Depression is a movement disorder

Hi there,

Remember Amy Cuddy? She was hailed the TED Talk queen of 2012. She told millions that “power posing” for two minutes could boost your confidence. Stand like Superman in the mirror, and suddenly you’ve got swagger and confidence of a tech bro mid-embezzlement

But then came the backlash and the eye-rolls. She became a punchline for everything wrong with pop psychology.

But a decade later, new research is proving she was dismissed for the wrong reasons.

Even if you don’t identify as “depressed,” here’s why reading this matters for you:

• Because if you’ve ever done the inner work and still felt “stuck”...

• Or if your nervous system still feels fried even after a great coaching session...

• Or if the journaling, the therapy, the vision boards are all in play and you’re still not “there”...

This might be the missing piece.

New research is challenging the idea that depression, and by extension, emotional flatness, numbness, or chronic stuckness, is a simply mindset issue.

It turns out, the latest science says mood might not just live in the mind. It might live in the body. And specifically, in how that body moves or doesn’t.

Stick with me. I promise this isn’t the typical “hit the gym” bro-science or hustle culture disguised as wellness.

For decades, researchers have noticed something called psychomotor slowing in depression which includes slower speech, less facial expression, and less movement. But here's the real question, one that has massive implications for anyone who’s ever felt stuck in their body or mind:

• Which came first: the low mood or the slowed movement? In other words, was it the mood that shut the body down, or the body that dragged the mood down with it?

New research is digging into that question.

In a 2022 paper, people with major depressive disorder were put through a battery of movement tests including gait, posture, balance, rhythm, even manual dexterity. The kind of stuff you’d expect to see in physical therapy, not psychiatry.

The results across nearly every test was that those with depression underperformed in psychomotor testing, including:

— Difficulty walking in rhythm
— Trouble coordinating arms and legs
— Reduced ability to jump, balance, or even relax their muscles

So maybe it’s not either/or.

Maybe it’s both. A body-mind feedback loop where movement and mood keep reinforcing each other until you can’t tell what’s causing what, only that something’s stuck.

The Nervous System Doesn’t Care About Logic

We love language. We think if we can just say it right, to ourselves, to a therapist, to a journal, something will shift.

We tell ourselves we should feel better because we’ve processed it, talked about it, named it.

But the nervous system doesn’t speak the language of insight.
It’s not persuaded by logic.
It doesn’t care how self-aware you are.

It doesn’t give a damn if you’ve read The Body Keeps the Score a hundred times. It just wants to know if you’ve seen the sun, touched grass, or stood up in the last 48 hours.

It responds to signals like movement, posture, breath, tension. That’s the language it understands.

Slump your shoulders and drop your gaze, and your body won’t just mirror low mood, it actually creates it. The feedback loop between body and brain is real. And it’s powerful.

Which is why "just thinking positive" can feel like screaming affirmations into a void. And why even the most self-aware among us can stay stuck in states we thought we’d grown out of.

Ultimately, no amount of insight can override a nervous system that’s still holding tension.

Movement as Medicine (But Not the Way You Think)

This doesn’t mean everyone should take up CrossFit or run a marathon.

In fact, research shows that standard exercise prescriptions are too blunt and drastic for people with depression. When your nervous system is jammed, movement isn't a motivational problem because it’s a motor one.

The advice to “move more,” “exercise more,” “get your steps in” skips over the fact that the body isn’t just sluggish. It’s actually locked and wired tight. Telling someone in that state to move more is like telling someone who is drowning in quicksand to swim faster.

The solution isn’t more willpower. It’s actually micro-movements. Things that gently remind the brain and the body that it’s still capable of a shift.

Here are a few small disruptions to try next time you feel flat that will help break the feedback loop of stuckness:

• Walking backward (it recruits different neural pathways)

• Laying on your back and rocking side to side on the floor

• Swaying to music without trying to dance

• Light bouncing on your heels

• Tracing the edges of furniture with your fingers

• Shaking out your hands like you're flicking off water

READER POLL

Final Thought

One of the most overlooked gifts of movement isn’t about just feeling better. It’s about connection.

From the moment we’re born, our very first language is movement. The grasp of a hand, the suckling of a mouth, the curl of toes. Before we speak or understand words, we understand gesture and motion. Connection starts in the body.

Our bodies connect us to the earth, the force of gravity, to our own breath and skin and to each other. It reminds us that we’re not just minds floating in meat suits, we’re living, sensing beings meant to reach, respond, relate.

That’s why when we stop moving, our posture collapses, or our body curls inward, we lose relationship with ourselves, the people we love, and the world around us.

Often we think healing is this grand, cerebral process. But if you’ve spent too long in your head, trying to think your way out of a fog, fix your mindset, or find that one final insight that’ll finally make it all click, consider this your invitation to try something different.

— Maybe it’s rolling on the floor like a toddler.
— Maybe it’s swaying to music when no one’s watching.
— Maybe it’s walking backward in your hallway.

If you do it right, it’s science. If you do it in socks on hardwood yelling “hee-hee,” it’s a moonwalk and possibly the loss of your neighbors’ last shred of respect.

Jokes aside, maybe… just maybe, that small shift in motion creates a shift in you.

Whether you’re recovering from burnout, trying to reconnect with a lost part of yourself, or just wondering why all your inner work still feels like it’s missing something, this might be your way back.

You don’t have to force transformation. You just have to move toward it.

Start small. Start sideways. Or backwards. Just start.

See you next week,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.