This post is the first part of a six-part series including:

The 5 Components to Anti-Aging

Exercising the ‘Tude

5 Ways to Keep Your Body Young

Food is Medicine So Don’t be Lenient with Convenience 

3 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Exposure to Toxins (AND Be  An Earthkeeper for Your Environment)

The Missing Link to Anti-Aging

1. A Fun Attitude

Everything begins with your mind, your thoughts, and your attitude.  If you have a great, “can-do” attitude about your age, then your experience will reflect that.  But if you complain constantly about your aches, pains, and shortcomings, then you will continue to experience that in your life.

I have an 80-year-old client who climbs roofs to maintain her rental properties. Instead of hiring a gardener, she does her gardening and landscaping herself, sometimes with the help of her son.  What do you think her thoughts are like?

She thinks, “I CAN climb this roof.”  “I CAN do my landscaping and gardening by myself.”  She does not worry about not being able to do these things because she is “too old”; she just does them!

2. Exercise/Movement

Movement is imperative for you to be functional in your human body.  It tones your muscles and keeps your joints lubricated as synovial fluid pumps into your tendons and ligaments.  Without movement, our bodies become stiff and stagnant as we age, thus making it harder to move.  A more active, non-sedentary lifestyle slows down your aging process. 

I always recommend to clients that they exercise in ways that bring them joy.  For me, it is dancing, whether it’s hip-hop or jazz, that not only keeps me flexible and agile but also feeds my inner child who loves to dance.  Dancing also gives me the cardiovascular workout I need to keep my heart pumping for a long time.  Remember the 80-year-old client I talked about?  She builds exercise into her daily life through acts of service for her tenants.  She gets satisfaction out of keeping her rental properties’ yards beautiful and clean while exercising different muscle groups at the same time.

3. Great Nutrition

Of course, you can’t forget about nutrition.  First of all, I can’t stress enough how important it is to stay hydrated.  Our bodies are 50-75% made of water, so we need to continue drinking water to replenish what is lost through tears, sweat, and other elimination processes.  Secondly, what you put into your body shows up on the outside as well.  Now, some people might say, “But I can eat junk food, and I’m OK!” That’s true; I have seen some people that seem fine on the surface despite poor eating habits.  To those people, I would just say, in the long run, you want to treat your body well to prevent disease.  It is much easier to take measures to prevent disease rather than trying to reverse it; for example, I’ve seen people struggling to reverse the onset of Type 2 Diabetes.  When diseases such as these show up in your body, you age faster.

As a Chinese Medicine Practitioner, I just want to share with you the effect that sugar has on your body.  It not only makes your body acidic, thus breeding disease, but also is one of the top reasons why some people experience wrinkles early in life.  Yes, I’ve seen people in their thirties with wrinkles.  So remember, what you put into your body will affect its aging process from the inside out.  Thus, what I want to share with you is this: listen to your body!  Your body is wise; it knows what it needs and doesn’t need.  If your body is breaking out in a rash, or you’re experiencing a lot of bloating or flatulence, it’s trying to tell you that you’re exposing it to something it can’t handle!  Many people have a diet that is high in carbohydrates, but it’s usually empty carbs. So, for example, that pasta made from white flour is full of empty carbohydrates, meaning that there is little to no nutritional value in it.  Personally, my body can’t handle gluten.  Gluten can be the cause of many autoimmune diseases we see today (asthma, MS, fibromyalgia, eczema, psoriasis, etc.) as well as many mental/behavioral disorders such as ADD, ADHD, autism, etc.  Research is also showing that the gliadin in gluten may be the cause of some joint disorders.  A friend of mine in his fifties recently told me that he decided to eliminate gluten from his diet after he saw how it has benefited me.  He found that he had more energy and was able to get rid of a lot of belly flab!

Eliminating these things–such as sugar, empty carbs, or even gluten–is what we call clean eating.  Together with exercise and protein intake, it will help you build lean muscle.

4. Non-Toxic Personal Care & Cleaning Products

The beauty market is deluged with products that are harmful to your body.  Remember, when you put toxins into your body, you are directly affecting its longevity.  You have to read the labels on your products. If you need some help figuring out what toxins to watch out for in your products, read my friend’s list, “12 Toxic Ingredients to Avoid in Skincare” over at Danu Skincare.

Most cleaning products on the market, too, expose your body to many toxins.  If you’re unsure if your cleaning products are harmful or not, you’d be better off making your own by using some simple ingredients such as Dr. Bronner’s Castille Soap, olive oil, water, essential oils, and baking soda.  In the past, I’ve experienced wheezing, congestion, and dizziness from cleaning, and it was all because of the products I was using.  When I switched to making my own cleaning solutions, I stopped experiencing all of those symptoms.  Remember, your home is the environment that you live in and return to after a day of exposing yourself to unavoidable toxins outside such as air pollution, and you want to keep it as chemical-free as possible.  We’ve already linked the use of aluminum in many products to Alzheimer’s disease, and we still don’t know the effects of many other toxins.  Instead of taking that risk, do your body and mind a favor and use non-toxic beauty and cleaning products.

5. Energy Healing

So, at this point, you’ve probably heard of most of these components of anti-aging, and they probably make sense to you.  However, I’d like to introduce the missing link: energy healing.  So much of what we ingest in our lives is taken into the energy field.  In return, it shows up in our body or on our faces. Coming soon to Self Care Queendom is a body map of how the “stuff” you ingest, including your emotions, shows up in your body.  What energy healing can do is prevent such stuff from showing up in your body.

For example, the same 80-year-old client who climbs up on roofs and maintains huge yards comes to me so that I can tune her up.  Her body might handle a lot from all of her physical activities, but at the end of the day, when I ask her what’s eating at her, I find that her aches usually correspond to some emotion that is not in harmony, like anger.  Now, being the multi-dimensional healer I am, I would take it a step further, because anger and frustration represent the surface of a much more vulnerable feeling.

However, it is my job to ease the anger and frustration in her body so her joints don’t become rigid and so I can allow her to do the yard work she loves. Stay tuned for an upcoming article, The Missing Link to Anti-Aging.  Energy healing is often overlooked and considered too “woo woo,” but when we show you your bio-energy fields and studies that have been done on healing people at a different level, your jaw will drop when you find out what a difference it can make.

Do you want to get right to helping yourself stay youthful from the inside out even when you think you’re past your prime?  Check out:

30 Days to a Vibrant, Healthier, Younger You

And start shining from the inside out!