If you, like many others, have ever fallen down the rabbit hole trying to understand more about what causes some people to live longer and feel happier, you may have heard of blue zones like Okinawa, Japan.
Blue zones are the areas with the longest lifespans in the world.
Dan Buettner, a longevity expert, says that on average, Okinawan women live longer than women in other parts of the world. Additionally, “Okinawas have lower rates of cancer, heart disease, and dementia than Americans,” Buettner wrote in his article. Place.
The island’s anti-aging inhabitants caught the attention of writers Héctor Garcia and Francisco Miralles. The two interviewed more than 100 of Okinawa’s oldest people and wrote about them in their book, “Principles and Techniques Japanese Centenarians Follow Everyday.” Ikigai: The Japanese secret to longevity and happiness.
Here are some practices that have contributed to the longevity and happiness of some of Japan’s longest-lived people.
3 daily exercises to help you live a “long and happy life”
1. Do at least 5 minutes of low-intensity exercise every day
Nearly every super-older person Garcia and Miralles spoke to said they practice regularly Radio Daiso is a well-known, decades-old Japanese exercise.
“Even residents of the nursing homes we visited devoted at least five minutes a day to exercise, although some did so from wheelchairs,” the authors write in the book.
This exercise requires low-intensity movement and can be completed in five minutes or less, which is helpful. What’s really remarkable about this practice is that it’s usually done in a crowd.
Garcia and Miralles said one of Daiso Radio’s main goals is to “promote a spirit of solidarity among participants.”
2. Find purpose and stay busy
There is a Japanese proverb: “Only by staying active can you live to be a hundred years old.” Okinawans achieve this by finding their own “ikigai” (purpose), which encourages them to focus on the deeper meaning in life.
Ikigai can be loosely translated as “ever-busy happiness.” Typically, the people who live the longest don’t retire.
For example, Hayao MiyazakiAged 83, Japanese animation film director from Studio Ghibli. The day after his retirement in the 90s, Miyazaki went to work drawing new animation sketches; he just had a movie released in 2023.
3. Achieve flow state
“There is no magic secret to finding happiness and living life on your own terms,” Garcia and Miralles write in their book. “But a key factor is being able to achieve this flow state and move through it. Status to get the ‘best experience’.”
Flow is a concept used to describe complete immersion in an action. It was coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Garcia and Miralles say being immersed in a flow state can help you focus more, improve concentration, and temporarily forget about worries.
“The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most,” they wrote. “They spend more time in a flow state than other people.”
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