The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

by Kelly McGonigal

The psychological effects of movement cannot be reduced to an endorphin rush. Physical activity influences many other brain chemicals, including those that give you energy, alleviate worry, and help you bond with others. It reduces inflammation in the brain, which over time can protect against depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Regular exercise also remodels the physical structure of your brain to make you more receptive to joy and social connection. These neurological changes rival those observed in the most cutting-edge treatments for both depression and addiction. The mind-altering effects of exercise are even embedded in your musculature. During physical activity, muscles secrete hormones into your bloodstream that make your brain more resilient to stress. Scientists call them “hope molecules.”

“Nothing makes you feel less adequate as a man,” Pontzer recalls, “than sitting there eating your bowl of instant oatmeal while five Hadza guys come back with a freshly killed antelope that they stole from a pride of lions.”

Volkssporting takes a noncompetitive approach to outdoor walking, hiking, cycling, swimming, and cross-country skiing. You can show up at an event any time within the start-to-finish window, participate at your own pace, and take in the scenery and the company.

“There have been times when I’ve been out there at mile ten, thinking, Why did I think this is fun? This is horrible. Other times I’m on cloud nine. I feel strong. I feel powerful. I’m accomplishing something.

Our brains change as we age, and adults lose up to 13 percent of the dopamine receptors in the reward system with each passing decade. This loss leads to less enjoyment of everyday pleasures, but physical activity can prevent the decline. Compared to their inactive peers, active older adults have reward systems that more closely resemble those of individuals who are decades younger.

I was used to clenching my hands into worried fists, but fists feel different when you’re throwing punches.

In humans, exercising three times a week for six weeks increases neural connections among areas of the brain that calm anxiety. Regular physical activity also modifies the default state of the nervous system so that it becomes more balanced and less prone to fight, flight, or fright.

The scent of her infant’s skin can trigger a neural response close to hunger. (One of my favorite headlines describing this research comes from the Daily Mail Australia, which assured readers, “Your compulsion as a mum to eat your baby is totally normal.”)

For ninety minutes, we didn’t fall apart, and for ninety minutes, no one was alone. It was another kind of collective joy. A salve. Whatever fear, confusion, or sadness we felt as individuals was held by something bigger, and in that space, we found room to breathe.

trust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who are viewed as trustworthy act in more generous and dependable ways. This becomes further evidence of their trustworthiness, and people trust them even more.

Studies show that after walking in step with someone, tapping to the same beat, or even just moving a plastic cup side to side in unison, people cooperate more in an economic game, sacrifice more to benefit the greater good, and are more likely to help a stranger. Even babies show this effect. When fourteen-month-olds are bounced to music, facing an experimenter who bounces in sync, they are more likely to later help that experimenter pick up dropped markers.

Primates who groom one another are more likely to share food and defend one another during a conflict.

Newborns out of the womb for only forty-eight hours can detect a regular beat. Infants rock their feet to the 4⁄4 meter of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik and smile while doing so.

Music activates the so-called motor loop of the brain, including the supplementary motor area, which plans movement, the basal ganglia and the putamen, which coordinate movement, and the cerebellum, which controls the timing of movements. The stronger the musical beat or the more you like what you hear, the more feverishly these regions consume fuel. All of this happens even though you remain absolutely still.

Bennett Konesni, who runs Duckback Farm in Belfast, Maine, has traveled the world studying work song traditions, spending time with musical fisherman in Ghana, dancing farmers in Tanzania, and singing shepherds in Mongolia.

Run to the Beat, a music-driven half marathon, and O2 Touch, a mixed-gender touch rugby program played to music.

For one woman, breathing harder and sweating might be interpreted as meaning I am getting stronger or I am doing something good for my body. To another woman, the same sensations might lead to thoughts of I am too out of shape to do this. These interpretations in turn predicted how much the women enjoyed working out. When they took a positive view of the sensations of effort, they felt much more pleasure.

Josh White, an Elvis impersonator who visits long-term senior care facilities around the United States, has seen people in noncommunicative, even comatose states reanimate when they hear a specific song. Their eyes open and light up. Sometimes they start singing along. “Even if the brain is literally dissolving,” he told me, “they can still hang on to memories of their favorite music.”

His daughter has reached the age when she will bring her play phone to Salazar and say, “More more more,” asking him to play music and dance with her. Most recently, she made that request in Target. “I don’t care if she wants to dance in a grocery store, I’m going to break it down right there,” he told me. Those are the moments he knows he will remember, the memories he wants to collect. “The old Bernie would have been, ‘You can’t do this, what are other people going to think?’ They’re going to forget about it, and that time will be lost if you don’t.”

Sometimes we need to climb an actual hill, pull ourselves up, or work together to shoulder a heavy load to know that these traits are a part of us. The mind instinctively makes sense out of physical actions.

Human beings are also storytellers, and the stories we choose to tell shape how we think about ourselves and the world.

The surface story may be “I ran through electricity,” but the deeper story is “I did something I never thought I could do.”

“Whenever I feel that I’ve reached my limit, I know that there’s more in there.”

In these studies, experimenters deliver electric shocks to rats by attaching an electrode to their tails or through an electrified grid on their cage floor. If you shock rats in an unpredictable and unavoidable manner, you can trigger behaviors that look like depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. The rats become less interested in eating or socializing with other rats. They freeze at any unknown noise or sign of threat. And having learned that there is nothing they can do to prevent the shocks, they stop trying to improve their situation in other stressful contexts—a phenomenon known as learned helplessness. Throw the rats in a bucket of water and they won’t even try to swim, sinking to the bottom in what psychologists call a defeat response. But sometimes shocking rats doesn’t make them helpless; instead, it makes them confident, even courageous. The key to reversing the psychological effect of shocks is to give the rats some element of control. Any element of control. For example, in one setup, a rat is placed in a running wheel with an electrode attached to its tail. The experimenter delivers shocks until the rat turns the wheel. The rat can’t prevent new shocks, but it can shorten their duration. This rat doesn’t become depressed or traumatized; it becomes braver in new environments and more resilient to future stress. Some researchers believe that what gets learned through controllable shocks is a different relationship to fear. What the rat learns i...

Humans are not the only species to help one another. Bottlenose dolphins will swim underneath a sick dolphin and push its head above water to help it breathe. When a Seychelles warbler becomes entangled in a seed cluster, fellow birds pick the sticky seeds out of its wings until it is able to fly free. An ant attacked by termite soldiers, limbs torn off in the struggle, will be carried back to its nest by other ants in its colony. In the wild, such aid is always preceded by a call for help. Sick dolphins emit two short whistles. Stuck warblers trill an alarm call. Injured ants release distress pheromones. We humans—so used to hiding our weaknesses or minding our own business—sometimes need to practice this call and response: “I’m here, and I need help.” “I’m here, let me help you.” When such heroic helping occurs in nature, the individual being rescued tends to be one of high value to the group or to the one doing the helping. Whether you are an ant, a bird, or a dolphin, you get saved because you matter.

When you move in a way that requires strength, your brain senses the resistance in your muscles and the force on your tendons, and concludes, “I am strong.”

My twin sister once told me that her favorite part of a run is “the part when it’s horrible.” When I laughed, she explained, “It’s a primal feeling. I’m doing this thing that is really tough, and I’m still doing it. I’m tough.”

“When the tree presented itself, I felt invincible,” she wrote back. It was as if her nervous system took stock of the fallen tree, recalled the euphoric feeling of swinging a forty-four-pound bell, and remembered that she is someone who can take on a giant.

If there is a voice in your head saying, “You’re too old, too awkward, too big, too broken, too weak,” physical sensations from movement can provide a compelling counterargument. Even deeply held beliefs about ourselves can be challenged by direct, physical experiences, as new sensations overtake old memories and stories.

Humans crave concrete goals and thrive when pursuing specific aims. C. R. Snyder, who conducted the most rigorous scientific analyses of hope, found that this state of mind—so crucial to our ability to persist in the face of life’s obstacles—requires three things. The first is a defined goal, that object on which hope lives. The second is a pathway to reach your goal. There must be steps you can take that lead to progress. The third is trusting that you are capable of pursuing that path. You must believe that you have the inner resources and the necessary support to take each step.

The mere presence of a loved one can change how you perceive a physical challenge and what you able are able to do. One study found that if you are accompanied by a friend, a hill seems less steep than when you face it alone.

In one experiment, psychologists induced hope by asking participants to think of a time in the past they had accomplished an important goal, and how this could help them pursue future goals. Each participant then held one hand in a bath of ice water for as long as they could stand it. The hope induction helped participants stick it out a full minute longer.

when people perceive a painful physical exercise as helping them reach their goals, their brains release higher levels of endorphins and endocannabinoids, the chemicals responsible for an exercise high.

This is also how collective hope works. Sometimes you are the one crushing the goal and ringing the bell. Sometimes you get to be part of the crowd that hugs and cheers the person ringing the bell. And sometimes it’s enough to simply immerse yourself in a space where such a joyful noise gets made.

There was chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, but also backyard Nerf battles, family vacations, and dance parties in the kitchen. When David was invited to share his story at a fundraiser, he surprised Heard by announcing to the crowd, “To kick things off, we’re going to have my mom shave her head!”—and so she did.

Within the first five minutes of any physical activity in nature, people report major shifts in mood and outlook. Importantly, they don’t just feel better—they feel different, somehow both distanced from the problems of everyday life and more connected to life itself. Taking a walk outdoors slows people’s internal clocks, leading to the perception of time expanding. Simply being in an environment with a variety of plant species increases people’s ability to gain perspective on their lives. Even just remembering a time spent in the presence of natural beauty makes people more likely to say they feel connected to the world around them, unburdened by everyday concerns, and in the presence of something greater than themselves.

“There were no sharp things inside me . . . not a sense that something was wrong, or I needed to work on something, there was just a peace, there was tranquility, there was acceptance, there was harmony.”

For many of us, the mind’s default has a negative bias. Its most familiar habits are to ruminate on past hurts, criticize ourselves or others, and rehearse reasons to worry. The default state can also become a mental trap. In theory, when you focus on something—a conversation, a movie, work—the default mode quiets down and allows the brain to enter a state of outwardly directed attention. But people who suffer from depression or anxiety don’t make this switch as easily. They show unusually high activity in the default mode network, and they get stuck in the default state, making it difficult to focus on anything or anyone else, or even to fall asleep. For some, the mind can even become addicted to rumination. The brain’s reward system—not a core part of the default mode network—can become highly connected to the structures within the default mode network that are associated with memories, worry, and thinking about yourself. Every time you revisit a familiar fear or judgment, the reward system says, “Yes, more of that!” It’s as though the brain is convinced that some good might come from the rehashing, worrying, or self-criticism. When this happens, you can find yourself as unable to escape these mental habits as a heroin user trying to suppress their cravings and compulsions.

Before and after the walk, neuroscientists put the participants in an fMRI machine to capture their brains’ resting activity. The participants also answered questions about their state of mind, including how much they agreed with statements like “My attention is focused on aspects of myself I wish I’d stop thinking about.” After the scenic hike—but not the walk on the busy roadway—participants reported less anxiety and negative self-focused thinking. Their post-walk brain scans revealed less activity in the subgenual cortex, an area linked to self-criticism, sadness, and rumination. Individuals who suffer from depression show more activity in this part of the brain during “rest” than people who are not depressed. A walk in nature selectively silenced this part of the default state’s stream of consciousness.

“Diving into wild water is the great bringer-back of reality. A perfect present tense, a right-here, right-now moment. The senses are so filled by the trees, the light, the sound of birds, of shivering leaves, the fierce, squeezing clinch of water—there’s no space for thought shadows.”

Psychotherapy helps him challenge his most self-destructive thoughts, but “it takes an awful lot of cognitive behavior therapy to change the tape.” Swimming outdoors turns the tape off.

When you are absorbed in your natural surroundings, the brain shifts into a state called soft fascination. It is a state of heightened present-moment awareness. Brain systems linked to language and memory become less active, while regions that process sensory information become more engaged. The senses are heightened and inner chatter quiets. This shift can be a tremendous relief for people who struggle with anxiety, depression, and rumination, for whom the default mode is relentlessly verbal, generating words and phrases that echo in their minds.

The human longing to connect with nature is called biophilia, which literally means love of life.

The human brain evolved in an environment that was defined by constant contact with and reliance on the natural world. The emotions that modern humans tend to feel in nature—awe, contentment, curiosity, wanderlust—contributed to early humans’ ability to thrive as a species that had to find its place in a complex and constantly changing landscape.

The bacteria found in ordinary soil can reduce inflammation in the brain, making dirt an antidepressant.

According to this theory, we evolved alongside these microorganisms, and they are vital companions to the human immune system and brain. Just as flowers and bees coevolved and rely on each other, we humans need these bacteria to flourish. In scientific papers published in microbiology and medical journals, the lack of exposure to dirt in modern society is described as “the loss of old friends”—a loss that is linked in humans to an increased risk of mental suffering, including depression.

Two years later, it is a fully populated pond, with amphibians, dragonflies, tadpoles, and aquatic plants that somehow had all found their way, and, together, turned a puddle of rainwater into a thriving ecosystem. As Hutchings described this to me, I realized that human communities are like this, too. Given a bit of structure—a reason to show up, a place to care for, and time to connect—we build ecosystems of mutual support. The communities that form around movement practices, such as CrossFit, running, group exercise, and recreational sports, are perfect examples of this.

A 2017 analysis of urban community gardens in cities as far-flung as Zagreb, Croatia, Flint, Michigan, and Melbourne, Australia, found that green spaces build social capital. They increase both bonding capital—a sense of belonging, trust, and friendship—and bridging capital, the broad social network you can draw on when you need help.

one gardener, who described the community garden as “a blanket of support between neighbors,” said, “Look at the fifty people eating homemade chili over an open fire two days after one of the most devastating hurricanes in the East Coast. Standing around joking, having hot chocolate . . . when the National Guard can’t even get through yet. . . . That is the best defense we have against fear.”

Jennifer Pharr Davis, who in 2011 set the fastest known time for hiking the Appalachian Trail (46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes), writes in The Pursuit of Endurance that one of the most important things she’s learned is, “You don’t have to get rid of the pain to move forward. The hurt we experience in life might never fully go away; it could ebb and flow for an eternity. You can make progress and appreciate the times when life isn’t as much of a struggle. And you can pray, and cry, and wrestle through the rest.”

You don’t have to get rid of the pain to move forward.