Age is just a number. Embrace every stage of life and never let your dreams fade away.
Carol Channing, Broadway star who continued performing well into her 90's
Let’s talk about a scary topic for many people. Aging.
Some big-money people are spending outrageous sums of money to reverse aging. Or if you are not a tech billionaire, but have some dough, you can do the Equinox, 40K a year anti-aging program. These folks are jumping on some twin research which supposedly revealed that only twenty percent of how we age is determined by our genetics.
Though I don’t usually spend a lot of time thinking about aging, I do notice myself sometimes looking at my arms and skin in a sort of bewildered state. The whole aging well and living well came up for me these last couple of weeks when John and I travelled to Costa Rica for a mind and body retreat.
We flew into Liberia airport which has signs all around reminding folks that Nicoya, a city near where we were doing our retreat, is one of the original five Blue Zones regions where people typically live unusually long lives. At this point most everyone has heard of the Blue Zones, there’s even a Netflix show where you meet folks along with the researcher and host, Dan Buettner.
The contributors to long living for Nicoyans are strong family and community ties which provide emotional support and reduces stress, physical activity as a way of life as they farm and walk well into old age. They also have a concept they call “plan de vida,” which seems to be about knowing what’s your reason for living or getting up each day.
The Blue Zones research is not without detractors and criticism, but the outcomes of the Nicoyan research makes sense to me. However, I think there's more. Perhaps you have not heard of the recent research on aging which fits right into John’s and my Costa Rican mind and body retreat. It’s about mindset - how the mind affects the body when it comes to aging. Becca Levy, who was mentored by Ellen Langer at Harvard, wrote a newish book called Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs about Aging Determine How Long and How Well You Live.
I mention Ellen Langer because it was her astounding work in the seventies around beliefs and aging that shook a lot of folks up. She’s the one who took older men away to a retreat center and had them relieving their youth with books, shows, music, conversations. Of those men who came in with canes, many left playing touch football. The reason the research didn’t get a lot of press at the time seems to be two-fold. One, it was a small study. Second, it was outrageous. Hard to believe that our minds could affect our bodies so dramatically.
And now here comes Levy with lots more research. She says that the images we have of aging radically affect how we age. She devised a quiz just using seven words which helps you figure out how you think about aging. Here’s an example of what she means. When you think of images of aging do words like Alzheimer’s, decline, dependent, senile, confused, decrepit, come up for you OR do words like wise, sage, accomplished, enlightened, insightful pop up? She claims it makes a huge difference.
When John and I were in the Costa Rican jungle doing the retreat (we just returned last night), we were doing things like setting intentions, breathwork, meditation, practicing some self-compassion, hiking around a bit, eating deliciously prepared local food, meeting a small group of aboriginal tribal folks from Brazil who seemed to be doing incredible things. (The village was beginning to take in people who had found no solution to their medical problems and psychological problems including addictions. Reportedly they were having a great deal of success. We saw pictures of the ceremonies they did with these folks – the singing and dancing. We also saw pictures of “old people” who were running around and singing and dancing along with everyone else, but also fishing, hunting, making jewelry and things for use in the village. Supposedly the usual life expectancy was late 90’s and early 100’s.)
Some specific things, which we may figure out through research like that happening with the tech millionaires and Equinox programs and Blue Zones, could contribute to a more youthful life, but I’d like to throw in my own theory. My guess is that the adventure itself had a big effect on both John and me.
John will be 80 on October 3rd. I’m seventy-four and we were stepping away from our usual life and having a big adventure… in the jungle! We were learning new things, meeting new people. Sometimes we prayed, we sang and danced and created art. We shared our lives in meaningful, vulnerable, deep conversations. Sounds like what young people do – that’s what our brain and body were registering.
What I’m proposing for this group of us, which is the fastest growing group in America - the over 65’s, is that acting younger can make us feel younger. Also thinking about aging in positive ways can affect us biologically.
I have a new book I’m browsing by Mo Rocca. It’s called Octogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs. I spent half a day with one of the people Rocca talks about in his book. Carol Channing. She did a show at the Wenatchee Performing Arts Center. As I recall she was over 80. I cried through the whole show - it was, she was, sooo good. She was fabulous and funny and strong and beautiful (despite the fact that she had eaten too many of our local cherries and had a bad case of diarrhea which she confided to me in her dressing room before the show, but at no time did she ever consider not getting out there on stage - what a woman).
Aging doesn’t need to be scary. We can get solid images in our minds of inspiring people like Carol Channing. Experiment with some Blue Zone recommendations. Have adventures. (John and I are talking about going to see the Brazilians in their village next year!) And as an aside, should you be one of those who is highly involved with caring for others taking no time for yourself, consider attending some sort of a retreat of your own; let's help each other remember the importance of putting on our own oxygen mask before trying to assist others.
How might journey together to The Good Life by facing down our fears about aging using anti-aging research including experimenting with the power of mindset?
Picture John took of the howler monkeys. They just make us laugh
Pic I took in the area where we stayed for our retreat.
And a little post script. Stop watching those clips of Biden not being able to articulate his thoughts. I was watching a panel show that clip and the entire group of panelists started not being able to articulate their thoughts. The ages ranged from maybe 35 to 70. That's how we can be negatively affected by mindset.
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