How to LIve Long and Prosper

Having reached my 60's and still being in good health, I want to keep it that way. My relatives tend to live very long and hopefully, I have inherited the right genes to nudge that along. However, from what I read and hear, even people with an excellent gene cocktail can enhance the vitality of their later years, and add to them, with a few simple steps.

Even more exciting is that almost anybody can improve their health and longevity just by attending to a few simple tasks. Some of these "tasks" are actually quite pleasurable and rewarding, and therein lies even more good news.

I'm going to skip the parts about nutrition and exercise per se. Those two areas are generating tons of literature, and often conflicting reports about the value of this nutritional item, that diet, or some particular exercise or exercise program. The bottom line here is that if you are not staying on top of everything going on, start taking a daily multivitamin, take regular walks or other physically demanding activity, get some rest, learn to relax, and see your doctor regularly.

Now, let's talk about the two other things that anybody can do to help their body and brain survive longer and in better health. Let's talk about activity and connectivity.

Activity:

Yes, I know I mentioned "exercise" already. While exercise certainly IS activity and DOES fit into this discussion, I want to look at activity from a slightly different angle for the moment. When I use the word "activity" here, I really mean...well...activity. Having a wide range of activities in your life pushes a lot of physical and mental buttons that help keep the juices flowing. This can be anything from taking the grandkids to the zoo, to gardening (exercise...okay, taking the grandkids to the zoo is exercise), needlepoint, following sports, keeping up with the news, writing letters to the editor, working crossword puzzles, reading books and so on. More good news. Sex qualifies as a beneficial activity!

The point is that when we regularly produce interest and challenge for our bodies and minds, they respond by staying a little younger a little longer. While aging and its effects are ultimately inevitable, the pathway we travel and the experiences we have along the way are very much under our control most of the time.

Years ago, I was the business manager for a mental health facility in Florida. We had a geriatrics program. It was heart-breaking to see these people, many of whom seemed perfectly healthy for their age, just sit and stare, ask the same questions over and over, or retreat into some internal closet where they waited for death.

Dianne, the RN in charge of the geriatric program, told me that most of those people should not have wound up there. They had simply slid down the slippery slope that begins to become created when we start to lose interest in people and events around us. As friends their age began to pass away, as children moved off to start their lives elsewhere, as society found new entertainments and interests about which they knew little, they began to barricade off parts of their lives until they found themselves carted off to a geriatric program in the basement of a local church while they waited for their blank or boring days to end.

Dianne explained that often something as simple as a hobby or reconnecting with a loved one or finding new contacts and interests was all that was needed to produce almost miraculous changes in the person...or to prevent them becoming isolated and aged in the first place.

This brings up the second point.

Connectivity:

By connectivity, I simply mean being a part of the community. It has been shown that married people, for example, tend to live longer and healthier lives than those living alone. Interestingly enough, the state of the marriage has less to do with it than the existence of the relationship itself. People with pets tend to live longer healthier lives than those without. As alluded to above, those without connections to other members of society may age more rapidly, both mentally and physically, than if they were so connected.

Another point of this, by the way, is that being a part of some "society", large or small, can be a make or break factor in this aging stuff. People who go to church and who are a part of that community, or people who take part time jobs or volunteer can find a position which helps define them and anchor them to the living, breathing community around them. So many people, my father included, die shortly after retirement having accepted the loss of their defining job or position as an end to a lively definition of self. Many researchers have speculated that no longer having a context and definition of who and what they are contributes to an earlier decline and death.

While there is no magic bullet as yet to prevent the effects and ultimate result of aging, by maintaining an interest in life, remaining an active participant, and interweaving your life with the lives of others may be a step towards a longer, healthier senior life and lifestyle. It's more fun, too!

The Basis of True Health

Today nearly everyone it seems has some kind of health issue. If it's not a serious internal illness like cancer, tumors or heart disease, then it's joint or mobility issues, inability to focus or any of thousands of different ailments affecting people today. Of course the human body is an immensely complex work of art and biology so the more complex something gets, the greater the chances of something going wrong.
This is evidenced by the fact that there are so many tens or hundreds of millions of people who simply don't feel well. The reasons for this are actually simpler than most are ready to believe. The mainstream media makes everything so complex that most simply can`t believe that simple things such as what foods you eat, deep breathing, exercise and simple meditation for example can actually alleviate so much of their chronic health issues. It's obvious that the truth about what really causes illness and what the true regulator of health and healing are never going to come from mainstream sources.
While more and more are coming to understand the role that nutrition plays in disease and healing, even this is only a secondary reason for illness and health. It's true that if our environment were pure and we were only eating a variety of truly healthy, organic and raw foods in their natural state this alone would keep us healthy and barring accidents guarantee us a strong, healthy and long life. But there is still something more to why those foods are healthy that most either don`t talk about or simply don`t understand to the degree necessary to truly benefit from.
With all the advertising out there trying to push a new pill that will cure all your ills, it can be very easy to get confused even for those of us who know what is hype and what is real. You often have to dig deep and long to find the real truth.
The Chinese in their search for the "elixir of immortality" researched everything from minerals, herbs, various drug and mineral combinations, some of which would be considered complex even by today's standards. Much of this was done by a group known as the Taoists monks. Taoism is one of the three major religions of China along with Confucianism and Buddhism. The Taoists were often some of the most practical, realistic and scientific. They were searching for anything and everything they could find to help them live as long as possible. They did this not because they were afraid of death, but because the longer they could keep the body alive, the more time they had to cultivate their spiritual training and achieve oneness with the universe.
In their centuries of constant research they discovered a tremendous amount of vital information that is still in use today. It was after many thousand of deaths through mineral and drug experiments that they discovered that the true "Elixir of Immortality" was not in any external potion, mineral, drug or even herbs, but it was already inside the body in the form of one's own life force or chi.
For those who may already be somewhat familiar with the principles of Chinese medicine and chi theory, this may not be too much of a surprise. If you`ve practiced Chinese medicine or other eastern and natural healing methods then you know how important your life force is to your well-being. This is not simply a belief but is something very real that is constantly being backed up by modern research in the fields of physics and medicine. We are not only a physical being but a spiritual being as well. We have a physical body and an energy or spirit body. We are also beings of light, luminous beings not just crude matter itself, but living matter with life, thoughts, spirit energy and more.
As the physicist Popp has also come to understand, our bodies are indeed store houses for bio-luminescent energy and this is in fact how all our cells communicate. This is the reason why sunlight is so vital for health and healing. While this knowledge is a far cry from what western medicine would have us believe, it is indeed nonetheless true. The west tries to convince everyone that a human being is nothing more than a mechanism that is not capable of self healing, or at least certainly not without their interventions through drugs and surgery.
In times of catastrophic accidents or acute illness, surgery and drugs can be life savers and it`s good we have them. But in the vast majority of health issues today such intervention is simply not needed. When the right energy techniques, nutrition and other healing techniques are employed the body can and will heal itself according to it`s own blueprint.
Western medicine takes the mechanistic view of the body, that the body is like any machine and that since our machines can't repair themselves, neither can your body. Even when the body is shown to heal countless times once it's given the right nutrients and conditions, most western doctors still stubbornly refuse to believe that the body healed without some so called "wonderful drug" of their own creation.
If a person is ever healed of anything serious such as cancer, tumors or the like, they stubbornly, blindly and arrogantly conclude automatically that the person was "misdiagnosed". Either way it shows the failure of most western medicine when dealing with non-communicable internal illness. If they misdiagnosed it in the first place or they could not cure it no matter what it was, either way this shows the abysmal failure of their techniques and approach.
The reason that Chi is the most important single factor in your health is because your entire body is essentially a large bio-electric magnet. It's known that without these magnetic fields, life could not occur. Cells have an electromagnetic field (EM) and it`s this field of energy that keeps each cell alive. The stronger the EM field, the stronger each cell is and the more resistant it is to decay and death.
Chi is a type of bio-electric energy, but it's not the type that can be measured with a volt meter. It exists in a slightly different plane and level but still strongly interacts with this world. Whatever it's called the human body has and needs this life force to survive. When cultivated, this life force can enable one to perform great feats of strength, power, and healing. For health purposes it enables one to heal from serious illness and most importantly, prevent such illnesses from occurring in the first place.
When man first started to go into space and orbited the earth in the 60's, NASA noticed that their astronauts were getting fatigued very quickly once they switched over to their internal oxygen stores. NASA was hard pressed to discover just why this was occurring as it was vital to the continuation of the space program. After spending some time analyzing the difference between earth air and the pure air they were storing in their oxygen tanks, they finally realized that the pure air the astronauts were breathing was devoid of a critical element that is abundant in normal earth air.....Ions. Specifically...negative ions. They learned that the potential gradient or electrical potential of the air in the capsules was near zero, where as on earth it was far stronger.
It`s also known that the potential gradient of the air is much stronger in the country than it is in large cities. It's also very strong in the mountains and near the oceans due to the actions of waves, water and sunlight which generate large amount of negative ions. Negative ions are also generated after thunderstorms which is what gives the air that pure, strong, fresh and energetic quality afterwards. Static electricity and lightning, which is really just a huge static discharge are all proof of the energetic quality that exists in the air.
So what NASA did to solve the fatigue problem is install negative ion generators in their space capsules and space shuttles to ionize the air and fill it with negative ions, thus solving the problem of space fatigue.
Negative ions and/or chi interact with the body at the cellular level. The electromagnetic field of cells has a very selective force field as part of their defense mechanism which allows various nutrients and waste material to enter and leave the cell but keeps pathogens, viruses and bacteria out. This field performs a similar function to the cellular walls. This is also why making sure that we get enough EFA's or Essential Fatty Acids in our diet like Olive Oil, Coconut oils and other Omega-3 oils are so vital.
When we eat foods with hydrogenated oils for example, they disrupt the function of the cell walls not only on a physical level but an energy level too. That's because hydrogenated oils are only one molecule away from being plastic and are in fact a type of celluloid plastic. Plastics are pretty good inhibitors of electrical energy flow. So the cell wall not only loses its physical barrier but its EM shield is compromised as well. This leaves each cell open to being invaded, mutated and destroyed from within.
The stronger we can make that EM field of our cells, the stronger is the energy flowing through our bodies and the greater is our immunity and resistance to invaders and disease. This EM energy along with light (A type of EM energy itself) is how our organs are energized and communicate with our brains (An EM generator). This makes our bodies much more resistant to disease, degeneration and decay. As the martial artists learned, not only is health and resistance greatly increased, but even ones physical strength and toughness of body can be greatly increased through focusing on the chi or EM energy of the body.
The latter is a big part of how advanced martial artists practicing the disciplines of advanced Iron shirt or Iron body do in fact make their bodies so tough that baseball bats, bricks and even knives and other edged weapons can not penetrate their bodies. Through years of specialized training techniques including deep diaphragmatic breathing, meditation and certain physical exercises, the body can eventually become so tough that anything less than a gunshot will not penetrate or damage the body or even skin. Chinese martial artists have been responsible for greatly advancing the understanding of Chi, which has in turn been applied to the fields of health and healing.
This is why in teaching and lecturing over the years many martial arts masters with deep understanding of energy science talk so much about chi. Because in order to truly get to the root of all health issues and restore life, the chi must be built up, purified, and its flow and balance increased. In the presence of a body with a calm, relaxed mind all of these will occur at a far higher rate than normal. This is why learning to calm down the mind is so important to health and longevity as modern research is constantly reaffirming.
As a human being you know that you're not just a mechanism or some biological robot. You have feelings, thoughts, emotions, dreams and aspirations and a desire to learn, create and expand all the time. These are qualities of the spirit and things that no machine could ever truly have. A machine may be able to be programmed to emulate those actions and emotions, but it doesn't truly posses them because such experiences are spiritual qualities that no machine could attain.
Western medicine loves to explain feelings and emotions simply in terms of physical causes claiming them to be nothing more than hormones, neurons firing or chemical reactions. It`s the ebb and flow of ones chi that is giving all cells, hormones and neurons in the body the bio-electric power they need to perform the jobs for which they were created. Without chi, the body is dead. Just as a robot or cyborg would be dead without energy and nothing more than a non functional lump of matter.
If you have ever seen a lifeless body, you would just see how the life is no longer there, that the body has almost become just like a lifeless machine with no movement, no energy, no life. The point is that our bodies without that bio-electric energy is essentially just a lump of flesh. It's the chi and our spirit that gives life to the flesh and body and without it our bodies simply deteriorate back into dust from whence they came. That is why the more chi we have, the more life we have, the stronger we`ll be and the longer we`ll live. Breathing techniques coupled with a calm, relaxed mind are the most effective methods to build up and increase our energy reserves and thus our life force.
When we do physical exercise we are also building up more of this energy which is why exercise is so important to health. But the Chinese were never big on heavy, hard, tiring exercises except under certain controlled conditions and on a limited basis. This is good news since most people don`t like to life huge amounts of weight or the idea that you have to workout to failure to achieve health or fitness. This is especially important at the higher levels of energy cultivation where maintaining certain energy levels in the body becomes very important and is especially true for the higher spiritual practices of enlightenment.
Everything that is done in the modern lifestyle from sitting in office buildings with very poor air circulation of ion dead air, to having too many machines doing work for us, eating processed dead foods, all pollute and destroy the balance of our bio-energy. This also greatly drains our limited stores of enzymes needed for digestion and immune activity.
Chronic stress, fear, and worry all set up a situation in our body where chi is constantly being drained and scattered at an incredible rate. This is another reason why so many people either age prematurely or simply have no energy with such low immunity that they're bodies are breaking down at an incredible rate. This is also another major cause of infertility in both men and women which is something we`re seeing more and more of today.
When were born we received a certain amount of energy called Yuan Chi or "Original Chi" from our parents at conception. The strength, purity and quality of this chi is determined by the health of the parents at the time of conception. The mental and emotional state of the parents at this time is also critical to the developing fetus.
Even western science is now beginning to understand this through the field of Epigenetics. Epigenetics is a relatively new field of genetic study that now understands that your genetics do not control the body as was taught for so long, but that it`s really the mind along with it`s thoughts, beliefs and emotions that truly controls and influences the genetics and DNA.
This is in perfect accord with ancient Chi-gung axiom which states "The mind controls the chi and the chi controls the body". The Taoists and martial artists have known this for thousands of years which hopefully gives you a little idea into just how far ahead of the west they are in the true understanding of the human body.
The good news is that this even if you didn`t inherit such great energy and genetics from your parents there are many steps that you can take to strengthen and improve your own energy and health. The majority of those handicaps can be overcome with proper attention to diet, learning to breath correctly, calming the mind, exercise and other lifestyle changes.
By charging up more and more of that battery in your lower abdomen where energy is stored in the human body we can greatly enhance and strengthen our energy flow and thereby our health. Breathing exercises such as the 8 pieces of brocade, chi-gung meditation and other energy generation techniques will greatly improve the four main characteristics of our chi which are the quantity, quality, balance and flow of our energy.
The truly best way to understand these concepts is through practice, for that is the only way to truly know that chi energy is very real and just how effective it can be at enhancing all aspects of your life. This is what happens when we have the true understanding and the proper view of no only health and healing, but of human existence itself.
This is something that can only be experienced, especially for those who are not sure what to make of chi or whether it's real or not. Through the practicing of breathing and meditative arts you will come to see and feel in a relatively short time that the human energy is indeed something very real and very powerful force for self improvement on all levels. Health, strength and peace of mind and can truly be achieved making the human experience something so much more enjoyable than you might now believe. The end result of this is not only far greater health and energy, but freedom from fear, worries and doubt that so often keep us from achieving our goals in life.

Faith, Family, Fitness & Finance

Most of us will agree to the fact that our Faith is the most important out of the four keys. Then comes our Family...followed by Fitness or your health & then your Finances.
Your Faith is personal to you and I am not going to interfere unless you feel that you need some help.
Most people out there are struggling with the family situation resulting in at least a 50% divorce rate, kids without mentors & emotionally starved & divorced even before it gets to the physical separation. Again I am not a counselor and will not interfere now unless you reach out for help.
The third F....Personal health is one of the most critical aspects to your overall success because if you don't feel good, it is impossible to do any good. You cannot motivate yourself to get going and procrastination with the enemy called average takes over. You have to learn the basics of health and understand how your body is struggling to maintain. It is crucial for you to know how your body functions & give it all the help it can get to nourish & flourish instead of just survive. You have to find a way to help regenerate new cells and slow the aging process. You have to flush out the toxins accumulated in your body. You have to find a way to get the right nutrition in your body with enough anti-oxidants to help fight the free radicals. Add some energy food to the mix and you are well on your way.
The final F....the captivating but elusive finance. Someone said money is not everything but it's right up there with oxygen! I just read the headlines yesterday...2 million jobs will be lost just this year alone. It's about time we reprogrammed ourselves with knowledge instead of just 'education'. It's time we educated ourselves out of the system. Long gone are the days of finish school, get a good 'job', sign up for the 401K plan, chug along until pension kicks in! Except that 401K's are now 4K's, Pensions are down to pittance, retirement is pushed back to another 15/20 years, jobs are as flaky as the debt ridden system we're a part of....So what's the good news you ask?
The good news is that the economy is booming in the people based business. Here's how you do it...
1. Create or Identify a Need in the marketplace
2. Find a convenient solution to that need
3. Make sure that the solution is unique & patented
4. Team up with like minded people to build a network by sharing the idea
5. Let the power of multiplication go to work for you
To find out how I am a part of this phenomenon I welcome you to visit my website...

Senior Citizen Fitness

1. Getting What You Want

Most of us are eager for a long life. Some of us are even desperate to regain your youth. That's why so many of us decide to get fit and join a fitness club. Great idea! But not so good if you heave weights or jog yourself all the way to the hernia or knee surgeon.

But in reality, you don't need to damage yourself to be fit. At the same time, you don't need to treat yourself with kid gloves either. What we really need at our age is a route to superb fitness without hurting ourselves ...

2. The Bad News First

Now, I hope your heart can take this because there's bad news from the start before we get to the good news.

Do you remember the saying, Life Begins At 40? It's supposed to be a cheering thought. But the harsh truth is that for many people life does begin at 40: it begins to deteriorate. Now, if you weren't so tough, this could almost put you off asking the same question about life after 50, or 60 or 70, couldn't it?

Luckily, you're tough. And you've accumulated the wisdom of a prophet too because you can see into the future. You know in your bones that inactivity will make those bones progressively weaker. And you know it's the same with your muscles if you allow it.

3. The Second Bad News

If you allow this to happen, your metabolism will also diminish. A diminished metabolism reduces the ability of the body to burn fat. Reduced fat burning leads to fat storage. Storing fat leads to greater weight. Greater weight leads to greater inactivity, and ... well, you get the picture.

But because it's you, you're not going to allow this to happen. Instead, you're thinking about going jogging or joining a gym or perhaps taking part in fitness classes. If so, that's great. Well, maybe it's great.

4. The First Great News

It's great because the really good news is that inactivity, muscle loss, decreased metabolism, poor eating and the accumulation of fat are not inevitable bi-products of aging at all. To a large extent, they are due to individual decisions. To put it another way,

· it's not your metabolism that slows you down

· it's you that slows down your metabolism.

Everyone's muscular-skeletal system is constantly regenerating and a muscle is a muscle no matter how old it is. Therefore, it responds to exercise at any age. The point is that loss of muscle and muscle fitness along with increases in weight are not essentially connected to age at all. What they are connected to is a type of lifestyle. But in this everyone has a choice.

Naturally, due allowance should be made for previous inactivity and current health before embarking on an exercise program. In fact, it would be sensible to seek medical advice before beginning any new physical activity, preferably from a medical practitioner familiar both with you and fitness.

5. More Great News

But, in essence, this means that workouts for older individuals need not differ markedly from those of younger people. Naturally, you need to be careful to avoid injury and probably take longer rests to recover. But in all essentials, in the words of another well-known phrase, use it or lose it.

Looking on the bright side, making the choice to keep active is easier than ever because there are probably greater opportunities and facilities available than for previous generations. Golf and tennis are still enormously popular as well as swimming and dancing. Fitness clubs and associations have appeared all over the place.

6. Jogging To The Surgery

But consider this. We are not alone. Lots of deteriorating middle-aged citizen desperadoes have already decided to join a gym, try out all the fitness equipment, start heaving weights or a jogging program to preserve their youth after 25 or 30 years or more of inactivity.

Pill and potion pushers are happy with this. So are chiropractors. So are joint and hernia surgeons. Business is brisk.

That's why it's best to take it easy at first. If you've been inactive for a long period of time there's a really, really good chance that it will take more than a few workouts before you become a world champ. Bet you knew that didn't you?

So, don't be too impressed by all the gadgetry in gyms these days. Most of it you can forget. My general advice would be to opt for non-weights based fitness program of a bodyweight exercises. It's safer and gets you fitter than practically everyone thinks possible.

7. Fitness Side Effects

We do much more than we generally think when working out.

This is because it's easy to think only of the benefits to the body. For example, we improve the capacity of our heart to pump greater amounts of blood. We also expand the ability of the lungs to supply oxygen to our blood and improve the ability of our muscles to utilise oxygen supplied by the blood. The better we do this the fitter we become.

But there's more - as well as becoming physically better in the usual sense of physical fitness, exercise also improves the circulation of blood to the brain.

8. Boost Your Brain Power

This brings at least two valuable benefits. The first is that it reduces the risk of strokes. The second is that it promotes the delivery of oxygen to the brain and improves its capacity to receive it.