Stay Flexible in Mind and Body

We are only as old as our spines. We don’t become old and stiff, we become stiff and then we are old. Stop complaining about your back aches and start moving it. If you go to bed with a back ache it will be there in the morning.

As you become older, you become shorter. Ligaments and tendons will shrink. Bodies become locked in concrete crying to be released again. Little old ladies develop the dowager hump. They have not stretched backward in 65 years and they never get a full breath of oxygen. When you tell people to take a deep breath of air, they raise their shoulders. We don’t breathe up and down with shoulders. We breathe in and out with our diaphragm. It is located in your abdomen. Watch the basic essence of a child sleeping in a crib. The abdomen goes up and the abdomen goes down. The shoulders never move when you breathe.

All babies put their feet in their mouths. If you haven’t done this in 20 or 30 years, you can’t do it now.

What happened to your body? Why did you stop moving your body? Men try to look like gorillas, stiff and inflexible and they have no longevity. Huge muscles impede the flow of blood. Golfers are the stiffest people in the world. A right-handed golfer turns to the left 100 times. He never turns right and he never bends backward. And now, in golfing, walking has been super-ceded by a golf cart.

Runners are the second stiffest people in the world. Have you ever seen a runner stop and press against a tree? That’s nothing, nothing. Press against the floor. Get your hands, head and heels all down at the same time. I never saw a runner stop and bend backwards. He can’t.

Years ago, I fractured my back in an aircraft accident in the Korean War and I lost a year of out my life, in and out of hospitals. When I was 50 years old, someone took me to a yoga class and I didn’t know yoga from yogurt. I couldn’t do anything. They told me to stay in position and wait and wait and wait. Six months later, one hour a day, I was in a complete “splits”, front and side and my feet up to the back of my head. It changed my life and now I have the flexibility of a child. Twelve-year-old kids can’t do what I do. Stretching is something that you can do all of your life, long after you’ve stopped running and pumping iron in our 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Stretching is for circulation. You are stretching your veins and arteries, making them more elastic to carry the oxygen to all parts of your body. Stretching is different. Nothing like aerobics – no bouncing, no counting, no loud music. Listen to the sounds of your body. The secret to stretching is relaxation. Holding the posture. You will gain one inch a day and several inches every week. Imagine what can happen in 10 weeks. Get your body back in shape the way it was when you were a child, free of all aches and pains.

The food that you eat makes a big difference in your flexibility. The uric acid in red meat is one of the causes of arthritis. When you eliminate the dead animals from your life and get your protein directly from the land (vegetables and nuts) and not secondhand from a dead animal, it will make a big difference in your life. Cancer of the colon, diverticulitis and heart disease are all caused by food – the wrong food. We die from the food that we eat.

If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got. Change your life. Find a good yoga class. Flexible people are better lovers!

Vol 15 Issue 4 page 1