Image Source: News24
Local – There is a direct correlation between physical movement and mental well-being. We often find that people who don’t move as often carry a heavier psychological load.
This load quietly builds until it becomes difficult to distinguish the exhaustion of the body from that of the mind. It is rarely dramatic. It creeps in through packed schedules, skipped mornings, and the steady accumulation of everything left unprocessed.
Shaaziah Kolabhai, a Pilates instructor and management consultant, knows this well. Her connection to movement began not in a studio, but amid the disorientation of studying abroad, far from family and comfort.
“When you’re away from comfort and having to put your life together by yourself… I needed something that would allow me to help build my life. And that allowed my brain to function better because if you take that all away and you’re just one person alone in a completely foreign country, it’s so daunting.”
The Mental Benefits of Movement
Kolabhai argued that the mental benefits of movement don’t require hours at the gym or a perfect wellness routine. Consistency matters far more than intensity, and even the smallest acts of deliberate movement can interrupt cycles of stress and anxiety.
Busyness, lack of time and familial responsibilities have become the default reason most people sidestep movement. The more crowded life becomes, the more urgently the body needs that release.
“You’re just allowing that stress to just build and build and build because you’re busy and you’re not allowing yourself to think I should just prioritise even if I just prioritise 10 minutes today.”
Kolabhai said movement creates compartmentalisation, a necessary separation from the noise. In that separation, the capacity to cope, to focus, and to get through the day is restored.
Small Steps, Significant Shifts
Lofty wellness goals can feel out of reach against the demands of daily life. Kolabhai said she is not here to add to that pressure. The gaps that already exist in the day, she argued, simply need to be used with a little more intention.
Walking up the stairs from her car to the office, not even four flights, is enough to reset her mental, physical, and spiritual state, she said.
“If it is just walking up the stairs from my car to the office, which is not even four flights, but it’s enough stairs in the day… that’s enough for my mental state, my spiritual state and my physical state.”
Kolabhai said habit stacking, layering small physical actions onto things you already do, is what makes movement sustainable. Even walking around the dining room table after a meal, she argued, is a thousand steps more than you would have had otherwise. The bar is lower than most people think.
