Working Out a Good Cry

Feel like you could use a good cry but just can't get the waterworks started? Try going for a long, hard walk.

According to Tina Vindum, author of Outdoor Fitness, painful life events can be stored in our bodies. But working out may help release them.

Tears on the Trail
Vindum believes that exercising, especially outdoors, is a great way to help trigger powerful stored emotions -- a phenomenon she calls "tears on the trail." And it's natural and healthy to just let it out.

Here are two reasons why:

• It can help you develop better coping skills. Emotional expression can teach people how to more effectively identify, clear, and control emotions. It also helps channel thoughts and feelings. Learn how to better cope with grief from life's painful losses.
• It can replace bad with good. When you embrace the feeling in the moment, you give yourself the opportunity to reflect on it later. You can then eliminate those emotions that no longer serve you and replace them with ones that do, according to Vindum. Take these five positive steps toward living a life you love.

Find out how to guard against the blues.

Tina Vindum's Outdoor Fitness: Step Out of the Gym into the BEST Shape of Your Life. Vindum, T., Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2009.