9. Recommendations

1. Embed Micro-Doses of Movement in Everyday Environments

Movement should be integrated into classrooms, corridors, waiting rooms, and community spaces through brief, intentional physical actions. Small, embodied moments regulate the nervous system, increase attention, and reduce anxiety — without requiring equipment, curriculum change, or additional resource.

Think movement as punctuation, not performance.

2. Prioritise Intrinsic Motivation Over Performance Metrics

Educational, clinical and community programmes should focus on experiences of embodiment, connection and agency; not medals, grades, podiums or perfect technique.

When movement becomes extrinsically motivated, it crosses the threshold where the psychological benefit inverts.

3. Normalise Visible Emotional Support

Emotional conversations should not be hidden in side rooms. Practitioners should consider using visible but private support — normalising care in front of peers and reducing shame.

The School of Hard Knocks model demonstrates this powerfully.

4. Train Movement Practitioners in Mental Health Literacy

Coaches, teachers, and facilitators should be trained to:

·       spot early red flags, ·       understand regulation, ·       refer appropriately, ·       avoid harmful messaging.

Movement professionals do not need to be therapists, but they should be trauma-informed.

5. Bring Joy Back Into Clinical Movement

Movement used solely as rehabilitation risks becoming synonymous with pain, compliance, and failure.

Clinical settings should:

·       introduce music, ·       offer creative choice, ·       use play-based movement, ·       support agency.

Joy is therapeutic.

6. Protect Adolescents from Early Hyper-Competition

There is a developmental threshold (which I don’t yet know at what age range this sits) where movement shifts from joy to performance.

Systems should actively:

·       delay competitive pressure, ·       diversify movement options, ·       discourage early specialisation.

Early intensification is a risk factor.

7. Safeguard Practitioners Who Carry Other People’s Trauma

Movement practitioners, teachers, coaches and clinicians are routinely exposed to emotional material.

Providing movement-based decompression reduces risk of burnout for professionals.

A regulated adult regulates the room. We must be well resource din order to resource others.

8. Incentivise Community-Based Embodied Interventions

Funding should favour programmes that:

·       Regulate through movement ·       Require minimal infrastructure ·       Prioritise exercise in natural environments that support the parasympathetic nervous system holistically ·       Are peer-visible, ·       Are group-based activities to encourage connection, cohesion and community.

Community scaffolding reduces isolation and shame.

9. Update Physical Education to Include Embodiment

Current PE curricula often prioritise:

·       performance, ·       competition, ·       assessment.

They rarely teach:

·       interoception, ·       breath, ·       grounding, ·       co-regulation, ·       somatics

PE must expand beyond “sport.”

10. Reframe Movement as Neurobiological Hygiene

Teach young people that movement:

·       regulates emotion, ·       supports cognition, ·       protects immunity, ·       integrates trauma, ·       fuels creativity.

11. Evaluate Movement Programmes on Emotional Outcomes

Success metrics should include:

·       belonging, ·       agency, ·       self-reported joy, ·       attendance by choice, ·       reduced shame. 

A programme that produces medals but increases disconnection is not success.

12. Recognise Maladaptive Environments as Active Stressors

Where environments are oppressive or dysregulating (e.g., prisons, crowded schools, clinical corridors), movement should be prescribed as environment-compensation:

·       grounding, ·       proprioception, ·       breathing, ·       rhythm ·       interoception 

The body becomes a buffer for the brain.

Strategic Summary

Movement must be:

·       micro-dosed (little but often), ·       visible (to dissolve shame), ·       joyful (to avoid inversion), ·       embodied (not performed), ·       context-aware (developmental & social), ·       meaning-connected (intrinsic). 

When you protect joy, you protect regulation.

Final Recommendation

Re-adopt the historical definition of movement — as mental impulse, desire, inclination.

Teach young people not simply how to move, but why movement moves them.