The programme progresses sequentially to help develop skills such as focus, awareness and control, and evolves to explore methods to strengthen connections with the natural world and live in the moment.

Gary Raucher, executive vice-president of category at Asics, described the programme as an extension of the company’s founding purpose.

“Asics is an acronym for the Latin Anima sana in corpore sano, which means ‘a sound mind and a sound body’,” he explains. “For more than 70 years we’ve been trying to uplift people’s spirit and well-being through movement and sport.”

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Establishing the programme’s scientific efficacy was key to its development. Movement for Mind was subjected to a large-scale randomised study, conducted by independent mental health researcher Dr Brendon Stubbs.

A total of 189 volunteers in the Netherlands and the UK were randomly divided into a participating group and a control group, and their mental well-being was measured periodically throughout the programme.

Seventy-one per cent of people who took part in the programme said they felt happier upon completing it. Results showed links between taking part in the programme and improved performance at work, and a greater ability to cope with the pandemic.

“When I analysed the data and saw the results, I just thought ‘wow’,” says Stubbs. “It’s so fascinating to see the change and improved well-being, I was absolutely, genuinely thrilled.”

Each week is different, with two 30-minute sessions per week, done outside, with no special equipment required.

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“We’ve made this to be incredibly accessible to all people, regardless of their fitness level,” says Raucher. “We really want to have a meaningful impact in society, and that is the driver behind trying to make this accessible to as many people as possible.”

With its focus on using movement as a tool to boost mental well-being, Movement for Mind is not a conventional fitness programme.

“When we’re walking we quite often think ‘I need to be out of breath to do my cardio, I need to get my heart rate up’, but actually it’s the other way around,” explains Caws.

The advantages are numerous. “You can change your mind’s response with how you’re breathing,” he says.

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Other experts come from fields rarely associated with physical fitness. In week four of the programme, for example, Dominique Antiglio steps in to introduce participants to sophrology, a stress-relieving meditation method.

“Movement in sophrology is really about bringing awareness to parts of the body that maybe we wouldn’t be able to connect with when we’re still,” explains Antiglio, founder of the London clinic BeSophro.

“The movements of sophrology are not meant to make you fitter, they are really there to help you connect to an awareness of your body. Sophrology is not really about getting fit, it’s about getting aware.”

Antiglio believes this holistic approach is a valuable one: “The fact that people are going outside, the fact that they’re connecting on many levels with nature and with themselves in that context, I think it can only be a recipe for feeling better.”

The blend of the different experts’ coexisting methods is what lies at the heart of the programme. Stubbs says: “It’s not just an exercise programme, it’s not just a mindfulness programme, it’s not just a breathwork programme – it’s a combination of all of these.”

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He concludes: “My hope very much is that people will start to use combinations of these individual techniques, because whether we want to improve our physical health or how we feel, there are numerous techniques we can use. It’s more than likely that combining two or more of these techniques is going to help us feel better.”