The other day, I put on a song in the kitchen and started dancing.
There was no plan. I wasn’t wearing activewear. My Fitbit was not consulted. I simply heard a song I loved and, before I had time to make the whole thing unnecessarily complicated, I began to move.
Nothing had been solved. But I felt lighter, more present and somehow more like myself.
I have been dancing for as long as I can remember, and I have always known that it helps me when anxiety begins to rise. Long before I knew anything about psychology or neuroscience, I knew that movement could shift something that thinking alone could not.
More recently, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal has helped me understand why that experience may be more significant than I realised. Her book The Joy of Movement explores movement not simply as a way to protect the body, but as a source of happiness, hope, connection and courage.
That distinction matters, particularly as we get older.
We are constantly told to keep moving in later life, but the message usually arrives dressed as a warning. Move so you do not become frail. Exercise to reduce this risk or prevent that disease. All of that has value, but it can make movement sound like another piece of maintenance, somewhere between taking a tablet and getting the car serviced.
What if movement is not only about preventing decline? What if it also helps us remain receptive to pleasure?
The part of movement we rarely talk about
One idea from McGonigal’s work has stayed with me. In an essay adapted from her book, she writes about age-related changes in the brain’s reward system and cites research suggesting that adults may lose dopamine receptors as the decades pass. Dopamine is involved in motivation, anticipation and reward, although—as is usually the case with the brain—the full story is more complicated than one chemical creating one feeling.
The point is not that ageing automatically drains the joy from life. It clearly does not. It is that reward and motivation systems change over time, and researchers have examined whether regular physical activity may soften some age-related differences.
McGonigal puts this in beautifully human terms: regular movement may make the brain more receptive to joy. Her broader argument is that movement can influence mood, motivation and social connection—not only physical fitness.
I find that idea far more compelling than being told I ought to exercise because I am getting older.
“Ought to” has never been an especially energising phrase. It turns a walk into a duty and a dance into a task. Before long, we are measuring, tracking and evaluating an activity that might once have been playful. We can even end up feeling guilty while doing something good for us because we are not doing enough of it, fast enough, for long enough.
McGonigal’s reframe invites a different question. Instead of asking, “What exercise should I force myself to do?” we might ask, “What kind of movement makes me feel more alive?”
For one person, that may be swimming. For another, gardening, cycling or walking the dog. For me, it is often dancing.
And yes, dancing in the kitchen counts.
Why dancing has always brought me back to myself
I have spent more than 20 years interested in self-development. Journalling, reflecting on my values and changing habits have helped me enormously. But there are moments when I cannot think my way into a better state.
When anxiety gathers momentum, the mind can become a rather unhelpful meeting room. Every worry asks for the floor and nobody keeps to the agenda.
Movement interrupts that process for me.
I do not mean that dancing removes the reason for anxiety. It changes my relationship with the moment. The music gives my attention somewhere else to go, and I begin participating in life again.
This is one reason I wanted the third video in my four-part retirement series to focus on energy without turning into another fitness talk. In the video below, I explore the possibility that movement is not just something we do to the body. It is one of the ways we experience being fully alive in it.
Energy in retirement is often discussed as though it were a battery problem: sleep more, eat properly, exercise regularly and try not to run yourself flat. Yet energy is also emotional. We can wake after eight hours of sleep and still feel flat, or arrive tired at a dance floor and somehow come alive.
The joy that appears when we move together
Movement can be joyful alone, but moving with other people adds another dimension.
The French sociologist Émile Durkheim used the term “collective effervescence” for the heightened feeling that can arise when people participate together. McGonigal applies it to the lift we can feel while dancing, singing or moving in time with others.
Research into synchronised dance offers some support for this. In one study, synchrony and physical exertion independently increased pain thresholds and were associated with greater social bonding. Pain threshold is often used in this area of research as an indirect marker related to endorphin activity, so it would be too strong to say the study simply “proved” that dancing releases bonding chemicals. Still, the findings fit an experience many of us already know: moving together can make strangers feel less strange.
Perhaps we have made movement too serious
One of the most encouraging aspects of McGonigal’s work is her insistence that there is no single correct form of movement. The central question is not necessarily which activity is most efficient, but which one we will return to because it gives us something meaningful.
This feels especially relevant in retirement.
When the structure of work disappears, many of us lose incidental movement as well as routine and social contact. We may sit more without quite noticing. Then we decide to “get fit,” buy something involving Lycra, and quietly abandon the project three weeks later.
Perhaps we have started at the wrong end.
Instead of beginning with discipline, we might begin with pleasure. Not, “What is the ideal exercise program for someone my age?” but, “What kind of movement did I once enjoy?”
What did you do before movement became exercise?
Did you ride a bike, swim in the sea, walk with a friend or dance at parties without calling any of it a workout? There may be a clue there—not to recreating your younger self, but to finding a form of movement your present self will welcome.
A song, a few minutes and no performance review
In the video, I suggest one very small experiment: put on a song you love and move to it for two or three minutes.
Not to burn calories. Not to improve your technique. Not to reach a daily target.
Just notice how you feel afterwards.
You may feel happier, warmer or more awake. You may feel faintly ridiculous, which is not always a bad thing. Or you may discover that dancing is not your form of movement at all.
The point is not to manufacture a particular response. It is to become curious about what brings energy back into your body and your day.
This is part of what I mean when I talk about creating a retirement that feels unmistakably yours. Energy is one of four ingredients I explore, alongside connection, purpose and vision. They overlap. A walk with a friend can offer energy and connection. Dancing can provide movement, pleasure and belonging. Training for an adventure can give us energy, purpose and something to imagine.
If you are curious about which of these areas may need more attention in your own life, you can take my free two-minute Thrive quiz. It offers a personalised reflection across all four ingredients.
But perhaps, before you do anything else, choose one song.
Let it play without turning the moment into a program for self-improvement. Move in whatever way your body allows. For those few minutes, forget fitness, forget performance and forget what movement is supposed to look like at your age.
See whether joy feels a little closer.
