13. Wanna run away?

Hi friends,

Welcome to the thirteenth dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive.

For the month of April, we’re reading “Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest” by bestselling author, longevity expert, and National Geographic Researcher Dan Buettner. 

Dan has traveled the planet to find the world’s oldest and healthiest people to learn if there are common elements in lifestyle, diet, and mindset that lead to an amazing quantity and quality of life. With the support of longevity scientists, his work has uncovered nine lessons for optimal health.

To accompany Dan’s nine lessons, today my team and I launched an incredibly exciting 30 day How Humans Flourish challenge. Designed by award-winning break*through wellness coaches, our inaugural challenge provides community members a fun and dynamic way to implement positive lifestyle changes.

It’s always a labor of love bringing something to fruition, and so, thank you to everyone who signed up. Your goals for personal transformation are inspiring and I can’t wait to break*through with you!

For those who couldn’t sign up for the challenge this month, no worries– we’re still digging deep in this newsletter (and dig deep we must, because if I’m honest, when I reflect on my initial exposure to Blue Zone principles, I remember how they sparked an intense quarter-life existential crisis)!

I’d just finished my graduate degree and was in the intellectual throes of realizing the life of a weathered journalist was not for me. It all felt quite difficult because “people like me” didn’t struggle with intellectual throes. I had a plan… and my plan had a plan… and besides, I was living in London, enjoying intellectual camaraderie, and was being professionally challenged to think with incredible nuance and precision. Life was supposed to be good. 

But, something felt amiss. While sitting at a local pub with senior editors, I realized we often recounted war stories. Famine, genocide, and human trafficking were all fair game in casual conversation, and at the tender age of 25, it dawned on me this would be the rest of my life. 

My colleagues, all in their late forties and fifties, were either lifetime bachelors or were on their third divorce. While brilliant, most of them were overweight and cynical with a bad nicotine habit…I could see my future closing in.

And so, with no plan in place, I returned to the United States and decided to visit an old college friend living in Guatemala. As a recently licensed midwife, she’d booked the pregnant owner of the largest Yoga resort in Lake Atitlán as a client and was happy for me to stay with her for a few weeks.  

Upon arrival, my life changed immediately. 

I walked everywhere, ate a fully plant-based diet, and practiced a rigorous yoga routine every morning in a glass treehouse that overlooked the sun rising above the lake. 

Phone off, heart open, I’d sit and contemplate, wondering how I’d find the wherewithal to return to the loud, bustling cadence of city life.

One week turned into two turned into three. 

The trip reached its climax after meeting Max and Maya. Max was a Mayan artist who combined traditional tattooing techniques with contemporary, modern designs. His wife was a Colombian free-spirit who’d left her middle class family in Bogotá for a life of adventure, and eventually love. They invited me to their home, a small and modest homestead with barely any furniture. What the home lacked in decor and indoor plumbing, it made up for in views. Overlooking the entirety of the lake, it was in the words of Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver, “some strengthening throb of amazement.”

We spoke– in our own way– about their ways of living, Mayan cosmology, and the soul. Max in particular was fascinated by my experiences as an African woman who did not quite feel so African. He felt sad for me, that I did not feel deeply connected to a tradition or culture older than most nation’s in the world. We spoke about the impact of colonialism and capitalism, how his traditional practices were being encroached by “modern” culture. 

Acutely aware of life’s hardship, unlike my journalist peers in London languishing under the weight of globalized suffering, Max was inspiringly optimistic. He sang me songs in his native tongue and asked me to sing him the songs of my home country.

As a keeper of fire in traditional Mayan sacred ceremonies, he would remind me that sharing and exchanging is how we keep ourselves alive–by remembering our songs, our poetry, our beauty. 

Later that night, he and Maya poured pots and pots of boiling water into a large wooden barrel. They then poured beautiful jacaranda and hibiscus flowers into the barrel until the stunning aroma filled the garden. 

After filling the barrel, they shared that they would leave for a few hours so I could have some privacy to take an evening bath while watching the sunset. 

I sat in that barrel, and felt a peace I didn’t know was possible.

Most importantly, I felt joy. Unfiltered. Unabashed. Unapologetic. Something that’d seemed so elusive while studying and grinding in London.

When I think of Dan’s work with Blue Zones, I remember this trip. 

I remember the strength of my body, the simplicity of my thoughts, the friendship of Max and Maya.

I also remember the poverty, the hard, hard living conditions, the fight against modern trappings.

Because most well-lived centenarians discovered in Dan’s book live provincial lives, the research in Blue Zones will force us to reckon with the old and the new.

The nine lessons are:

1. Move naturally: be active without thinking about it.

2. Hara Hachi Bu: stop eating when you’re 80% full. 

3. Plant slant: avoid processed foods.

4. Grapes of life: drink red wine (in moderation).

5. Purpose now: take time to see the big picture.

6. Down shift: take time to relieve stress.

7. Belong: participate in a spiritual community.

8. Loved ones first: make family a priority.

9. Right tribe: be surrounded by those who share these similar values.

They sound simple enough, but there’s a lot to unpack and we’ll spend the next few weeks examining what it looks like to realistically adopt these principles in a modern society.

Be forewarned—it requires some science, some commitment, and indeed, some imagination.

But, in the words of Max, life is the initiation. There’s no practice run. Let’s make this one count.

With gratitude,