In fact, you can cultivate your own “blue zone” right in the comfort of your home. Discover the simple yet effective strategies that can transform your living space into a sanctuary of health, happiness, and longevity.
Easy steps to create your own ‘blue zone’ at home:
- Gardening: Tending the garden can help to lower your centre of gravity and improve fitness and balance.
- Walking up hills: Residents of Blue Zones often live in areas where they are required to walk up steep inclines in their daily routine.
- Lose the chair: Avoid always sitting on a chair and try sitting or squatting on the floor more often.
- Use your hands: Elders in Blue Zones still do a lot of manual work. So the next time you reach for a machine for a job, think about using your hands instead: for example, chopping wood and kneading bread.
- Leave the car at home: Instead of defaulting to cars as your method of transport, why not switch it up with walking or biking.
- Learn how to manage stress: Everyone experiences stress – even people in the Blue Zones experience stress. But what the world’s longest-lived people have that many people don’t are routines to manage stress. Okinawans take a few moments each day to remember their ancestors, Ikarians take a nap and Sardinians do happy hour.
- Watch what you eat: Reduce how much you eat, but make sure you are eating plenty of plants. ‘Hara hachi bu’ is the Okinawan, 2500-year old Confucian mantra said before meals that reminds them to stop eating when their stomachs are 80 per cent full.
- Reach out for connection: Join a community that supports healthy behaviours. In Okinawa elders often belong to ‘moais’– a group of friends that are committed to each other for life.
