During the first twenty minutes, you may feel slow and stiff and not very inspired about the run. You may find yourself in a sour mood. (There is even a term for this phase: _dysphoria_.) {207} Persuade yourself that it is not important and keep going. Between twenty and thirty minutes, if you are dysphoric, that feeling may peak; some people even begin to cry. This is not necessarily depression; it may actually feel good. (Another reason to run alone: other people won't understand and may want to "rescue" you from your therapeutic endeavor.) At some point, after about thirty minutes of running, you will probably find that your mind refuses to do any more problem solving. You stop worrying, problems you may have been dwelling on simply begin to feel distasteful, and your mind clears. (After a good run, when you do return to the problem, you may well find that it is less difficult to think through.) Between thirty and forty minutes, many people begin to feel more "open"--their breathing begins to come more freely, and their whole system seems to work more smoothly and with less effort. This can be a wonderful feeling. After you have been running for forty minutes, the first alterations in your consciousness may begin. Your senses begin to feel more alert, more alive. Things seem more vivid--the colors of leaves, the song of a bird, the freshness of the air. Runners who have experienced this say that this natural, vivid, fresh sense of perception is unique; to some extent it may resemble the experience that comes from meditation, biofeedback, or drugs. This experience seems not to occur before forty minutes of running. It may be an experience of mild euphoria, or you may feel it as a marked increase in aesthetic sensitivity or as a sense of growing inner serenity. APPLICATIONS OF EXERCISE AS PSYCHOTHERAPY I'm sure that these experiences are closely related to meditation. The clearing of consciousness, the ability to find a central focus within, the delight of a clear mind, the sense of refreshment of the soul are reported both by those who practice meditation and by long-distance runners. The difference between the two techniques is in the physical effects of the running. It is as if those who meditate have found one half of the picture. The runners who just compete and do not reach for the psychological aspects have found the other half. The runners who are able to slow down and search for the psychic aspects will have both--the soul and the body. Thaddeus Kostrubala, _The Joy of Running_ {208} Even though aerobic exercise such as slow long-distance running can produce a feeling of moderate depression during the first thirty minutes, people who have moderate, lingering depressions in daily life often find that, as described above, depression disappears after about forty minutes. Anger and hostility also seem to be much reduced after about thirty minutes of running.