Brian Johnson explains how gravity constantly compresses your body, and why you need daily decompressing habits to fight it. Standing tall, lifting your sternum when you breathe, and keeping your chest up counteract the damage of sitting. Eric Goodman and Joan Vernikos show that lack of gravitational load causes rapid physical decline.
Foreign. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on gravity and compression. It's inspired by Eric Goodman's True to Form and Joan Vernikos. Sitting kills moving heels. As we know, gravity is working on us basically every moment of every day to push us into the center of the Earth. That's what gravity is doing, right? And working against. Against that gravity is extraordinarily important. Joan tells us that if you hop on a rocket ship, right, and you blast off as an astronaut and you leave this gravitational pull, your health deteriorates immediately and radically. These astronauts that are the healthiest people on the planet age 20 to 30 years in a very brief trip out of gravity's pole. Now, that's interesting, but it's really relevant for us because when we're sitting all day long and not fighting back against this gravitational push, we get what Eric Goodman describes as compressed.
We get compression.
If you're sitting down all day, every day, everything within you gets compressed, right? And so one of his key tenets is you need to decompress. You need to fight back against gravity. Joan calls those G habits. Eric says, again, we want to decompress. Well, how do you decompress? It's very, very simple stuff. You want to do basic things. Number one rule of Eric's book, which echoes Joan's wisdom, is to stand tall. Simply standing tall. Stretching out in standing tall and extending yourself fights against gravity in a subtle way, but a very, very important way. Whereas most of us are slouching over all day, every day on our computers, with our iPhones, et cetera, stand tall. Right? Now stand up. Lift your sternum as you inhale. As you inhale, lift your sternum up, your shoulders, gently, externally rotate as you do that. And your neck lengthens and your spine lengthens. Imagine having a thread being pulled from the top of your head. It connects all the way down to your tailbone, right? And you're pulling up this thread. So you're lengthening and widening your back. Your head gently comes up off your. The back of your neck as your chin goes down a little bit and your chest goes up. Eric's advice is chest up, chin slightly down, really easy way to stand up tall. Another way to stand up tall is to put a book on your head. Try standing up with a book on your head. You have to have good posture to do that. And that good posture is a G habit. It's a micro movement to go to Katie Bowman and move your DNA. It's a micro movement. It's a tiny thing, but it's decompressing us fighting back against gravity in all those little choices to stand tall, to walk tall, to sit tall, to put our chest up and our chin down exercise. These G habits and decompress have an aggregated effect in our optimization. So pay attention to gravity and compression. Stand a little taller today and make today another awesome day. See you.
Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that, and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up. Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books in helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do as something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing. You got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.
