Yesterday, mine led me to a free-range pig farm south of Bendigo, a place where Berkshire pigs roam free, and just by going about their piggish business – foraging and digging for yummy roots and bulbs – are regenerating and repairing the land they inhabit.

But the image I came away with, the one burnt into my memory, is of tiny week-old piglets, and an exuberant three-year-old child, spontaneously leaping.

I know three-year-olds like to leap about, and I’ve seen lambs and calves do it, but I didn’t know piglets could defy gravity. It’s a beautiful thing, to see those springy tails airborne.

It got me thinking about leaping. What a pure expression of joy it really is.   

As a kid I leapt over puddles, into piles of crunchy autumn leaves, off furniture, did everything I could to make my bike and skateboard defy gravity. I remember one day tying a sheet around my neck like a cape and leaping off the garage roof.

“Spread your arms and hold your breath and always trust your cape,” Guy Clark sang.

He understood that leaping is an integral part of childhood. Not only because it teaches us about risk taking, but simply because it makes us happy.

So what happens when we hit adulthood? Apart from a few serial leapers – the base jumpers, hang gliders and skydivers of the world – the rest of us curtail our leaping by around 3000 jumps each year to an average of zero.

We reach an age where actual leaping is replaced by imagined metaphorical leaping. Astronauts make giant leaps for mankind. The rest of us make the occasional leap of faith, leaps of imagination, leaps in the dark – all valid forms of leaping – but you have to wonder if any of them can match getting up a full head of steam on a swing and having a genuine, blood-curdling leap.

I’m not making this stuff up. Science tells us that leaping releases natural endorphins that provide the same kind of high you might experience from cocaine. Leaping can reduce pain and anxiety (depending on your landing) and increase wellbeing. Ask any three-year-old.

But leaping has also become a serious business. Psychologists in the USA are getting their patients off the couch and onto trampolines, while another organisation, Chai Lifeline in New York, set up a series of beds in city streets with the simple instruction “Be a kid again – Jump on me”.  Adults of all ages gleefully obliged.

Your own leaping needn’t be so ostentatious. You can resurrect your old leaping habits with a gentle leap out of bed in the morning, or a subtle leap over a crack in the footpath.

It’s all about feeling the joy – releasing your inner pig.