Do Sweat It

The Relationship Between Physical Activity and Cognition

Physical activity is critical to the health of the human brain (Nussbaum, 2003). Research indicates that people who are engaged in physical exercise outperform those who are sedentary in tests of long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, and fluid-intelligence tasks. In other words, those individuals who are more physically active are able to reason more quickly, think abstractly, and improvise more effectively to solve a new problem (Medina, 2008). Although most research on this relationship uses samples of people who are aging (e.g., Churchill et al., 2002; Emery, Huppert, & Schein, 1995), this relationship also appears to hold true for people who are middle-aged (Richards, Hardy, & Wadsworth, 2003; Singh-Manoux, Hillsdon, Brunner, & Marmot, 2005) and those who are young (Taras, 2005; Tremblay, Inman, & Willms, 2000). As an example, the results of a 2001 study led by Kisou Kubota at Nihon Fukushi University in Japan revealed that young people who engaged in a 12-week program of jogging two to three times per week significantly increased their scores and reaction times on complex memory skills tests. Interestingly, participants’ scores decreased once they stopped their exercise program. Researchers in this domain attribute this type of increase in cognitive functioning to an increase in oxygen intake, which when distributed through a healthy circulatory system protects the brain (Reuters Health, 2001). Additionally, physical activity has been shown to increase the production of the nerve growth factor hormone, which has been tied to increased brain functioning (Jensen, 2000).

With established support for a positive relationship between physical exercise and cognitive functioning, researchers have worked to identify which cognitive functions are most affected by exercise. This kind of investigation is particularly important given that there is research indicating that “the positive effects of exercise on cognitive performance are selective” (Eisner, 2004, p. 171). In a meta-analytic review of the literature, Kramer and colleagues (Kramer, 1999; Kramer, Hahn, Cohen, Banich, & McAuley, 2001) found that exercise was most beneficial to tasks that are regulated by the frontal lobes of the brain. The frontal lobes control the functions of working memory (i.e., the system that maintains information in memory, particularly in times of distraction), executive control processes (i.e., those involved in selecting and coordinating the execution of tasks), and inhibitory processes (i.e., those functions that limit the retention of irrelevant information into working memory; West, 1996). Relating this research back to the exercise intervention described in this article, each of the cognitive processes identified above (working memory, control processes, and inhibitory processes) is a required component for effective personal and professional development in many if not all work contexts—particularly those falling in the domain of management.

Physical exercise has also been linked to an individual’s positive emotional state, which has been linked to performance. When a person is emotionally stable, it may be easier to focus on cognitive and skill-based tasks. In the organizational sciences literature, we refer to this relationship as the relationship between affect and performance. Affective states have profound and pervasive effects on judgments, decision making, and behavior in organizations (Forgas & George, 2001). Understanding this relationship is particularly important for current and future managers for whom a focus on understanding oneself and emotional control and stability are often critical components of job satisfaction and effectiveness. Recent neuroscience-based research on the human amygdala has uncovered a clear connection between cognition and emotion such that “the mechanisms of emotion and cognition appear to be intertwined at all stages of stimulus processing” (Phelps, 2006, p. 46). Although scientists are only now discovering connections at the neuroscientific levels, for centuries practitioners have professed knowledge of the connectedness between an individual’s physical, emotional, and cognitive states. One example of this interconnectedness can be seen in the many varied forms of yoga. Westernized yoga, also called “hatha yoga” (Garfinkel & Schumacher, 2000) is a holistic form of exercise with the aim of creating balance between an individual’s psychological, social, physical, and spiritual components of self (Engebretson, 2002). It has been shown to have numerous benefits, including improved awareness, increased energy, and emotional balance (Cowen & Adams, 2005; Ives & Sosnoff, 2000). The practice of yoga has also been related to decreases in stress (Franklin, 2000) and perceptions of health (Cowen & Adams, 2005). Again, through this research, the importance of maintaining a healthy physical state is highlighted as a critical element in maintaining healthy and productive emotional and cognitive states.

In terms of the direct relationship between exercise and emotional states, research has demonstrated that increased physical activity has been repeatedly shown to reduce both mild depression (American College of Sports Medicine, 2004) and clinical depression (Camacho, Roberts, Lazarus, Kaplan, & Cohen, 1991). One longitudinal study following individuals across a 20-year period found that people who were less cardiovascularly active were more likely to experience depression than those who exercised regularly (Eisner, 2004). This finding may be at least partially because of the fact that physical activity tends to increase an individual’s production of dopamine, a mood-enhancing neurotransmitter (Jensen, 2000).

In a related stream of research, a team led by Duke University’s James A. Blumenthal has been examining the link between physical exercise, depression, and cognition for more than two decades. Some of his most representative work is focused on the use of exercise to aid in the management of depression (both minor and clinical), high blood pressure, stress, and cognitive functioning. The team reported in a recent study:

Assessments of cognitive functioning (memory, psychomotor speed, executive functioning, and attention/ concentration), depression, and physical fitness (aerobic capacity and exercise endurance) were conducted before and after the intervention. Exercise-related changes (accounting for baseline levels of cognitive functioning and depression) were observed for memory and executive functioning. (Khatri et al., 2001, p. 43)

In summary, numerous cognitive functions are required for success as a manager, including memory, reasoning, attention, problem solving, recall, selection and performance of specific tasks, and abstract thinking. Each of these cognitive functions has been shown to have a positive relationship with physical exercise and aerobic fitness levels. These relationships are consistent across people of all ages, indicating the importance of highlighting physical exercise as a critical component of any individual’s general personal routine and professional development. Additionally, physical exercise has been shown to reduce depression and negative emotional states in adults by increasing individuals’ self-esteem, improving moods, reducing anxiety, increasing their ability to handle stress, and improving sleep patterns (Sutton, 2009), which when coupled with the increasing prevalence of repressed negative emotions (e.g., stress and depression) in the workplace (Ganster, 2005; Shapiro, 2009), is a significant issue for students entering into today’s workforce. As Lovelace, Manz, and Alves (2007) state,

Physical fitness is a fundamental way to build good physical, psychological and social resiliency and therefore is an important way for the leader to sustain healthful regeneration. Building resiliency through physical fitness is especially important for leaders in high demand jobs because physically fit leaders have been found to have increased stamina and mental focus. (p. 380)

What struck us as we reviewed this research were the pervasive linkages to the common concepts of our domain: problem solving, critical thinking, stress, emotion and mood, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. These and related topics are standard fare—in part or in whole—in most organizational behavior and related management classes. Indeed, stress and work–life balance issues have been given increasing attention in many subject outlines and textbooks, reflecting the growing body of research in these areas. Moreover, health and well-being is an issue of increasing importance to employers, governments, and society in general. Unfortunately, students often read or discuss these concepts as yet another set of intellectual abstractions rather than engage with them in a potentially more meaningful way. Management students need to be exposed to the benefits of physical exercise, not only for their short-term health and well-being but also for their long-term personal and professional development.

The Exercise Session: “Make ’Em Sweat”

The session that serves as the focus of this article—highlighting the importance of the relationship between one’s physical state and his or her emotional and cognitive states—was intentionally designed as experiential. The only criterion that is set for the students at the beginning of the class session is that they must sweat (i.e., they must push themselves to the point where they will at least break a sweat—with the qualifier that no student should push himself or herself beyond comfortable physical limits). We typically use this session in negotiation courses and have done so at the undergraduate and EMBA levels. We have also used it as part of MBA and EMBA team-building programs to give them this experience and information at the outset of their respective programs of study. For all of our applications, our sole learning objective for the students is for them to develop an appreciation of the importance of maintaining one’s physical health to support effective cognitive function, manage stress, and promote an overall healthy lifestyle by developing and (re)committing to a regular exercise program.

In the negotiation courses (as an example), when we introduce the session, we describe it as focusing on the use of physical exercise as a critical and highly useful tool for every negotiator’s tool belt. We discuss the importance of maintaining a healthy physical state as a mechanism for keeping one’s mental state and negotiation skills “sharp.” This type of outcome frame focused on “keeping skills sharp” can be applied to any number of other management-related skills drawn from a variety of courses (e.g., entrepreneurship, leadership, general management, managing change, cross-cultural management).

Related to the progress of this exercise session as a developmental tool in our courses, we have made a number of modifications over the years, including the following:

The three appendixes are also available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental.

In terms of the actual class session itself, we do not tell the students about this session until the class session immediately before it takes place. We do this to create a sense of excitement and to add in an element of surprise regarding what they will experience. At the end of the class preceding the fitness center session, we tell them:

Your next class will not take place in this classroom. You should meet me at the gymnasium in work-out clothes—be ready to engage in physical activities where you will sweat. You will need sneakers (i.e., running shoes) and comfortable clothes. There are showers at the gym and lockers for your clothes and other belongings during our exercise session. You will have 30 minutes at the end of class, which should be enough time for you to shower and get to your next class if you have one immediately following mine. Come prepared to exercise, learn, and have some fun!

On the day itself, students begin the session (again, the session is run at the university gymnasium in a regular 2-hour class session block) with a prebriefing where we ask them not to push themselves past the point of being physically comfortable. We briefly describe the session as having a focus on the connection between people’s physical state and cognitive abilities, including the connection between physical and emotional states. We then ask them to complete a pre-exercise questionnaire, which includes the release form designed by our university’s legal team (as seen in Appendix A). The questionnaires have the students’ names listed at the top (i.e., they are not anonymous) as we need to have the names on them to hand them back for the postexercise data collection and debrief. We make a point to tell the students that the exercise is not graded in any way and that their responses will be treated as confidential. We also note that the session is designed to be fun for everyone—both for those students who exercise regularly and for those who do not. As a final note to make students comfortable, we always laugh with the students about how infrequently we do this type of exercise, stating that it is literally only “two times per year during these class sessions,” when we do spinning classes and soccer. At this point in the session, one of the authors talks about running regularly and participating in a Zumba class she enjoys, and the other author discusses going to the fitness center to use weights as well as participating in a martial arts class two times per week.

Following our self-disclosure and introduction (which typically takes approximately 10 minutes), we begin the session and join the students in the exercise class. It is important to note that we do everything with the students to illustrate that physical states are important at every age, particularly when you are “old” like us (well, that is what we tell the undergraduate students anyway). We begin by participating in a 30-minute spin class run by one of the gymnasium’s full-time sports trainers. Any class that allows the students to engage in a person-specific physical challenge would work here (e.g., boxing circuit, step class), as the goal for this portion of the class is for each student to individually push himself or herself to the point of sweating and feeling like he or she has physically accomplished something. This individual component is followed by a 30-minute team-based activity (e.g., basketball, soccer, badminton, weight lifting in pairs or trios where they have to support each other). We now use both individual and group-based exercise as part of the session to highlight the variety of types of exercise environments that are available to students.

This variety is particularly important as we have noted over the years that one of the primary motivators for some students’ exercise is to be around others—to exercise in social settings and spend time with other people. We have also noted that there are other students who are motivated by challenging themselves—pushing themselves to achieve more in terms of physical goals—hence the inclusion of an individual activity, and not just a team-based one, in our session.

Following the exercise itself, we wrap up the class with a large group debrief which includes a postexercise debrief questionnaire for the students to complete as well as a discussion of a handout they receive providing a review of relevant extant literature drawn from both the health and organizational sciences domains (as seen in Appendixes B and C, respectively). This portion of the session takes approximately 20 to 25 minutes depending on the students’ interaction levels. The students are left with 25 to 30 minutes for shower, clean up, and transitioning to their next classes (if they have a class scheduled after ours). It is important to note that our campus is relatively small in size with an average time to walk between buildings of 2 to 3 minutes. For larger campuses, with greater distances between buildings, instructors could reduce the length of the workout components (e.g., each could become 20 minutes in duration), shift the student postsession reflection to the next class session, lengthen the allocated time for class (for many, this will not be an option), or create online pre- and postsession surveys for students to complete before and after the class session, respectively.

Student Response to the Exercise Session

In terms of the students’ responses to the questions on the pre- and postexercise questionnaires, some interesting patterns have emerged over the years. Over the course of a 4-year period (2008-2011), 175 students have both participated in the exercise session and fully completed the pre- and postsurveys (given the short length of the surveys, incomplete surveys were excluded from the analyses). All the responding students were undergraduates enrolled in an advanced elective negotiation course; the survey was not administered to any of the MBA or EMBA students. Sixty-one percent of the responding undergraduate students were male (n = 107) and 39% were female (n = 68).

In terms of patterns across the students’ pre-exercise session responses to background questions about their typical routines, the average number of days that students reported exercising per week was 4 (mean = 3.6, SD = 2.1; minimum = 0, maximum = 7). With respect to how important exercise was for students prior to the session, using a three-tier ranking (high, moderate, or low), 66% of the students rated it as highly important (n = 115), 22% of students rated it as moderately important (n = 38), and 12% of students rated it as not important (n = 22). Ninety-one percent (n = 159) of the students reported that they had previously considered the link between exercise and their mental states prior to the session. It is interesting to note that each of these students (the 91% who mentioned that they had thought about the link between exercise and mental state) reported working out at least two times per week (i.e., they were not the students who reported having no exercise routine). Following the exercise session, 99% of the students (n = 173) reported thinking that exercise would help them as a negotiator (there were two students that wrote in “maybe” as the response to this question), and 100% of the students from cohorts across all 4 years reported having fun in the session.

In terms of qualitative responses to the open-ended questions, the authors independently coded the survey responses using a content analysis approach (e.g., Krippendorff, 1980). The intention with content analysis is to organize the qualitative responses into content categories called “resultant themes.” This technique has been used extensively in qualitative research, as it allows researchers to make “inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages” (Holsti, 1969, p. 14). Because this research was exploratory, the involved faculty members chose content analysis as an appropriate means to identify categories that might then be used for future quantitative research in this area.

Following the recommendations of Haney, Russell, Gulek, and Fierros (1998), a subset of the data was randomly selected (40 pre- and 40 postsurveys) for initial content coding. Each faculty member read through the responses to the two open-ended questions and identified phrases that seemed to represent distinct themes. The two questions that were analyzed for resultant themes included one from the pre-exercise survey (“why do you exercise?”) and one from the postexercise survey (“what did you learn from today’s class?”). The faculty members took an inductive approach to identifying themes. The initial wording of the faculty members’ resultant themes was slightly different, but the overall meanings were quite similar. Through discussion and mutual agreement, the wording for each set of three themes was decided with sample “responses” listed for each theme (as drawn from the initial data analysis). Using the agreed-on list of themes, each faculty member proceeded to categorize all of the participants’ responses for the two open-ended questions.

Given the moderately sized data set (n = 175 for each question), the reliability in the coding was quite high. Interrater reliability was 97% for the first question (five responses with different codes) from the pre-exercise survey and 99% for the second question (one response that had to be recoded) from the postexercise survey, representing an acceptable level of reliability (greater than 95%; Krippendorff, 1980) between the faculty members. The responses that were coded differently were discussed and through consensus were coded into one of the existing themes.

As stated above, the first question we coded was the pre-exercise question, “why do you exercise?” (i.e., what do the students gain from it). Sixty-five percent of the students had more than 1 response to this question, resulting in 292 coded responses. Three themes emerged from the coding process: (a) feeling good and keeping fit, (b) interacting with others, and (c) reducing stress and centering oneself. The first theme, Feeling Good and Keeping Fit, was the most common, with 77% of the respondents (n = 135) including a response coded in this category. These responses related to positive outcomes of generally feeling good, improving self-esteem and self-confidence, and either working toward or maintaining the goal of staying fit. Representative responses include the following:

The second theme, Interacting with Others, was identified by 43% of the students (n = 75). Responses coded into this theme revolved around students gaining things from exercise that related to other people—being in a setting with other people, being social with other people—or using exercise as a tool for affecting others’ impressions of them. Responses to the “why do you exercise?” question in this theme include the following:

The third theme, Reducing Stress and Centering Oneself, identified by 28% of the respondents (n = 49), clearly related to exercise as a tool for dealing with negative emotions (e.g., anger, frustration, exhaustion) and reducing stress. Responses of this type include the following:

With respect to the students’ responses to the question about what they learned from the exercise class, there were 208 unique responses for coding (with 33 students listing 2 responses). The coding process resulted in three overarching themes. The first theme, Behavior Change, identified by 76% of the student respondents (n = 133), relates to responses targeting behavioral changes for students in the future, that is, the things the students say they will do differently as a result of the session. Examples of these statements include the following:

The second theme of the responses, New Knowledge, identified by 39% of the students (n = 68), is tied to knowledge the students learned about outcomes of exercise, in terms of both theory and practice. Examples include the following:

The final theme, Social Support, identified by 21% of the respondents (n = 37), most likely stemming from the addition of the group/team exercise portion of the class, relates to exercise as a team-building and support mechanism. Examples from this theme include the following:

In the postexercise questionnaire, the students reported reflective statements that demonstrated a clear connection between the theory we had discussed and the physical exercise we had just completed. For example, responses to the prompt asking students to explain why they think exercise would help or hinder them as a negotiator (as mentioned above, 100% of the students responded that it would “help” them as a negotiator) included the following:

The overall messages from the students tended to center around the key theme of learning that physical exercise can improve their individual and collective effectiveness as negotiators. Indeed, as another student comment succinctly summarizes, “a strong will means a strong brain = a great negotiator.”

Taken in the aggregate, the students have consistently enjoyed this session, as reported in their postexercise reflections as well as in the follow-up conversations we have had with them after the semester has ended. Part of this is because of the fact that it is a “different” type of class (i.e., it takes place in the gymnasium and the students are able to do something physical not just mental), but another part of it is that the students are learning about the connection between research and empirical support for behaviors that many of them anecdotally knew were good for them. During the debrief discussion, although very few of the students report that they had previously directly connected physical exercise with their negotiation skill set, many of them state that they implicitly knew exercise was something they should be doing. The goal of reporting a summary of key research studies with the students is to not only provide a theoretical and empirical foundation supporting what many of them already know (i.e., that exercise is beneficial for their physical health) but also encourage them to view physical fitness as a key contributor to lifelong cognitive and emotional well-being as well as personal and professional development.

Potential Limitations and Ideas for Adapting the Exercise Session

One of the limitations of using any experiential exercise is that students will not make the connection between the experience and the theory—thus making the exercise a waste of time in their minds, resulting in frustration rather than exhilaration and thus serving as an impediment, rather than a stimulant, to learning. This limitation was a distinct issue for this exercise session during our first years of running it. As a result, we increased the amount of time spent on reviewing the literature from both the organizational and health sciences during the debrief session with the students. We also provide handouts to the students with studies or research from the past decade, including an overview of each article and a summary of its main contributions (the 2011 version can be seen in Appendix C). We couple this handout with a visual stimulus where we hold up one or two recent books on the topic. For example, in our 2011 negotiation class, we held up Chodzko-Zajko, Kramer, and Poon’s (2009) book, Enhancing Cognitive Functioning and Brain Plasticity, as well as Medina’s (2008) Brain Rules. The latter book is particularly useful as it has a highly informative and somewhat interactive website associated with it (www.brainrules.net), which students appreciate being able to visit as a follow-up to the class session. As a note, these two books could be used associated with running this exercise as a part of any management course, as the focus for each of the books is the general connection between physical and mental states, with no specific connection to negotiation.

The second limitation is cost. At the university to which we are affiliated, there is a fee for students to use the university fitness center. As a result, we had to negotiate with the university’s administration to allow students to use the facilities for free on a one-time trial basis. (We focused on getting them into the facilities once as a way of introducing them to the services they could have access to if they paid the annual student fee.) Related to this limitation is the cost of hiring an instructor to teach the spin class. This cost has been minimal at $40, and our department has been willing to pick up the charge as an investment in innovative teaching methodologies. As a way to adapt this session to an environment where there is restricted access to either a fitness facility, funds, or a fitness instructor, some possible variations include the following (a) taking the entire class for a brisk walk to illustrate how easy it is to get one’s heart rate up from simple activities, (b) asking the students to do 30 minutes of physical exercise on their own and come back to class with a set of reflections about their experiences, (c) having the students engage in a variety of tasks during 30 minutes of class with one group going for a jog, one group going for a walk, and one group doing physical activities such as sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and so on. Each of these three variations has limitations, as does the variation we currently use.

The third major risk is physical. For the first 2 years this program was run, the first author did not have a legal release form that her students were required to sign. As soon as the program was embedded into the EMBA Negotiation course and team-building program, the exercise session liabilities became an issue for administrators in the School of Business. At that point, our university’s legal counsel was briefed, and they created a release waiver that is now used at every educational level, including undergraduate, graduate, and executive (see Appendix A). Completed release forms are kept by the program administrator for the EMBA and by the instructor for any undergraduate or graduate courses that use this teaching tool.

Related to this point, there will always be issues related to physical limitations of students and to students with disabilities. We have always asked students to identify any physical ailments or disabilities before the exercise session begins. As almost every session has involved students with physical limitations, part of the role of having the fitness instructor there is to have him or her talk through which parts of the session those respective students need to either skip or adapt. We have had students with broken bones and casts, strained muscles, past surgeries, and other physical limitations as well as students who have physical ailments such as the common cold (which can be physically debilitating) on the day of the session. Over the years, we have had five students who were unable to participate in the physical session activities. In these instances, the students sat on the sides of the exercise session, participating in the pre- and postexercise reflections and cheering on their classmates during the individual and collective exercise. As instructors, when those situations occur, our goal has been to involve every student as much as possible, so we have invited all of the students to work together to be inclusive and create roles for those students who are sitting on the sidelines (working together with the students who are unable to participate). In each of the five instances, the groups created and assigned these students the roles of scorekeeper, cheerleader, and/or referee to encourage participation and camaraderie.

In each of these situations, we included a discussion of this component of the session as part of our debrief. For example, we have discussed how it felt for the student on the sidelines; how there are different ways to physically exercise, including, for example, using your arms if you are in a wheelchair; how one of the major challenges of being a good negotiator is to effectively step into others’ shoes to try to understand their wants and needs; and how that translates into what happened during this exercise session for students who were both able and unable to participate. As with any effective reflective session targeting holistic learning, every aspect of the exercise session needs to be tied to course-specific learning outcomes. In our courses, as one management discipline-based example, we aim to tie all of the students’ experiences to lessons that apply to the skills and processes of negotiation.

Conclusion: Using Exercise in Management Education

Our overall experience having incorporated this exercise session in numerous cohorts over the past 7 years has been overwhelmingly positive. Not only does it take learning outside of the bounds of the traditional classroom setting, but it also achieves this learning in a way that energizes students and allows them to push their boundaries and challenge themselves in both individual and team-based formats. It also incorporates interdisciplinary research into learning via an evidence-based platform for reflection and signifies the importance of connecting theory with practice. In this session, the involved faculty members and students are together, both individually and collectively, “walking the talk” of the intended learning objective of this session (Whetten, 2007). Using highly experiential, physically involved teaching tools allows a faculty member to harness the power of movement in learning and teaching environments, which has the potential to increase students’ retention and application of academic content (Jensen, 2000). Knowledge that is taught using a variety of appropriate methods, in a variety of contexts, is more likely to support the transfer of knowledge (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Learning in multiple contexts helps prevent new knowledge from being constrained to a single context and helps learners extract the salient features of concepts and develop a more flexible, fungible representation.

Although somewhat basic in terms of the learning objective, the potential impact of this exercise is so universally important to students’ overall personal and professional development that it has the potential to be used in a variety of management classes. The themes that we derived from the student responses are applicable to everyone, regardless of age or academic program. Students reported that they exercised for multiple reasons—to interact with others, reduce stress, center themselves, feel good, and keep physically fit. Their lessons learned reflected similar themes—students reported an increased awareness of a need to exercise, to change their behaviors such that they incorporated more exercise into their lives. They also reported a newfound awareness of the fact that there is research in the extant literature on the connection between one’s physical and mental states. Finally, they reflected on the realization that exercise can serve as an important social support and team-building mechanism.

Each of the themes mentioned above relate to management education and the organizational sciences. Organizational behavior, as one of the most fundamental management courses in most tertiary institutions, has three general domain levels—individual, group, and organizational. Each of these levels can be tied to the students’ reflections above. As an illustrative yet certainly not exhaustive list, the individual level often encompasses issues of time management, stress, perception, motivation, goal setting, and attitudes and behavior. The team level has clear connections to issues of social support and the design of effective team-building interventions. Finally, the organizational level typically involves discussions of organizational policies and procedures as well as culture and climate. We often anecdotally connect this exercise to what the students have learned about the policies, culture, and climate at Google—where employees’ healthy eating, fitness, stress release, and overall physical wellness are all clear organizational level goals. Again, these are just a few of the multitude of possible connections between management concepts and student “takeaways” from this exercise. In summary, the overarching goal of any teaching tool should be to aid in the development of students’ knowledge, understanding, awareness, and abilities. This exercise is no exception.

It also does not stand alone. There are a myriad ways to explore the connection between learning and the body—a concept referred to as somatic learning in the education literature (Clark, 2001; Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Ropes courses and other outdoor team-building–type activities (Williams, Graham, & Baker, 2003) might readily come to mind as an example, yet a number of innovative educators have developed effective ways to facilitate learning leadership (Clawson & Doner, 1996), power and conflict (Crowdes, 2000) and a number of other topics by engaging students’ mind and body. Our goal with this article is not to supplant these creative methods but rather to highlight the physical and cognitive linkages on which such activities are successfully established. By understanding and strengthening these linkages, students and educators alike can become more effective learners. As Shilling (1993) astutely noted,

The capacities and senses, experiences and management of bodies are not only central to the exercise of human agency and constraint, but also to the formation and maintenance of social systems . . . Our experience of life is inevitably mediated through our bodies. (p. 22)