Exercising in the Fresh Air Helps Heal a Broken Heart

Exercising in the Fresh Air Helps Heal a Broken Heart

Last update: 29 March, 2018

Mujer remendando su corazón roto

A great way to get better after the emptiness of an emotional breakup and to heal your heart is to do exercise, especially in the fresh air. This is because it releases all the tension that’s built up in your body. And it will also bombard your brain with endorphins, the neurotransmitters that make us feel better and reduce our feelings of pain, whether physical or emotional. Let’s dig deeper into this. 

The mind-body connection

When you go through a breakup, emotional pain takes over, causing its own kind of physical reactions in your body. In fact, a lot of studies say that the same part of the brain activates when you’re physically injured as when you experience a rejection of love, or the loss of someone you love.

woman holding heart

This is reason all the feelings and emotions in your mind will have an effect on your body. And the same happens the other way around, when stress and physical exhaustion affect your mind.

The mind and body are connected. They work together and affect one another no matter how much we might want to deny it. So, the effectiveness of physical exercise for curing a broken heart is all based on this deep connection. That’s why when you take care of your mind, you’re also taking care of your body, and vice versa. When you take care of your body, you’re also taking care of your mind. 

But doing exercise in the fresh air is a much better option for healing a broken heart than most other kinds of activities. Just simply experiencing nature has a series of added benefits that you can’t get anywhere else.

Exercising in the fresh air blocks your anger and gives you hope

Like we’ve said, exercise helps you get through the difficult task of sewing up the parts of a heart broken by romantic difficulties. And this works even better in the fresh air.

When you confront the effort that goes with going for a run, a speed walk, or taking any other exercise in a natural environment, you’ll quickly regain your awareness of your true place in the world. We’re insignificant and powerful at the same time. We’re pure energy, life.

Every pothole, every rock, every hurdle you overcome, every objective you reach, and every goal you achieve is a victory that will make you feel less angry. Thanks to the release of endorphins, your anger will disappear and little by little you’ll move on to hope. So you can re-energize yourself from within, clean your wounds, and after some time, regain your awareness of yourself and more specifically, your essence.

Exercise is an example of how consistency and effort are worth the trouble. It helps you overcome the breakup and put yourself back together.

cycling in fresh air

Nature helps you broaden your perspective

Exercising in the fresh air doesn’t just reduce your anger. It also helps you get some perspective on your life and how to solve your problems and hardships. Spending time surrounded by nature and stopping to look at its beauty will calm you down and help you broaden your perspective.

By observing the simplest, everyday scenes, the most common elements, and the harmony in nature’s vastness, you may start to understand things you might never have even thought of before.

Everything your five senses take in from nature can help you reach a state of meditationAnd you can use this state to clear your mind, reduce your anxiety, and as we’ve seen, calm your anger. Doing exercise outside might even become a haven of peace for you. Its simplicity and generosity, its transcendence and its “ephemeralness,” its cycles…all of these will help you broaden your understanding of things and see what’s important and what’s just secondary.

 “Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of shattered dreams.”

-S.A. Sachs-

meditation outdoors

Nature helps you forgive

Lastly and no less importantly, doing exercise within nature predisposes you to cleanse all your bitterness about what you’ve experienced. The state of well-being that comes from exercising alongside the wonderful power of peace that nature has will help you find a new sense of hope. And so you’ll find a new ability to forgive. Because forgiveness requires hope and the belief that there’s a better place far from the painful emptiness you went through after the breakup.

As we’ve seen, doing physical exercise in the fresh air clears your mind, relieves your emotional pain, and empowers you to keep going. Because even if your heart breaks, you can always look for the best way to repair it. And exercise and nature are one of the best combinations for doing just that.


This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.