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

by Kelly McGonigal

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. Sci...

Your doctor might encourage you to exercise to better control your blood sugar, lower your blood pressure, or reduce your risk of cancer. But for most of human existence, the central purpose of movement was not to prevent disease. Physical activity was how we engaged with life.

As neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert writes, “The entire purpose of the human brain is to produce movement. Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world.”

At the most fundamental level, rewarding movement is how your brain and body encourage you to participate in life. If you are willing to move, your muscles will give you hope. Your brain will orchestrate pleasure. And your entire physiology will adjust to h...

Movement is intertwined with some of the most basic human joys, including self-expression, social connection, and mastery. When we are active, we access innate pleasures, from the satisfaction of synchronizing to the beat of music to the sensory thrill of moving with speed, grace, or power. Movement can also fulfill core human needs, such as the desires to connect with nature or to feel a part of something bigger than yourself. The physical pastimes we are most drawn to seem uniquely devised to harness our individual strengths—the abilities to persist, endure, learn, and grow—while simultaneously rousing our instincts to work together. When physical activity is most psychologically fulfilling, it’s because our participation both reveals the good in us and lets us witness the good in others.

This is one reason every culture puts movement at the heart of its most joyous and meaningful traditions. As philosopher Doug Anderson observed, “Movement has the power to bring us fully to what is most human about us.”

human happiness flourishes in community. Human beings evolved as social creatures, and we need one another to survive.

Throughout human history, movement—whether labor, ritual, or play—has helped us to connect, collaborate, and celebrate.

so much of the joy of movement is actually the joy of connection.

How marvelous, how miraculous, we humans can be.

THE PERSISTENCE HIGH The runner’s high is often held up as a lure for reluctant exercisers, described in terms that strain credulity. In 1855, Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain described the pleasure of a fast walk or run as “a species of mechanical intoxication” that produces an exhilaration akin to the ancient ecstatic worship of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine.

While many runners favor comparisons to intoxicants, others liken the high to a spiritual experience. In The Runner’s High, Dan Sturn describes tears streaming down his face during mile seven of his morning jog. “I flew closer and closer to the place mystics and shamans and acidheads all try to describe. Each moment became precious. I felt simultaneously all alone and completely connected.” Still others draw parallels not to alcohol or religion, but to love.

On a Reddit forum dedicated to explaining what the runner’s high feels like, one user posted, “I love what I’m doing and love everyone I see.”

Stephanie Case describes her midrun glow this way: “I feel connected to the people around me, the loved ones in my life, and I’m infinitely positive about the future.” While runners have a reputation for praising the exercise high, the side effect is not exclusive to running. A similar bliss can be found in any sustained physical activity, whether that’s hiking, swimming, cycling, dancing, or yoga. However, the high emerges only after a significant effort. It seems to be the brain’s way of rewarding you for working hard. Why does such a reward exist? And more important, why would it make you feel loving?

The latest theory about the runner’s high makes a bold claim: Our ability to experience exercise-induced euphoria is linked to our earliest ancestors’ lives as hunters, scavengers, and foragers.

On a typical day, the Hadza engage in two hours of moderate to vigorous activity, like running, and several more hours of light activity, like walking. There is no difference in activity level between men and women or between young and old. If anything, the Hadza become more active as they age. Contrast this to the United States, where the average adult engages in less than ten minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a day, and physical activity peaks at age six. If the Hadza lifestyle reflects what human bodies are adapted for, something has gone seriously awry for the rest of us.

In the United States, daily physical activity—as captured by an accelerometer—is correlated with a sense of purpose in life.

Real-time tracking also shows that people are happier during moments when they are physically active than when they are sedentary. And on days when people are more active than their usual, they report greater satisfaction with their lives.

Other experiments in the U.S. and the UK have forced moderately active adults to become sedentary for a period of time, onl...

Regular exercisers who replace physical activity with a sedentary activity for two weeks become more...

Within one week of becoming more sedentary, they report a 31 percent decline in life satisfaction.

The average daily step count required to induce feelings of anxiety and depression and decrease satisfaction with life is 5,649. The typical American takes 4,774 steps per day. Across the globe, the average is 4,961.

Humans weren’t always hunters and foragers. Two million years ago, a major climactic event cooled the Earth and changed the landscape of East Africa. Forested areas became more patchy and transformed into open woodlands and grasslands. As the habitat changed, so did the food supply, forcing early humans to travel far and wide to chase animals, scavenge for carcasses, and gather plants. Anthropologists believe this was a turning point in the evolution of our species—the moment natural selection began to favor physical traits that helped our ancestors run. The humans who survived were the ones whose bodies could endure the hunt.

you can observe many features in your own physique that help you run. Large gluteal muscles and longer Achilles tendons propel us forward. Compared to other primates, humans have more slow-twitch muscle fibers, which resist fatigue, and more mitochondria in running muscles, allowing them to consume more oxygen as fuel. We are also the only primate to have a nuchal ligament, the strip of connective tissue that fixes the base of the skull to the spine. This ligament—shared by other running species, such as wolves and horses—keeps your head from bobbing when you run. All of these adaptations suggest that we evolved as endurance athletes. Because the survival of early humans depended on traveling far and fast, you were born with bones, muscles, and joints that help you go the distance. David Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona, was familiar with the idea that natural selection favored traits that allowed humans to run.

Raichlen is a recreational runner, and he began to think about the runner’s high. No one had ever come up with a good explanation for why it exists. What if the high wasn’t some random physiological by-product of running long distances, but nature’s reward for persisting? Was it possible that evolution had found a way to harness the brain’s feel-good chemicals to make endurance exercise rewarding? Maybe, Raichlen mused, early humans got high when they ran so that they wouldn’t starve. He reasoned that such a neuro-reward would have to do two things: relieve pain and induce pleasure.

Scientists have long speculated that endorphins are behind the runner’s high, and studies show that high-intensity exercise causes an endorphin rush.

But Raichlen had in mind another candidate, a class of brain chemicals called endocannabinoids. These are the same chemicals mimicked by cannabis, or marijuana. Endocannabinoids alleviate pain and boost mood, which...

And many of the effects of cannabis are consistent with descriptions of exercise-induced highs, including the sudden disappearance of worries or stress, a reduction in pain, the ...

Why did jogging increase endocannabinoids, but walking slowly and running at an exhausting pace did not? Raichlen speculates that our brains reward us for exercising at intensities similar to those successfully used for hunting and foraging two million years ago.

What does all this mean for today’s recreational exerciser? For one thing, it suggests that the key to unlocking the runner’s high is not the physical action of running itself, but its continuous moderate intensity. And in fact scientists have documented a similar increase in endocannabinoids from cycling, walking on a treadmill at an incline, and outdoor hiking. If you want the high, you just have to put in the time and effort.

Anything that keeps you moving and increases your heart rate is enough to trigger nature’s reward for not giving up. There’s no objective measure of performance you must achieve, no pace or distance you need to reach, that determines whether you experience an exercise-induced euphoria. You just have to do something that is moderately difficult for you and stick with it for at least twenty minutes. That’s because the runner’s high isn’t a running high. It’s a persistence high.

Sometimes when she’s running, Bender finds herself reflecting on her journey. “It’s usually at the end of a long run. I start thinking about where I was and where I came from,” she says. “Sometimes I cry when I run. I assume no one’s noticing because I’m super sweaty. I’m never really sure if it’s a runner’s high or I just can’t believe I’m able to do this. I’m so proud of myself. There was a time I couldn’t, and it wasn’t that long ago.”

Witnessing this aspect of our human inheritance—the ability to persist so we can survive—can be an awe-inspiring experience. But it’s also something many runners and athletes glimpse directly when they choose to push past the inertia that makes it difficult to begin or the fatigue that tempts them to stop.

Persistence is key to experiencing a high while exercising, but maybe that’s not the best way to think about it. We don’t persist so we can get some neurochemical reward; the high is built into our biology so that we can persist. Natural selection has endowed us with a way to chase our goals and keep going even when it’s hard. The runner’s high is the temporary reward that carries us to our bigger goals. For many, the experience of persevering is part of what gives movement meaning and what makes the experience rewarding.

This is the less heralded but perhaps most lasting side effect of the persistence high: You get to experience yourself as someone who digs in and keeps going when things get tough.

She attributes much of the confidence she’s developed since then to running. “I kno...

Neuroscientists describe endocannabinoids as the “don’t worry, be happy” chemical, which gives us our first clue about what exactly an exercise high does to your brain. Areas of the brain that regulate the stress response, including the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, are rich in receptors for endocannabinoids. When endocannabinoid molecules lock into these receptors, they reduce anxiety and induce a state of contentment. Endocannabinoids also increase dopamine in the brain’s reward system, which further fuels feelings of optimism. As runner Adharanand Finn observes, “It may only be chemicals shooting around in your brain, but after a long run everything seems right in the world.”

I am not a morning person, but I have learned to drag myself out from under the covers, stumble to the kitchen for coffee, and exercise before I do anything else. For me, it’s a survival strategy. I want to face the day as the version of myself who takes over by the time I’m done with my workout: braver, more optimistic, and ready to face whatever challenges await me.

in the group setting, the same physical movement means something different than it does when she exercises alone. It feels like everyone in the class is pursuing a collective goal, putting in the effort not just for themselves but also to support one another. One of her favorite parts of the workout is when the coach calls for an all-out attack, and she looks at the person on the treadmill next to her and says, “Let’s kill it!”

The studio is lined with mirrors, and during a recent workout, Flemmer made eye contact with a man on the treadmill behind her. “We had that moment of absolute connection, with gestures to indicate we were cheering each other on. I felt grateful. Grateful for him and his ability to show up for himself, and grateful for the human capacity to connect.”

This feeling lingers after class ends. “I feel more brave out in public, to make eye contact and engage people more,” she told me. “It’s helping me realize that everyone wants connection. Even though they might not admit it, people like it when you smile at them.”

Social confidence may seem like a surprising side effect of breaking a sweat, but the chemistry of a runn...

“My family will sometimes send me out running, as they know that I will come back a much better person.” One study found that on days when people exercise, they report more positive interactions with friends and family. Among married couples, when spouses exercise together, both partners report more closeness later that day, including feeling loved and supported.

I thought about something else anthropologist Herman Pontzer had told me about how early humans adapted to a changing landscape. He’s convinced that running is not the only factor that helped them survive. “If you had to pick one behavior that marks the beginning of hunting and gathering, that is the game changer,” he said. “It’s sharing.”

Hunting and gathering, both as it’s done among the Hadza today and as we imagine it was done hundreds of thousands of years ago, is a division of labor. Some members of the group go out hunting, while others do the more reliable work of foraging for plants. “You bring those together at the end of the day, and you share, and everyone has enough to eat,” Pontzer said. Groups who were better at sharing were more likely to survive, and natural selection started favoring not just traits that enhance physical endurance, like longer leg bones, but also traits that encourage within-group cooperation. That’s why humans have such big whites of the eyes; it helps us communicate through eye contact.

Mutual cooperation activates brain regions linked to reward, releasing a feel-good chemical cocktail of dopamine, endorphins, and endocannabinoids. Call it a cooperation high: It feels good to work with others toward a shared goal. Brain-imaging studies show that when you see the face of someone with whom you previously cooperated, it reactivates your reward system. From an evolutionary point of view, this is the neurobiological foundation of trust. It’s also a kind of anticipatory high.

Wallace is surprised by how strong her bonds have become with her local running group. She calls them her GoodGym family. When Wallace first heard about GoodGym, she was at a point in her life where she felt stuck in her daily routine. A single mom to a teenage daughter, she didn’t have many friends outside her coworkers, and she longed for a greater sense of community. On the one-year anniversary of her first run with GoodGym, she got emotional just thinking about how much her fellow runners had come to mean to her. “I know I could go to these people for anything,” she told me. “I’ve never really had that.”

How marvelous it is that by exercising or volunteering in packs, we can forge friendships that nourish us.