Meditation
Meditation along with yoga is one of the most effective ways of relaxing and eliminating or coping with stress.
Meditation can help to rejuvenate the mind and the body and the balance that it can bring to your life can increase energy levels, eliminate insomnia and help give you a more positive attitude and outlook on life.
People who practice meditation on a regular basis are calmer and more relaxed and the health benefits that it brings can add years to your life.
Meditation can help people to break bad habits and those habits are often associated with things that affect aging and make people look older than they should. Problems such as over eating, smoking and other negative addictions can be eliminated with meditation.
Meditation will stimulate healthy circulation and that in turn will help improve the condition of the skin making it look healthier and younger.
The mind has a huge influence over the way we look and meditation will help to address any issues that are on the mind that can be affecting stress levels and decisions that are made on a daily basis that are detrimental to healthy living.
One of the benefits of meditation is the fact that once learned is can be practiced almost anywhere and the more that it is practiced the more effective it becomes.
By making meditation a regular part of your lifestyle you can expect to look better and feel better for longer while enjoying more aspects of your life.
It is not difficult to learn how to do meditation and it is also inexpensive. Unfortunately there are still many people who don’t understand how powerful meditation can be for making changes to their life and those changes can be highly beneficial for helping to stay, look and feel young.
Yoga
Yoga is one of the most effective ways to make you look and feel younger and can add years to your life with better health, strength and flexibility.
Yoga is suitable for all ages and all health conditions and almost everyone will get some positive benefits from doing yoga on a regular basis.
Yoga is one of the most effective methods of reducing stress, along with meditation and anything that will reduce the effects that stress can have on your mind and body will make you look and feel younger.
There are various different types of yoga and you can choose the one that suits your needs the most from the simplest exercises that will help you to relax to the advanced exercises that will help you get a toned body and help to wind back the years.
Yoga helps to improve your blood circulation and that will make your skin condition look and be healthier. Even certain inverted exercises will increase the blood flow to the scalp and this can assist with the reduction of hair loss in some people.
Increased flexibility will help to reduce muscular and joint pain and a reduction in pain can help with a reduction of frown lines that are common with people who suffer from constant pain.
Yoga helps the digestive system and this will help to get the maximum benefits from the food that you eat and in doing so improve overall health and nutrition which will be reflected in good skin condition.
By bringing about a balance in both mind and body yoga can do more for the aging process than a hospital full of surgeons. You should consider trying it as it can be done freely at home without the cost of gym fees; it is convenient and scaleable according to your fitness levels.
Tai Chi
Tai Chi is an excellent form of exercise that offers many benefits for people seeking to look and stay younger.
It is a very powerful form of stress management and that in itself can have a positive effect on your youthful look as stress can change the choices we make in food and drinks and also cause wrinkles from frowning.
Tai Chi is a low impact form exercise and is suitable for older people. The exercises help to build strength in the muscles and that is very important as people age and lose muscles mass through a lack of use.
Tai Chi also helps people to become more balanced and to be steadier on their feet which reduce the chances of falls as people age.
Posture is another area that is improved through the exercises that are performed in Tai Chi and this helps people to look younger as the ability to stand tall rather than stooped as many older people become will give the impression of being somewhat younger.
The strength that you can build through the exercises will improve many areas of health and that will slow the aging process and improve the chances of living a longer life and having the ability to enjoy that life better.
Many Tai Chi instructors will adapt programs to suit the various age groups and levels of fitness and there are moves underway in many areas of the country to encourage more elderly people to start doing Tai Chi as it has been shown to improve the quality of life for elderly people.
It can also help to reduce the impact that old injuries can have on pain management and the enjoyment that can be lost when injuries affect sleep and other areas of aging.
The social interaction of joining in with others to do Tai Chi helps people to stay alert and coordinated and the positive attitude that this brings with it enhances their life keeping them younger for longer.
Power of the Mind
Studies by Scientists at Yale University in America have shown that one of the most powerful methods of increasing your life expectancy is through the power of your mind.
Simple by thinking positively you can add years to your life expectancy.
How many years?
Well surprisingly enough they have determined that you can add up to eight years to your life due to the fact that you will be happier, have a more fulfilling life and make better choices throughout your life due to your positive attitude.
We are often taught that you will get what you expect and people with a positive attitude tend to think they will live longer and in fact they actually do.
It has also been proven that the stress caused by negative attitudes that result in constant or long term worry will reduce your life expectancy. When you consider the benefits of worry, or lack thereof, you will wonder why we ever worry in the first place.
90% of what you worry about will never come to fruition and most of the other 10% you can’t do anything about anyway so you should look at your attitude honestly and make a concerted effort to let matters ‘float on by’ without causing you to worry and you will live longer by doing so.
Meditation is an excellent method of helping you to break the bad habit of worry and also for reducing other forms of stress.
Add as much fun and laughter to your life as this will also help to enhance your immune system thereby slowing down the aging process.
Laughter helps to release pain relieving and muscle relaxing endorphins and that reduces the amount of stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin in the body. Anything that you can do to reduce or eliminate stress will help you to live longer.
Even refraining from watching the news on television or reading about it in the newspapers or on the Internet can help you to live longer because much of the news that we hear everyday is negative.
A study was done on newsreaders that showed they died younger than comparable people who were in alternate professions and it was suggested that the cause of this was the fact they were constantly reading negative news reports on a daily basis.
Be positive and live longer and the best way to start is by laughing and smiling right now and understanding that whatever you are currently worrying about right now can’t be changed by simply worrying.
Attitude & Positive Thinking
Many people are surprised to learn how much their attitude and the power of positive thinking can have on their aging.
Quite apart from the fact that a person who has a positive attitude tends to smile more often and the affect that smiling can have on toning the face and making a person look younger there are the other aspects of better health that come with positive thinking.
Thinking positively will make a person focus more on the things in life that will deliver better results in health and mind and those alone will make you feel and act younger.
Positive thinking will help a person to set and achieve goals and do things that others of the same age might believe they are past doing.
When you feel better about yourself, as you will do with positive thinking and the correct attitude, that confidence will show on your face and that will make you look younger as people do tend to become more negative as they age and find that they aren’t able to do certain things any longer.
Most of the things that we do in life are from the habits that we have formed and by simply creating a positive attitude or changing your attitude to one that is more positive you can end bad habits that are affecting your life.
These changes can result in ceasing smoking or refraining from eating the foods that have caused a person to become overweight. Once changes are made, more changes can be made more easily and all these little ‘positive’ steps can lead to big changes in a person’s life.
And those changes can not only extend a persons life expectancy but they can also make them look younger at the same time – and that of course will be another added boost for their confidence.
Action for Health
There can be no improvement in your health and no expectation of living to 100 if you don’t take action.
You know that eating the right food will make you healthier and if you are healthier you will be less inclined to succumb to illness and disease.
You know that you will be more likely to live longer if you don’t become ill or diseased.
You know that smoking makes you ill and for many people it is an early death sentence.
You know that the sun can cause skin cancer and skin cancer can result in death.
We all know many things that we intend to do something about but more often than not, after the initial inspiration to improve our lives or increase the length of our life we fall back into the same old habits where we eat the wrong food, go without sufficient water from one day to the next even though we know we are feeling lethargic most of the time, smoke cigarettes, get too little sleep or eat too much food and many other vices that we know are wrong.
So what does it take to get started in the right direction and make the changes that can totally transform your life?
Action – that’s all you need. Just a little action to get started doing one thing that will take you in the right direction to better health and a longer life.
Once the initial step has been taken and you begin on that path more positive steps will follow.
Where you are today is a direct result of your beliefs and actions. If you change your beliefs and take action you can change your life.
The action that needs to be taken is often so small that there is no pain – you won’t feel that you are missing out on anything and the upside of this is there are so many more things in life that you WILL be able to enjoy with better health.
Take action today and feel pleased that you did when you look back in the distant future.
Enjoying Life
Some people get all too concerned about aging and some to the extent that it becomes and obsession.
What is the net result of this? Well you might look a little younger but you still need to enjoy life along the way.
Most of the ways that you can use to make yourself look younger such as stopping smoking, or limiting your exposure to the sun, or fitness training and maintaining good health and nutrition will not only make you look better but they will also make you feel better and get more out of life.
Your energy levels should increase and you will have more time to do more of the things that you like.
You should enjoy your life all the more while looking better as an added bonus. If you do anything other than in moderation then you will negate the positive effects that are available to you.
Even over training can make you look older and leave you susceptible to injury.
Finding a balance in all that you do will keep you young in mind and body and that is why yoga is so effective at helping you to stay young.
I recall reading a book on a husband and wife team who focused their life on longevity. This book detailed all that they did with their extreme exercise and nutritional regime.
While their steps might (or might not) add to their life expectancy they certainly didn’t look very young for their age.
In fact their ‘extreme’ lifestyle made them look considerably older than the average person of the same age so it just goes to show you that more is not always better when it comes to anti aging programs.
Enjoyment and happiness will show on your face and the more you smile the more beautiful you will become, and besides, smiling does wonders for your face muscles.