For centuries, eternal life and preserving one’s youth has been a lifelong search for those desiring to live forever. Call it a pipe dream or a fantasy, but does a fountain of youth really exist? A magical elixir, an advanced technological discovery, or bizarrely enough, becoming a vampire, have all at times been purported as ways to achieve eternal youth. Although scientists have done extensive research in finding out the secret in unlocking the body’s ability to stay young, a way to achieve this goal has still proven illusive, which prompts the question, “Are we supposed to live forever and always keep our youthful appearance?”
What drives us, as we get older, to not want to lose our youthful looks, where we find ourselves constantly looking for youth enhancing products? Why are grey hairs considered the bane of our youth, showing that we are getting older? Is it vanity or just the perspective that we no longer will be desirable to the opposite sex, because of our aging visage? Why not take a different perspective – that the trade off of aging is gaining experience and wisdom, which is truly invaluable. Learning to accept the aging process can go a long way in helping someone accept themselves and the life they lived.
However, besides self-acceptance, another way to address the aging process is to utilize stress instead of managing stress. What I have come to understand over the past fifteen years is that stress causes one to age faster than necessary. Have you ever seen a loved one, friend, co-worker, or boss age before your eyes after they have gone through some major health crisis or intense life experience? Stress is ever present in our lives, so how do we find a way to not let it get to us and age us? There are many ways to manage stress from meditating, quieting our minds, yoga, breathing exercises, maintaining a proper diet, possessing a positive mindset, and other stress managing/reducing strategies. So how do we utilize stress?
The first way to learn how to utilize stress is to become aware of how certain life experiences or situations impact our physiology and body. Becoming conscious of how certain life stressors are expressed in one’s body, helps determine how stress is affecting us. Gaining this self-awareness is essential, giving us the ability to then choose how we want to address the stressors that are impacting us. At the moment we feel tension building in our neck or in our low back after experiencing something challenging, we can choose to breathe into that area and/or look for the hidden positive reasons for this particular situation.
This next step in seeing how a particular situation has a positive purpose in your life can be rather difficult when you first attempt to do this. The reason being, when you perceive something to be challenging, oftentimes you get tunnel vision, not to mention, emotionally attached to, what has happened “to” you, versus it occurring “for” your personal growth and development. Someone may create a story about what has happened “to” them, which becomes amplified by their emotions. Stories are also created for positive and happy experiences, which we all tend to hold onto, because when life circumstances are less than desirable we reflect on those “good old memories.”
What I have discovered is that whenever we choose to hold onto our old stories, whether they be good memories or bad/challenging ones, they all take energy. This energy is expressed as tight musculature, stiffness in one’s joints, and less than optimal breathing. It takes a lot of energy to hold onto memories, which prevents one from staying in the present and it ages you. The goal is to balance mentally and emotionally, your experience and the stories created, in order to free up this energy so that it can be used to heal your bodies and bring more ease into your lives. When our bodies are in a balanced and relaxed state, it engenders deeper healing and slows down the aging process leading to our very own fountain of youth.
If you can relate, or have a story to share, please comment below. There is a benefit in expressing and exchanging our stories. Let’s hear it!
