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Joy of movement
What’s in it for me? Let science inspire you to 
get moving. 
If you’re someone who works out regularly, you 
might have observed how the benefits of 
exercising carry over into day-to-day life. Yoga, 
for example, can teach us to take a deep breath 
in stressful situations. From dancing, we learn 
that a good mood can be infectious. And a hard 
cardio session teaches us that a racing heart 
isn’t always a sign of fear. 
And that’s not all: a single good workout can 
instantly change your mood, make you feel 
stronger and more confident, and bring you 
closer to the people you exercise with. The 
mental health benefits of exercise are 
undeniable, and they apply whether your 
preferred 
physical 
activity 
is 
running, 
weightlifting, or swimming; whether you’re an 
amateur or a pro athlete. 
These blinks will shed light on how and why 
physical activity affects your mood, your sense 
of purpose, and your self-perception – and show 
you that movement is a key factor in human 
happiness. By the end, you’ll have all the more 
reason and inspiration to get moving. 
In these blinks, you will discover

What’s really behind the “runner’s high”;

Why people get addicted to exercise; 
and

How a hard workout can change your 
perspective on life. 
The high we experience from physical 
exertion is an ancient mechanism helping us 
persist, thrive, and socialize. 
As early as 1885, Scottish philosopher 
Alexander Bain described what we now call the 
“runner’s high”: the feeling of bliss and elation 
that sets in after a prolonged period of jogging. 
Bain likened this high to a spiritual experience, 
but others have compared it to being in love, and 
the effects of all kinds of mind-altering drugs.
Curiously, from a neurological standpoint, the 
drug that the runner’s high comes closest to is 
cannabis. Recent studies have shown that a 
long 
run 
greatly 
increases 
levels 
of 
endocannabinoids in our brain. These are a 
class of chemicals, and cannabis mimics the 
effects of them on the brain. Endocannabinoids 
are known for lessening pain, boosting mood, 
and triggering additional feel-good chemicals 
and neurotransmitters such as dopamine and 
endorphins.
Endocannabinoids also help protect us against 
anxiety and depression. The weight-loss drug 
Rimonabant, for example, was designed to 
suppress appetite by blocking endocannabinoid 
receptors. Instead, it brought about dramatic 
increases in anxiety and depression in clinical 
trials, even leading to four suicides, and was 
permanently banned. Conversely, one recent 
study showed that just 30 minutes of exercise 
can make people immune to the severe anxiety 
induced by the drug CCK-4. In this study, the 
effect of exercise was equivalent to taking a 
sedative like Ativan. 
And that’s not all: endocannabinoids also make 
us more social. In one experiment conducted by 
researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome, 
people who exercised for 30 minutes before 
playing a social game were much more 
generous and cooperative than people who 
didn’t. Initiatives like GoodGym in London 
harness the social energy generated by physical 
activity: they organize communal runs that send 

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volunteers to do all sorts of social projects in 
their communities, such as visiting socially 
isolated elderly people. 
Luckily for those of us who’d rather eat a broom 
than run a lap around the block, the runner’s 
high is not confined to running. It is proven to 
appear after all kinds of moderately exhausting 
physical activity that takes more than 20 
minutes, whether that’s swimming, cycling, or 
speed-walking. Thus, the explosion of brain 
chemicals from prolonged exercise might be 
more accurately called a “persistence high.”Why 
would our brains make us feel so good about 
exhausting our bodies? The latest theory traces 
this phenomenon back to our earliest ancestors. 
It’s likely that the persistence high evolved to 
keep us hunting and gathering for longer periods 
of time, making us more likely to find food and 
survive. And the increased willingness to 
cooperate and share after physical exertion 
could also have had an evolutionary benefit: it 
made hunters more likely to share their spoils 
with the tribe.