13 Feel-Good Ways to Release Dopamine Naturally (and Freely)
Getting your daily fix has never been easier
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays many important roles in the brain and body. It is an organic chemical that lays the foundations for what we do, think, say, and feel.
Our actions, thoughts, words, and emotions either raise our dopamine levels or diminish them. This creates a beautiful (or not so beautiful) feedback loop.
The good news is that you don’t have to go anywhere to find it, buy it, source it, or grow it either, it’s built within the very fabric of your being and is so ready to be released given the opportunity. All you have to do is know how to do it consistently to live a life full of joy.
My hope is that this article can provide you with some tools to do just that.
There are two types of dopamine hits that we experience — one fast-burning and one slow-burning. For the sake of this article, I’m interested in the slow-burning kind of release.
Fast-burning dopamine hits (or spikes) come from substances such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol, or from adrenaline-producing games consoles, social media, and gambling to name but a few. This tends to arouse us quickly and then fades away as fast as it came to keep us coming back for more. Facebook and other messaging devices have been known to hack this hard-wired system to produce apps and features to do just that.
Fast-burning dopamine also comes from addictive drugs, gaming, shopping, porn, and eating disorders too. This creates a co-dependency with the substance of choice but what we really crave is the chemical release of dopamine. If we can find new ways to release the same amount (or more) dopamine than that of the addiction, we can rapidly change our addictive tendencies.
Depending on what we feed our hard-wired reward circuity will depend on how we feel. Our feelings or emotions then produce the thoughts that we think, the words that we speak, and the actions that we take. In a world that’s only getting busier, noisier, and quicker, learning how to self-regulate has never been more important.
Below are 13 feel-good natural and completely free ways to release dopamine healthily, consistently, and over long periods of time. So, let’s get to it — your happiness awaits!
1. Breathe
The breath is the first thing we do when we’re born and it’s the last thing we do before we die. Our whole life exists between these two moments. One inhale. One exhale.
The breath is a fantastic anchor point and connecting to the breath can be an incredible superpower that helps us to feel more balanced, emotionally resilient, and living in a higher vibration.
The average person breathes around 15,000–20,000 breaths every day but how many of those breaths are breathed with awareness?
Here are some other health benefits to having healthy breathing habits:
- reduced stress and anxiety levels
- better blood circulation
- deeper sleep
- better digestion
- stronger emotional resilience
- more creativity, intuition, and a deeper sense of peace
- stronger immune, respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, and skeletal systems
- reduced inflammation
- A rise in dopamine levels
and this list could go on and on!
If you’d like to learn more about how to bring breathing exercises into your daily practice, check out a blog I wrote here
Or discover what my favourite breathwork is here.
2. Exercise
Exercise provides a low-dose jolt to the brain’s reward centers that are responsible for helping us anticipate pleasure, feel motivated, and maintain hope.
Regular exercise builds this reward system up, leading to higher circulating levels of dopamine and more available dopamine receptors.
Exercise is slow releasing and the effects are normally felt after the event. What that means is that during or immediately after a strong session, we might feel tired, exhausted, and drained but after a short rest, we typically feel calmer, more relaxed, and clearer.
3. Dance
Dance lowers stress and raises levels of happy hormones like serotonin and dopamine. And because dancing boosts your heart rate, it increases blood flow throughout the body, including to the brain.
So, find some cool music, turn up the volume and dance, even if it’s just you in your lounge. Dopamine isn’t judgemental, it just wants to dance!
4. Meditate
Meditation doesn’t mean sitting in a lotus position while trying to impersonate the Buddha. All meditation means is presence. Presence and awareness of what is happening in this very moment. Presence and awareness of what is happening in your body, your mind, and your heart right now.
You can meditate while you work, while you wash the dishes, have a conversation, or sit in stillness.
Meditation is the longer road but if you can get to the point where you can regulate your emotions and keep your energy high enough, then you can master self-regulation and release dopamine whenever you need to. This is the potential that meditation holds.
5. Walk barefoot in nature
This is also known as “earthing” and it’s often associated with flower-power hippies dancing around in a daisy field. However, now science has backed those hippies up.
Walking barefoot is as old as our ancestral line but our modern-day world asks us to wrap our feet up wherever we go. If we can allow ourselves to walk barefoot in nature we can connect to the Earth and feel more grounded, comforted, and connected.
This makes me feel like a little boy as I’m reminded that I once loved smushing my toes in the mud, wetting my feet in the sand, and getting green ankles from kicking freshly cut grass. A small act of taking my shoes off brings those memories right back.
6. Feel the sun on your skin
Think of a beautiful sunny day and then think of a bleak stormy grey overcast one. Was there a difference?
It’s pretty intuitive stuff but getting enough sun on your skin can help to boost vitamin D and release some good old dopamine into the system.
There’s even an aptly named condition nowadays for people that feel the effects of not enough sunlight (Seasonal Affective Disorder). SAD is a condition in which people feel sad or depressed during the winter season when they are not exposed to enough sunlight. This is a common condition in places like Scandinavia where they go months without daylight.
If you’re not in one of these places, step outside and soak up the sun for just a few minutes a day. If for nothing else, then do it for the people in Scandinavia.
7. Eat healthily
Certain food release more dopamine than others. Foods such as
- Dairy foods such as milk
- Cheese and yogurt
- Unprocessed meats such as beef, chicken and turkey
- Velvet beans
- Omega-3 rich fish such as salmon and mackerel
- Eggs
- Fruit and vegetables, in particular bananas
- Nuts such as almonds and walnuts
- Dark chocolate
A dopamine-focused diet tends to leave out alcohol, caffeine (yikes!), and processed sugars so it’s just something to keep in mind if a high-energy diet is what is desired. Be flexible here. Play. But just remember the good old saying “you are what you eat” (Ludwig Feuerbach) so keep an awareness with what goes in and moderate yourself if things become unbalanced.
8. Make love
Duh.
9. Hug
Yes, this wacky little hippie past-time has some incredible science to back it up too.
Every child needs a loving environment to survive, and as adults, it’s what makes us feel great too. Hugging feels great, you have to admit it. So, hug! A person, a tree, a dog. Be loving and open and connect from the heart whenever you can.
Hugging releases dopamine and oxytocin naturally so perk yourself with some human touch that we’ve been deprived of for too long.
10. Laugh
If you can’t, fake it. That’s the foundation of laughing yoga after all. It’s also extremely contagious.
Think about a baby laughing so much that it falls over…
See what I mean?
Laughing reduces stress, lets off steam, lightens the mood, engages the diaphragm (which is great for good breathing habits!), and releases dopamine and oxytocin naturally. It really is medicine.
11. Listen to music
Several brain imaging studies have found that listening to music increases activity in the reward and pleasure areas of the brain, which are rich with dopamine receptors.
Listening to music has even been shown to help people with Parkinson’s disease, children with ADD, sleep disorders, and anxiety.
It’s one of the easiest ways to evoke emotion and feel good so take advantage of this incredible time that we find ourselves in and tap into the thousands of ways in which music can be found.
12. Be around animals
“Be the person your dog thinks you are” — J.W. Stephens
When another being loves us this much it’s impossible for it not to affect us in a positive way.
For young kids, contact with animals can provide a secure and active environment. For elderly people, they provide companionship. And for everyone in between, they help to release dopamine and serotonin (the happy chemicals) naturally.
Caring for an animal (and them caring for you) has helped to reduce depression, anxiety, heart-attacks, cholesterol levels, and even lower blood pressure.
This is also due to the human need to touch. Even hardened criminals in prison show a dramatic change in the long-term as hugging, stroking, touching, and loving an animal soothes and calms stressed and anxious moments.
13. Get enough sleep
Large amounts of dopamine get released in the morning when it’s time to wake up and our levels naturally fall in the evening when it’s time to go to sleep. However, a lack of sleep appears to disrupt these natural rhythms.
When people are forced to stay awake through the night, for example, dopamine receptors in the brain are dramatically reduced by the next morning. Overstimulated minds, poor sleep, and anxiety also have the same effect.
Getting regular, high-quality sleep may help keep your dopamine levels balanced and help you feel more alert and high-functioning during the day. Feeling present, awake, and alive releases more dopamine which creates a beautiful feedback loop for it to continue.
Sleep hygiene can be improved by sleeping and waking at the same time each day, reducing noise in your bedroom, avoiding caffeine in the evening and only using your bed for sleeping (and making love of course).
To recap
Get your dopamine fix not once, not twice, but multiple times a day by combining forces to create a feel-good, uplifting life. All of these activities can be done daily (or at the very least, weekly) and the best thing about all of them is they all come completely free and naturally.
Breathe, exercise, dance, meditate, walk barefoot in nature, feel the sun on your skin, eat healthily, make love, hug, laugh, listen to music, be around animals, and get a good night’s sleep to fill your days up with joy and your being up with love.
