Old Age and Back Pain?
Reverse the signs of aging to move better, live better, and feel younger
Aging doesn't mean decaying
When I entered my 40s, I became very interested in the process of aging - specifically, what I could do to slow the process down and remain physically active and pain free. My grandad lived to be 100, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
I began reading and googling. I was curious about age-related topics like:
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Old age and back pain
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Muscle, leg and joint pain in old age
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How to improve cognitive function
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How to improve your balance and stability
And my research indicated that if you're over 40, it's likely you're one of the millions of people experiencing the telltale signs of aging:
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Decline in vitality, flexibility, strength, mental clarity, balance, vision, bone density, and ease of movement
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Increase in aches and pains, anxiety, falling and the fear of it, broken bones, disease, joint replacements
Not exactly a list to look forward to. Surely this didn't have to be my destiny.
“I have come to believe less and less that biology is destiny. It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits. Now I accept none of the medical wisdom regarding the courses our diseases must take as necessarily true.”
- Ellen J Langer, author of Counter Clockwise
Trying to digest the “inevitable” breakdown of the aging body wasn't easy.
And then I discovered, it doesn't have to be inevitable after all! I can make choices in my daily life now that give me a much better chance of enjoying a healthy life into my sunset years. And while it's true we don't have a choice about growing old, we do have a choice and some control about what that process looks like.
Age is merely a number. It really means nothing. We can't slow our chronological aging process, we definitely have considerable control over our physiological aging process.
And it all starts with the brain.
Our relationship with gravity
The moment we're born we begin a lifelong relationship with gravity. All of our movement and activity, our entire existence, is organized within the confines and rules of the gravitational field that surrounds us.
Babies begin learning how to move within gravity with their first random, erratic movements. When we're young and our body is well organized, we use gravity to our advantage for easy, efficient, pain free movement.
However, as we age, gravity starts working against us, and movement becomes more difficult. As we become more sedentary, develop poor posture, battle injury and illness, and develop destructive habitual movement patterns, we begin to age poorly and often complain of feeling older than we actually are.
While the natural laws of physics dictate that our bodies and minds will age and deteriorate, research assures us of a couple powerful realities:
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It is possible to reverse and slow down the symptoms of aging.
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If we do nothing, the aging process will accelerate.
We don't have to helplessly sit back and passively watch the aging process unfold. By taking intentional steps to wake up our brains, we can gain a new sense of wellness and vitality and feel young again.
Movement habits that we develop as we age are impacted by our life experiences, and they lead to limitations in how we move, think, and feel. As we become more sedentary and try to minimize chronic pain from a life's worth of activity, injury, and illness, we develop patterns of moving that become very limiting.
Wake up your brain!
NeuroMovement® uses the 9 Essentials to take advantage of the power of the brain to create new connections, regardless of our age and physical or mental condition, which leads to new possibilities and freedom in our movement and our thinking.
Daily functions like twisting, reaching up and down, moving from lying to sitting to standing, walking, and going up and down the stairs, all have the potential to become easier and more comfortable to do.
Enjoy doing those activities you love again! Get out in the garden, pick up that instrument, hit the ski slopes, ride that bike!
Feel young again!
Get active again
