“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.” - Sophia Loren
According to Wikipedia, “The Fountain of Youth is a mythical spring which allegedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted around the world for thousands of years,…Based on these many legends, explorers and adventurers, such as Ponce De Leon, looked for the elusive Fountain of Youth…”
And the truth is most of us wish Ponce had found it, so many people hate and fear aging! They see the body almost as a foreigner, as a betrayer, rather than a process - a process that a soul came to experience. Stage one in that process is birth; the last stage death - and every stage in-between a glorious lesson in the human experience. There is not a moment - painful or pleasant - that is not to be savored.
But what if there really was a Fountain of Youth, and those who drank or bathed in it could live forever? Think about it. What would really happen? And what would that really mean? Would those “lucky” souls feel so invulnerable that they would slowly lose all empathy for others? But worse, would they lose all appreciation for the joys of life? Would they still treasure a home cooked meal? Would they stop and sigh over a beautiful sunset? After all, they literally would have forever to experience another…and another…and another.
So, if the idea is not to live forever, isn’t the key to life to live as well as one possibly can and then to accept the end with grace and gratitude? Easy to say…But what does it mean to “live well”? The trouble is that definition varies from person to person. For example, a friend of mine died of metastatic breast cancer. It was discovered late stage. She did an experimental treatment, but she refused to alter her lifestyle in any way. “If I have to go without wine, I’d rather die,” she said. If it was me, I would’ve tried everything - not so much to live on, but to try things, experiment with approaches, and report back on what works. She did what was right for her. I’d do what is right for me. There is no right or wrong way. My friend’s husband said her attitude in death was wonderful to be around. She had done or tried to do everything in life that meant anything to her. She had accepted what hadn’t worked out. She had a spiritual life that mattered to her. She died in a good way at what felt like the right time - to her. Living fully, by your own design and definition, is the key to recreating that formula.
There are two ways people age prematurely: first through the body and second through mental outlook. Both can be helped with hypnotherapy. In this blog, I’ll start to address physical aging, finish it in Part 2, then in Part 3, I’ll take on the mind.
The Cleveland Clinic has a handy list of causes of premature aging: sun exposure, high-energy visible (HEV) light which comes from smart phones as well as the sun, environmental factors, smoking, unhealthy diet, drinking too much alcohol, poor sleep, and stress.
Interestingly, the last four - smoking, unhealthy diet, drinking too much alcohol, poor sleep, and stress - are main reasons clients seek hypnotherapy. Usually, if a client comes for sleep, we discover that there are related reasons - like stress as well as handling stress through bad diet, drinking too much alcohol and eating too many sweets. Therefore, before we even approach ways of improving sleep through hypnosis, we have to look at the whole person. We must unpack sources of stress which may seem unrelated to the client - like eating a donut before bed, or staring at a screen device for moments before turning off the lights. “Good sleep hygiene,” as a proper nighttime routing is called today, may take a while for the client to establish.
Most hypnotherapy clients are fairly sophisticated. For example, they know what a healthy diet consists of. They know that smoking can cause cancer. They know they need 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night. However, something in their belief system - in their subconscious programming - keeps nudging them to do what they know is harmful for their health. The subconscious mind is very literal and it’s also the seat of the emotions. More importantly, it moves away from pain and toward pleasure. This means that, with a man who drinks too much wine, for example, that he is getting a literal message from his subconscious to engage in that behavior, that this behavior grew out of a powerful emotion in the past, and that he compulsively drinks - even though his conscious mind knows better. Therefore, he needs to find the root cause - (or all the root causes, if there’s more than one) and neutralize his emotional relationship to it. He also need hypnotic suggestions to do the behavior that he intends.
Best of all, hypnotherapy and the practice of self-hypnosis provide an easy, pleasant change in lifestyle that automatically reduces stress and raises self-esteem - and thereby help a client feel healthier and younger. Hypnotherapy focuses on creating new pathways in the brain by flooding it with positive emotions in relation to new habits and/or achieving a goal. These positive emotions help a client see that peace, success and satisfaction are not only possible, but also within reach.
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