Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Happiness isn’t only in your head — your body is important, too. This week, we’re led in a short Japanese calisthenics practice called Radio Taiso.
Check out Radha’s video guide to this practice:
https://dose.daybreaker.com/videos/microdose-oxytocin-healthy-spine
Today’s Happiness Break host:
Radha Agrawal is a Japanese-Indian author and a founder of Daybreaker, a company that throws sober dance parties at sunrise all around the world.
Learn more about Daybreaker:
self-compassion.org
https://www.daybreaker.com/
The Science of Happiness listeners get 100% off their first month of Daybreaker’s Dose, using code GGSC at check out:
http://dose.daybreaker.com?code=ggsc
Follow Radha on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/love.radha/
Follow Radha on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/radhatwin
Learn more about Radha and her book, Belong:
https://belongbook.com/
More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:
We love hearing from you! Tell us about your experience of trying radio calisthenics. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
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We’re living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That’s where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.
Transcript:
Dacher Keltner We all need breaks, and this is a Happiness Break— a series by The Science of Happiness where we take 10 minutes out of our day, just a short break, to bring us more happiness.
I’m Dacher Keltner and today we’re going to try an exercise that has been practiced in Japan for about 100 years. It’s called Radio Taiso, which means Radio Calisthenics in Japanese.
It started as a Japanese radio program that broadcast morning daily exercises for the whole country to hear and practice together. A way to promote healthy lifestyles.
And how we’re starting to learn about some of the health benefits. Studies out of Japan find that this practice can help older adults stay focused and have sharper attention and memory as they age. And another study found that radio calisthenics supports skeletal muscle loss in patients with type-2 diabetes.
And we know in general, daily exercise and moving the body in simple ways for a few minutes can actually benefit cognitive function later in life, life expectancy, and cardiovascular function.
Our guide for today’s Happiness Break is Radha Agrawal. She’s a Japanese-Indian author and a founder of Daybreaker, a group that throws sober dance parties at sunrise all around the world. Here’s Radha.
Radha Agrawal So let’s come to standing and just take a moment to arrive. Let all your to-do lists fly away. Let all the racing thoughts move away from you, and just be here in complete presence with this very moment.
Starting just standing straight up and tall. Stretch your arms up to the sky like a snow angel, and give yourself a full-body morning stretch. Reach, reach, reach to the top. Crinkling the sides of your mouth towards your ears into a soft smile and stretching again, taking a juicy inhale in and winging your arms back down like a snow angel. Smiling, whether it’s real or fake, actually tricks your brain into a serotonin hit, which is one of our four happy neurochemicals. Again, winging your arms back up like a snow angel. Smiling at the top. Inhale. And exhale on the way down. Haaa. Audibly hearing the back of your throat activated in vocal toning coming back up again. Two more snow angels taking a juicy inhale in. Smiling at the top. Holding at the very top. Hands facing each other. Yes. And winging down. Exhale. Last one. Winging your arms up, snow angel. Juicy inhale in, smiling at the top, and coming back down.
So much of the yoga poses can be sort of static stretches, Japanese Calisthenics is dynamic. It’s moving stretches. So we’re gonna rotate our arms in a counter-clockwise position. We’re gonna do that five times. Let’s do a vigorous rotation of our arms counterclockwise. If you wanna do it slow, go for it. If you wanna do it fast, go for it. But it wants to feel dynamic and you’re really getting your arms, your shoulders, your neck, your back, all activated. Your spine. Let’s do a couple more of those and reversing the direction and the other way. Again, lubricating our shoulders. Take a couple more rotations and come back to the side. Arms to the side. Beautiful. Now we’re gonna touch our toes again for a dynamic stretch.
If you can’t touch your toes, don’t worry. Coming back up. Winging your arms up to the sky, again in a snow angel. And snow angel-ing back down as you hinge down. And coming back up.
All right, so now palms facing each other. Place them in front of your body. So hands in the center. We’re gonna open up our arms all the way to the sides. And we’re gonna stretch, again, out. Clap your hands back.
We’re gonna bring our hands down to our sides, and we’re going to do a nice rotation around our shoulders. So rotating our shoulders all the way around. So coming back, hands in front of you, palm’s facing each other. Arms out now, back in for a clap, down by your sides and around for a beautiful shoulder rotation.
Hands in front of you facing each other. Arms out to the sides. Winging out. Back in for a clap down and around. Now hands back up to the very top. We’re now going to hinge to the right. Our spines. We just hinged forwards. Now we’re gonna hinge to the right feeling, a stretch on the side body. If you wanna grab your wrists, you’re welcome to do that, too. And really feel that stretch in the side body. Come back to the center, go as far as you can, being very, very safe.
Now moving to the other side of your body, hinging to the other side. Coming back to the center and we’re gonna do it again, the other side. Coming back to center and the other side. Let’s interlace our fingers and we’re just going to press them forward in front of our bodies, just doing a final, really beautiful back and shoulder stretch. And lastly, clasping our fingers behind our bodies, and doing a final heart-opening stretch here.
Thank you for your courage for practicing joy with me and this Happiness Break community. It is all about, taking the practice of mental health into our bodies. Taking the joy that we practice in our brains and now moving it into somatic practice, that is actually where all the juice lies. Our brain helps us move and process, but our bodies hold all the wisdom. Our bodies activate all that which we learn. And so let’s never forget what we learn in our minds, we must bring into our bodies and that’s why we do this practice.
Dacher Keltner That was Radha Agrawal leading us in Japanese Radio Calisthenics. Radha is Japanese- Indian- author and founder of Daybreaker, a group that throws sunrise dance parties around the world.
I’m Dacher Keltner, thanks for joining us in this Happiness Break.
Shuka Kalantari Hey there. This is Shuka Kalantari, Executive Producer of Audio here at The Science of Happiness. Doing Radio Calisthenics with her mom is a fond memory for Radha, and millions of others in Japan and worldwide. But we also want to acknowledge the practice’s history. In the places Japan colonized earlier in the twentieth century—like The Philippines and Taiwan—Radio Calisthenics was imposed on people as part of Japan’s cultural assimilation policy. For many, Radio Calisthenics might feel more like a symbol of an unwanted colonial rule.
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