Aging

Welcome to Saturday Morning Cuppa.

Brew of the Day:
Dandelion Tea (The girls and I have been foraging this week. They’ve collected raspberries and gooseberries and I’ve collected dandelion leaves for my veg juices ~ YUK. Much more bearable as tea)

What I’m reading: Here’s a brief description of the books I’m currently reading (not necessarily holistic!)

1421 …The year the Chinese discovered the world by Gavin Menzies
Lent to me by a really lovely chap in our village. Caught him deep inside the book a few weeks back when I was out walking. Asked him what he was so engrossed in and he waxed lyrical. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and am now thinking of asking my history teachers to annul all those fail marks!

Captain Cook didn’t bloody well discover Australia!! It was the Chinese a few hundred years before. www.1421.tv

So it’s tough out there, is it? A parable by TM columnist Barry Durdant-Hollamby. Fabulous! I don’t tend to read fiction these days but as I loved his non-fiction book, The Male Agenda, I thought I’d give this one a go. Well worth reading this parable about life in the business world and how we can make business (and our personal lives) ‘holistic’ by being more conscious of our actions and reactions. It’s made me want to sweep through the offices of Britain waving a magic wand and bringing ‘wholeness and joy’ back to people. www.barrydurdant-hollamby.com

The power of the subconscious mind by Joseph Murphy
What would we do without our good ol’ subconscious? This is great for reading just before going to sleep ~ helps to remind one how powerful each of us are in creating the life of our dreams (or nightmares!). Paul is actively teaching our girls about the importance of delivering appropriate messages to the subconscious.

Your right to be beautiful: How to halt the train of aging and meet the most beautiful you by Tonya Zavasta
I’d read Tonya’s columns in Get Fresh, the magazine of the Fresh Network (raw & living foods network), so moseyed on over to her website and was so inspired by her that I HAD to get this book. And I wasn’t let down. It shows how everyone can create their most beautiful self by feeding their body living foods. www.BeautifulonRaw.com

The Juice Master ~ Turbo Charge your life in 14 days by Jason Vale
I bought this book just after I’d finished my juice fast, hoping for further inspiration. My initial response was actually of huge disappointment until I realised it was simply a matter of different starting points. For the ‘average’ person on the street eating a standard diet, his work constitutes a HUGE shift and from this point of view is invaluable (assuming a person puts it into action!). I have, however, managed to get through the ‘excuse’ trap in regards to aerobic type exercise as a result of this book, for which I’m ever so thankful.

Aging

Last week a beauty therapist was talking on BBC Radio Cumbria about preventing ‘aging’ and how important it is to wear SPF cream by day and a night cream before going to bed. She compared our skin to an autumn leaf ~ dry and crinkly and that we needed to nourish it with moisture!

YES, but not with night cream or SPF! God helps us. We don’t nourish our skin by external preparations but by what we put into it internally. Have you ever been able to bring an autumn leaf back to green by adding moisture from the outside?

I won’t get on my soapbox again about sun skin creams (did that rant a few blogs ago) and as for night creams, the skin needs to breathe, so the kindest thing we can do is wash our face with water before bed and leave it bare.

The scary thing is that 99% of the listeners to that radio show will have nodded their head in agreement with that woman. Why? Because humans are sheep, doncha know? How I wish I could be an ‘alternative’ health reporter for that station to counteract some of the crap I hear there. It really does press my buttons to the point I end up turning it off to save my sanity. Reckon they’re sick of my e-mails, too, so there is no point in always registering my thoughts with them!

I’ve often thought about what I’ll be like in my seventies or eighties and NOT ONCE have I ever seen my self blobbed on a sofa, arthritic, fat, wrinkly or a burden on the National Health Service with one thousand and one ailments. Nope, not me! I’ll still be eating my quota of fresh, unprocessed fruit, vegetables and fresh herbs; drinking loads of spring water, exercising and endeavouring to live a happy and conscious life – and still hassling the local radio station.

I see myself enjoying the autumn and winter of my life as a fit, energetic, lively, radiant and talented women, oozing with health and having a zest for each day that I live to see another sunrise. I see myself cycling, jogging, swimming and maybe even white water rafting, as I did in my pre-kid days.

It occurred to me this week that in order to fulfil that vision, I’d better get off my ass and create it! And that maybe my rebounder (mini trampoline) and brisk walking aren’t quite enough, so I’ve incorporated jogging into my walk…and I’m NOT a sporty sort of girl. My legs have wobbled like jelly and with each passing day I’ve felt myself get stronger and more able. My heart no longer threatens to land me on the side of the road with a coronary arrest. In fact, sometimes I’m unaware of my heart even racing. What started as 20 metre jogging ‘spurts’ alternating with 20 metres brisk walking earlier in the week, has increased to jogging becoming the main part of my exercise. If nothing else it has taught me, once again, how important it is to stretch one’s self, to break through excuses and to JUST DO IT. I’ve always ‘told myself’ that I’m simply not a jogger…not designed right, you know…big boobs and all. Well, I’ve not blinded myself yet!

It’s about choices though, isn’t it? Had an e-newsletter this week which asked what choice I could make in the next ten minutes that would affect the rest of my life. ‘Get off the computer!’ was my first thought. I’ve already incorporated a weekly one day juice fast and now drink a freshly made vegetable juice, or two, each day of the week. I realised the single most important thing I could do was to exercise more. To get beyond a brisk walk. It’s easy when we’re carrying extra weight to make excuses, to think we’ll do these things when we’re thinner and more in shape. That’s a kind of backward logic.

It is the little choices we make, day in, day out, which paint the bigger picture. Out walking the other morning I came across an elderly gentleman…fit, tanned and very chatty! Eventually we got onto The Mother and natural parenting. He said ‘wow, I bet you’ve got great kids. I’d love to meet them. Then with a twinkle in his eyes he said “I’ll bet they’re real little blighters!” Well, I nearly wet myself laughing at this point. My eyes wide and disbelieving, hands on hips, laughing out loud, “How did you knoooooooooooooooow?” I enjoyed walking with this man as he embodied the brightness of the elderly that really shows how different things can be if we make the effort. He was charming, bright, fit and articulate. Who wouldn’t want that rather than sitting in a nursing home being spoon fed?

Someone asked me the other day ‘How can you have a toxic body? Wouldn’t you be dead?’ Yeah, well, most people are! The walking dead, haven’t you heard of them? They’re people with no passion or zest for life, whose life revolves around other people living their lives (on tv).

Our body accumulates toxins every day from just about everywhere around us ~ the furniture, fabrics and paints from within our home; food and drinks (if grown non-organically); tap water; clothing; environmental pollution from cars, farmers’ sprays, factories, etc..

I saw a photo of a heavily made-up, famous tv presenter who is about 60. No amount of make-up can make a woman beautiful or disguise flabby, puffy or wrinkled skin. Make-up isn’t designed to hide flaws or lack of health. Rather, its purpose is to enhance our features.

The skin tells our story. It tells the world what we eat, what we drink and, most importantly, what we think! Our thoughts are etched not only into every cell of our being they also manifest on our face. Our skin accurately shows the world (and ourselves, if we care to look) what is going on internally. It shows which organs are healthy, or not. Our skin is an excretory organ. It is, by design, meant to get rid of toxins from our body. Jowls and saggy skin aren’t just ‘bad luck’. It is our skin screaming out with pain! It’s such basic maths. Put in toxins and they have to come out somehow. One of the main ways is through the skin. We see this all around us with eczema, psoriasis, so-called allergies, rashes, pimples, blackheads. Simple things like replacing fried foods with Essential Fatty Acids (such as flax or hemp seed oil) on our salads make the world of difference to the skin. People who’ve experienced life-long suffering of any of the above conditions can reverse them through detoxing completely. Even things like hay fever, which we consider to be related to external stimuli, can actually be healed by cleaning out our body! I suspect many people would rather wear it as a badge of suffering than doing anything constructive to eliminate it from their lives.

In observing others this week ~ the beautiful, the average and what some might call the ugly, I’ve realised that this is yet another area where I walk the road less travelled. I just don’t buy into the idea of expensive moisturisers (with dozens of toxic chemicals) that promise to give you a youthful look, nor into SPF sun skin cream and I certainly don’t believe that beauty can be put onto you from the outside. Doesn’t happen! Clearly, though, the average woman on the street wants to believe there is hope in a jar that doesn’t actually have to involve making lifestyle changes. That’d be too hard wouldn’t it?

Beauty can’t be bought (begged, borrowed or stolen). To defy aging (or more accurately, to age gracefully) we must treat our body with the respect it deserves.
Ways to do this include eating fresh, raw (unprocessed) fruits and vegetables rich in antioxidants; drinking at least 2 litres of pure water each day; NOT putting poisons, such as suntan cream on your skin; getting plenty of sleep (get to bed before 11pm so the liver can do its work); avoid stimulants such as coffee, recreational drugs. Don’t smoke! ~ the one thing that really trashes a person’s skin is cigarette smoke. When I go to town I can pick out a smoker every time without even seeing a fag in her hand. It’s written on their face and can’t be hidden with make up or beautiful clothes.

Keep pleasant company. I can’t emphasise enough how the company we keep can impact on how we feel about ourselves, the internal messages we feed the subconscious, etc.

Use a simple, natural and edible oil if you do need moisture on your skin. If I ever feel the need to add something to my skin, I use raw, organic (edible) coconut oil (it’s very tasty!) and doesn’t stay greasy on the skin either. My recommendation is to not put anything on your (highly absorbent) skin that you wouldn’t comfortably put in your mouth. Make it a rule, and watch your skin change.

Joseph Murphy has many interesting things to say about aging in his book, ‘The power of the subconscious mind’. Beginning with the fact that our mind and spirit don’t grow old it goes to say that we are as young as we think we are. He says that our ‘character, quality of mind, faith and convictions are not subject to decay’. Furthermore, he encourages us to affirm life, not death. To get a vision of ourselves as happy, radiant, successful, serene and powerful. ‘You grow old when you cease to dream’.

Research physicians say that a neurotic fear of the effects of time may well be the cause of premature aging. In other words, the fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Interestingly there was a note at my chiropractors’ this week which said, “If you didn’t know how old you were, how old would you be?”

I’m learning more and more that the most important aspect of doing my life’s work is taking care of myself first. It’s only taken me until now to figure this out! There is no excuse not to feed and nurture my mind, body and soul on an hourly basis. Excuses are now out with the compost!

Have a lusciously beautiful week. ~ Veronika ~