has shown that Peppermint essential oil significantly improved exercise performance. Peppermint essential oil contains high concentrations of the compound menthol, which helps enhance exercise performance, boost energy, and improve concentration.
According to a study published in the International Journal of Neuroscience, peppermint essential oil has been found to enhance energy, alertness, and memory. Research from the University of Cincinnati found that inhaling peppermint oil increases mental accuracy by 28%.
What’s more, essential oils that are high in a component called sesquiterpenes—including cedarwood, vetiver, spikenard, sandalwood, black pepper, patchouli, myrrh, ginger, and frankincense—may help oxygenate your brain. Sesquiterpenes are carbon chains that do not contain oxygen molecules but appear to attract oxygen. This may be one reason why essential oils high in sesquiterpenes increase oxygen levels in the brain when inhaled or topically applied to the skin around the head.
4 Essential Oils to Enhance Movement
1. Circulation™
Optimal circulation is essential for any exercise, especially when your legs and feet require a boost to counteract the effects of gravity. Essential oils can help improve circulation by relaxing the blood vessels and improving the health of the blood vessels. This allows more blood to circulate through them, thereby improving circulation. Essential oils can also be used to help the veins contract, stimulating blood flow. Read More about Essential Oils for Circulation HERE.
Circulation™ blend supports healthy circulation, delivering oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to the body and brain, while simultaneously carrying toxins and waste to the kidneys and liver for elimination. Circulation™ is formulated with several oils known to be high in sesquiterpenes, including Black Pepper, Ginger, and Frankincense, that deliver oxygen to the cells.
Apply 2-3 drops of Circulation™ on the sides or back of the neck, over the left clavicle, on the wrists or ankles to support energy, brain endurance, and warmth of the distal extremities, like the fingers and toes.
2. Lymph™
Exercise and movement help get the lymphatic system moving, and our Lymph oil seems to enhance that movement. Essential oils help keep plants healthy by facilitating the movement of vital fluids and energy. They perform similar functions in the body, helping to improve flow and move energy, which helps shift or calm stagnation.
As you may know, interstitial lymph fluid flows through the lymph nodes, where toxins are filtered out. Unlike the cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system lacks a heart to pump fluid through the body. The more you can help the lymph fluid flow, the more quickly you can remove toxins from the body.
Topically applying Lymph™ to the following specific points on your skin can help lymph flow:
- Around the sides of your neck
- Under your left clavicle (collarbone)
- On the armpits
- Around the bikini line (think where your leg creases when you lift it)
Approximately 75% of lymphatic fluid drains down the left side of the body, so apply essential oils more aggressively on the left side of the neck and the left clavicle.
3. Breathe™
A key component of movement is the breath. We naturally work to breathe deeper during our yoga practice to take in more oxygen for the body and the brain. Vibrant Blue Oils Breathe™ blend opens and soothes the physical airways, allowing for enhanced oxygen intake during exercise. On an emotional level, the lungs also take in and release emotional energy. Vibrant Blue Oils Lung Support, in combination with yoga breathing, can help release feelings of grief, bereavement, regret, loss, and remorse that can obstruct the lungs’ ability to accept and release. Both Breathe™ and Lung Support™ can be inhaled or applied topically over the lungs before yoga to optimize breathing. Breathe™ contains hot oils and should be diluted with another oil (like coconut oil or olive oil) before topical application.
Featured Oils:
Ready to get started? Click the links below to order today:
- Breathe™ available here
- Circulation™ available here
- Lymph™ available here
- Lung Support™ available here
Resources:
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19669784/
- https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00158.2021
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26741120/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172294/
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070415110116.htm
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9291552/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28114723/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264128122_Instant_effects_of_peppermint_essential_oil_on_the_physiological_parameters_and_exercise_performance
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207450601042094
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/02/20/the-sweet-smell-of-success-may-be-piped-in-peppermint/50951219-6ca2-45de-9f7d-410758bb44d2/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7b209bc4c4fc
