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This is the Making Moves Podcast hosted by Vanja Moves.
Japan has some of the longest living people on the planet. Entire communities where hitting 90 or even a 100 isn't unusual. And here's the thing. They're not just alive. They are thriving, moving, walking, laughing, gardening, socializing, cooking.
Speaker 1:At an age where most people in the West are struggling to get out of their chair, these people are still living life to the fullest. Now here's where most people mess this up. They're gonna say things like, well, those people were probably just born lucky. Their genes are different. Their DNA makes them live longer.
Speaker 1:And that is a comfortable excuse because if it's genetics, then we really don't have to change anything at all about our lives. But the truth is right in front of us. The research is very clear on this. Only about 20% of your lifespan comes down to genetics. The other 80%, that's all on you.
Speaker 1:Your environment, your habits, how you move, how you eat, how you think, how you live your life. Think of aging like rust. If a hinge never moves, it seizes up. It locks. It breaks down.
Speaker 1:But if that hinge opens and closes every single day, if it's lubricated with motion, it's gonna last for decades. And humans are exactly the same. The only reason we rust is because we stop moving. And Okinawa proves it. This little island in Japan has more centenarians, people living past 100, than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1:And the thing is they're not just surviving into old age. They are still carrying their groceries. They are still gardening. They are still getting up and down from the floor without struggle. And that's what I want to talk about today, why they live so long, what they do differently, and most importantly, how you can steal their secrets and apply them in a world that's designed to break you down.
Speaker 1:I'll just quickly touch on blue zones, which is what prompted me to talk about Okinawa. The term blue zone was coined by Dan Buettner, who worked with the National Geographic and teams of scientists, doctors, and researchers. They studied places where people consistently live longer and better. The five original blue zones include Okinawa, Japan Sardinia, Italy Nicoya, Costa Rica Ikaria, Greece and Loma Linda, California. All different languages, different climates, different diets, yet all with the same outcome.
Speaker 1:Extraordinary longevity. Now here's the kicker. It's not about perfection. It's not about eating one magical food or doing one magical exercise. The overlap comes down to how they live their everyday life and how they stack those habits day after day, decade after decade.
Speaker 1:Their environment forces them to move, to connect, to live with a purpose. In Sardinia, shepherds walk steep hills every day. In Nicoya, people farm, chop wood, carry water. In Ikaria, they are gardening, dancing, dancing, and socializing deep into the night. In Okinawa, they are squatting, kneeling, gardening, and sitting on the floor daily.
Speaker 1:This is what I always say. Movement isn't an accessory. It is not something that you tack on after sitting all day long. Movement is identity. It is survival, and every single blue zone proves this.
Speaker 1:Let's look at a day in the life of an Okinawan elder. Picture an 85 year old Okinawan woman. She wakes up, goes to her garden, she squats down, digs into the soil, she bends, she twists, she carries baskets, her hips are always open, her spine is always rotating, her hands grip and pull daily. Before breakfast, she's already done what most people in the West pay trainers to replicate in a gym over months on end. She prepares food, sitting on the floor.
Speaker 1:She chops vegetables. She lifts pots. She carries trace. She walks to the market, socializes, carries her groceries back home. That's load bearing movement right there.
Speaker 1:And in the evening, she sits on the floor for tea. She gets up and down multiple times, fluid, unassisted, complete freedom in her body. She's not exercising. She is living, but her life is training her body. Now let's contrast that with an 85 year old in the West who wakes up, sits in a chair, maybe shuffles to the car, drives, sits again.
Speaker 1:By evening, the joints are stiff. The spine is rigid. The knees are aching. Getting up and down off the floor, for many people, that's impossible. And here's the painful truth.
Speaker 1:That fragility doesn't suddenly happen at 85. It is built over decades, decades of not moving, decades of outsourcing movement to machines, to cars, to chairs, and decades of neglecting your body. And the irony, we pay for machines and gyms to copy what the Okinawans get naturally. The garden squat becomes a leg press. Carrying groceries becomes a farmer's carry.
Speaker 1:Sitting and standing from the floor becomes a balanced drill. They are living it, and we are simulating it. And you see the difference in how their bodies age. Do this with me. If you can, drop into a squat right now.
Speaker 1:Hold on to something if you need for assistance. Heels down if possible. Rock gently in that position. Feel the hips open, the ankles lengthen. Now stand up without using your hands.
Speaker 1:That's medicine for your body. That is training for life. Because like I always say, flexibility without strength is fragility, and strength without range is brittleness. The goal is strength through range. That's how you build joints that last.
Speaker 1:Every squat that you do, every step, every carry is a rep, and reps compound to write your future. Okay. Okay. So So really really quick, quick, I I wanna wanna share a resource with you that I have available if you are currently feeling injured, stiff, broken, if you're a professional athlete looking to improve your mobility. My mobility toolkit is currently helping over 50,000 people in 40 plus countries, people ranging from all walks of life, complete beginners, professional athletes, men and women in their seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1:If you have fifteen minutes to spare, this will work for you, and it's gonna produce dramatic results within weeks. Check it out. Let's talk about community. Community is your armor against decline. In Okinawa, they have something called moai, a group of five to eight people who support each other for life.
Speaker 1:They share meals, money, labor, laughter. Loneliness is deadly. Research shows that it raises stress hormones, increases disease risk, and shortens lifespan. Community buffers that. It gives accountability, meaning, and belonging.
Speaker 1:In Okinawa, neighbors expect to see you walking. Friends garden together and share food. They organize tea circles daily on the floor in movement. In the West, however, we isolate. We grind.
Speaker 1:We work. We scroll. We disconnect completely, and it kills us early. So you need to build your own moai, and you can do that so simply by choosing five people, friends, family, gym partners, colleagues. Create two weekly rituals that you do together.
Speaker 1:It can be as simple as a walk and a carry around the block. Put your phones away, move, and talk, or you can do, like, a floor routine where you gather around the floor and you sit having tea and sharing wins and struggles. Share the accountability. Rotate who invites, who checks in, and who celebrates. Community is not optional.
Speaker 1:It is armor. It catches you when motivation drops. It normalizes movement. Alone, you're gonna drift. Together, you're gonna build resilience.
Speaker 1:The third pillar is purpose or ikigai. This is your compass for consistency. Ikigai is a reason to get up in the morning. Without it, you're gonna stop moving when life gets hard, and it will get hard. Purpose is the multiplier.
Speaker 1:It's what turns optional into nonnegotiable. Ask yourself right now. Who am I moving for? Why am I doing this? What do I want my body to still do at 80?
Speaker 1:What pain am I done carrying? What freedom am I trying to earn? Write it in one sentence. I move so I can get on the floor with my grandkids. I move so I can wake up pain free.
Speaker 1:I move so I can be a better role model for my family. Say your sentence while you move. Drop into a squat. Breathe. Rise back up.
Speaker 1:Repeat. Anchor the why into your body. Make it identity, not aspiration. Purpose makes practice permanent. Your future self depends on the why that you choose now.
Speaker 1:The next pillar is eating with awareness. I'm not here to push a diet. You already know that I lean towards animal based high protein diets. What I want you to take from Okinawa isn't about what to eat. It's about how to eat.
Speaker 1:It's the ritual, the awareness, the intentionality. In Okinawa, they have this phrase, stop eating before you are stuffed. People often say 80% full, but here's the truth. You can't measure that number in your head. What actually matters is eating with presence so that you can hear your body when it says enough.
Speaker 1:So why does this matter for movement? Because overeating makes you feel sluggish, stiff, and less likely to move. Eating with awareness equals better digestion, better recovery, more energy to move. Shared meals equals bonding and accountability, which keeps habits alive long term. Some practical ways to apply this without changing what's on your plate is start with protein.
Speaker 1:Build your meal around it so that you are nourished and recovered. Ditch the screen. One, cut down the the amount of meals that you eat per day. That's gonna cut your calories down naturally. Move after you eat.
Speaker 1:Even a five or ten minute walk helps digestion and keeps you in motion. Try this at your next meal. Before your first bite, pause and take three slow breaths. Midway through eating, put your fork down, scan your body, and ask yourself, if I stopped eating now, would I be satisfied later? When you finish, don't collapse on the couch.
Speaker 1:Stand up and walk for five or ten minutes. That's how you turn food into fuel for movement instead of weight that drags you down. This has nothing to do with restriction or micromanaging. It's about awareness. It's about making food serve your movement, your recovery, and your long game, not the other way around.
Speaker 1:Next pillar, stress and environment. Okinawans are not stress free, but they buffer stress with rituals, things like tea, gardening, gratitude, community. Their environment is designed to make the right choice easy. You cannot discipline a bad environment. You have to design it.
Speaker 1:Examples include, just take five or ten minutes to sit in silence, breathe, Let all the external factors just drift away. Don't allow yourself to always rush through the day. That's what causes stress and anxiety. Make sure that you get enough sleep. Make sure that your circadian rhythm is in check.
Speaker 1:Make sure that you are recovering properly. Make sure that you're getting enough sunlight. Do some daily movement snacks if you're feeling tense. The grind culture is real, but so are the design levers that you can pull. And the science is very clear.
Speaker 1:There are decades of data that back this up. The Okinawa centenarian study has tracked over 3,000 elders since the nineteen seventies. Here's what they found. Okinawan women live seven years longer than American women. Heart disease rates are eighty percent lower.
Speaker 1:Breast and prostate cancer rates are eighty percent lower. Hip fractures are half as common. Dementia and inflammation are far less frequent. And Okinawa is one of Japan's poorest cultures. So it's not money.
Speaker 1:It is lifestyle. It's environment. It's practice. Mechanisms in your body, joints, movement pump synovial fluid keeping cartilage alive. Tendon and fascia, frequent load keeps them springy.
Speaker 1:For your bones, the squats, the caries, impact equals density preserved. Your brain, gait plus balance plus connection protects cognition. Inflammation, sleep, and stress rituals regulate recovery. This isn't magic. It is physiology.
Speaker 1:It's practiced over decades. Here's what you can do now. Do five ground to stand reps any way that you can. Time it. Tomorrow, do it again.
Speaker 1:That's your diagnostics. That's how you track real world capacity. Can you get up on the ground and stand back up without support? Let's talk about some practical applications. How do you live this way if you're not in Okinawa?
Speaker 1:And here's the quick blueprint that you can start using from today. Number one, always choose movement. Any chance that you get, put yourself in that position. Squat instead of sitting on a chair. Lay on the floor instead of the couch.
Speaker 1:Carry instead of pushing your shopping. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk instead of drive. Every microchoice is a rep, and every rep stacks upon each other. Number two, make movement your top priority.
Speaker 1:It comes before work, before screens, before all the extras. Without health, nothing else matters. So you're gonna block movement before your meetings, early in the morning, anchor it to habits. Brush teeth equals squat. Phone call equals walk.
Speaker 1:Use alarms to force breaks. So every three minutes, every fifty minutes, every sixty minutes, do a movement snap. Number three, embed your purpose. Write your sentence. I move so I can x y zed.
Speaker 1:Anchor it daily to your practice. Speak it while you squat, while you hang, while you carry. Identity nor discipline. This will keep you going when times get tough, when you don't feel like it. Number four, build your circle.
Speaker 1:Five people. Pick them. Two weekly rituals, a walk plus a carry around the block. Share roles. Share accountability.
Speaker 1:Normalize movement together because if you're doing it together, you're gonna go a lot further. Number five, design your environment. Make movement the path of least resistance. Install pull up bars. Get mats on the floor.
Speaker 1:Make sure you have accessible movement spaces. Let your house coach you. Optimize your environment. Number six, embrace discomfort. The floor feels hard on your body.
Speaker 1:That's good. Sit there. Sleep there. The groceries feel heavy. That's good.
Speaker 1:Carry them. The stairs burn your knees. Good. Take them. Discomfort is tuition for freedom.
Speaker 1:Just try it now. Take a squat hold for sixty seconds, then do a hang for thirty seconds, and then carry something heavy for two minutes. That's a full body medicine in three minutes. No excuses. No gym required.
Speaker 1:And this is how you live like Okinawa, not by copying their food or their geography, but by choosing daily movement, embedding this movement into a purpose, building your community, designing your environment, and paying the price of discomfort now so you can have freedom later. You gotta change the way you think. You gotta change the way that you consider normal. It's about identity. It's not about luck.
Speaker 1:This is your biggest takeaway. It's got nothing to do with genetics. It is about you and your identity. Movement is your medicine. Community is your armor.
Speaker 1:Purpose is your compass. Awareness is your protection. Design is your coach. Discomfort is tuition for freedom. Your body isn't a car that you can trade in.
Speaker 1:It's the only vehicle you will ever have. Keep the hinge moving, and it won't rust. Keep the machine tuned, and it will carry you further than you can imagine. Your future self is listening to what you decide this week. Not someday, this week.
Speaker 1:Today, right now. So you gotta start now. Train your mobility. Move like weapons. Live the way that your body was designed to live.
Speaker 1:Optimize your environment. Do it day in and day out, and your future self will thank you.