Promoting Mental Health: A Call for a Multicultural Human Movement Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, a culture of evidence-based, natural scientific, bio-medical and bio-mechanically orientated health-promoting physical activity packages has become popular, to promote health and prevent various illnesses associated with the violence and stress of contemporary planet earth, including the sedentary, technocratic lifestyles typical of economically developed countries. However, humanity has always promoted mental health through involvement in human movement in the form of an infinite variety of behaviours such as playing, running and dancing. Although the new evidence-based approach has scientific validity and undoubted value, considerations of health, holism and harmony also suggest the need for additional forms of discourse that represent more essential, original, meaningful experiences, and multicultural forms of human movement that promote mental health and welfare, perhaps more cost-effectively. The aim of this article is an explication of this conception and its public health implications, with special reference to guidelines for multicultural movement counsellors. Supportive evidence, related to the experience of movement, as well as mental health-promoting activities involving rhythmic, breath-co-ordinated, sociocultural exercises such as chi-gung and dance, is presented.

Keywords:

• mental health promotion
• multicultural
• human movement