Our culture conditions us to see mind and body as separate—and so we separate, in turn, our periods of thinking from our bouts of exercise. Consider how many of us make our visits to the gym only after work, for example, or on weekends. Instead, we should be figuring out how to incorporate bursts of physical activity into the work day and the school day—which means rethinking how we approach our breaks. Lunch breaks, coffee breaks, downtime between tasks or meetings: all become occasions to use exercise to maneuver our brains into an optimally functioning state.
