Have you ever heard of the term “runner’s high” before? Don’t be fooled, you don’t even have to be a runner to achieve it!
This concept is relevant to all types of movement and all types of people.
So, what is a runner’s high? The runner’s high is a real hormonal chemical reaction that results in this feeling of euphoria, bubbling over joy, increased focus and mental clarity, decreased anxiety, and actually a decreased ability to feel pain as well. It’s experienced after a more intense burst of activity, which causes endorphins to be released. Endorphins are your pleasure hormones that activate the pleasure centers in your brain and cause a very similar response to taking opioid drugs or cannabis, in an entirely natural and safe way.
Again, this response it’s not just for runners. You can achieve a “runner’s high” with any kind of movement that involves an endurance type of activity done at a fairly vigorous intensity.
Prefer to listen? Check out this episode of The Joyful Movement Show.
Unleashing the Power of Joyful Movement
A “runner’s high” can be a great indicator that we are doing a movement that brings us extreme pleasure and joy. When we discover a joy for movement and learn how to experience pleasure through movement, all our struggles with motivation and consistency become a non-issue.
What is your current experience of feeling pleasure and joy during movement? Is that a brand new thought for you?
Movement does not have to be miserable, in fact, if the movement you are doing is feeling tortuous, it is not very helpful. You are never going to be motivated or consistent if you hate what you are doing.
Think about this: Pleasure is something that, as humans, we all have a natural inclination towards. By avoiding pain and seeking out things that bring us joy or make us feel secure, our minds are telling us to do what’s necessary for survival – but why does exercise seem like such an exception? When it comes to exercise, it seems that there are some people who love to move, and for others’s it’s torture.
Two Tips to Achieve the “Runners High” with Any Kind of Movement
To find true joy in movement, reignite that inner motivation, and access the ‘runner’s high, you’re going to need to do two things:
One, you need to cultivate positive thoughts about movement.
Deliberately change your thoughts to focus on the positives. You have to choose to switch the narrative to look at what you enjoy about movement. Why are you choosing that movement if you hate it? What about your choice of movement do you enjoy? Does that enjoyment you get, feel worth it? Build in movement that you eagerly look forward to, and ditch the ones that you don’t.
Two, You need to allow yourself to feel pleasure during your activity.
Storytime- I wasn’t always a Joyful Movement personal trainer. In fact, when I was first interested in running, I believed that the whole point of exercise was to punish my body for how it looked. That’s taken a lot of work and self-coaching to get to the bottom of, but that’s exactly what was going on. Here is what I have learned: As long as I felt negatively about my body, everything I did was from a place of trying to fix myself. It felt hard. It felt like torture. There was no joy in sight.
Seeking pleasure is a natural human instinct. The only reason why we would choose to engage in something that is not pleasurable is that we feel we deserve the pain and punishment. I had to get to a place of disconnecting my thoughts about my body’s appearance from my behavior with movement. I had to heal my relationship with my body image so that I could view the movement as a form of self-care. I had to accept that my body deserved to be treated with respect and deserved to experience pleasure regardless of how it looked. It didn’t deserve to be punished.
If you are currently engaging in exercise from a place of punishment and trying to fix yourself and not allowing yourself to feel pleasure, please know- you’re not broken. Even if you don’t fully accept your body today, even if you still desire to lose weight, you don’t deserve to be punished and you deserve and are able to choose to feel pleasure in movement.
Motivation is 100% a product of positive feelings and enjoying the activity is one of the top three factors that has been proven by science to increase motivation. The science behind it is simple: your brain releases dopamine- that pleasure hormone mentioned earlier. It’s released whenever we engage in behavior that feels good and it lights up our brain. Particularly, the emotional regulation centers. We feel the emotions of pleasure, joy, satisfaction, and happiness, and then our brain goes into action thinking of ways that we can get more of that because we are wired to seek pleasure. This is why you really can achieve a “runners high” with any kind of movement.
As a personal trainer with years of experience, I can tell you that the feeling of exuberance, calm, peace, connectedness, clarity, and contentment is truly amazing. And once you find it, all of your struggles with motivation will be a thing of the past. Take a moment to reflect: what mindset shift can you make today to start experiencing joy and pleasure in movement?
If you are ready to take the step into joyful movement, Radiant Vitality is here to help you on your journey! Radiant Vitality is a weight-neutral fitness and body image coaching service whose mission is to equip you with practical and sustainable tools to heal your relationship with exercise, food, and your body. Contact Radiant Vitality today!
