The Joy of Movement Quotes

“I don't think it's a coincidence that so many people are drawn to communities where they can pursue physical challenges alongside others. It's a joy to watch people to exert themselves, face their fears and overcome their obstacles.
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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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“Movement offers us pleasure, identity, belonging and hope. It puts us in places that are good for us, whether that's outdoors in nature, in an environment that challenges us, or with a supportive community. It allows us to redefine ourselves and reimagine what is possible. It makes social connection easier and self-transcendence possible.
Each of these benefits can be realized through other means. There are multiple paths to discovery and many ways to build community. Happiness can be found in any number of roles and pastimes; solace can be taken in poetry, prayer or art. Exercise need not replace any of these other sources of meaning and joy.
Yet physical activity stands out in its ability to fulfill so many human needs, and that makes it worth considering as a fundamentally valuable endeavour. It is as if what is good in us is most easily activated or accessed through movement. As rower Kimberley Sogge put it, when she described to me why the Head of the Charles Regatta was such a peak experience, "The highest spirit of humanity gets to come out." Ethicist Sigmund Loland came to a similar conclusion, declaring that an exercise pill would be a poor substitute for physical activity. As he wrote, "Rejecting exercise means rejecting significant experiences of being human.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“When adults are randomly assigned to reduce their daily step count, 88 percent become more depressed. 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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“One theory of chronic worry is that people like me have an overactive fear circuit in our brains, set off not by anything specific, but operating more like constant background”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“When you exercise, you provide a low-dose jolt to the brain’s reward centers.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“Like highly addictive substances, regular exposure to exercise will over time teach the brain to like, want, and need it.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“People who are regularly active have a stronger sense of purpose, and they experience more gratitude, love, and hope. They feel more connected to their communities, and are less likely to suffer from loneliness or become depressed. These benefits are seen throughout the lifespan.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“If exercise is a drug, the one it most closely resembles is an antidepressant.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“In a 2017 review of how the endocannabinoid system works in the brain, scientists identified three things that reliably amp it up: cannabis intoxication, exercise, and social connection.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“And in fact scientists have documented a similar increase in endocannabinoids from cycling, walking on a treadmill at an incline, and outdoor hiking. If”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“One of the first scientific papers to write about exercise-induced myokines labeled them “hope molecules.” Ultra-endurance athletes talk about the metaphor of putting one foot in front of the other—how learning that you can take one more step, even when it feels like you can’t possibly keep going, builds confidence and courage. The existence of hope molecules reveals that this is not merely a metaphor. Hope can begin in your muscles. Every time you take a single step, you contract over two hundred myokine-releasing muscles. The very same muscles that propel your body forward also send proteins to your brain that stimulate the neurochemistry of resilience. Importantly, you don’t need to run an ultramarathon across the Arctic to infuse your bloodstream with these chemicals. Any movement that involves muscular contraction—which is to say, all movement—releases beneficial myokines.
It seems likely that some ultra-endurance athletes are drawn to the sport precisely because they have a natural capacity to endure. The extreme circumstances of these events allow them to both challenge and enjoy that part of their personality. Yet it’s also possible that the intense physical training contributes to the mental toughness that ultra-endurance athletes demonstrate. Endurance activities like walking, hiking, jogging, running, cycling, and swimming, as well as high-intensity exercise such as interval training, are especially likely to produce a myokinome that supports mental health. Among those who are already active, increasing training intensity or volume—going harder, faster, further, or longer—can jolt muscles to stimulate an even greater myokine release. In one study, running to exhaustion increased irisin levels for the duration of the run and well into a recovery period—an effect that could be viewed as an intravenous dose of hope. Many of the world’s top ultra-endurance athletes have a history of depression, anxiety, trauma, or addiction. Some, like ultrarunner Shawn Bearden, credit the sport with helping to save their lives. This, too, is part of what draws people to the ultra-endurance world. You can start off with seemingly superhuman abilities to endure, or you can build your capacity for resilience one step at a time.
Months after I spoke with Bearden, an image from his Instagram account appeared in my feed. It was taken from the middle of a paved road that stretches toward a mountain range, with grassy fields on either side. The sky is blue, except for a huge dark cloud that appears to be hovering directly over the person taking the photo. I remembered how Bearden had described his depression as a black thundercloud rolling in. Under the Instagram photo, Bearden had written, “Tons of wind today, making an easy run far more challenging. So happy to be able to do this. Every day above ground is a good day.” Below, a single comment cheered him on, like a fellow runner on the trail: “Amen to this! Keep striving.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“In 2015, scientists from the Center for Space Medicine and Extreme Environments in Berlin followed athletes competing in the Yukon Arctic Ultra. They wanted to know: How does the human body cope in such a brutal context? When the researchers analyzed the hormones in the bloodstreams of the athletes, one hormone, irisin, was wildly elevated. Irisin is best known for its role in metabolism—it helps the body burn fat as fuel. But irisin also has powerful effects on the brain. Irisin stimulates the brain’s reward system, and the hormone may be a natural antidepressant. Lower levels are associated with an increased risk of depression, and elevated levels can boost motivation and enhance learning. Injecting the protein directly into the brains of mice—not something scientists are ready to try with humans—reduces behaviors associated with depression, including learned helplessness and immobility in the face of threats. Higher blood levels of irisin are also associated with superior cognitive functioning, and may even prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
The Yukon Arctic Ultra athletes entered the event with extraordinarily high blood levels of this hormone, far beyond levels seen in most humans. Over the course of the event, their irisin levels climbed higher. Even as their bodies fell victim to hypothermia and exhaustion, the athletes were bathing their brains in a chemical that preserves brain health and prevents depression. Why were their blood levels of irisin so elevated? The answer lies in both the nature of the event and what the athletes had to do to get there. Irisin has been dubbed the “exercise hormone,” and it is the best-known example of a myokine, a protein that is manufactured in your muscles and released into your bloodstream during physical activity. (Myo means muscle, and kine means “set into motion by.”) One of the greatest recent scientific breakthroughs in human biology is the realization that skeletal muscles act as an endocrine organ. Your muscles, like your adrenal and pituitary glands, secrete proteins that affect every system of your body. One of these proteins is irisin. Following a single treadmill workout, blood levels of irisin increase by 35 percent. The Yukon Arctic Ultra required up to fifteen hours a day of exercise. Muscle shivering—a form of muscle contraction—also triggers the release of irisin into the bloodstream. For the Yukon Arctic Ultra competitors, the combination of extreme environment and extreme exertion led to exceptionally high levels of this myokine.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“Later, when I thought about this story, it occurred to me that almost all long-distance races take place outdoors. Other than the occasional fundraiser, people don’t run ultramarathons on a treadmill. They roam wild terrain, follow the path of rivers, climb mountains, and descend through canyons. What separates even the most punishing ultra-endurance events from masochism is context. The events are not about suffering for suffering’s sake, but suffering in a natural environment that invites, almost guarantees, moments of self-transcendence. If endurance training is in part about learning how to suffer well, it helps to put yourself in surroundings that inspire awe or gratitude. Outdoors, you can be stunned by a sudden change in landscape or enthralled by the appearance of wildlife. You can find yourself entranced by the stars at night or heartened by the first light of dawn. These transcendent emotions put personal pain and fatigue in a different context. It is impossible to understand what ultra-endurance athletes are doing without taking this into account. Experiencing a state of elevation during a moment of deep exhaustion provides a reminder that flashes of pure happiness can take you by surprise even when things seem the most bleak. Knowing this is possible is how we survive our worst pain. Finding a way for suffering and joy to coexist—that is how humans endure the seemingly unendurable.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“Today, the ultra-endurance world—in which competitors push their bodies to the limits of what human physiology can withstand—continues to provide a window into both how and why we go on. In The Lure of Long Distances, Robin Harvie notes that the word athlete derives from a Greek word for “I struggle, I suffer.” Ultra-endurance athletes have a relationship to suffering that separates them from most recreational exercisers and that often resembles the wisdom of spiritual traditions. For many, the motivation is not just to complete fantastic feats, but to explore what it means, as one athlete I spoke with puts it, to “suffer well.” Their experiences paint a portrait of how humans maintain hope and momentum in the darkest moments. We endure by taking it one step at a time, by making space for suffering and joy to coexist, and with the help of others.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

“By harnessing the brain’s capacity to fall in love, regular exercise helps us joyfully commit to a relationship that enriches our lives and augments our happiness.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“Around the world, people who are physically active are happier and more satisfied with their lives.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“I had learned that a pounding heart is not always a sign of fear. Sometimes, it is proof that your heart is being strengthened.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“One study of new members at a gym found that the minimum “exposure” required to establish a new exercise habit was four sessions per week for six weeks.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“Three days without exercise induces symptoms of depression, and one week of abstinence can produce severe mood disturbances and insomnia.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

“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.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage