AGING AND GROWING YOUNG
By Shelley Cushner Gardner
I once received a birthday card that read: “You may be older than you’ve ever been before, but you’re younger than you’ll ever be again.” I guess that was meant to be the bright side. When it comes to how we view aging, our culture polarizes youth and aging: youth is brief and quickly lost, aging stays with us. We assume that physical and mental decline are inevitable as we get older, that we are more prone to illness and disability, and that we are essentially victims of a downhill progression toward deterioration, senility, frailty, and death. However, some holistic thinkers advocate that if we shift our beliefs about aging, we can actually choose to grow younger as the years go on.
As a medical doctor in 1993, Deepak Chopra, M.D., offered a radical, holistic perspective on health and aging in his book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: A Quantum Alternative To Growing Old. Dr. Chopra asserts that we have been programmed to live in accordance with the rules and assumptions we learned about aging, a process he calls “collective conditioning”. He also asserts that we are actually the“only creatures on earth who can change our biology by what we think and feel.”Because we are aware of aging--a consciousness unique to the human species--- we have the capacity to influence our aging experience, to rewrite the program for our bodies and minds. To truly allow a positive and healthy experience of aging, the “chains of our old beliefs must be broken”.
To begin to open our minds, Dr. Chopra suggests we consider three distinct facets of age: Chronological age is how old you are by the calendar; it is fixed, and yet there are huge variations in how individuals of the same chronological age are actually aging. That is because biological age--- the condition of our organs, tissues, bones, and muscles---is a complex determinant of how an individual ages. Time, stress, illness, lifestyle, and genetics all impact our biological aging process. Perhaps the most fascinating aging factor is psychological age --- how old you feel you are --- which is uniquely personal and has profound impact. Negative psychological factors, including depression, helplessness, loneliness, excessive worry, and pessimism, can accelerate aging; positive factors, including satisfaction in work and
relationships, personal happiness, optimism, laughter, and adaptability, can retard aging.
The mind/body connection is most evident when we consider that it is not aging, per se, that wears us out, but rather vulnerability to illness and stress and how we respond. Dr. Chopra and other experts in holistic medicine, including Jon Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living, 1990) and Robert A. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,1994), emphasize the powerful connection between how we live and how we die, and most importantly how we achieve mastery of our life and circumstances.
An advice sampler:
1)Listen to your body’s wisdom.
2)Live fully in the now.
3)Be still, meditate, cultivate mindfulness.
4)Relinquish anger, embrace forgiveness.
5)Pursue self-knowledge, creativity, learning, and purpose. 6)Release judgment of self and others.
7)Eliminate toxic food, drink, environments, and emotions.
8)Be motivated by love over fear.
9)Build social affiliation and support.
10)Live in balance and connection to the rhythms of the universe.
The ‘baby boomer’ generation has challenged limiting views of aging by embracing youthful lifestyles and adopting wellness perspectives that address the whole person. Adults in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, even 80’s are enhancing health, happiness, and longevity by improving their diets; working out at gyms; walking, running, and hiking; taking up sports and yoga; meditating; traveling; dancing and singing; volunteering; participating in organized social recreation.
Self-help books with healthy lifestyle tips abound, but a new mindset of ‘growing young’in mind, body, and spirit can empower us to experience health and vitality at any chronological age. And upon reflection, we can remember that timeless lyric by Roger McGuinn and The Byrds: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
Shelley C. Gardner, M.Ed., LCMHC, ATR-BC is a therapist and life coach at Woodland Professional Associates in North Hampton, NH.
By Shelley Cushner Gardner
I once received a birthday card that read: “You may be older than you’ve ever been before, but you’re younger than you’ll ever be again.” I guess that was meant to be the bright side. When it comes to how we view aging, our culture polarizes youth and aging: youth is brief and quickly lost, aging stays with us. We assume that physical and mental decline are inevitable as we get older, that we are more prone to illness and disability, and that we are essentially victims of a downhill progression toward deterioration, senility, frailty, and death. However, some holistic thinkers advocate that if we shift our beliefs about aging, we can actually choose to grow younger as the years go on.
As a medical doctor in 1993, Deepak Chopra, M.D., offered a radical, holistic perspective on health and aging in his book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: A Quantum Alternative To Growing Old. Dr. Chopra asserts that we have been programmed to live in accordance with the rules and assumptions we learned about aging, a process he calls “collective conditioning”. He also asserts that we are actually the“only creatures on earth who can change our biology by what we think and feel.”Because we are aware of aging--a consciousness unique to the human species--- we have the capacity to influence our aging experience, to rewrite the program for our bodies and minds. To truly allow a positive and healthy experience of aging, the “chains of our old beliefs must be broken”.
To begin to open our minds, Dr. Chopra suggests we consider three distinct facets of age: Chronological age is how old you are by the calendar; it is fixed, and yet there are huge variations in how individuals of the same chronological age are actually aging. That is because biological age--- the condition of our organs, tissues, bones, and muscles---is a complex determinant of how an individual ages. Time, stress, illness, lifestyle, and genetics all impact our biological aging process. Perhaps the most fascinating aging factor is psychological age --- how old you feel you are --- which is uniquely personal and has profound impact. Negative psychological factors, including depression, helplessness, loneliness, excessive worry, and pessimism, can accelerate aging; positive factors, including satisfaction in work and
relationships, personal happiness, optimism, laughter, and adaptability, can retard aging.
The mind/body connection is most evident when we consider that it is not aging, per se, that wears us out, but rather vulnerability to illness and stress and how we respond. Dr. Chopra and other experts in holistic medicine, including Jon Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living, 1990) and Robert A. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,1994), emphasize the powerful connection between how we live and how we die, and most importantly how we achieve mastery of our life and circumstances.
An advice sampler:
1)Listen to your body’s wisdom.
2)Live fully in the now.
3)Be still, meditate, cultivate mindfulness.
4)Relinquish anger, embrace forgiveness.
5)Pursue self-knowledge, creativity, learning, and purpose. 6)Release judgment of self and others.
7)Eliminate toxic food, drink, environments, and emotions.
8)Be motivated by love over fear.
9)Build social affiliation and support.
10)Live in balance and connection to the rhythms of the universe.
The ‘baby boomer’ generation has challenged limiting views of aging by embracing youthful lifestyles and adopting wellness perspectives that address the whole person. Adults in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, even 80’s are enhancing health, happiness, and longevity by improving their diets; working out at gyms; walking, running, and hiking; taking up sports and yoga; meditating; traveling; dancing and singing; volunteering; participating in organized social recreation.
Self-help books with healthy lifestyle tips abound, but a new mindset of ‘growing young’in mind, body, and spirit can empower us to experience health and vitality at any chronological age. And upon reflection, we can remember that timeless lyric by Roger McGuinn and The Byrds: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
Shelley C. Gardner, M.Ed., LCMHC, ATR-BC is a therapist and life coach at Woodland Professional Associates in North Hampton, NH.
