151: Joy of Movement with Kelly McGonigal

Kelly McGonigal joins us this week to kick-off 2020 with a candid conversation on why movement is integral to our happiness and our humanity. Learn how to harness the power of authentic, joyful movement to create meaning and connection that goes far beyond the way we look or what the scale reads.

And for those of you in the NYC area, join us this week, Thursday January 9, for Jumpstart Joy 2020: a LIVE Pivot Podcast and celebration of Kelly’s book launch, with dancing and Nia movement! Learn more and get tickets (which includes a signed copy of the book) at http://pivotmethod.com/joy.

Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at PivotMethod.com/151.

More About Kelly McGonigal

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection. She is the best-selling author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress. Her latest book, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage explores why physical exercise is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

 Topics We Cover

• Kelly’s opening invitation: "I hope that at some point you will put this book down with a heart that is full. That you will find yourself thinking, how marvelous, how miraculous, we humans can be."

• How Kelly started watching aerobics exercise videos in third grade and then became an instructor at 22

• 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.”

• Why we are hardwired to take pleasure in the activities, experiences, and mental states that help us survive

• Collective joy, and why every culture puts movement at the heart of its most meaningful traditions.

• “The neuro-chemical state that makes running gratifying may have originally served as a reward to keep early humans hunting and gathering. What we call the runners high may even have encouraged our ancestors to cooperate and share the spoils of a hunt. The runners high isn’t a running high. It’s a persistence high. You just have to do something that is moderately difficult for you and stick with it for at least 20 minutes.”

• When adults are randomly assigned to reduce their daily step count, 88% become more depressed. The average daily step count required to induce feelings of anxiety and depression and decreased satisfaction with life is 5649. The typical American takes 4774 steps per day. Across the globe, the average is 4961. 

• “Movement isn’t addictive only when it feels pleasurable. I think the brain can sense resilience being wired in. And in fact courage is another predictable side effect of how physical activity changes the brain.”

• Synchrony and ecstatic dance - the boundary of who you are dissolves 

Resources Mentioned

• Kelly McGonigal on the web

• Twitter: @kellymcgonigal

• Instagram: @kellymariemcgoinigal

• The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage

• Kelly’s other books:

  • The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It

  • The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It 

• Related Pivot Podcasts:

  • 40: The Upside of Stress with Kelly McGonigal

  • 89: Turning Pain Into Purpose: Blind Adventurer Erik Weihenmayer on Kayaking the Grand Canyon, Climbing Everest and Building No Barriers

  • 56: Perfection Detox with Petra Kolber

• Joy of Movement Book Launch + Workout

Check out other episodes of the Pivot Podcast here. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen, and if you enjoy the show I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! Sign-up for my weekly(ish) #PivotList newsletter to receive curated round-ups of what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and new tools I’m geeking out on.