Why Moving Your Body Moves Your Mind

Running has long been a part of my life, mostly because my sister, an accomplished runner, has always been a part of my life. To be honest, I’m not good or fast – or even always committed — to my running regime. But I am rewarded by it. Surprisingly so.?

In my earlier years I prepared for half-marathons and even a full marathon, and then went months without running at all. But now, it’s become a favorite habit. I run four days a week — not in preparation for any race or event, but just because. Often it’s with others, which makes it fun and entertaining. But I’m not averse to lacing up my running shoes and heading out on my own, either. In fact, I often find that I conjure up some of my best ideas when I go solo.

That’s not unusual, as physical activity has long long been associated with creativity.?

“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking,” ?German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) once said.

The author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was no less eloquent on the topic,?writing the following? in his journal in 1851:

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow. … Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read.

Far more recently, Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder, conducted?walking meetings . So too did Jeff Weiner while serving as LinkedIn’s CEO from 2008 to 2020. Now that organization’s executive chairman, he once explained that it is not only?“energizing” ?to conduct business in that fashion, but that the format “essentially eliminates distractions.”

Then there’s the Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who in 2008 wrote the book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” He?once explained ?that his writing routine involved arising each day at 4 a.m., working for five or six hours and then running 10 kilometers (i.e., 6.2 miles) or swimming 1,500 meters — sometimes both — in the afternoon. By holding to this regimen, he said, he was able to “mesmerize” himself.

“In that sense,” he added, “writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”

I’ve learned that the reason physical activity elevates creativity is that exertion causes the heart to pump faster, supplying more blood and oxygen to the brain — as well as every other organ and muscle. It also?rewires the brain , creating new connections between cells and?forestalling the brain atrophy ?that occurs during the aging process.

The results have been demonstrated again and again. In 2014, for instance,?two Stanford University researchers ?asked one group of subjects to ideate while seated at a desk in a drab room, and another group to do so while walking on a treadmill in the same space. The latter group proved to be far more creative.

Another study, undertaken by?Australian researchers in 2020 ,?reached much the same conclusion. In this case 79 subjects were given activity trackers and asked after five days to return to the laboratory and conceive of new uses for everyday items. Again, the results were clear: The more active the participants, the more creative they were.

The upshot is, it’s not surprising that I often return from runs with my mind in overdrive.

I’ve often conjured up new solutions to vexing issues, or have generated some especially bright ideas.?Because the truth is, everybody does. Your feet and your brain are more intimately connected than it might appear, and moving one definitely moves the other.