Don't Get Old, But Age with Health! by Bansuri Mehtap

Yoga Teacher, Trauma Therapist & Columnist Bansuri Mehtap

There is a saying, ‘You all are young as you believe, and old as your suspicions; young as your belief in yourself, and elderly as your fear; young as your hope, and old as your age’

If you perceive the aging process as healthily growing older, maturing and as times that are most enjoyable, it is not a scary process but actually what it’s supposed to be. In the movie Immortal Love that was shown in theaters last year, though the main topic of the movie was about love, the main message of the movie was more striking. A story about a young woman who can’t age due to an accident and has to deal with the difficulties of forever being stuck at the age of 29, living like that for 80 years and still wishing to get old. Average lifetimes are extending. From the age of 40, regular medicine usage for chronic diseases are on a rise. As the lifetimes are on a rise towards the age of 90, there must be precautions to take and things that can be done right?

I don’t have time for myself!

Time, irrepressible and unstoppable, is the most important notion in our lives! In the modern times of today, as the people who are living the urban life styles, we don’t have any time to spare for the main subjects of our lives that is us, right? Yet even on the planes the ‘flight safety cards’ instruct you to put the air mask to yourself first. We create the future with the actions we do while living in the moment and with our thoughts. Your health is your most important creation that you create in the moment. The actions you take today create your future health, especially after mid 30’s it becomes more important. If you don’t have time for yourself or for your health, it is certain that time won’t be on your side in the future.

Symptoms of sickness are signs of deteriorations in your body. Over looking these signs and treatments just to suppress these symptoms will make things worse. In fact the underlying reasons for many illnesses with unknown symptoms are due to way of life and nutritional habits. If you have any chronic illness symptoms in your body, take it as a sign on your way to recovery, listen to your body and change your life habits.

How to Age Healthily?

When it comes to a healthy lifestyle, we can list the most important factors as follows:

Are you breathing right?

Is your body strong and flexible enough?

Are you staying alone with yourself?

Are you eating right?

With your answers to these questions, you can turn the aging process into aging healthily or slowing down your aging process. As always both solution and problem is sourced from you. Decision and selection both belongs to you. With letting go of the victim psychology, doing what needs to be done during the aging in health period, aging happily is possible until you leave the bodies that are given to you. Come on, altogether let’s look at what we can do and where we can start this process.

Breathing Right

Breath is the source of life and energy. Our life journey starts with diaphragm breathing while we were babies and breathing from our noses. Afterwards, with various physical and psychological factors the breathing gets shallow, superficial and not enough. The lungs won’t get enough oxygen and both physical and psychological health gets affected negatively. Breathing right is more important than you can imagine. With most of your physical and psychological illnesses, you can help your treatment by using the right breathing techniques. With the diaphragm breathing technique exercises, which is breathing in and out from your nose, it will let you breathe more oxygen and breathe out more carbon dioxide.

Diaphragm breathing is a soothing breathing technique that occurs by putting your hands on the abdomen – belly button level, blowing up your abdomen while breathing in and pulling in your abdomen while breathing out. Diaphragm goes down while breathing in and there is more space for lungs to be filled up with oxygen and expansion; breathing out lets diaphragm move upwards and helps emptying the lungs. This breathing technique has countless benefits. As a reminder, breathing techniques is a very broad subject and there are many special breathing techniques.

Mental Calmness

Breath and physical exercises before calming the mind is very important. Without these, for many people it is not possible to just stay still and be silent for even a minute. Think about your daily routine; are there any moments when you close your eyes, staying still without moving your body and not dealing with anything, other than when you are sleeping? Just stay still for 5 minutes a day, by focusing your mind to your breath, and allowing your thoughts to flow like clouds in the sky. As you get used to it, value of that moment will be priceless to you.

Flexible and Strong Body

Our body is a perfect mechanism and all the systems are connected to each other. With flexible back, chest and rib muscles, the space for lungs to expand with the oxygen intake grows and that way you can enhance your lung capacity. With a flexible and strong body, your movement capability is much more. You will not have the problems like loss of balance, falling or injuries; even if you do the damage will be mild. With strong and flexible muscles, burden of the bones, joints and spine will be less. Having flexible and strong joints, spine and muscles, means having a healthier and younger body. And it is never too late to start. Chinese Deshun Wang is 80 years old and started working out at the age of 50, has the title of World’s oldest model.

Eating Right

We can list the biggest threats to our health as follows; animal products that are infused with hormones and drugs for fast growth and efficiency, genetically changed wheat with more gluten and refined sugars, packaged foods with additives that help for longer shelf life. By rearranging your kitchen you can reduce these threats. Plant based foods like seeds, legumes instead of animal products, quinoa, buckwheat, chia seeds instead of gluten and foods with gluten free products; instead of refined sugar, using fruit based sugars like coconut sugar, agave, maple syrup that has low glycemic index; instead of packaged foods, you can use these products to make healthier snacks at home and incorporate it to your life. By giving importance to plant based foods, incorporating %50 raw vegetables and fruits in your meals, will be an important step on your journey to healthy life.

New Year, Time for New Decisions

Christmas is the time for new decisions, change, and transformation. On these first days of 2019, if you have complaints about your health and don’t know where to start; by spending 10 minutes a day to revert from instinctive breathing to conscious breathing to increase your lung capacity, 15 minutes of exercises for flexible and strong muscles, 5 minutes to shut your always talking mind and everything else to just stop for a minute, for yourself and by increasing the amount of raw and plant based food that you consume, you can move towards a healthy life style. The good news is, awareness starts with breath, body and mind. Breath, exercise and awareness that will happen with half an hour of daily practice of silencing your mind, will help your meals and snacks to change towards healthy eating. Life will get easier with this effortless change.

The smallest act you apply regularly by initially using willpower will result in effective change. It is not about making exceptional things, but it is about making usual things with exceptional discipline and frequency. Repeated actions will lead you to successful results. On the road to health, if you take these four items and apply it to you daily routine, you won’t believe the results that will get.

The most difficult thing is to change your habits; but if you have a special goal, again the easiest thing is to change these habits.

Stay healthy!