It is true that physical labor does a variety of things for one's state of being. One is constantly exercising - all the better if there is a dynamism to one's tasks, as opposed to rigid repetition - and basic pleasures, such as eating, drinking tea, resting, and all the like become much more satisfying. And life becomes more satisfying as a result. One's concerns are simplified in this way too. Existential fears tend to take a back seat, the more one looks forward to one's next meal.
However, carried to an extreme endless work becomes numbing drudgery, no matter how dynamic or interesting the work is. Small pleasures become mere consolations as one looks forward to a future of numbing labor.
Those at the spearhead of the Protestant work ethic had some sort of intense drive to labor, and so their labor was their ecstasy, just as the capitalists become titillated by trade. But not everyone shares these sensibilities, and end up being carried along by intense instincts that are separate from their own, because the direction that cumulative human activity is taken by those with the most intensity in their drives.
