Talk:Demystifying Depression/The Role of Sports

Competative sports, as an extreme and seeming obvious example, should be avoided. Insecurities and other related "flight" instincts can corrupt a healthy attempt to return to or to even experience for the first time a healthful mindset.

Apprehension can interfere with group exercise, although the task of entering into an exercise routine is up to an individual. Depression can sway a recovering person through extreme emotions related to apprehension at joining a group even for Yoga. Depending on the source of the depression, avoid group exercise until you are truly ready.

Sports or exercise is challenging for people experiencing depression primarily because of the engagement of mind, body and spirit. For example, persons depressed as a result of sexual trauma have spent an unknown length of time separated intellectually from their body(ies). One exercise that allows for a kind of autonomy while truly strengthening the body and connecting mind and body is lap swimming. Here an individual can focus on breathing as one would while engaged in meditation. There are also various kinds of disguises involved in swimming starting with swim goggles. The combination of the "mask" and the single swim lane results in a safe environment.

Swimming requires regular participation. The outcomes (for me) are still being recognized, but the main effort to connect or to reconnect the mind and the body through a concentrated routine of swimming for exercise are being realized.