Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.

The line treats happiness as partly biochemical—something with a “chemistry” that can be stirred, altered, and renewed through bodily motion. By pairing dancing (playful, social, expressive) with running (disciplined, solitary, aerobic), Cooley suggests that different kinds of movement can disrupt emotional stasis and reconfigure mood. “Shake up” implies both agitation and mixing: physical exertion can jolt a person out of rumination, while rhythm and breath can recalibrate the body’s internal state. The aphorism also lightly satirizes the tendency to medicalize feeling, proposing a simple, embodied intervention rather than an abstract theory of happiness.