Japanese culture has always fascinated me.
Their overall health. Their low crime rates. Their high intelligence. Their cleanliness. Their ability to defeat the tragedy of the commons. (Even when it’s off their own shores.) Their ability to take the otherwise mundane and turn it into an art form.
Whatever they do, they do exceptionally well as a culture. The more I studied them, the more I became convinced none of it was coincidental. There’s something going on underneath. Some fuel that drives the deeply embedded cultural norms. On the individual level that is.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated & adopted many of the underlying principles that guide their success.
Ones that transcend health. Ones I’ve found to be transformative across all domains of life.
We emphasize them here because if you strive to become a physical specimen in this life, you must strive to do so in whole: the truly elite individual is elite in mind, body, & spirit.
Here are the 22 most useful ones I’ve kept at the forefront of my own mind over the last decade.
#1: Shin-shin ichinyo (心身一如)
“heart-mind and body, one suchness”
What it means: Body & mind unified as one.
How it applies: We’re deeply interconnected beings. Psychology and physiology bidirectionality is one of the most overlooked concepts in the current health landscape. There’s no such thing as a purely psychological symptom or a purely physical one. Every emotion has a metabolic impact. Every metabolic state has an emotional one.
#2: Yamai wa ki kara (病は気から)
“illness & health comes from ki (breath/energy)”
What it means: Sickness starts in the mind. A proverb that anticipated psychoneuroimmunology by several centuries.
How it applies: Stress doesn’t necessarily cause disease, but it dysregulates the systems that defend against it. A couple fantastic reads I’d highly recommend on this topic:
Why Zebra Don’t Have Ulcers (Robert Sapolsky)
When the Body Says No (Dr. Gabor Mate).
#3: Genki (元気)
“origin energy”
What it means: Fundamental vitality.
How it applies: Upstream force that injects vital energy into life. It is our subjective vitality that drives objective biomarkers. It’s the spark. It’s the internal fire. It’s what separates those who read the book & those who write each chapter.
#4: Mibyō (未病)
“not-yet illness”
What it means: The state between perfect health & disease.
How it applies: Western medicine has a pathogenic approach → treating sickness. Classical East Asian medicine takes what we prioritize here with a salutogenic vector → focusing on prevention & what supports the optimal state of health.
#5: Ichigo ichie (一期一会)
“one time, one meeting”
What it means: Principle derived from the traditional Japanese tea ceremony meaning every gathering is unique & unrepeatable.
How it applies: The highest ROI solution I’ve found for addressing the divided attention epidemic. Wherever you are, be there. And only there. Close the gap between you & the moment.
#6: Omoiyari (思いやり)
“sending one’s thoughts out”
What it means: Anticipating what someone needs before they ask. Given without an expected return.
How it applies: Two broader applications I’ve derived from omoiyari:
The more transactional you make relationships, the more costly they become, ironically.
“Let me know if you need anything” outsources any work to the person least able to do it. True concern for someone’s well-being is marked by a deep understanding of what their needs are, then supporting in a way even the individual themselves are incapable of unearthing internally.
#7: Shoshin (初心)
“beginning mind”
What it means: The art of detaching from preconceived notions & embracing true curiosity.
How it applies: The paradox of expertise in any field is that it increases efficiency at the cost of closing perception. James Clear taught me the best practical methods to rekindle the childlike curiosity.
Let go of the need to add value.
Let go of the need to win every argument.
Tell me more about that.
Assume that you are an idiot.
#8: Mushin (無心)
“mind without mind”
What it means: Flow state.
How it applies: The more I fixate on the end state, the more I start managing a result instead of producing the thing that would cause it. Instant feedback-coded environments make flow states more difficult than ever. Learn to fall in love with the sound. Detach from the outcome.
#9: Kuchisabishii (口寂しい)
“lonely mouth”
What it means: You’re probably not hungry. You’ve probably just got a case of bored mouth.
How it applies: A 72+ hr fast will turn 3 eggs & avocado into a Michelin star meal. And that’s the mark of true hunger. The highest ROI tactic to fend off the cheap dopamine-induced bored mouth state has virtually nothing to do with health at all: fix your environment (digital & physical).
#10: Hara hachi bu (腹八分)
“belly, eight parts” (out of ten)
What it means: Eat to 80% full.
How it applies: Learn to slow down when eating. Satiety signaling is slow. And takes 15–20 minutes to completely register a meal. Trust the fullness will arrive.
#11: Shun (旬)
“a 10-day period”
What it means: Peak ripeness window.
How it applies: Eat seasonally. Nutrient density in produce is much higher near harvest & decreases with storage. Satiates longer. Tastes richer. Nourishes better.
#12: Gaman (我慢)
“self-pride”
What it means: Enduring the seemingly unbearable with dignity.
How it applies: Choice of pain now beats the discomfort chosen for us later. Growing muscle. Building the cardio engine. Learning focus through boredom. Choose progressive adaptation or succumb to chronic deterioration.
#13: Tanren (鍛錬)
“forging and tempering”
What it means: Thousands of reps. Never one dramatic strike.
How it applies: The only shortcut worth learning is the one telling you there are no shortcuts. Build the system that introduces infinitesimally small, hormetic stressors sized to be sustainable & progressive. Obsession creates the default system. And the system prioritizes pace over perfection.
#14: Kaizen (改善)
“change for the better”
What it means: Continuous, incremental improvement.
How it applies: The art of progressive overload is defined by impatience with action & a patience for the results of those very actions. It’s ever so subtle that on a day to day scale, progress is unrecognizable. But over the years, it’s profound.
#15: Karōshi (過労死)
“excess-labor death”
What it means: Death by overwork.
How it applies: Josef Pieper would’ve been suspicious of the hustle p*rn culture when he said the inability to rest is despair disguised as diligence. Hours logged has always been a meaningless proxy for contribution (now more than ever in the AI era). Rest & recovery to the athlete is boredom to the creative spirit.
#16: Ma (間)
“interval, the space between”
What it means: The gap treated as substance rather than waste. Silence in music. Emptiness in architecture.
“Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful.”
– Lao Tzu
How it applies: Growth happens in the interval. For hypertrophy, muscle protein synthesis peaks the day after training. For cognitive growth, memory consolidates in deep sleep. Design your schedule with built-in ma (deloads & rest days).
#17: Kinhin (経行)
“sutra walking”
What it means: Interrupted sitting.
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
– Søren Kierkegaard
How it applies: Get a standing desk (added bonus with a walking pad). Every hour of prolonged unbroken sitting = 10% HIGHER cancer mortality. Every hour broken up by movement = 18% LOWER risk. Great way to stimulate creativity & fend off back pain with age too.
#18: Inemuri (居眠り)
“sleeping while present”
What it means: Dozing on a train or at your desk. Socially permitted practice in Japan. Understood to be exhaustion from commitment rather than a lack of it.
How it applies: Learned this one from a Japanese coworker who would zonk out on her desk at 3 PM daily. There’s a sweet spot to the nap game. 10–20 min → you improve alertness & feel refreshed with minimal sleep inertia. More than 30 min → you wake up mid-cycle feeling groggy & spending sleep pressure you’d otherwise have for the night.
#19: Kanso (簡素)
“simple & unadorned”
What it means: Simplicity through elimination. The removal of everything non-essential so the essential becomes visible.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman’s Odyssey
How it applies: Notice that any time you add to a system or protocol, it is always defensible. You can explain away each and every little thing. But conversely, removal requires true knowledge of what’s pulling the weight. Yet most people neither know nor care to find out so they keep everything as insurance. First, learn to operate with less. Then, learn to subtract until something breaks.
#20: Poka-yoke (ポカヨケ)
“mistake-avoiding”
What it means: Designing the error out of the system rather than willpowering it out.
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
– Charlie Munger
How it applies: The ideal health posture is a default system running in the background. Resilient to the stressors of the modern environment & flowing day to day without requiring a decision.
Not enough diligence in setting up the proper system? Expect a barrage of chronic pain in the future.
Optimize too hard? Start implementing solutions only to create problems you never had.
#21: Wabi-sabi (侘寂)
“spiritual richness in imperfection”
What it means: Finding the beauty in what’s imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete.
How it applies: A couple points to derive from wabi-sabi:
Optimization culture (neuroticism) treats every deviation as a failure to correct. Wabi-sabi declares an “error” as a feature of the system, not a bug. A resilient, but imperfect system consistently executed for decades beats the perfect, rarely conducted one.
Never fall victim to the comparison induced inadequacy of the digital space. This is a game between two people: last week you vs. this week you. It is that simple.
#22: Nagori (名残)
“remaining name”
What it means: The traces left behind by something that’s gone.
How it applies: On a long enough timeline, every self-respecting man contemplates the same question: what do I wish to be remembered for? But this is starting to feel like the wrong one to me.
The people who carry your legacy won’t remember the work as much as you think…do you remember your grandfather’s work? How about your great-grandfather? Do you even know their full names?
What people will remember about you is how the vibes shifted when you walked in a room. They’ll remember who you were on an ordinary Thursday. They’ll remember who you were at your worst. At your best. And when nothing was at stake.
I can guarantee you’ll gain something from this list. Even if it’s just a single concept you let marinate in your head for a few hours.
Many have been paradigm shifting for me. Enough to shift my perspective in life over time. And I think they will for you too.
Understand them fully. Practice them intentionally. Normalize them daily. All to be applied for your own unique trajectory in this life.
Stay after it. And we’ll see you guys next week.
— Phys
If you found this article useful for improving your life, here are some others you might find practical:
Fantastic post. Sending to my friends. Cheers Phys.
Whew.
I'm relief to see the list does not include beheading your neighbors (to 'build character', 'teach follow-through', or other reasons), a la Nanjin.
/sarcasm
/not sarcasm