We hear that movement is medicine, and it genuinely is. Regular exercise is preventative across a long list of chronic conditions including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis, and other metabolic disorders. It is also one of the best things available to you for supporting your nervous system and your hormone health, which is the part that gets talked about least.

This is the first of the Health Essentials, and there is a reason it comes first.

If you are the woman holding everything together

You have a lot going on. Career, kids, ageing parents, being a partner, all of it, and you are keeping every one of those balls in the air. What that usually means is that your own health and wellbeing quietly slid off the list some time ago, and exercise is very often the first thing to go.

Which is unfortunate, because when your nervous system is dysregulated, and that shows up as stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and living with your foot jammed on the accelerator or else feeling so depleted you have nothing left, movement is one of the more effective things available to you.

It does not have to be a workout

This is the piece I most want to land. Getting your body moving does not have to be a spin class, a full yoga practice, a run, or an hour lifting with a trainer.

You can find small pockets of movement through the day, and doing that helps bring your nervous system back toward a more neutral, balanced place. It might be a brisk ten minute walk on your lunch break. It might be three restorative yoga postures before bed. It might mean standing up in the middle of the afternoon, shaking your body out, or putting on a song that gets you going and having a small dance party in your kitchen.

None of that is formal exercise, and all of it counts.

Match the movement to your nervous system

Here is the part that most general advice misses entirely, and it is why the same workout can leave one woman restored and another wrecked.

If you are feeling wired, stressed, anxious, running around doing all the things, high intensity work may deplete you further rather than help. A brisk walk, lifting some weights, or a yoga flow is more likely to bring you down and settle you.

If you are feeling exhausted and burnt out and do not much feel like doing anything, you will probably gravitate toward slow restorative or yin style yoga. What I would actually encourage is getting your body moving a little, because you need some propulsion to support your energy coming back online.

So the sequence is: work out when you are doing it, decide what you are doing, and then check whether what you have chosen matches the state your nervous system is actually in today.

Building the full repertoire

Over time you want variety rather than one thing. Cardiovascular work, which can be brisk walking or higher intensity training if that feels available to you. Strength, whether that is weights, bodyweight, resistance bands, or machines, and strength becomes genuinely important as you move into perimenopause. Mobility and flexibility through something like yoga or Pilates. And ways to down-regulate, which is where restorative yoga earns its place.

Alongside those, jump training supports bone health and balance training reduces fall risk later, both of which are worth starting well before you think you need them.

Start by picking one thing. Not the whole repertoire, one thing.

Two practical questions

First, when. Look across your week and find where the ten minute gaps are, because I know you have ten minutes, and the fact that you are reading this means you want to prioritise feeling better.

Second, what. Ask yourself what type of movement you actually enjoy, because you are dramatically more likely to do something you like. If the stationary bike in the corner of your basement fills you with dread, you are not going to get on it, and that is information rather than a character flaw.

One honest caveat. Most of us are carrying a body we have lived in for decades, with knee pain, low back issues, a shoulder that has never been right, or hips that changed after carrying a baby around. All of that shapes what movement is appropriate for you, and an individualised plan built around your actual body will always outperform a generic one.

Where to start

Which type of movement suits you depends on the pattern your nervous system runs under stress, and my free Stress Blueprint quiz will show you yours in about three minutes.

If you want a plan built around your body, your history, and the week you actually have rather than an idealised one, that is what happens in my one to one work. You can book a connection call and we will talk it through with no pressure either way.