When you turn fifty, you stop worrying about other people. I don’t know why I wasted my whole life thinking I wasn’t allowed to do athletics because I was a girl and I was fat.”

space to develop if I hadn’t stepped into the instructor’s role? Would I have become someone who sees the good in others if I hadn’t first benefited from my students’ positive projections?

the cortisol awakening response. Although cortisol is best known as a stress hormone, it’s also what gets you out of bed in the morning. The cortisol awakening response—measured by the amount of cortisol in your saliva first thing in the morning—helps your body mobilize energy.

When you sense, empathically, the movement of others, you also sense that movement as part of your “self.” Our bodies learn what is possible by seeing and sensing the strength, the speed, the grace, and the courage of others. I think this is one reason I found myself watching so many videos of Tough Mudder events and athletes training at DPI

rumination. Might there also be a very different default mode that reveals itself when we are in nature? Alexandra Rosati, a psychologist who studies the evolutionary origins of the human mind, points out that two pressures shaped the development of the human brain. The first was our need to cooperate in small groups. This pressure gave rise to

This is one reason every culture puts movement at the heart of its most joyous and meaningful traditions.

When you are absorbed in your natural surroundings, the brain shifts into a state called soft fascination. It is a state of heightened present-moment awareness.

If exercise is a drug, the one it most closely resembles is an antidepressant.

2017 essay, Norwegian ethicist Sigmund Loland posed the question: If it becomes possible, should we replace exercise with a pill? Scientists are already trying to manufacture medicines that mimic the health benefits of exercise.