The Come Alive Project

Tag: Senior Wellness

  • Energy Bite 394 – Laugh for Physical Stimulation and Mental Healing

    I have been going back through older blog articles, starting from the beginning, nearly a decade ago, to pick to choose articles that would fit into a “collection” of the best ones. These would then be edited and compiled into the form of a book. Yes, a book. It wasn’t even my idea. A number of readers suggested that I do it. So, I am.

    I came across this article/essay from September of 2016 and thought it would be a good fit for right now. So with a little rewriting, and a bit of editing, I repeat this old essay. I may even include it in the book.

    Laugh for Physical Stimulus and Mental Healing

    “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.” There’s a lot to that statement.

    Laughter releases chemicals into your body . . . feel good chemicals.

    Laughter exercises your abdominal muscles, your diaphragm, your solar plexus, and that point just below your navel where all movement begins. It strengthens and stimulates that entire area of your body. It can make your voice more powerful and will lift your energy level upward. It feels good to laugh.

    And that’s just the physical aspect. How about the mental side?

    Laughter changes your mental state and your overall attitude. How can you feel bad when you are laughing? How can you be depressed when you are laughing? And just think, comedians are paid a lot of money to make you laugh.

    When you laugh, you are nice to be around. When you cry or complain about life, people want to leave you alone. Laughter brings happiness and joy, albeit temporary, to yourself and to those around you.

    Who or what do we laugh at? We laugh at things we find amusing or funny. We find irony in life’s complexities, and we laugh at them. Best of all, we laugh at ourselves, and often that’s the best laughter of all.

    THE REALITY IS . . . Laughter is “feel good medicine”. The more you do it, the better you feel. It is physically stimulating and mentally healing.

    Laugh a lot!

    Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this article, please forward it to a friend and tell them they can get my weekly articles and essays at www.thecomealiveproject.com  

  • Exercise Lite – Simple Things

    One of the ongoing buzz phrases you hear a lot is “too much sitting”.  It’s true, sitting for long periods of time behind a desk, in a car or on an airplane, can be dangerous for an older person.  Too much time spent on a couch watching endless television can be deadly.

    Try a couple of these movements and stretches while you are watching TV or working at a desk and you will get a little bit better blood circulation through your muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons. If you breathe deeply while you do them, you will reap enormous benefits.

    Move your ankles forward and back fifteen to twenty times, and then rotate your feet at your ankles in a circular motion ten times in each direction.  It loosens up your ankles and gets the blood circulating in your lower extremities.  It’s not particularly important for a younger person, but for an older person, it can be very physically stimulating.  As we get older, we sit more and aren’t on our feet nearly as much as the younger set.  So, we need a way to circulate the blood as well as activate the muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments in the outer parts of our body.  Open and close your toes as wide and as tight as you can for ten or fifteen times.  Do the same with your fingers.

    A couple of minutes of that and similar movements a few times a day is something you need to at least stimulate a little circulation, and you can do it while you’re reading the paper, when you’re watching “the box”, or wasting (I mean spending) your time on Facebook.

    I used to call exercises like foot or ankle rotations and other similar exercises, “wuss exercises” until I realized how valuable they are after sitting in the car for long periods, or writing at a desk or table for and extended amount of time.

    “Squirming” is another example of an “exercise” that can help keep your body circulation process going. Twyla Tharp, the famous dance choreographer now in her 80s, wrote in her recent book, Keep it Moving, Lessons for the Rest of Your Life: “A wriggling movement – squirming looks like what it sounds like, a worm moving. It is formless physical effort, the vaguest of movement inside your skin.”

    Try doing shoulder shrugs while you’re sitting.  Lift one shoulder at a time toward your ear.  Then rotate both your shoulders forward and back.  Try raising one arm over your head, and then the other, bending sideways slightly in each direction while you are sitting at a table or desk.

    These movements don’t really do much to get the heart beating any faster but they do stimulate joints, ligaments and tendons, and even the local muscles.  Give these moves a try and see if they don’t refresh you a bit.

    You don’t have to do them in public when you think other people will stare at you, unless you’re comfortable in your own skin, and don’t mind other people knowing that you take care of yourself.  I’ve stopped letting the “wuss exercise” label hold me back, and I feel a lot better during the day as a result.

    Doing just those simple moves alone will not get you fit.  They will help your circulation, mobility and overall well-being.  They should not replace a regular exercise program, but are simply things you can do short term to keep your blood circulating and your joints loose.  Give them a try while you read this article. You’ll feel better.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 388 – Resilience

    EB 388 – Resilience and Longevity

    One of the more fashionable buzzwords today as related to Longevity is the term: Resilience. You may have seen recent articles in newspapers and magazines about the importance of Resilience to Health and Longevity.

    What is Resilience? It’s the ability to bounce back from adversity and stress in a positive way. Stress has been know as a “silent killer” for many decades but only now does it seem to have been looked at beyond a strictly medical level. Academia and business are getting involved in “resilience” in a major way.

    According to a publication of the Harvard Medical School, Resilience is the ability to cope with stress in a positive way and is associated with longevity, lower rates of depression, and a greater satisfaction with life. A lack of resilience is the inability to handle stress and is associated with high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, and other health challenges.

    According to a publication by the World Health Organization, entitled, Strengthening Resilience: a priority shared by Health 2020 and, the Sustainable Development Goals, Resilience is a major priority, not only at an individual level but systemically through all levels of society.

    Let’s stay with Resilience at the individual level. Since we are all affected by stress in some ways, what is the best way to conquer the stress and develop resilience? The following is a bit technical but as I said, Academia is getting more and more involved in the subject . . .

    In his nearly 800 page book, The Future of the Body, Esalen Institute co-founder Michael Murphy recognized the problem and suggested that resilience can be developed through: “1. Reduction of habitual muscular tensions by somatic disciplines or biofeedback training. 2. Self-reflection that produces hopeful, though realistic, perspectives on life in general. 3. Relinquishment of chronically negative attitudes in psychotherapy or witness meditation. 4. Practiced contact with the self-existent delight revealed by witness meditation, contemplative prayer, and other religious exercises.” (Murphy, Michael, The Future of the Body, p 578).

    Hmm, got all that?

    The Harvard Medical School publication I mentioned above put it like this:

    How to build resilience:

    1. Meditation

    2. Reframe the situation

    3. Being involved in a “real” social network (real life)

    4. Positive thinking

    5. Laugh more

    6. Be optimistic.

    The only thing that the Harvard article left out was: Exercise. And I believe that exercise is one of the best tools to help cope with stress.

    Anyhow, the better our ability to handle the stresses of not only crisis situations, but those of everyday life, the better chances we have of living longer and better, and maintaining our mental and physical health.

    Thank you for reading.