I can’t believe you let yourself get this out of shape. I am so out of breath. This is so hard. I don’t think I can do it. It sucks to get older. Does any of this sound familiar?

 

These were some things that passed through my mind while hiking in California with my 37-year-old brother and three 19-year-old friends. My brother and I made some small comments to each other joking about keeping up, which made me feel even worse. One of us mentioned something about age and my brother joked about how much worse it hurts when you fall.

 

Something about that struck me. I thought, that’s not right, it doesn’t have to hurt worse when we’re older. Everything I’ve studied about anatomy, epigenetics, and aging among different cultures shows that aging does not mean a less nimble functioning body. Aging may offer you a different body than when you were 19, but nonetheless it doesn’t mean what we impose on it.

 

As we went along I got to thinking about why I felt so different than my younger self and why the age discrepancy between a 35-year-old active female and a 19-year-old active male seemed so vastly different. We went off the beaten path as soon as we saw swimming holes and after ditching our socks and shoes I started to notice the difference.

 

The younger guys moved quickly from rock to rock and through slippery terrain without too much thought. My brother and I, however, check and rechecked our footing and often hesitated before taking the next step. Did we really hesitate because it hurts more as we get older? Did we hesitate because we knew how much an injury would hurt and the younger guys didn’t? No. Those three had not only had their fair share of injuries one of them had just had pins and screws surgically used to mend a broken collarbone one year prior to our trip.

 

I got to thinking about a conversation we all had a few days prior to our hike while riding jet skis. One of the best pieces of advice I’d been given while driving was to trust the jet ski to do what it was designed to do. And just like that there was my answer. The reason why there was such a discrepancy was as we had gotten older we stopped trusting our bodies to do what they were designed to do.

 

I think of the Tarahumara tribe, a tribe of people in northern Mexico. This tribe, well documented in the popular book Born to Run, are some of the best long-distance marathoners in the world. Elders of the tribe are running ultra marathons well into their 80s and 90s - for fun. It helps that the tribe practices running for spiritual reward and for the good of the earth but another important factor is no one in their culture ever told them they couldn’t run or move because they are older. Or aboriginal Australians who depend on their elders for their memory and sharp practiced minds, also a culture that remains active for the entirety of their lives. Whether their tribes have healthier habits or not is debatable, but one glaring difference remains: what we belief about our bodies and age.

 

Imagine if you will, that no one ever said anything about the mind and body deteriorating with age? I am not suggesting that the mind and body don’t change with age. I’m suggesting you consider that the concept of deterioration was not introduced to you. If you are being honest, and logical, you’d probably believe that at minimum our habits and how we chose to engage with our mind and body would be vastly improved and as most that our entire culture would be vastly improved.

 

Now that I have introduced a new concept, and one that feels much better (at least to me). What can we do? For starters we can begin with the minimum, a different belief system. You can choose, today, to begin believing that your body was designed to move, to move often and with freedom for the entirety of your life.

 

With this simple belief you will begin to change the way you choose to engage with your body. Even in the midst of the aches and pains that you’ve acquired and chronically have had, you will choose to engage differently with your body. You may find yourself standing a bit more. You may find yourself parking a little further from the door. You may find yourself taking the stairs.

 

If you’re already active, for the most part, perhaps you can begin to improve upon this belief system and engagement. You can change the way you speak about your aging body and mind. Most importantly you can begin fully trusting your own body. Similarly to my experience hiking, you can choose to trust what your body is designed to do without having to push or force it and without hesitation.

 

Regardless of where you are on your health journey the path will comes increasingly easier and maybe even start resembling the spiritual reward like the Tarahumara tribe if you practice trusting your body to do what it was designed to do.

 

Love and trust,

 

Melissa

www.melissaromano.com