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The me arse all is like it's Unbound. It's Limitless, but we will use words to limit
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on her extraordinary guest
All right over to a lease.
Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and professor at Stanford. I first fell in love with Kelly after I read her book The Upside of stress and she just came out with a new book, which is equally as fascinating called The Joy of movement today Kelly teaches us about exactly that the joy of moving our bodies we talk about something called Collective Joy, which is what happens when we move our bodies together, we'll get into the science behind movement how exercise is euphoric and orphans are a bonding hormone and why dancing together can make us feel
Better about Humanity we learn how movement can help us get out of our heads quiet are constant brain chatter and bring us more peace of mind and as Kelly puts it when we stopped associating exercise with the desire to make us look a different way. We can then tap into the pleasure of movement
itself. The theory is that humans who could experience some kind of pleasure and experience less pain while they were on the hunt or while they were doing this this long Gathering process that they were
the ones who would survive
Okay, let's get to my chat with Kelly McGonigal.
I have been stalking you every time I come to San Francisco. I'm like, can I please talk to Kelly McGonigal? Because I loved as you know, I love the upside of stress and I recommend it to everyone and I think we all have those books that shift something in you and for me, that book is one of those since like most stressed people. I've spent a good majority of adulthood.
Feeling like I'm terrorizing my health and so just understanding from you that it's actually a mindset was so
liberating. Yeah. I mean I write the books that I need to shift my mindset for to yeah,
that was interesting because it was so reading this book. I also deeply related when you were talking about doing Tae Bo VHS tapes and I had to do
what I had every tae-bo and I used to get them at the good.
Stores here in San
Francisco for like 75 cents. Yeah, and I think I had like 40 different volumes of Tae Bo
you had way more than I did there was a monthly club and apparently somebody who like to donate VHS
tapes to Goodwill was a monthly subscriber. So I was constantly getting these new videos and
I had Tae Bo I had the Cindy Crawford workouts, which was the first workout to tell you to drink water
we could do such a deep dive on workout videos, but I remember it was like a classic it was a big shift. She's like you have to
drink water when you
exercise is also outside. Yes. I know that you had a real trainer.
Yeah. What is this? This is serious. I
mean, I just take it all the way back to the beginning of this movement. My mom had the Jane Fonda record. Yeah and the corresponding book and I used to do that as a child. Yeah, and I would do step aerobics at like the Athletic Club in town. How old were you young like 12 and they let you in. I'm so jealous.
Because I had to do the videos at home that my mom would get
from garage sales because they wouldn't let you do step aerobics class. Well, you know, I don't know if they wouldn't have let me but I mean,
I don't even know if there was a gym where I grew up. Yeah, this was
early 80s and I feel very fortunate that my mom imagined that she would exercise and would buy these tapes at garage sales and then abandon them to me and I was the one who you know who fell in love and with Jazzercise was the first one for me those old videos.
Yes, but how funny right when you think
back that this whole this is a relative's isn't completely New Movement this idea. I mean really Jane Fonda kicked it off, right? What were people doing before just like roadrunners clubs? So biking outside resource and I think was the first person to do group
aerobics. Yes, I think aerobics came out of the military. They were trying to increase the fitness and men and there's like this first book. It's a Bradley
Cooper who wrote this.
About aerobic fitness and I think Jackie Sorenson, you're really testing my knowledge here. I think Jackie Sorenson developed this program for women and then there were a bunch of these different threads that emerged Jazzercise was 1969. I think
50 it's been 50 years. We just had the 50th year anniversary of Jazzercise. I was saying yeah, that was one of the
first ones and and then Jane Fonda came in and she really viewed it as part of a feminist movement. Yes idea that you could get strong and use your body and it is real.
Interesting to watch how you know, you see all these different competing threads in the fitness movement. There's always the body angle and the appearance angle and losing weight and looking good. But there's also always been this angle of it feels good to be in your body. And this is what your body was born to do and what I love about the female-centric side of the fitness movement has always been like let's do it together all the synchrony. We synchronize to the beat of music and we synchronize our bodies together.
There's this is kind of collective
action. Yeah, Collective effervescence is no Collective effervescence that seat that's the original term that was durkheim's term
from 1912. I think this idea that when we move our bodies together not just in aerobics, but in work or ritual or prayer that we feel connected to one another and not only do we feel connected to one another
but we feel
connected to something bigger than ourselves. Yeah, and so he had this idea that we need to use our bodies in this way in order.
To sustain this feeling of self-transcendence that helps us form strong communities that are committed to the collective life. Yeah. I need to use our bodies in synchrony with other people. I absolutely View group fitness as being one of the best ways to experience that kind of so they call it Collective Joy now because I guess effervescent sounds like soda,
but you know, we call
Collective joy, and it's absolutely one of the best ways to experience it. It's why I teach group fitness.
Yeah. No, I
I love that part of the book too. And and I want to talk about this is a separate idea as well. But like even when you're talking about it, I do dance cardio. That's my primary. It's dances and their choreographed and we all know what we're doing and it is so cathartic both. Like I feel myself release things from different parts of my body, but then that Euphoria and even hearing you talk about it. I think we all tap into it, right like what is
that? Yeah. Well, there's so much in
so you are
You're
speaking my love language because I I teach cardio dance. It's sort of my first love and fitness and you caught me now between teaching two different cardio dance classes this morning. I taught a class and you're warehouser. Yes.
Well, but you know, no but the most
impressive thing about me is that I can lead a room full of people in dance. I absolutely consider that to be you know, even if it doesn't require a PhD to do it and this morning my class was mostly women in their 70s and older and I'm going to this afternoon teacher
It's mostly undergraduate and graduate students. And you see the exact same kind of collective joy in both groups and a couple things are going on when you're doing dance fitness one you mentioned. It's choreographed to the song and you all know what you're doing. Yeah, there's something about moving to music that is its own kind of euphoria.
We know that when you listen to music it lights up all
the movement systems of your brain your your brain can't hear music without wanting to move so part of what makes Dance Fitness.
NE so great is that you are having that Joy of moving to music and a good teacher will come up with movements that fit the music so that it feels like somehow you are embodying everything with the artist intended in the song The whether it's the emotion of the song or like you're actually playing the song with your body and that is a joy that humans have and apparently also cockatoos have I don't know if you've seen this science recently. It's like the only other animal species we can talk about why that that particular
Bird might also have the joy of music but it's such a fundamental human instinct babies will do it. You can have a baby just out of the womb will bounce and smile. Yeah, if you play music to that's part of what's happening, but there's this other thing that that amplifies the joy of moving to music which is this Collective joy and human beings. It's like we have two different modes. There's a sense of self that is wrapped up in your skin. It's like this little package. It's you your body the lease and
You're like your personal Zone like one inch beyond your skin and we go around most of our time sensing ourselves as that sort of individual package. And when we move together something happens and how we perceive ourselves so that our sense of awareness stretches beyond the confines of your skin and
it starts to include
the space around you and other people around you and you start to sense yourself as part of this. It's almost like you're part of a bigger organism that is bigger than the confines of
Your skeleton and you can sense other people moving and there's this incredible sense of power and agency and pleasure that comes from now. Suddenly you are bigger than
self. Is it a collective vibration? Is it that it is it like is there anything that can be measured on an energetic level?
So unfortunately, I don't think there's any science on this. I'm not going to be a skeptic about that, but I can only point to science that looks at what happens in your brain when it when you're doing this. Yeah.
You know, we know that
when you move in unison
with other people particularly when it's to music their couple of hormones and neurotransmitters that increase endorphins is the big one and endorphins are part of what make you feel so good
but endorphins are also a bonding hormone
and most people don't know that that when endorphins are high, whoever your you're hanging out with you trust them more you like them more. So that's part of what this high is of dancing with other people is you sort of feel better about the people around you and if
Strangers, it's almost like you get this endorphin rush that makes you feel better about Humanity because maybe you're not dancing with your friends and your family. It also increases oxytocin, which is a hormone that helps us feel close to other people and form these social bonds and oxytocin also has the side effect of dampening down fear and anxiety. So we start to feel braver and we start to feel more optimistic. And so these hormones in these neurotransmitters, they help us feel more connected to others and
they make us feel better about life in terms of you know, what's happening at a vibrational level. I mean, I don't think anyone's written a grant to study that but but what I love about the hormone stuff is that it's built into our biology. Yeah that this is
That this is what happens when we move together. It's like it unleashes the human capacity to experience Joy through connecting with others and through self-transcendence. Yeah, and one of the reasons I love the science is it says that it says like that's what were meant to do. That's how I interpret it. Yeah that we could access that kind of self-transcendence. So easily by just clapping to a beat and and joining together. It doesn't even have to be you.
Like Alvin Ailey level choreography. You can get the same Collective Joy by step clapping because it's so Primal.
So what and one of the it seems like the one of the central themes that you're circling throughout the book is this idea of this runner's high and its purpose and it seems like it has like a biological there's a biological level and then also clearly some sort of other spiritual maybe that too is biological like what I know.
No, there's no completely clear answer but can you sort of take us through what it is? I
wanted to understand why people who exercise regularly are happier in every way and Beyond just their in a good mood when they exercise but it's things like they have more meaning in life and they're less lonely. They feel more gratitude emotions that we don't typically think of as being like a runner's high. And so I wanted to understand why
Our bodies is linked to to Really spiritual emotions and and meaning in life and I wanted to look at both the biology which includes the runner's high but also things like how do we make meaning out of an embodied experience? So, you know, if you lift something heavy, how does your mind makes sense of that experience that you just exerted strength? And how does that inform your sense of self? And what's possible and so there are all these different.
Current layers of sort of why exercise can make us feel so good and so good about ourselves, but the runner's high is a particularly interesting example, because it's this phenomenon first of all that if you haven't experienced it you don't believe is real the way people describe it right there. Like I go for a run and I lose all sense of time and it's like Bliss and it's like everything is right in the world and suddenly, I feel like I'm not even exerting any effort. I'm just flying. I'm not a runner so I am very
Well, I was very skeptical that running could even get you to that state but as it turns out it's not even so much a runner's high but it is it's a state that people enter when they continuously engage in something that is physically difficult, but not overwhelming this sort of moderate intensity persistence. And if you do something that requires is kind of moderate intensity effort form, you know least 20 minutes your brain and body shift into the state that seems
has to be designed to allow you to persist to endure and the latest theory about this from anthropologists and scientists is that this is something we inherited because our ancestors had to hunt and gather and scavenge and you know, there's this whole crazy idea that two million years ago our climate changed and the landscape that humans were living and change and all of a sudden humans couldn't just, you know, pick a fruit out of the tree and survive. They had to start hunting they had to start searching out Anna.
Protein and plans and that this required going much further across the landscape and the idea is that the humans who survived were the ones who were willing to put in the physical effort to walk and hike and even run to chase down something to eat for dinner. And and so the theory is that humans who could experience some kind of pleasure and experience less pain while they were on the hunt or while they were doing this this
long Gathering process that they were the ones who would survive and somehow the human brain as it evolved it learn to interpret physical persistence as a cue to unleash hormones and neurotransmitters that make you feel good and that reduce pain and that's the theory now about what the runner's high is is why you don't get it as soon as you step on a treadmill that you have to do something. You have to get to the point where your body is like, oh, we're actually doing this and it's not going to end in 30.
Guns, I better put myself into a state that allows me to persist and endure and enjoy it and not be overwhelmed and not be exhausted. And the thing that I found most remarkable because I'd always heard about the endorphin rush and I thought runner's high. It's probably the same kind of endorphin rush that you know, I get when I'm dancing but scientists have found. It's probably more of a buzz that it actually is more like cannabis that it is fueled by endocannabinoids which are such an interesting class of neurochemicals.
Because they aren't exactly like endorphins that give you this kind of like ecstasy rush but they they have this effect of creating a great sense of peace. And when you hear Runners describe the runner's high they often are trying to explain how like something was bad and wrong and then all of a sudden it wasn't anymore right whether it's the inner anxiety and then it's gone or whether it's the pain in their body. It's gone or do you run you're nodding your
head?
No, but I thought that that was so no I didn't run poorly. I run under duress but that the obvi Asian of pain and I know you can you talk and I've always been fascinated by the so I was glad to see you explore it the connection between marathoners and Ultra marathoners and addicts and sort of what is at play in brains because it seems like every recovering addict becomes an extreme athlete. Yeah, or
or every extreme athlete I talked
To seems to have a story of addiction or depression and again, it is really interesting to me. You know, I have my own mental health challenges and I think there are ones that actually have steered me toward movement that gives me this kind of extreme joy that is really energized because my challenges are about anxiety and withdrawal and shutting down and it's been fascinating to me to talk to people who are drawn to things like running and Ultra endurance training is
That often than the demons they're fighting are somehow different. They're like the voices in your head that you need to shut up. Yeah, or it's the intensity of craving that you you need to escape and people who have that. I mean, we're all battling something but when I talk to Runners and people who hike and people who do these extreme sports often there is this kind of peace that they experience through movement. Whereas when I'm off in chasing is something that makes me feel more alive and less less afraid.
I'd like I need to be turned on I need to find that inner courage and there, you know, there are all sorts of other explanations for why someone who struggles with addiction my benefit from things like running or Ultra endurance training. I mean every form of movement can be described as kind of like a class of drug and these endurance training activities running swimming hiking biking they seem to work like an antidepressant and they seem to also reverse some of the the brain changes you see
After addiction, they restore the brain to be better able to resist impulses and cravings and also experience pleasure. If you if you're someone who doesn't run and you start a running program the one of the ways that the brain changes is it actually increases the binding opportunities for endocannabinoids and dopamine these two chemicals in your brain that make you feel optimistic that make you feel happy. They make you feel like everything is right in the world. Your brain actually is like, oh we're going to
be getting this kind of endocannabinoid Rush. We're going to be getting this flood of dopamine when we go for a run. We better make more binding sites available in the brain because we're going to be flooded with all of these wonderful neurochemicals and as a result of that the brain becomes more sensitive to Joy because it's not just running that's going to enhance these neurochemicals, but it's things like social connection the joy of play The Joy of food the joy of a beautiful sunset and this is a really key benefit.
People who are struggling with depression or addiction is to find a way to like wake up the part of your brain that knows how to enjoy life
because also doesn't addiction and AJ I was shocked by that statistic but it seems like addiction ravages those dopamine receptors. And then we lose 13 percent per decade. Is that right? Yeah, certifying addiction will do it
fast for you. Yeah, and one of the things I always want to be careful about is when you're telling these sort of horror stories to sticks to make sure to emphasize
None of this is permanent. Yeah lace up your running
shoes. The brain is incredibly
plastic. So we know that a lot of the things that people become addicted to it's not it's not like having an addictive personality ruined your brain. It's that it's the substances that you are abusing that wreck this havoc in the brain and they it does tend to depress levels of dopamine and receptors for dopamine and you basically have a blunted sensitivity to joy and pleasure except for whatever.
Addicted to it's such like a creepy scheme to keep you addicted to something. Like the only thing that will make your brain happy is the thing that you're addicted to and we also know that as people age in general they seem to lose 13 percent of their dopamine receptors and the ideas that that may explain why a lot of people as they age they seem to enjoy life less and there also is an increased risk of depression often you see an aging but one study found that
that older adults who are regularly active and not necessarily running marathons, but regularly active in most studies means 30 minutes five days a week or 60 Minutes three days a week that their brains look like younger people. They didn't show age related loss of these dopamine receptors and if you look at animal studies, you can actually see that that animals will grow new receptors or you'll see you'll see changes in the reward system that suggests that
That exercise training can actually pretty quickly, you know, within weeks and months begin to remodel your reward system so that you have more dopamine available and you have more joy and there are few studies that have shown that in humans as well including humans who are recovering from
addiction. Yeah. No, I think it's so fascinating and so hopeful and it explains why my parents are such Ardent exercise are
so I cannot tell you how many people swear they don't like exercise and then suddenly they hit mid life.
For later and it's like the pleasures of movement reveal themselves. And I think also in part it's because often at midlife or older people start abandoning body
goals. Yeah. I think one of the things that
that confuses a lot of this and makes people think that they don't like exercise is as soon as they're moving their bodies, they're staring in a mirror and thinking this is too big. This is too fat. That's too weak. That's not right.
And the whole experience of movement is like you're not even noticing what's happening because you have this whole inner dialogue about exercise as punishment for what you look like or what you want. Yeah, or
what you ate and it
gets in the way of social connection it gets in the way of pleasure, you know might still remodel your brain fingers crossed but there's a lot you're going to lose from that and one of the things that I found in teaching people across the lifespan is that I don't see a whole lot of that in people who are in late midlife they're happy to be
To
move their there for a different reason and because of that they experience more of the direct Joy part of what I want to do is help people get there sooner to to understand that you will get so much more out of whatever movement form you're doing if you can separate it from the desire to make yourself look a certain way or even sometimes we think of exercise is being good for us for our physical health.
Somehow that seems like more virtuous to exercise for health and say that exercise to lose weight, but actually that's I don't think that's a particularly useful motivation either in terms of you know, when you eat a meal you might have a broad goal to eat food. That's healthy. But in the moment you're eating it the best thing to do is focus on how delicious it tastes and you don't want to spend every Spoonful thinking this is
going to ward off cancer,
whatever, you know, you might be thinking you want to in that moment think wow this
Skirt. Wow, I'm so lucky to have this food. Wow, I can think about all the people who who who helped prepare this where this food was grown. I can feel Pride that I actually cooked it. I'm prepared food and nourishment for myself. I can celebrate that. I'm sharing it with friends or you know, whatever it is and movement should be the same way. We can't get so stuck and thinking that movement is here to prevent a heart attack or to burn a certain number of calories that we don't get to enjoy the whole experience and when we do that,
That of course, we're more likely to stick with it. And then also experience whatever those other health benefits
are totally and I think too often this whole, you know, when we do it from a place of hating and I've certainly been guilty of this myself, but of, you know being unhappy in our bodies or wanting to lose weight or pay back for Thanksgiving or whatever. It is the the self-flagellation. It's such a nebulous goal and it in many
Ways I've never had the experience of being maybe a couple times in my life of being like Oh, I think I'm exactly right. It's a moving goalposts. Right I have on the other hand the experience of growing in an eight and and achieving in sports and a way of like incredibly profound and meaningful experiences and and that those seem like worthwhile goals, and I know a lot of the book to particularly near the end.
And there's about goals in the context of like pushing beyond what we think we're capable of achieving which I think also carries its own high, right? Oh,
yes, absolutely. Some of the best stories that I heard in the book. We're from people who
used movement
almost as a metaphor. There was one woman. I talked to who actually had a plan to take her own life and she went to the gym and she deadlifted more weight than she'd ever.
Have been able to lift before and she literally had this sensation of inner strength when she did it that made her realize she didn't want to take her own life. And I heard so many stories like that where people were overcoming fears or redefining what they thought was possible who they were like this woman who took up boxing and it's like wow, I never thought I was going to be someone who could throw a punch.
Is that the one he threw a hundred punches in a minute?
Yes. Yeah. She's one of my favorite people in the
book but they're all my favorite people in the book, which is also as a side note people reveal themselves through movement in ways that are so beautiful to observe that is actually one of the joys of movement is putting yourself in an environment where you can see people face their fears or lift something heavier than they've ever lifted and see that look of Wonder on their face or pride and to be able to share in that and there's I like fell in love with everyone I talk to
Because they were telling me who they were through this language of movement, you know, like the woman I spoke to who was a rower and talked about what it was like to row in synchrony with with the other women on her team and to be in synchrony with nature and I just it's so beautiful who people are when they find the right movement form that becomes a way of defining who they are. But yeah, so so there's is a joy to doing something you've never done before one of the women. I talked to the book Terry Schneider. She's
in an adventure athlete which couldn't be more far from my own impulses. I initially did not even want to write about this aspect of movement because I was so
she the one we like Belle Donovan Kate volcano and was attacked by a wild dog and then had leeches. I know this is the lead story
was crazy to me that she was she was
trekking through a jungle and
leeches were flinging themselves at her from every direction. She couldn't see them because they immediately
Able to get into holes through her clothing. She was saying like the islets of her buttons and and that she knew they were eating her because she saw the blood seeping out of her shoes and her clothes and she's telling me this with a smile and she's laughing when she tells me that she's like she's like, oh it was you know, it was horrible and she's laughing this woman is amazing. She has all these adventures and so so I feel like some human beings have a different brain and body.
D. Yeah, I dissociate just thinking about the experiences that she's had. I mean she's been thrown off boats into shark-infested Waters. She I write in the book about how I overcame a fear of climbing by getting up 50 feet on a wall. Yeah. I can't remember how far the
mountain was it the think 600 feet or so now 200-600. No. No, I must have been more than that. It was I don't remember easy. Anyways, she's
climbing like Mountain faces, but what's so remarkable about
Her story is that she's like it's just amazing to see what you're capable of. Yeah, and I you know, I still remember her saying I was like, so what got you into this or whatever the silly question was and she's like, I don't have a crazy backstory. I'm not overcoming anything. I'm just becoming a strong woman and it was that that's her story and she has found that what she's capable of is beyond what we would normally think human beings are capable of
she just keeps stretching because she loves the experience of that Big Stretch where she isn't sure and again, that's so different than setting a goal and saying I have to achieve it. Yeah, you know, she's talking about the joy of I don't know if I could survive this particular track on my own. I mean she ran across the Sahara
Desert is that when she lost her shoes and I am barefoot. No, that was the that was the Gobi desert. Okay. Sorry, the sand Flats
sucked her down like to mid thigh and like sucked her shoes off. Yeah, and she had to run barefoot.
But she actually had like a mental breakdown in the in the Sahara Desert and there's this, you know, she has a memoir which is a wonderful Memoir is called Dirty Inspirations, and she's like screaming at the sun. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, but there's some part of her that's also present for it and just marveling at how interesting it is that mentally she's falling apart and yet she still continuing to run across the desert and I feel like we can all find our version of that. Yeah. So my version of that is not going to be the Sahara desert but this idea
idea of I don't know if I could do that, but wouldn't it be interesting to put myself in a place where I have to find out what What Fear feels like and how to hold it with courage and to have that experience of I did something I didn't think I could do. So now I'm not really sure what is possible. Yeah and to have that how that breaks open. What's possible in every part of our Lives?
Yeah, and I think just this continual redefinition of what's possible and we see it obviously is
Old records continue to shrink or grow and who was it? Who was the like the Doctor Who rant was at the five-minute mile or the four-minute mile? I don't know. What are you people probably running to minute miles now. Yeah. I know it's what's happening, but it was one of those world. I think he broke the record and then everyone else everyone else go to and you know, I love to the section of the book about DPI. And yes and this idea of all these Park people with Parkinson's or her
Polly Jack or recovering from stroke and yeah exactly otherwise theoretically physically incapacitated being pushed to individual goals that are Herculean like how many pull-ups did that woman and of doing this she was he or she I think she was aiming for being able to do a hundred
pull ups so that she could learn to walk
again. Yeah, so DPI,
it's so funny. I feel like sometimes Universe brings me to the people I need so when I was writing this book,
I was aware of this program that was doing what's called adaptive Fitness. So you take people who have some sort of physical disability like a stroke or amputations and you train them like athletes and everything is just adapted so that they can be the athlete they are and whatever their physical condition is, so I knew about this gym and was a gym that got a lot of PR and it was this huge facility and I was Googling trying to find it and I must have entered in something wrong because I got this little
All tiny gym in Fairfax, Virginia that had a similar name. I went there by accident. I'm like, I don't think this is the place that I was going to write about and it's a small gym and it's just one trainer who knew the research that said that if you have a stroke or you have some sort of spinal cord injury that if you push yourself you often can recover a lot of abilities and you can also avoid a lot of the depression or the the psychological challenges that come with now
A very different kind of body that you're living in so he started training people like the way you would train an athlete even if it's somebody who has very severe physical limitations
and but usually people who have not trained as athletes exactly. Yeah
often not athletes when they show up and you know, the first time I talked to him, I just remember thinking I don't know. I don't know who this is or what this is but this is this is amazing because he was describing the way he was describing.
The people at his gym, I think so the first picture I saw the gym there was this wall and it had all these sayings on it and I was asking him about that and he was giving me a tour of the gym and I was looking at the wall and it said things like, you know, keep it lit and never giving up and that sort of thing and it's like what is that and he said that well, you know, when people come into the gym, we tell them if they work really hard and they set this audacious goal that we will let them put their name and a motivational quote up on the wall to motivate.
People and to Mark the another progress and it's like well, do you remember any of these stories and I will never forget he looked at me and he laughed and he said Kelly I remember all of them and you know somebody who who teaches Fitness and as a psychologist, of course, he could have remember all of them because this is a facility where people are having human relationships. And the first one he told me about was this woman who was in her I think late 50s. She was a stroke survivor.
Iver she had a lot of problems with strength and balance and gait and they challenged her to do five hundred squats on a squat machine, right? So like a weighted squat machine five hundred squats in a row and I was like like really like in a row. I've never done five hundred squats in a row certainly not waited and he said yeah and she's up to a thousand now and you know, every quote on the wall had the story and this is what's so great about this facility is it's not like as one of
Women there said it's not like physical therapy. I wiggle my finger and you know, everyone gives you a medal. It's doing things that most people cannot do and being able to maintain that part of your identity or craft that part of your identity. Maybe you never had it before but to be someone who is now in a wheelchair and can't do so many things but part of your identity is I can do things with my body that most people will never be able to do whether it's the punches or the pull up.
Oops, everyone there is is treated like an athlete and they're making incredible progress that that translates into real quality of life. But there's just there's something else about I viewed it as a model for really how any of us should be thinking about why we're trying to do difficult things. Yeah, and sort of and how to get it done, you know to do it in an environment where people see the good in you where people believe in you and it's all done with the awareness that this is also about your life. Yeah it
Just stay in the gym that this is going to translate in being able to make other changes in your life that are meaningful and I talked to so many people who are in that kind of world CrossFit is another place where people experience this a lot and I talk to people who are who are training at CrossFit or doing these obstacle courses where they have a sense that what they're doing. Yes. It's physically hard. Yes, it's impressive. I was able to, you know, run through electricity, but there's another story behind it.
That is I'm the kind of person who does something even when it scares me or I'm the kind of person who by putting in the time and the effort makes possible something that I literally could not imagine three months ago and that becomes a core part of your identity that then allows you to say, you know what maybe I'm ready to be a parent or maybe I'm ready to go back to school and it translates and I think if we're open to that then any sort of skills.
Then can become this way. If we defining ourselves, yoga is another great example of it when it's done in a mindful way Tai Chi and there are a lot of forms. You could almost call them contemplative movement where when you're doing them your mind goes into a different state one that is more appreciative one that is more attentive to Sensations in your body. But also in the space around you and the Brain shifts into a state that really that really literally quiets down that inner chatter that that's
So often torments us throughout the rest of the day and this is another kind of joy of movement.
So can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know you talked about the default mode default mode Network. It's not right. Yes, and then how but how you can achieve that or what happens in exercising in nature. And so sort of How It's like my getting this right? It's like essentially the same as meditation or some sort of combination.
Yes, many people like it a lot more than meditation because it doesn't
Fire a lot of training. So if you if you find meditation difficult, you haven't found that inner peace yet, you know try going for a walk in nature someplace beautiful. But so to get to the the brain science part psychologists know that if you put someone in a brain Imaging scanner, so imagine you're lying on your back, you've got nothing to do nothing to look at and you're waiting for instructions the mind the human brain enters the state that they call the default. That's basically I mean if we were to just shut up right now and sit here.
You would go into it. I would go into it. The listeners would go into it in the absence of something else to focus on our brains like to enter this state of either time-travel thinking about the past or Imagining the future or problem solving or thinking about who we are our preferences in our problems. There's a lot of different like content to it. But if you know literally someone could press pause right now and sit here for a minute and you would find your default State and the default state is part of
Makes humans human that when we're not in an emergency where we need to focus or were not interacting with one another in a very present way our minds are like what would be useful to do I know let's think about the future and plan for it or let's rehash what happened yesterday and figure out what we did wrong so that we can avoid that in the future or let me think about other people and what they think about me so that I can make sure that I do things that keep my status in My Tribe the brain is great. It's great that we have brains at do this. It's very effective.
At keeping us living in a social world, but for a lot of people the default mode is negative. It has a negative bias and can be extremely self-critical can produce a lot of fears and worries. And in fact people who suffer from anxiety disorders post-traumatic stress disorder depression often what you see is their default mode is particularly negative
and really running right like stuck.
Oh, yes. Yes if they get stuck in it.
Yeah, so someone who
suffers from depression in order to fall asleep at night, you have to turn off the default mode. Well that doesn't happen for a lot of people. It just keeps on going or in order to you know, enjoy a movie you need to get the default mode to shut up and a lot of people will have that experience of trying to enjoy a movie but their mind keeps sucking them back into past memories were worries about the future even word Loops like what's wrong with you? You'll never be happy. That's also part of the default mode.
Mode and so often times when we're we get stuck in the default mode. We need we need it to quiet down so that we can experience some kind of Peace of Mind some sort of freedom from that trap and meditation is the best known way to do that. There are plenty of studies that show if you chant a mantra or you do breath Focus meditation or loving-kindness meditation the default mode all of those areas of the brain that Co activate to produce this particular.
Often painful inner chatter they quiet down and other systems kick in but a lot of people don't experience that when they first meditate so, you know, I also teach meditation and research meditation and I know for sure when people start meditating what they often experience is the default mode even louder than ever before they think they're going to focus on their breath and instead its default mode this and default mode that and people are like meditation is making me crazy because they just didn't even know how powerful though.
Out those thoughts were before
so meditation is
effective. If you put in the time to train it study suggests that going out in nature does the same thing without effort that if you are in a natural space where you feel safe, so, you know, it can't be like in the middle of the woods in the dark with no food or the Brad does. Yeah
something about feeling at the Sun as
you know place where you feel relatively safe and there's something of Interest something of beauty some plant life the brain
Seems to shift into this other state. It's sometimes referred to as Fascination where the default mode shuts down and particularly the part of the default mode that is over activated in people who have depression. It's a part of the default mode that's associated with both sadness and self-critical thought that in particular seems to quiet down when people are out in nature or going for a walk in nature and all of this happens without the need to even tell your mind to do something people often report feeling this.
dramatic shift in mood as soon as they're outdoors and I heard from a number of people who who were really struggling with mental health issues trying to find the right antidepressant medication, you know on and off lots of different medications people struggling with suicidal thinking and they found that the only thing that would keep them alive while they were trying to figure out the whole mental health treatment side with something like swimming in a lake or going for a walk in a park that it would give
that brief period of time where those inner voices would literally quiet down and that was enough to keep them alive, you know as they continue to I'm not saying that it's a replacement for actual mental health care, but you could think of it as a kind of self-care that can really stabilize us when we need
it totally and I know you talked about Forest bathers or just the idea to I think for all of us who might not be impacted by depression, but just how being in the presence of Nature's good
For our health in general. I mean we get destroyed and mocked icube obviously for talking about grounding or which is a funny word. But just this idea of like we've lost connection with the Earth and it's bad for our health. Yeah, but when you actually say it like that, it's like duh. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people
mock things that that are hard to explain. Yeah. Sometimes you just need to go to direct experience so as much as I love explaining, I'm sure somebody listening was like how
on Earth did they look at what was
happening in their brain while they were
Walking in the woods and of course the you know, the methods are so complicated and we can't we can't actually look at what's happening deep in your brain while you walk in the woods
just like we don't actually know what's
happening when your feet may contact with the Earth, but there are things the things that we do know absolutely point to the fact that we humans need to be in nature. One of the theories. I came across that I absolutely fell in love with is called the old friends hypothesis. And this is the idea that we need contact with dirt and in order to have a cycle.
Logically Healthy Mind and brain that there is bacteria in dirt that the human brain and body evolved with co-evolved with that. You know that
these little micro organisms were coming
into being as we were becoming humans and that part of what keeps our immune system healthy and our brains healthy are these microorganisms in dirt? So yes walking barefoot putting your hands in the earth, you know taking time to
Have play in the mud or even if you think about running on think on a dirt road and how it kicks dirt up into your face and you're literally inhaling dirt that there are microorganisms in that dirt that reduce inflammation in your brain that ward off depression and even loneliness and the reason that I fell in love with this theory is they call the disconnection from nature
the loss of old
friends. Yeah, and I just there's something poetic about that know and we need
nature that we are
part of
that's part of our
Network are our
social. We have a social connection to Nature not only to other animals and that we need that relationship in order to be healthy.
Yeah. Absolutely. We had a while ago now but dr. Zach Bush on the podcast he talks a lot about sort of the soil and what's happening to our soil and how it's reflected in our God and and he sort of traits.
That out to this idea of like extreme loneliness and that cancer cells are lonely. He does it much better than I do but it's the most beautiful and sad sort of exploration biology is often poetic. Yeah. No it is and it all makes so much sense. You know, like I think we've gotten so far away from these things that are so essential and so human and it is this lived experience, right? We get so excited. I in the same way
that we might know.
Know that eating Whole Foods are really good for us and they're going to be companies that are going to be looking to figure
out what could we avoid eating the Whole Foods like is their schools avoid eating and like we
just like shoot something into our bloodstream and we can just bypass that whole having to grow plants and eat them thing. We sometimes do that with movement to like. Oh if it's an amazing experience to go for a walk in a park and to stop and look at a beautiful view, but I believe you just like get a picture of the view right and put on some like virtual reality goggles.
Could we just do that instead? So Trend or even things like we know that moving the body is good. So we look for equipment that that somehow shrinks the experience and I mean no offense to anyone who loves like a ThighMaster do people even know. What a Thigh Master is anymore, but you can if I'm trying to imagine if I wanted to shrink the joy of movement to a really like literally like an isometric contraction with a
little tiny device that you can do
sitting in your chair. You're going to strip away so much of what you get when you go to the gym.
Jim yeah and see in see friendly faces and experience full body movement or you know are doing new challenges and there's amazing music playing and I think that you know people who want the joy of movement should think about going into the expansive version so that all of these Joys can come in at
once what is is there a biological mechanism like of inertia? Like why is it so hard to get off our asses? I
Certainly feel this more than I would like to admit. Yes, and
I would like to cop to it also because you know just this morning I had to teach my first dance class and I have to get up early and do lately. I've been doing core work because it's important for my ability to teach and feel strong and we know that when you activate your core muscles it actually dampens down activity in the anxiety areas of the brain. So I think
this being like a little there's like a
direct route from because your brain is always sensing what's happening in your body.
Yeah, and it just it turns out the Deep core muscles of your body are really good at sending sensory feedback to the Stress and Anxiety centers of your brain and it's like you literally are sensing. Oh I got this and your and your brain is
like oh, okay. Let's be courageous then
so because that's really good medicine for me. I need to get up in the morning and do that, but I don't want to get up even me who is writing a book about how much I love exercise in that. You know when I'm first thinking do I want to roll out the mat the answer is
no, and there's something there's some Paradox about human physiology in the brain that you know, we evolved as creatures who needed to persist as we get the runner's high and all of that but we also needed to not accidentally burn off whatever calories we were able to collect so we can't we need to find have some mechanism for conserving energy and it seems to be this kind of inner balance that the brain and body are trying to maintain
An and for whatever reason I don't know what it is. I wish I knew what it what it was that this time in this culture. So many of us experience the instinct to not move more loudly than we experienced the instinct to move even though they're both critical to our survival. So I can't explain I think every researcher who's looked at the says clearly humans have some kind of instinct.
Serve energy and it manifests as not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. You know, one of my previous books is about willpower and I used to always ask people whenever I give talks what something that really challenges your willpower. And at first I thought this was a
joke, but almost
every time I asked a group that the first thing that people would say was getting out of bed in the morning and I was
like, oh, you know, haha, like we can all relate
to that but that's strange that that's true that that challenges our willpower even just to get up.
That has to be embedded somehow into our biology and our psychology. This this deep need to conserve energy and we need to find a reason to get out of bed. We often need to be moving before the desire to move kicks in. I mean they talked about this with sex also that that for a lot of people you need to be having sex before you feel the desire right and moving seems to be like that too. So I can't explain what it is. But I think it's good to know that it's there and also know that
People almost never regret moving once they've started and you need to trust the process that how you feel. Once you're doing it is probably different than what you predict. Yeah, when you're telling yourself too tired today, or I don't have time today and how you feel afterward is going to be even better. Yeah, and that that amplifies throughout the whole
day. It's such a good advertisement for just go on a walk or take a hike or I guess the the fantasy would
be group exercise in nature.
Yes, kicking
up dirt with a
soundtrack though. I have to say I will always choose the exercise form that has a good soundtrack.
Yeah. Is there anything in terms of motivation? Is it like you find your fight song? Is that a good way to get yourself out of bed
for me it is and you know, it's so funny. I literally set my alarm with songs that I've been using in dance class because I'm trying to trick myself. So right now I've been getting up to the song housework. Do you know it?
Fighting it Odette
trust me. I dance better than I sing. But anyways, I do exactly that because we know that when you move to music when you hear that song it amplifies what normally happens in your brain when you hear music that you love so the motor systems become even more activated and you get more dopamine and more endorphins. So I am literally trying to use that trick. I've been using that trick for 20 years. Yeah, it's Mark but in terms of motivation for exercise in general
I feel like
You know from a very big perspective people need to understand the movement experience as a peak experience that you can give yourself permission to have and the motivation is going to come after you figure out what it is instead. If you think that movement can be a peak experience to start what what do you want to bring into it? Is it nature is it music? Is it social connection? Is it doing incredible things with your body?
Is it play
is it competition and and where does it take place and what community Do you want to build around that experience that that will ultimately be the biggest motivation because it will mean something different to you and it will come to play a role in your life that sustains you when you're struggling and that fuels you when things are going well.
Thanks for listening to my conversation with Kelly McGonigal for more make sure to get a copy of her new book The Joy of movement.
That's it for today's episode. If you have a chance, please rate and review hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes and pass it along to a friend. Thanks again for joining. I hope you'll come back this Thursday for more. And in the meantime, you can check out groov.com the podcast.
