Dr. Toni

Turning Back the Clock

Posted on by Dr. Toni

As Bette Davis famously said, “Getting old ain’t no place for sissies.” And while I’m not quite a senior citizen myself just yet, I’m becoming ever more aware of my own aging journey and have recently faced some of my own age-related challenges.

So I can appreciate Bette’s keen observation about aging. And I can also see why the global anti-aging market is valued at over 65 billion dollars and is expected to almost double by 2030.

From creams, injections, and cosmetics that promise fewer wrinkles and unsightly skin blemishes, to nutraceuticals and supplements that claim to slow down aging on a cellular level, to hormone optimization, laser body sculpting, blood plasma transfusions, plastic surgery; an almost infinite list of options are available today, all aimed directly at fighting off that ancient nemesis:

Aging.
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Is Aging Bad?

Now, some say these treatments are feeding into an unhealthy fear, and that aging is getting a bit of a bad rap. They say that our culture doesn’t understand or value the aging process and instead has consistently overvalued youth and become addicted to vanity.

“Aging is a natural process,” they point out, “and nothing to fear!”

I think this is an encouraging take, albeit one that’s often expressed by much younger people who aren’t quite speaking from personal experience.

Me? I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m not especially eager to turn into an “old man.” But I’m also averse to wasting my remaining years worrying over some wrinkles or thinning hair. So I have to wonder if it’s possible to accept this “natural process” of aging while still working to retain as much of my youth as I can, while I can.

But I’m not really into creams, pills, and surgeries unless absolutely necessary. So what I really wondered was how much of aging is natural entropy at work and how much was mindset?

Is it possible to actually think yourself younger?

Age Is Just a… Thought?

I believe in positive thinking. Yet the notion that something like aging could be mitigated by simply altering your thoughts seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. Sure, our thoughts are powerful, but it’s asking a bit much to believe that how we think and act could somehow slow down or even reverse aging.

Or so I thought.

Let me introduce you to Dr Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who not only wondered the same thing I did about whether mindset could affect aging, she actually conducted a remarkable experiment to find out.

For over 40 years, Dr Langer has studied the power of mindfulness. If her name sounds familiar to you, it may be because she’s often referred to as the “Mother of Mindfulness,” and for good reason. Her work has established a powerful and undeniable connection between the power of one’s mindset and their physical health.

Now, it’s worth noting that Dr. Langer’s version of mindfulness is not specifically attached to meditation but is rather a simple way of applying one’s attention and focus. It’s “a flexible state of mind in which we are actively engaged in the present, noticing new things, and sensitive to context,” she says.

Back in 1981, Dr Langer wondered whether aging was really purely mechanistic, or whether one’s environment and mindset played a role. To find out, she recruited eight men, all in their 70s, most with standard-issue problems of average men in their 70s: some joint stiffness, back pain, arthritis, and mobility issues. Some walked with a cane or were slightly hunched over. Others had eyesight or hearing trouble.

A Time Travel Experiment

On a crisp New Hampshire autumn day in 1981, these men were driven to a converted monastery which had been renovated to be a communal living space for the eight subjects. But this was no ordinary renovation. As the men entered their new temporary home for the next five days, they felt like they’d just stepped through a time portal.

In the living room, The Ed Sullivan Show was playing on an old black and white TV. Somewhere in another room, Doris Day was singing from a vintage radio. The books, newspapers, and magazines were all from the late 1950s, as was the furniture and decor. They were given clothes they might have worn in 1959. Even the food was 1950s cuisine. Nothing of the present-day world was evident.

It was as if these men had time traveled back some 20-plus years into the past.

But the subjects quickly learned that this was no nursing home or hotel. Nobody was going to haul their luggage up to their rooms for them. They were to do everything for themselves, from the cooking to the cleaning.

The men were not just there to reminisce about “the old days,” however. For the duration of the week, they were instructed to adjust their mindset, to effectively turn back their clocks by twenty-two years, and to live, speak, and act as if they were over twenty years younger.

They played 1950s games, watched 1950s TV, and read their 1950s magazines. They were not to talk about the politics of 1981, but could talk all about events of the 1950s, and to treat such topics as if they were present day events. They decided when to eat, when to go to bed, and when to get up. Oh and one more thing: no mirrors.

For all intents and purposes, these men spent a week living in their own past, as if twenty years younger. This would become known as the “counter-clockwise experiment” and it would challenge much of what we’ve come to believe about aging.
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The results?

Almost “too good to be true,” said Dr. Langer.

At the end of the week, the participants showed better posture, stronger grip strength, more mobility, less pain, more energy, better mood, and greater manual dexterity. Some even showed improvements in both their vision and hearing.

Two-thirds of the men scored higher on intelligence tests. Independent volunteers who were asked to judge the ages of the men both before and after the experiment consistently assessed the “after” photos to be at least two years younger than the “before” pics.

Maybe most importantly, the improvements did not immediately fade away. Follow up assessments showed that the subjects continued to feel healthier, stronger, and more rejuvenated even months after the experiment ended.

And if that’s not enough, on the day Langer arrived to end the experiment and pick up the subjects, she was surprised to find these same men “who had seemed so frail only days before, were playing an impromptu touch football game on the front lawn.”

Somehow, these men had effectively grown younger in five days, leading Dr. Langer to conclude that, “many of the consequences of old age may be environmentally determined and thereby potentially reversed through manipulations of the environment.”

Rethinking Aging

While it seems that we still have much to learn about aging, Langer’s work certainly suggests that we seriously rethink not only how we age, but how we treat and care for our elderly.

Mindset matters. Environment matters. What we think and how we act matters (regardless of age!).

So is aging all in the mind? Well, probably not.

But Dr Langer’s counter-clockwise experiment presents us with a fascinating twist in the story of how and why we age. She demonstrated the undeniable power of “as if” thinking and the pivotal roles played by mindset and environment in the way we age.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to some 1980s music and then watch Cheers!

Check it Out!
Beautiful Brain

Did you know that most people have a brain that has a “Brain Age” that’s OLDER than their body?

But now we’ve made it easy to turn back the clock with our newest Holosync collection:

Beautiful Brain

By harnessing the power of brain balance, clarity, and resilience, Beautiful Brain will help you:
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  • Cultivate feelings of peace and centeredness
  • Make your brain younger & healthier
  • Strengthen your mental resilience
  • Reverse rapid brain aging
  • Balance neurochemicals
  • Reduce memory lapse
  • Blow away brain fog

And much more!

You see, “anti-aging” isn’t just for your skin.

Now you can create the kind of healing and rejuvenation your brain needs to reclaim its vitality, its wit, its energy, its inspiration and its power.

And the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see results.

Wise Words
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The Traits of the Truly Wealthy

Posted on by Dr. Toni


Fortunately, many people in this stage of life have developed qualities that, to my mind, constitute true wealth. And though there is no guarantee that these traits will ensure a comfortable life ahead, forestall physical decline or dispel the health and long-term care crises that loom, there is little doubt that they can help those who possess them contend with critical challenges and generate a positive ripple effect.

It is not only economic poverty that poses risks; an impoverished spirit and negative outlook also make us fragile. The characteristics and behaviors possessed by the richest Americans I know form a protective armor that lets them weather life’s blows and rebound.

I’ve learned a great deal about the traits of 50+ people leading rich lives from my work here at Next Avenue.

1. They’ve mastered a lot of life lessons and they want to pass them on. So they look for opportunities to teach and mentor others.

2. They’ve pinpointed a few causes they really care about, work at developing deep insights about them and donate their time and energy to them in the belief that they can help change things for the better. They don’t worry about whether they’re impacting a single individual or the world.

3. They are grateful for what they have and take steps to share it.

4. They are seekers and doers who are enthusiastic participants in life — they are fully engaged in work, play and relationships.

5. They have a hunger to keep learning — information, skills, fresh practices — to foster brain health and become better equipped to stay employed and contribute to society in fresh ways.

6. They have an open heart, build communities around them, forge and cherish connections with people of all ages and help others create nourishing bonds.

7. They try to learn from their mistakes and take action to heal old wounds, smooth out past relationships and resolve regrets.

8. They think about life’s big questions, focus on being open-eyed and taking action to become more emotionally insightful.

9. They acknowledge difficulty but choose to believe in the possibility of positive outcomes and try to spread the happiness they cultivate.

10. They respect and take care of themselves. They are conscientious about making healthy food choices, exercising regularly and taking measures to reduce stress. They accept that they have a responsibility to cultivate physical and mental well-being and to protect and honor their bodies. Why? To make the most of their own lives and to ease the prospective future burdens on their loved ones.

part of an article in NEXTAVENUE  by Donna Sapolin

 

Mental Diets by Neville Goddard

Posted on by Dr. Toni

Segment Taken From an Audio Transcript of a Recording called:
Mental Diets by Neville Goddard

nevillegThe mind always behaves according to the assumption with which it starts. Therefore, to experience success, we must assume that we are successful. We must live wholly on the level of the imagination itself, and it must be consciously and deliberately undertaken. It does not matter if at the present moment external facts deny the truth of your assumption, if you persist in your assumption it will become a fact. Signs follow, they do not precede.

To assume a new concept of yourself is to that extent to change your inner talking or Word of God and is, therefore, putting on the New Man. Our inner talking, though unheard by others, is more productive of future conditions than all the audible promises and threats of men. Your ideal is waiting to be incarnated, but unless you yourself offer it human parentage it is incapable of birth. You must define the person you wish to be and then assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled in faith that that assumption will find expression through you.

Test it. Try it. Conceive yourself to be one that you want to be and remain faithful to that conception, for life here is only a training ground for image making. Try it and see if life will not shape itself on the model of your imagination.

The transformation of self requires that we meditate on a given phrase, a phrase which implies that our ideal is realized, and inwardly affirm it over and over and over again until we are inwardly affected by its implication, until we are possessed by it. Hold fast to your noble inner convictions or “conversations.”

Nothing can take them from you but yourself. Nothing can stop them from becoming objective facts. All things are generated out of your imagination by the Word of God, which is your own inner conversation. And every imagination reaps its own Words which it has inwardly spoken.

The great secret of success is a controlled inner conversation from premises of fulfilled desire. The only price you pay for success is the giving up of your former conversation which belongs to the Old Man, the unsuccessful man. The time is ripe for many of us to take conscious charge in creating heaven on earth. To consciously and voluntarily use our imagination, to inwardly hear and only say that which is in harmony with our ideal, is actively bringing heaven to earth.

Every time we exercise our imagination lovingly on behalf of another, we are literally mediating God to that one. Always use your imagination masterfully, as

a participant, not an onlooker. In using your imagination to transform energy from the mental, emotional level to physical level, extend your senses – look and imagine that you are seeing what you want to see, that you are hearing what you want to hear, and touching what you want to touch. Become intensely aware of doing so. Give your imaginary state all the tones and feeling of reality. Keep on doing so until you arouse within yourself the mood of accomplishment and the feeling of relief.

This is the active, voluntary use of the imagination as distinguished from the passive, involuntary acceptance of appearances. It is by this active, voluntary

use of the imagination that the Second Man, the Lord from heaven, is awakened in man. Men call imagination a plaything, the “dream faculty.” But actually it is the very gateway of reality. Imagination is the way to the state desired, it is the truth of the state desired, and the life of that state desired. Could you realize this fully, there would you know that what you do in your imagination is the only important thing.

Through the portals of the present the whole of time must pass. Imagine elsewhere as here, and then as now. Try it and see. You can always tell if you have succeeded in making the future dream a present fact by observing your inner talking. If you are inwardly saying what you would audibly say were you physically present and physically moving about in that place, then you have succeeded. And you could prophesy it from these inner conversations, and from the moods which they awaken within you, what your future will be.