I decided to write this book because I sensed that spiritual practice and healthy aging go together. Now it seems that science agrees. Dr. Roger Walsh, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine, has recently written an article summarizing this research.4 He began by noting that aging-related diseases such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer are all affected by lifestyle choices. This itself is important news for anyone in the second half of life.
Dr. Walsh then listed eight lifestyle factors that have been shown to contribute to healthy aging. These include exercise, diet, time in nature, relationships, recreation, stress management, and service to others. As soon as I saw this list I realized that a spiritual approach to aging and modern research had a lot in common. And when I read the last factor—religious and spiritual involvement—I was sure of it. Ancient Taoists and Buddhists combined meditation, exercise, diet, herbs, and minerals to support long life. Clearly they were on to something! Modern research points us in the same direction.
Alan, the history teacher and track coach, called me a few weeks after our interview to tell me that he had joined a meditation-based stress-reduction class. “I went back to my doctor and he said my blood pressure was up. He asked me if anything had changed in my life and I just laughed.”
As a meditator, Alan was already familiar with the use of meditation for stress. Using a method of mindfulness meditation developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and explained in his book Wherever You Go, There You Are, many teachers of mindfulness-based stress reduction are working throughout the country in hospitals, clinics, skilled nursing facilities, and mental health centers. Alan was able to find a class at a hospital near the school where he worked.
I was interested to read a recent article5 that defined meditation as an awareness practice that focuses the mind and trains the attention, leading to feelings of calm and well-being. It went on to say that meditation is a worldwide practice found in every major religion.
How much has changed since the days when I began meditating in my college dorm room! At that time meditation was little known or understood.
My college adviser called me into his office one day and cleared his throat. “Mr. Richmond. It has come to my attention that you are burning incense in your room and doing…meditation.” He said the word with distaste.
I hastily assured him that I was up to nothing nefarious. “I’m a philosophy major,” I said. “I’m specializing in Neoplatonism.”
Somehow that explanation seemed to satisfy him, although I soon got rid of the incense.
Today meditation in its various forms is discussed on Oprah, explained in airplane safety booklets, and taught in thousands of books, magazine articles, websites, and retreat centers. Meditation has arrived. Western science has scores of medicines for blood pressure, anxiety, and stress, but Alan didn’t want to take a pill and convinced his doctor to let him try meditation first. The American Psychologist article supported Alan’s choice, noting that “several hundred studies over four decades” confirm that meditation can help with conditions such as high blood pressure and lead to “feelings of improved self-control and self-esteem.” Each of the contemplative reflections in this book are a form of Buddhist-based meditation, and each offers a centuries-old path to easing worry, developing acceptance, and deepening wisdom. Modern science, which has numerous ways to objectively measure stress, confirms that meditation really works—without drugs or other outside intervention. Buddhist methods alter our mental state from the inside, making us more self-reliant in dealing with our own problems. Shunryu Suzuki liked to say that meditation was a way to make us “the boss of everything.” That was his lighthearted way of saying that we can have confidence in our own inner resources.
I have always loved being in nature. My first spiritual experiences were in a forest near college, and even today I maintain my connection with nature through such practices as the gratitude walk.
When I was a college student I took nature for granted. Mine may be the last generation in the industrialized world that feels that way. Now, all over the world, people increasingly spend their time in artificial environments: office buildings, underground malls, apartments, and even homes. For many, the closest they get to nature is a corner window or a houseplant. This “global experiment,” in Dr. Roger Walsh’s words, has costs, and he lists them: disruptions of mood and sleep, impairment of attention, and greater cognitive decline in the elderly. The multimedia world of television, Internet, and cell phones further separates us from nature.
The boomer generation grew up without computers, iPods, and cell phones. In fact, we invented them. But we have now embraced them and are surrounded by them. Facebook, originally developed for teenagers, has seen its greatest growth among people over fifty. At a time when the over-fifties need the restorative power of nature more than ever, we are spending more of our time online.
A recent Harvard Health Letter6 reminds us that “Light tends to elevate people’s mood, and there’s usually more light available outside than in.” It cites recent research in England on “green exercise” that showed health benefits from exposure to the color green in the outdoors.
It seems obvious when you think about it. We evolved in nature, and our spiritual feelings of oneness and worship come from nature. All of the world religions were founded in rural settings. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born in the desert, where the herding of sheep and the cultivation of grain shaped people’s lives. Hinduism and Buddhism came from the tropical forests of India, where a hermit could live on fruit and nuts and needed no more shelter than a large tree. The Buddha achieved enlightenment under a tree.
How many of us today have ever met a shepherd, separated the wheat from the chaff, or picked fruit in a tropical forest? How many of us have grown up in a village where all the generations lived together and where elders taught children the skills of life? In many parts of the world, people still live this way, but even there, cell phones are common and things are changing.
Nature helps us age well because it nurtures us; that’s why we call her Mother Nature. Spiritual practice was once intimately bonded with nature. Today there is an iPhone application that will set up an altar for you and ring a chime to begin and end your meditation. On Second Life, the virtual reality website, your “avatar” can “visit” a Buddhist temple and hear a talk on meditation from a wise beetle or a space-age robot.
Ours is a new world, and who knows where it is heading? I once made my living as a software designer, and I confess to being something of a techie. I also spent several years in a mountain monastery without telephones or electricity, absorbing the spiritual teaching of “Great Nature,” as my teacher called it. Both experiences are now a part of me. The techie part maintains my Droid smartphone calendar, but for spiritual sustenance I invariably return to Great Nature.
There is a movement among environmental scientists called the “biophilia hypothesis” that says we need regular exposure to nature just to maintain normal mental health; without it, our minds don’t function well. Maybe this explains why, when I ask people what they don’t like about aging, so many of them reply, “The whole world seems to be changing so fast.” People in their fifties and sixties today remember a time when nature and the great outdoors were right at hand. I myself spent my childhood in the outer suburbs; there was a vacant field next door to my house. I loved that vacant field and used to spend hours exploring it or lying on my back in the tall grass that would grow there in the summer until it was mowed for hay. Recently I went back to visit. The whole neighborhood is now a shopping center. That vacant field is now shared by a KFC and a Jack in the Box.
Standing there in the parking lot, I mourned for that vacant field.
I recently came across an article that reviewed more than seven hundred scientific studies looking at the correlation between religious involvement and physical and mental health and was stunned to discover that those who attend religious services at least once a week tend to survive seven years longer than those who don’t.7 This is especially true when religious involvement includes service to others. The study did not distinguish between type of religion, or whether it was meditative or contemplative. Any kind of religious or spiritual involvement was included.
During my training, I spent many years attending religious services several times a day, and for more than thirty years I have led meditation groups that meet from once to several times a week.
I never knew that my lifelong pursuit of meditation had such a practical value! I’ll be sure to let the members of my religious community know about this extra benefit. What this result tells me is how essential and important a spiritual life is for basic well-being, and how much we all need it.
But why is that so? These days many people feel disconnected from the religion of their childhood. I know many people who think of Sunday morning as an ideal time to surf news sites, update their Facebook page, and catch up on their e-mails. At the same time, the latest Pew religion research polls show that millions of people are interested in spiritual matters, though they are adherents of no particular religion.
Shunryu Suzuki, in describing Zen practice, said, “In our practice, we rely on something great, and sit in that great space.”8 I find this sentence beautiful because with a slight change in vocabulary it could refer to any religious practice. Someone could say, “In our religion, we rely on God and sit with God.” God is something great, or as St. Anselm defined God, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” A Buddhist would have no quarrel with St. Anselm’s language. Suzuki would have welcomed it.
As for living seven more years, that result would seem to be connected to relying on something greater than ourselves. Ninety percent of the world’s population engages in religious practices, says Dr. Walsh. So nearly everyone relies on something great. In one sense, age is a time of diminishment: Growing old, we have less energy—physically, sexually, and emotionally. But relying on something great counterbalances this diminishment. As we become individually smaller, the greatness that is within us can become greater. Just as the research on the benefits of meditation did not distinguish between the many kinds and styles of meditation, the research on religious involvement did not distinguish by faith. Whatever our style, whatever our faith, all spiritual practice contributes to healthy aging, where all of us may sit in that great space.
Modern research affirms what all religions have known: Service to others brings gifts to oneself. As the Dalai Lama put it, “If you’re going to be selfish, be wisely selfish, which means to love and serve others, since love and service to others bring rewards to oneself that otherwise would be unachievable.”9 If scientific validation of this truth is needed, there are a number of studies that provide it.10 People who volunteer their time are happier, healthier, and may live longer.
Because I have had many illnesses, I am often asked for advice by people with chronic or intractable disease. This is never easy. What do you say to someone who is ill and will probably never recover? In the midst of my own illnesses, there was a time when I was inconsolable. None of the good advice people gave me really hit home, and I used to think, “What do they know, really?”
Now what I say to people is what I have come to know from responding to other people’s pleas for help—that a positive thing about being sick is that it can be a gift to others. I urge them to reach out to someone who needs their help.
In reading the research on service and aging, I found this comment: “If giving weren’t free, pharmaceutical companies could herald the discoveries of a stupendous new drug called Give Back—instead of Prozac.”11
Fortunately for all of us, it is free, and it gives in all directions—to ourselves, to those we help, and to invisible recipients in the larger web of generosity.
Dr. Walsh’s article mentions three aspects of a healthy diet: fresh fruits and vegetables, fish as a primary protein source, and reduced calories. As to the last, Dr. Robert Russell, the president of the American Society of Nutrition, recently wrote that while the public is aware of obesity’s health risks, “that awareness has not translated into major behavioral change.”12 In other words, while many of us diet to keep our weight down—I certainly do—we are met with limited success. Studies comparing the various diet regimes such as Weight Watchers, Atkins, and Zone show that all of them work—for a while. The problem is staying on them.
I love to eat. All my years of Zen training haven’t changed that. Dr. Russell explained that this isn’t just my problem. We’ve all evolved, he said, to store calories that we don’t need right away. Dieting means “working against the way our bodies have been programmed.” Even though keeping my weight down is a challenge with each passing year, my Zen training has helped me in one area: bodily awareness. Meditation helps me “tune in” to my body and listen to what my stomach is telling me.
The stomach has two main jobs: to digest our food and to signal us when it has had enough. That signal needs a while to reach our brain, often as much as fifteen or twenty minutes. Meanwhile, that signal can easily be overridden by emotion—a fact well understood by the snack food industry. The emotional override of a piece of chocolate or a bag of potato chips is strong. If we are feeling sad, anxious, or lonely, the override is even stronger. If we think of that override as a kind of static interfering with the stomach’s fullness signal, it is possible for our awareness to cut through that static.
Michael Pollen, in his bestselling eating guide, Food Rules, points out that many cultures have incorporated this sensitivity to the stomach’s fullness into their eating customs, and even into their language. The Japanese, Pollen says, have an expression for fullness that translates as “80 percent full.” The French say, “I have no more hunger.” They don’t say, “I am full,” but simply that the feeling of hunger is gone. As with many healthy principles, there was a time when this sense of conscious eating was well-known.
Try it the next time you are eating. Make it a point to “listen” to your stomach. From time to time ask your stomach, “How are you feeling? Have you had enough?” The stomach’s answer will be a sensation—often rather subtle—of fullness. Notice as you do this that there is another signal vying for attention: a voice saying, “More! More!” That voice is the emotional static. The static is usually stronger and louder than the stomach, but with practice and focus it is possible to hear the stomach’s honest answer.
This is an awareness practice, and I try to do it whenever I eat. Sometimes I can hear what my stomach is really saying, sometimes not. I am continually impressed by how difficult this practice is. Sometimes I tell myself that I am on the ELF diet: Eat Less Food. Other times I give up in frustration and just eat what I want.
And when all that fails, I do what many people with iPhones and Android phones have discovered: There are smartphone applications that work as online calorie counters for the diet-conscious. I use one on my Droid called “Calorie Counter,” and there is one for the iPhone called “Tap and Track.”
Millions of people in the second half of life are engaged in this same struggle, fueling a multibillion-dollar diet and weight-loss industry. Whenever I see a clip of an old movie showing a thin Fred Astaire dancing with an equally svelte Ginger Rogers, I know it didn’t used to be this way. They probably didn’t have to diet. Portion sizes were smaller then, they clearly exercised as part of their daily lives, and the fast-food nation wasn’t born until the mid-1950s. In the meantime, we must all keep trying to eat healthy foods, to eat less food, and to listen to the stomach. Use your “gut feeling” to tell you what you need to know.
Actually, sensible eating is a good practice at any stage of life, but it is particularly true in the second half of life. As Dr. Walsh’s article makes clear, all the research convincingly shows that the three biggest killers as we age—heart disease, cancer, and diabetes—are all closely correlated to weight, stress, and diet.
I was speaking with Dr. James, a psychiatrist whose patients were mostly over fifty. I said, “In your experience, what is the single most important factor for healthy aging?”
“Flexibility,” he answered. He didn’t just mean limber joints, although that helps too. He was referring to mental flexibility, the ability to adjust and adapt to physical, mental, and emotional changes as we age.
John, in his seventies, and Sybil, in her sixties, were putting their house on the market, one in which they had lived for more than thirty years. It was a multilevel, rustic home on several acres of unspoiled wilderness, and I knew how much they loved it.
When I asked them why they were selling, Sybil said, “We’re both getting old. We’re healthy now, but anything could happen. If suddenly one of us can’t climb all these stairs anymore, we don’t want to have to deal with the problem then. We want to deal with it now when we can.”
John added, “Sybil and I intend to get very, very old together, and this house with all these stories isn’t a house to get old in. We’re healthy now, but I’m thirteen years away from being ninety, and one slipup on the stairs could change everything for our future. So while it still can be an adventure, and while we can still handle a big move like this, we’re going for it.”
John and Sybil are a touching example of what Dr. James means by flexibility. It’s especially impressive when a married couple can come to such a conclusion together. That doesn’t always happen.
In contrast, Alan’s high blood pressure was a sign that his difficulty adjusting to his own aging was causing stress. Like so many people, Alan had built his career and identity around a picture of himself as young, capable, and vigorous. Hearing about the sudden death of a friend his own age challenged that picture and forced him to bump up against his own fixed ideas of himself. Going to the stress-reduction class was a wise move for Alan, a first step to help him toward the possibility of flexibility and change.
Emma is another good example of someone who discovered a new flexibility to accommodate her advancing arthritis. Artists have a knack for it; they often have an ability to see fresh possibilities where others cannot. I asked her if she had any secrets to share about her success in adjusting to her arthritis. She wasn’t sure, but she did tell me about how her friends tried to comfort her by comparing her to Matisse, another artist who found a way to keep painting in spite of physical disability.
“Well, I didn’t want to hear about Matisse!” Emma said. “How did that help me? I still had to find my own way. Nobody else could do it for me.”
As she was speaking, she dropped the brush she was holding onto the floor. I bent to pick it up but she shooed me off.
“Let it be,” she said. “I don’t need it now.”
As we age, we become less spontaneous and impulsive than when we were young, and tend to develop well-honed routines. In part this is because by the time we are fifty or sixty our tastes have matured and we know what we like and what works for us. For example, every morning I toast large-grain couscous, mix it half and half with four-grain cereal, sprinkle it with sesame salt, and eat it with a poached egg. I’ve had a lifetime to try other breakfasts, and this is the one I like best. These kinds of routines help busy lives run more efficiently and flow more pleasantly.
However, there is another kind of routine that reduces our capacity to be flexible, which Dr. James said was the single most important factor for healthy aging. Routines of this kind can ossify and make us less able to adjust to aging’s inevitable changes. Rigidity reduces pleasure and possibility in our life and closes doors that need to remain open for aging to blossom.
I experienced this while I was healing from encephalitis, a nearly fatal brain infection that sent me into a sudden two-week coma when I was fifty-two. The doctors never found out exactly what caused my illness, but in the days before its onset, I had a bad mosquito bite, one that made my whole arm swell up. Once I was out of rehab and recuperating at home, I developed a phobia of going outside, particularly during the mosquito season, which lasts several months in California. Even though there was no proof a mosquito had caused my encephalitis, I had read that mosquitoes can cause it—through West Nile virus and similar illnesses—and I developed an irrational fear that if I went outside, I risked getting the dread disease again.
It was only when I realized how much I had impoverished my life and my enjoyment of time in the garden or park that I went to work on my phobia. Phobias, like many rigid habits, are irrational; you can’t will them away. But logic can help. I took out a pad and paper and created a question-and-answer exercise for myself.
I wrote:
Do I know for sure that a mosquito caused my illness? Answer: No.
What are the chances of a disease like West Nile virus causing encephalitis? (I asked my doctor about this). Answer: 1 in 50,000.
Can I wear a hat, a long-sleeved shirt, and mosquito repellant during mosquito season? Answer: Of course!
Which is stronger, my fear of the dreaded illness coming back or my desire to have a normal life with normal enjoyments? I wasn’t sure about this one for a while. I had to do some real soul-searching to finally convince myself that the answer was on the side of returning to my normal enjoyments.
Medically, by this time my encephalitis had long since receded. Emotionally, I had acquired a rigid attitude that was keeping me in a fearful state. But I overcame it, finally. Taking a hike at the height of summer on a favorite trail by the seashore with Amy at my side and a backpack full of lunch goodies was the moment of my final healing.
So as this chapter’s contemplative reflection, I ask you to inquire of yourself where some rigidity of your own may have set in. Have you recently had an injury, illness, or accident that has made you unable to function as you once were able? Are you upset and angry that because of a bad knee you can no longer run, that because of a bad elbow you can no longer play tennis, that because of arthritis you can no longer play the piano?
Have you suffered a trauma that has made you fearful? Are you like Linda, an old friend of mine who suffered an episode of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome through overuse of a computer mouse? Even though the condition healed, the stress of the experience made her unable to use, or even look at, a computer without feeling sick to her stomach.
Once you have identified your own fear or rigidity, begin by taking comfort in that fact. It happens to all of us. As a second step, logically take stock of your situation. Take out a pencil and paper as I did, and write down the questions you need to ask yourself, together with the answers. You may think it is unnecessary to actually write them down this way, but the act of writing carries its own power. Rigid habits and fears have their home in the dark corners of the unconscious. Writing and reading back what you have written shines the light of awareness on the dark corner.
Try it and see.
You may need to work on your problem for days or weeks, particularly if some of the questions you ask yourself do not have ready answers. Don’t try too hard to come up with answers. Go easy on yourself. The unconscious sometimes needs time to be convinced that it is all right to let go, to be flexible again.
At some point, the answer is likely to come to you. It could be in a dream; it could be when you wake up suddenlyin the middle of the night, while you are taking a shower, or while you are having a cup of coffee in the morning. In Linda’s case, she figured out that if she put the computer, the keyboard, and the screen up on the highest shelf in her library, it didn’t bother her anymore. She couldn’t reach it, but she felt emotionally that it could reach her (or hurt her). She lived with it that way for a few weeks and finally took it down.
Her fear was gone. She switched it on, she typed, and she went online and watched an old Laurel and Hardy skit on YouTube.
“I never laughed so hard in my life,” she told me.
Facing our own rigidities can be poignant. In “Happy Anniversary,” an episode of The Cosby Show that I fondly remember, Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable buys his parents plane tickets to fly to Paris to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
“We really appreciate this, son,” his father said. “But we can’t go.”
“Why not?” Dr. Huxtable asks.
“Well,” his father said haltingly, “For one thing, we’d miss being able to open the front door and get The New York Times every morning. We really like that. We’d miss the Times.”
“And I’d have to clean out the refrigerator of all that food I just bought,” his mother added.
“And my oatmeal!” his father added. “I wouldn’t be able to have my oatmeal.”
Of course there was more to it than that. Dr. Huxtable’s parents were old and frail. They were afraid of taking such a long trip at their age but couldn’t admit it, even to themselves. During the half-hour show, Dr. Huxtable tries various strategies to convince his parents to go. Nothing seems to work. Finally, his parents are back in their own home, sitting on the couch, thinking about the cruise. His mother muses, “That young, handsome soldier I married would have taken me to Europe.”
“That’s right!” his father agrees. “In an instant. So let’s go. Let’s not even tell Heathcliff we’re going.”
“We’ll send him a postcard from Paris.” The mother laughs.
Undoubtedly, there is something in your life that is like that cruise to Europe. Can you too find a way to broaden your thinking and overcome the limitation of habit?
When it comes to being more flexible, there is always something you can do.