Healthy aging is our birthright and yes, it can be yours at any age! We have been conditioned to believe that aches, pains, body issues, brain fog, emotional issues, incontinence, decreased libido, and so on, automatically come with aging.
This is an old paradigm and an unrealistic way of thinking. For more than a century, our belief systems have been connected to a society that has focused on disease rather than health; on treating illness rather than preventative healthcare. The messages we are being sent have not been supportive of healthy living, nor do they invite and empower you to take good care of yourself. But you do have a choice in how you care for yourself.
Choosing Self-Care
In the 1980s when I was in my 20s, I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease. My whole life changed when I met and made the choice to be under the care of Dr. Baum, a vibrant 92-year-old naturopathic physician working in New York City. He taught me the importance, value, and benefits of self-care and through his teachings and listening to my own inner voice, I became healthy and strong. To this day, I remain healthy and follow his guidance, sharing all I have learned with family, friends, and clients around the world. I have stayed committed to self-care and the world of holistic health ever since.
Self-care equals healthier aging, requiring a commitment to your life that can feel scary and overwhelming. The first steps, no matter how small, can make a big difference. When we take care of what’s inside, the outside changes, too. There is never a more important time than now to make those desperately needed changes in our life. There are steps you can take at any age to give yourself the gift of better health. It has been documented that if you commit to thirty days of a new activity, it will become a part of you. The resulting changes in your body, mind, and/or spirit can be amazing!
Science has proven that the gut–brain connection is real. If you clear your mind and body of old hurts, resentments, obsessions, blocks, depression, anxiety, and hopelessness, you have much more ability to stand your ground, feel your center, and have an open heart for yourself. You are able to communicate clearly and express your needs and aspirations. This helps with the connection to the Invisible that creates our world and all the different dimensions here and beyond.
The first step toward self-case is mindfulness—noticing everything in and around you. It may not feel easy, but it will lead you in the direction of wholeness. It is an embodied approach, inclusive of every part of you without judgment—body, mind, heart, and soul. In this way, you can begin to see you have many parts, feelings, thoughts. Become aware by slowly listening to how you talk to yourself. How mindful are you as you eat or go through your day-to-day life? What are you doing to nourish your gut? What are you doing to nourish your soul?
Steps Toward Self-Care
- Take a moment to just breathe. Be still and sit quietly. Can you feel your center? Close your eyes and breathe down into your belly. Imagine stepping out of yourself through your belly. Turn around and look at yourself. With a loving heart, tell yourself sitting there, “I am right here with you. We can do the steps together.” You can support, encourage, and inspire yourself and be your own best friend—make a commitment to yourself right now. Then slowly step back into your belly and just breathe. In the stillness, feel your connection to your own heart and spirit. You are choosing health.
- Challenge yourself to eat a plant-based diet for thirty days. Your gut will love you. You will be shocked to see discomfort, bloating, and gas start to dissipate.
- Stock your refrigerator with organic fruits and vegetables, salad ingredients, whole grains, nuts, seeds, Impossible or Beyond plant-based meat, tofu, beans, lentils.
- Water. Living water—structured water—is the key to health. After thirty days, you are able to take the next steps because you feel so good you don’t want to stop.
- Grow your own! Start small with lettuce and kale, even a tomato plant, in the garden or in your apartment in containers. Yes, it can be done!
- Walk 20 minutes every day. No, don’t run. Be gentle through this.
- Cleanse and detox the body. Empty the “garbage.” Renew and rejuvenate with simple filtered water. It’s called colon hydrotherapy. (This was—and still is—an important key in my rejuvenation.)
- Drink green shakes every day! Kale, spinach, or any leafy greens mixed with fruits such as berries, banana, apple.
- Connect and communicate all those feelings, emotions that are sitting in your gut. Reach out to a person you feel safe with to do this. Buddy up with them. See a therapist or a living-healthy coach who is trained in body–mind therapy. Find a living-healthy support group. We need community focused on healing and healthy aging to create our dreams of a better world.
Choose one and begin. When done together, you have the potential to live fully in good health until you are very, very well-aged! Aging is inevitable. Healthy aging is a choice you can make at any age. Heal your gut. Heal your mind. Heal your heart. It’s a process. Changing you changes the world.
Beverley Blass is a Healthy Living Coach, Detox Specialist, and Professional Colon Hydrotherapist who helps you identify and manage the challenges of living a healthy life. She helps you integrate the mind body–spirit connections leading toward wholeness as a human being. A graduate of Hartford Family Institute’s extensive psychotherapy training program, Beverley works as a guide and facilitator to help you heal, transform, and grow as you learn to approach life with compassion and awareness. Beverley offers in-office and teletherapy sessions.
For more information, please contact Beverley at 860.206.1129 or through her website: www.beverleyblass.com. Beverley Blass Integrative Health is located at Hartford Family Institute, 17 S. Highland St., West Hartford, CT 06119.