Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (41 page)

THE TIME IS NOW

It’s never too late to transform the old, outmoded beliefs about your body that have been keeping you stuck for years and replace them with updated ones while becoming stronger, more agile, and more movement oriented. The mother-in-law of a friend of mine never exercised after playing college tennis in her teens and 20s. When she had a hip replacement in her 90s, she took a look at the physical therapy exercises she was supposed to do to rehabilitate her muscles and said to her daughter-in-law, “I’m not doing these.” Her daughter-in-law told her frankly, “If you fall, I can’t pick you up. So you might be on the floor for some time and you might even die there. Can you live with that?” And the woman said, “Yes.” So be it! Know the consequences of your choices about movement.

If you find your balance isn’t what it used to be, you can’t keep up with your grandchildren, or you bow out of social activities
because of the amount or type of movement involved, decide whether you’re okay with that. There’s no age limit for flexibility or fitness. Research has clearly shown that people in their 90s can build muscle and improve balance and flexibility. Don’t buy into the cultural myths about what you can do at a certain age.
Do
go slowly and respect your body’s messages about what type of movement is right for it. You get to decide how, when, and how much you move. Healthy centenarians can be found doing tai chi in the parks every morning. That can be you!

I go to Pilates class twice a week, walk a couple of miles three or four times a week, dance the tango, and do Resistance Flexibility regularly. I’m also doing something called Sprint 8 for cardiovascular fitness. It’s a form of high-intensity interval exercise that is proving to be not just a timesaver but a way to boost metabolism. Using an exercise bike, a treadmill, or an elliptical trainer, or doing intervals of sprints and walking, you work out to your maximum intensity for 20 to 30 seconds, then move gently for 90 seconds, then repeat the sequence for a total of eight cycles. It only takes 20 minutes once or twice a week but leads to dramatic increases in growth hormone, and it’s far more effective than an hour of regular aerobic activity. It also takes away the excuse “I don’t have time to exercise.” At first, I found myself gasping for breath when running on the elliptical as fast as I possibly could. But after a couple of weeks, my cardiovascular fitness increased dramatically, and Bob Cooley’s resistance stretching made the movements easier than ever. (You can learn more about Sprint 8 and its benefits at
http://fitness.mercola.com
.)

Although I do enjoyable movement every day, I now find I’m unable to sit for long periods like I used to. Conventional wisdom would say that this is because of arthritis in the spine due to age, but that’s not it. I’m more embodied than I have been since I was a child, and I can no longer disconnect from my body as I trained myself to do during college, medical school, and residency training. If I sit down to work at the computer, I find it very hard to sit there for more than 30 minutes before I have to take a movement break. I also sit on a yoga ball to keep my hips and spine mobile during the sitting time. Don’t wait until your body screams at you to do this. Instead, take regular dance breaks and
stretches—there are plenty of apps you can use to remind you. And if you have a cat that jumps onto your keyboard, interpret it as a sign from the universe that it’s time for a movement break!

MANY BENEFITS OF MOVEMENT

An increasing amount of research is showing that regular exercise is brain protective (and as I mentioned earlier, partner dance is particularly good for this purpose). Exercise improves cognitive function in older people with or without Alzheimer’s.
⁹
Two 20-minute periods of aerobic exercise weekly have also been shown to increase the size of the hippocampal memory area in people in their 60s.
¹⁰
Weight training has been shown to improve cognitive abilities in women in their 70s who had mild cognitive impairment, according to research done at the University of British Columbia.
¹¹

Be smart: Move your body, and when you find you’re falling back into sedentary habits, self-correct. Love your body so that the changes you make in your movement routine are permanent, and so that your attitudes change and aren’t overridden by old beliefs about conquering your weak body, or about certain types of movement being womanly or not womanly. Here’s a prayer you can say: “Divine Beloved, please change me into someone who loves to move my body!” And consider those quintessentially feminine ways of moving that are part of belly dancing.

You may well find that emotions, memories, and thoughts stored in your fascia and muscles come up as you begin moving your body. Any massage or yoga teacher will tell you that it’s common for people to burst into tears when certain fascial tissues are stretched or touched. Past trauma—and all the memories associated with it—are stored in fascia. If this happens, don’t try to stop it. You’ll be surprised at how often you end up laughing at the end of a good cry. Congratulate yourself for letting your old feelings and thoughts come up and out of you so that your body’s self-healing processes could be turned on.

You might find that, as for many women, your beliefs about your body and how to move it are based on old ideas that you thought you had rid yourself of long ago. The shaming of women
so prevalent in a dominator society can lodge itself deep in your tissues. So if any of these old shame patterns arise, know that you are right on track. When I was working with Tami Lynn Kent, a physical therapist who works with pelvic bowl energy, she “heard” my mother say, “I hate this part of my body” when she was working on the fascia of my left pelvic side wall. Together, we consciously released this old shame from my body. The shame wasn’t even mine—it was my mother’s—but I had been carrying it in my fascia for years.

Shame keeps a constant supply of inflammatory chemicals in the body. When you remove shame energetically, it feels as bad going out as it did when it went in. The discomfort is only temporary, however. And it bears repeating here that shame can’t exist in an atmosphere of light, consciousness, and humor. It lurks only when it’s kept secret. So if you find shameful memories coming up and out, talk about them. Air them. Take them into the sunshine of awareness. You’ll feel ten pounds lighter. Release any old self-hatred and any fears that you aren’t enough—beautiful enough, sexy enough, young enough, and so on. Instead, bring the vast, ageless energy of the Divine into your heart and your pelvic bowl. Move your hips and your whole body with sensual abandon. Dance like the goddess you are.

CHAPTER TEN

GODDESSES ARE GORGEOUS

The sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of
inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.

— R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON

A
s I was leaving the bus station the other day, a stylish woman with flowing long gray hair was hurrying up the steps. I smiled at her with approval.
Ah—another ageless
beauty.
Over the past decade or so, I’ve made a habit of noticing—and really taking in—the beauty of women who are over 50. Here’s what I’ve found. The more I look for ageless beauty, the more I find it. Of course, there are the famous gorgeous goddesses: Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, and Barbara Walters, to name a few. But when you decide to pay attention, you too will begin to notice more and more incredibly attractive ageless beauties in your day-to-day life. Believe me, they are out there, and you can be one of them.

You have to let go of the myth that to be beautiful, a woman has to be young. To be beautiful, a woman needs to be youthful and supple in mind and spirit. Then she has inner beauty that radiates outward. As Tosha Silver says, “The true depth of your own value, beauty, and worthiness has already been conferred by the Divine. It is set. No one else’s behavior or opinion can honestly
ever
minimize it. It’s like clouds trying to eradicate the sun. It always reemerges.”

UNCONSCIOUS PROGRAMMING ABOUT BEAUTY AND AGE

As I said at the start of the book, the first step to becoming an ageless goddess is to become aware of your cultural programming so that you can step out of it. For example, have you ever noticed how women’s magazines tend to run stories on what to wear or how to style your hair based on your age? “Your Best Hair in Your 30s, 40s, and 50s” is a typical one. I have yet to see one that reads, “Your Best Hair in Your 60s, 70s, and 80s,” nor have I ever seen men’s style advice broken down according to age. Instead, a recent issue of
GQ
called the Style Bible had a headline on the cover that said, “Look Your Best in 2014”—period. The message is clear that we women are not supposed to care how we look after 60 or so and that our age determines what our style should be.

Mindfulness expert Dr. Ellen Langer suggests changing your “priming,” that is, your expectation of what you are supposed to experience as time goes by. I want you to forget about which hairstyles are appropriate “for women over 40.” Rejecting this sort of priming helps you feel beautiful as you enter your ageless years.

Yes, I’m fully aware of the ageism all around us. In the editorial from
AARP: The Magazine
I mentioned earlier entitled “The Smart Money Is on the 50+ Crowd,” editor Robert Love writes, “Older Americans are virtually ignored by marketers mired in last century’s obsession with youth. In fact, only 5 percent of advertising is directed at older consumers, according to Nielsen, which has been tracking Americans’ habits for decades. It’s
insulting. As veteran ad man Bob Hoffman put it recently, ‘Almost everyone you see in a car commercial is between the ages of 18 and 24. And yet, people age 75 to dead buy five times as many new cars as people 18 to 24.’ Nielsen calls people 50 and up ‘the most valuable generation in the history of marketing.’” I personally see this as a huge opportunity to turn ageism right on its head. So I, for one, am no longer buying into the ageism agenda. And I hope you’ll join me. After all, I was part of the strike generation. Why not keep that new energy going? The baby boom generation has changed every stage of life it has gone through. Watch us change this one!

It’s also true that as women get into their ageless years, it’s often hard for them to accept their changing looks, especially if they’ve been used to heads turning when they enter a room. It’s a real loss if you’ve never developed a true inner sense of self and all the gifts of wit and wisdom that come with the years. For those of us who never had that “turning heads” experience in our youth, the transition to a new kind of beauty is often not as difficult. That’s especially true when you’ve developed “centenarian consciousness” and believe that your best years are all ahead! To do this, we must change our thoughts and beliefs. The nuns’ study and studies by researchers such as Becca Levy that I’ve mentioned have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that acting as though we are in our prime has a huge impact on our health and physical appearance—so pay attention to your self-talk! In our ageist culture, even 25-year-olds worry about one gray hair or a laugh line that you can see if you position yourself just so in front of a magnifying mirror. Women reaching 30, which is probably our first shared cultural portal about beauty in the West, can start panicking about looking old. But what if you had no notion of what you’re “supposed” to look like on any milestone birthday? Forget the number of candles you’re “supposed” to put on your cake and your notions of beauty can change.

Instead of fretting about your age, make an empowering change such as quitting a job that’s draining you and making you feel disrespected. This alone can make you look healthier and younger almost instantly. You might find people asking you if you “had something done” (as in plastic surgery) after you’ve
walked away from a stressful, overly demanding job. And there’s nothing more beautiful than deep contentment and happiness, the kind of happiness that comes only when you have connected with the ageless goddess within. When you’re a happy, joyful, ageless goddess, people see you in a different light. They aren’t noticing the lines in your face or the skin on your neck. They’re seeing your sparkling eyes as you laugh.

OWNING YOUR BEAUTY

An ageless goddess rejects ageism and owns her beauty. One way you can do that is to acknowledge it through affirmations or a Divine Beloved Change Me prayer, such as “Divine Beloved, change me into someone who sees, appreciates, and cultivates my own beauty.”

Another way to own your beauty is to adorn it in your own personal style. Don’t think of clothes as “fixing” a “figure flaw” but as flattering you and bringing out your natural beauty. Spend money on clothes that make you feel beautiful. How a jacket or dress is cut can make a huge difference in how you feel in an outfit. A friend of mine jokes that at 50 she dresses pretty much the same as she did in the second grade: turtleneck or simple long- or short-sleeve shirt or sweater, jeans or trousers, and flat black shoes. The look works for her and she is happy sticking to it. But now she’s meticulous about choosing the cut, color, and style of every item in that simple list. She can spot in an instant whether an item is even worthy of trying on her Aphrodite body. And she feels great and is often complimented on her looks and style. Where she sometimes gets daring is with jewelry and lipstick. She says, “I take chances with accessories or makeup when I feel like it, not because I’m trying to please other people and be trendy and fashionable. When I was younger, my look said, ‘I can fit in and be anything you need me to be.’ Now my look is classic
me.
” She doesn’t worry about whether her look is trendy, or “too young,” “too old,” “too conservative,” or “too” anything else.