Last update: 18 September, 2017
The burning pain of a failed relationship is one of the greatest pains you can ever experience. Feeling in an endless tunnel with a broken heart extinguishes your strength and prevents you from seeing beyond.
An excellent way to recover from the emptiness caused by a romantic breakup and help heal the heart is to play sports, especially outdoors. The reason is that this allows you to release all the tension accumulated in the body and, in addition, bombards the brain with endorphins, the neurotransmitters in charge of making us feel good and decreasing pain sensations, both physical and emotional. Let's take a closer look at what it is.
The mind-body connection
When we experience a sentimental breakup, we are pervaded by an emotional pain that causes, in turn, physical reactions. Several studies claim that the area of ​​the brain that is activated when we are physically injured is the same as when we experience love rejection or the loss of a loved one.
Consequently, all the sensations and emotions of our mind affect our body and, similarly, stress and physical fatigue affect our mind.
As much as we can deny it, body and mind are connected, they work together and affect each other. The effectiveness of exercise in healing a broken heart, therefore, stems from this deep connection. When we take care of our mind we take care of our body and, conversely, when we take care of our body we also take care of our mind.
However, when it comes to a broken heart, outdoor sports are much more recommendable than any other activity. The simple fact of walking in the middle of nature brings a series of additional benefits that cannot be found otherwise.
Exercise in the fresh air offers a great opportunity to heal emotional pain. It reduces the feelings of anger and sadness that accompany a broken heart.
Outdoor sport dulls anger and makes us hopeful
As it was said, physical exercise helps us in the arduous task of mending the edges of a heart broken by a break, even better if in the open air, in the middle of nature, learning great lessons.
When we face the efforts required by a run, a walk or any other physical exercise in a natural environment, we immediately regain awareness of our true place in the world. We are insignificant and powerful at the same time, we are pure life energy.
Every ditch, every stone, every void we jump, every goal we reach and every challenge we win are a conquest that mitigates the anger, thanks to the secretion of endorphins, and which gradually excludes it, giving way to hope. In this way, we renew ourselves inside, we clean up our wounds and, over time, we recover the consciousness of our being and, ultimately, of our essence.
Exercise is an example of how important constancy and effort are to overcome and get back on track.
In nature we can find many answers. Answers that will open up new possibilities for us, which will transform the negative energy of anger into positive energy to move forward.
Nature helps us broaden our perspectives
Playing outdoor sports will reduce our anger and will also help us have a renewed perspective on our life and solve problems and difficulties. Coming into contact with nature and pausing to observe its beauty calms us and allows us to broaden our perspectives.
Thanks to the observation of the simplest and most everyday moments, of the most common elements and of the harmony that arises despite its great immensity, we can manage to steal things that perhaps we had never noticed.
Everything our five senses gather from nature can lead us into a meditative state through which to free the mind, reduce anxiety and, as we have seen, calm anger. Exercising in the midst of nature can become our safe haven. Its simplicity and magnanimity, its transcendence and “volatility”, its cycles… All helps us to broaden our understanding of things and to differentiate what is important from what is not.
"Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of broken dreams"
-S.A. Sachs-
Nature helps to forgive
Last but not least, exercising in the midst of nature predisposes us to heal our resentment for what we have experienced. The state of well-being originated from sport, together with the wonderful power of tranquility transmitted to us by nature, helps us to find new hope and, with it, the ability to forgive. Because forgiveness requires hope and the belief that there is a better place away from the painful void that formed after the breakup.
As we have seen, Exercising in the fresh air frees the mind, relieves emotional pain and gives us the strength to carry on. Because even if your heart breaks, we can always look for the best way to mend it, and the best combination to do it is the one offered by sport and nature.
