We all have an ikigai. It’s the Japanese word for ‘a reason to live’ or ‘a reason to jump out of bed in the morning’. The place where your needs, ambitions, skills and satisfaction meet. A place of balance.

In this extract from Ikigai by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles we learn the importance of getting up out of the chair.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book will help you unlock what your ikigai is and equip you to change your life. There is a passion inside you and a unique talent. It gives you purpose and makes you the perfect candidate for something. All you have to do is discover and live it.

Do that, and you can make every single day of your life joyful and meaningful.

EXTRACT

Studies from the Blue Zones suggest that the people who live the longest are not the ones who do the most exercise. But rather they are the ones who move the most.

When we visited Ogimi, the Village of Longevity, we discovered that even people over eighty and ninety years old are still highly active. They don’t stay at home looking out the window or reading the newspaper. Ogimi’s residents walk a lot, do karaoke with their neighbours and get up early in the morning. As soon as they’ve had breakfast – or even before – they head outside to weed their gardens. They don’t go to the gym or exercise intensely. But they almost never stop moving in the course of their daily routines.

As Easy as Getting out of Your Chair

“Metabolism slows down 90 per cent after 30 minutes of sitting. The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 per cent. Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again. These things are so simple they’re almost stupid,” says Gavin Bradley in a 2015 interview with Brigid Schulte for the Washington Post. Bradley is one of the preeminent experts on the subject. He is the director of an international organisation that builds awareness of how detrimental sitting all the time can be to our health.

If we live in a city, we might find it hard to move in natural and healthy ways every day. But we can turn to exercises that have proven for centuries to be good for the body.

The Eastern disciplines for bringing body, mind, and soul into balance have become quite popular in the West. In their countries of origin they have been used for ages to promote health.

Yoga – originally from India, though very popular in Japan – and China’s qigong and tai chi, among other disciplines, seek to create harmony between a person’s body and mind so they can face the world with strength, joy, and serenity.

They are touted as elixirs of youth, and science has endorsed the claim.

These gentle exercises offer extraordinary health benefits, and are particularly appropriate for older individuals who have a harder time staying fit.

Tai chi has been shown, among other things, to slow the development of osteoporosis and Parkinson’s disease, to increase circulation, and to improve muscle tone and flexibility. Its emotional benefits are just as important: It is a great shield against stress and depression.

You don’t need to go to the gym for an hour every day or run marathons. As Japanese centenarians show us, all you need is to add movement to your day. Practicing any of these Eastern disciplines on a regular basis is a great way to do so. An added benefit is that they all have well-defined steps. As we saw in chapter IV, disciplines with clear rules are good for flow. If you don’t like any of these disciplines, feel free to choose a practice that you love and that makes you move.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Francesc Miralles

Héctor García is a citizen of Japan, where he has lived for over a decade, and of Spain, where he was born. He is the author of several books about Japanese culture, including two worldwide bestsellers, A Geek in Japan and Ikigai. A former software engineer, he worked at CERN in Switzerland before moving to Japan

Francesc Miralles is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of books about how to live well, together with the novels Love in Small Letters and Wabi-Sabi.

Alongside Héctor García, he was welcomed to Okinawa in Japan. Where the inhabitants live for longer than in any other place in the world. There they had the chance to interview more than a hundred villagers about their philosophy for a long and happy life.