Ageing has been dissected as if it is a disease. With the imminent growth spurt of the baby boomers it seems that whoever can unveil the most potent potion, the best exercise, diet, the one who can find “the cure” wins. Ageing is big business.
Nonetheless, I encourage all ages to consider this thing we call “ageing” and how what you do now (or don’t do) could drastically impact your ageing process.
We equate the process of ageing with the passage of time.
Indeed, many aspects of the human process intimately relate to time passing. A newborn is much shorter and lighter than an eighteen year-old; a normal thirty-five year-old can speak, read, write, understand politics and engage in an intimate relationship in ways that a nine year-old cannot.
But once we are past the initial growing years (up to the late teenage years) the passage of time no longer needs to determine the ageing process.
It is rather how we are and what we do during that time that matters. What makes one twenty-five year-old “old” while we can think of an eighty year-old who is truly “young?”
Through my work I have seen many babies and children with developmental challenges, and I also work with adults who talk of a variety of “ageing” issues like pain, loss of mobility, strength, and anxiety.
Specific qualities that underlie youthfulness are essential for any child to be able to grow and develop. But the very same qualities are also essential in order for adults to be able to stay young.
Many adults lose some of these essential qualities over time.
But the good news is that these essential qualities can be regained readily at any age.
Two of these qualities are making variations and new learning
When we observe healthy babies and young children one can see that not only do they tend to vary a lot what they do, but also they vary how they do it.
They move in and out of an activity not knowing what is the “right” way of doing it and often without a clear goal.
They constantly do things in a different way, endlessly experimenting.
What happens to adults though who are losing this essential of making variations?
Many set rigid goals and try to achieve them in a direct, linear and forceful way.
Where a child would experiment, adults no longer dare to.
Anything short of achieving their predefined goal is considered failure.
Before long they will avoid future failure by abandoning setting new goals or trying to learn new things.
They will increasingly stick to the known, finding safety in routine.
Gradually, their vitality, energy and flexibility of mind and body diminishes.
This is ageing.
When it comes to new learning a child finds every day full of new experiences and complex learning.
Quite often for adults it stops after university. For others it may be high school.
Then there are those that do virtually no higher form of academic education, yet their learning matrices are richer than all the Nobel Laureates put together.
Why is this? These people learn new and novel things all the time.
They kick the inner fear voice that says, “You are too old!”
These folks take up a new pastime, a new career, learn a new sport or musical instrument, make new friends no matter what their age.
All of us, I am sure, know someone who joins a new social club, goes on a cruise solo, hikes new trails every summer, or heaven forbid, re-marries in their senior years! They keep a childlike sense of learning and challenge close to their hearts. Such resilience is key to ageing well.
The exploration of new and novel movement patterns brings part of your brain and nervous system into a situation where you must sense, think, organize and essentially solve a movement riddle.
An interesting thing to note is that normal ageing is no longer associated with a decline in brain cells, but as a result of a lack of change and diversity occurring within the cells themselves.
Many of us tend to take action only when it has to be done. Why do we need to feel tired and ragged before we consider taking better care of ourselves?
Why do most people seek out mind-body modalities and various therapeutic healing arts when injury is at full bay and they can’t walk anymore?
Why not learn how to use yourself efficiently and effectively before that dreaded fall happens, or before that pulled muscle limits your daily walks, or before that future bad back inevitably descends over you in your old age?
We make excuses for not doing various activities as a result of getting older, when it is not doing these activities that makes us age.
We have all the tools within ourselves to avoid succumbing to the classic ageing process, all that is needed is a form of practice that taps back into the embedded wisdom that exists deep within us.
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