How does Ikigai bio-hacking differ from traditional biohacking?
Sachiaki Takamiya outlines the three health categories that he associates with Ikigai bio-hacking, which differentiate it from traditional biohacking.
Bio-hacking and the three types of health
Nick: So going deeper. In your book, you touch on three types of health that you relate to bio-hacking. So what are they?
Sachiaki: So these are personal health, planetary health, and spiritual health. One difference between ikigai bio-hacking and regular bio-hacking is that we kind of include the spiritual aspect of our life.
So when you start thinking about spiritual aspect, the death is not the end of everything. Depending on your belief, you might believe in reincarnation, or you might have a Christian belief of going to heaven after dying, and so on.
But whatever the belief you have, if you believe in some form of life after death, and then your focus is not only just extending your lifespan and trying to live as long as you can. And your focus is not only the physical body, but the spiritual side as well.
So from that point of view, maybe you don't have to live to 150 because you have a next life to transform into. But while you are alive on this earth, you want to kind of accomplish your life mission, therefore the quality of life is more important than the length of life.
But then if we think about personal physical health and spiritual health, maybe we are doing slightly different things. Like for example, we talk about fasting or diet or exercises, and so on. But things can be slightly different if you're aiming for spiritual health as well, and the planetary health.
Because if the planet is in a healthy state, there is no point of doing all those things to extend your, to improve your health condition, because you cannot survive without the earth. So for me, personal health and planetary health should be tackled together, they're kind of the same thing.
And then again, if you're thinking about the planetary health, the type of activity you do changes a little. There are many activities which can benefit just for your physical health, but may not be good for planetary health. But there are activity, which can help both the planetary health and the personal physical health.
Nick: I really liked this approach, and it kind of highlight, it's not a self-centric or selfish way of thinking about your own life that you're including this spiritual aspect. And even if you're not religious, you just don't know, you don't know what happens after death.
And I guess from living in Japan, and observing how Japanese handle the death of relatives and their cultural practices, Japanese seem to accept death and don't seem to perhaps fear it. Whereas in the West, we have this probably mentality of, ‘I don't want to die. And I want to get everything done before I die.’
And we have this different perspective. And then this idea of planetary health, I think it's really important, and we obviously can relate that to our connection with nature and how we treat nature, and look for sustainable ways that you discuss, for exercise, diet, and lifestyle.