Does meditation reverse aging? That is a great question! The short answer is – yes. You can reverse aging with meditation. I’ve experienced it myself personally and I’ve seen it happen with others who practice meditation.
An even better question may be: How do I gracefully age or do so consciously? This question incorporates the idea of your viewpoint and perspective on aging and how important it is.
I think this question gets to the heart of the matter best. Let’s all admit this truth up front: It is difficult to age! As we get older, we notice changes in our bodies. But how do we react? Do we deny our aging and hang on to our youth? Or do we consciously reflect on aging and how it makes us feel?
Ask yourself realistically:
- How do you feel as you notice these changes to your body?
- How do you relate to these changes as you feel older?
Become aware of how you are facing the aging process:
- Do you consider it natural and inevitable?
- What does it make you feel and think?
A response I often hear is that it makes you feel anxious. The reality is that a lot of people fear aging. Be aware of how you are motivated by your anxiety in reaction to aging. For example, are you doing everything you can to stay young? How much energy are you putting into maintenance to keep looking young?
I like to reflect upon this discussion in this way. Aging is an experience to help us raise our self-awareness. It gives us an opportunity to find greater balance and wholeness within ourselves. We learn to attune better with what we feel as we age. Reflection helps us become aware and age gracefully.
Avoiding Aging
On the flip side of this discussion, how do we accelerate aging? These, of course, are things that you want to avoid as much as possible to look and feel younger.
Worry
Worry is often aimed at the uncertainty of the future and focuses on what may or may not be.
Poor diet
We eat poorly, and it impacts our bodies in physical, mental, and emotional ways. Feed your body with those things that make it healthier and feel satisfied.
Stress
We experience stress for many reasons, but commonly, generalized anxiety can eat away at people. When people are asked what most ages them, this answer tends to be the first reason people give.
Beating yourself up
It’s important to learn to be gracious and forgiving to yourself. You cannot live in shame and guilt when you consciously practice forgiveness. Research finds that those who love themselves can better reach out compassionately to others.
Lifestyle
Things like exercise, sleep, and alcohol and drug use all play an important part in your overall lifestyle choices. Many people are surprised at how beneficial relationships and family are to one’s long-term health.
How Does Meditation, Relaxation, and Energy Healing Help Us Slow Down Aging or Reverse the Aging Process?
Is it possible to reverse the aging process? Yes, I believe so. When I started meditating, I felt younger. My body started releasing toxins and energies that had been keeping me stressed out in a high-paying, high-stress corporate job that had been eating away at me and dragging down my health.
As we get older, we become rigid, set in our ways, and attached to our routines. We get comfortable and become more afraid to try new things. Meditation and mindfulness helps open us up to energy and all areas of our lives.
I worked in the corporate world in a high-pressure situation, and the stress of it started to make me feel old. Yoga and meditation helped me stay younger. People even commented on how I looked younger. How you feel every day affects your energy.
Don’t resist the aging process, because that creates worry and anxiety. It’s true, there is a sense of loss through aging. People say, “I am not able to do what I used to do.” It is important to create a paradigm shift around how you address aging. Consider the following six key areas as guiding principles that will help you look and feel younger, and help you slow down the aging process.
6 Key Areas to Make You Feel Younger and Slow Down the Aging Process
1. Deal With Your Thoughts and the Way You Think
The average person has between 60,000 and 90,000 thoughts per day. Now that’s a lot of thoughts! Many people are surprised at how many of those are harsh, judgmental, and negative.
Enter meditation. Meditation helps you be aware of how you think. Meditation can create a sense of stillness and help change the nature of your thoughts.
On the contrary, negative, stressful, and fearful thoughts make you age faster. Consider a quick exercise:
- Think of something negative that happened to you. How is your body reacting to those negative thoughts?
- Now think about something that makes you feel happy and joyful right now. Take a moment to feel how your body reacts to your positive thoughts.
Most people agree that negative thoughts are pervasive and heavy. Imagine having negative thoughts repetitively throughout any given day. Negative energy weighs on us and eventually shuts us down. Negative thoughts are taxing and make you age faster. They eat away at your health and vitality.
Find tools that help you take control of your thoughts. I find that deep breaths work to ground negative thinking. We only have a certain number of breaths in our lifetime. Make each one count.
For more information on controlling your thoughts, please see another blog article, “How to Get Rid of Negative Thoughts,” specifically on this topic.
2. Give Yourself Space to Rest, Relax, and Have Downtime
Overworking and overdoing ages us and takes a toll on our minds and bodies. However, our culture seems to be continually battling overdoing. We are always churning without rest or sleep. You need rest and downtime to help you step away from the stress, calm yourself, and return to homeostasis.
Notice when you get stuck in stress mode. It feels like we are turned on, on guard, and always “go, go, go” – you’re in fight or flight mode. We need to produce in our jobs and we push to get bigger, faster, stronger, and more efficient. That’s a lot of stress! We can’t go on at that pace without crashing and burning. We need to unwind and relax. Let go. Release tension. You don’t need cortisol to fight or run away. Start breathing exercises. You can eliminate toxins through your lungs and breath which allows you to return to your center.
I teach meditation classes and coaching where we begin with the relaxation response. I tell people to rest and digest. From survival mode to relaxation response, learning to rest and digest helps you self-regulate. Many people ask about meditation and when is the best time to slow down and meditate.
For more information, please read this article, When Is the Best Time to Meditate?
3. Pay Attention to Your Body so That it is Active Each Day
You will learn to notice when your body is hurting or stressed compared to when your body is in a groove. Your brain responds to breath. Move the energy in your body to regulate and stimulate – power runs through your body like a super-highway system — through the meridians and channels in your body.
As we get older, we dry up, so it becomes very important to move energy throughout your body. I teach self-energy healing and self-massage. For example, rub your hands together to feel the energy generated. Or bring your hands to your heart and feel the electricity, energy, and flow. Stimulation keeps us young. Massaging, touching, and moving are important, so your body doesn’t feel stagnant and dry up.
In my forties, these self-practices are important to stay young, healthy, youthful, and creative.
Movement releases energy and tension. Energy opens up and flows through us. Energy, electricity, and flow keeps us strong. Otherwise, we become stagnant.
Techniques, such as dry brushing, tapping, and EFT, open meridians and send positive energy back into ourselves and the world. This energy helps you feel good and stay connected.
4. Be Aware of How you Deal With and Process Your Hard Emotions
The pandemic means people are going through loneliness, instability, personal loss, financial loss, anxiety, and depression. Emotions are all over the place. Ask yourself: Do I process and express emotions or suppress them and shut them down?
The goal is to have emotional awareness. Do you feel safe to release and express your emotions? Do you feel safe to admit that you are even having them?
Do you think some emotions are bad? If you do, you will tend to shut them down and deny your emotions.
Face what’s real. Meditation helps us do that. Meditation helps us to be honest about what we feel so it does not stay trapped in there. Chinese medicine shows us that emotions are connected to our bodies and negative emotions, in particular, can get trapped. Fully feel your emotions. Let them move and flow through you.
Move toward helping others by empathizing with them, knowing they are often going through hardships just as you may be.
5. Examine Your Lifestyle and How You Live and Spend Your Time
Create your lifestyle from a place of love and joy. Align with your purpose.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you willing to give yourself peace by bringing your life together with your calling?
- Are you willing to create a lifestyle that helps you feel balanced and at ease?
- Do you love yourself enough to give yourself that kind of space?
- What’s your work? Are you working or not working? Does your work align with your passions and callings, or do you just work a job?
- Do you make hard decisions and say no to some good things that don’t fit your family’s values, purpose, and calling?
6. Maintain Positive Focus, Intention, and Purpose
I like to ask these questions of my clients when I work as a meditation coach. Are you living your purpose with something you love? Do you feel joy? Do you feel passionate about and enjoy it?
Meditation can give us access to infinite, unlimited energy. When we take time to rest in our center, we need less sleep and are not making up for deficits.
You get fed on another level – an unlimited energy system we all have to tap into; a more subtle energy to help us thrive. Universal energy feels like bliss. Allow yourself to tap into it during meditation and surrender to that positive chi that flows through all things.
How Does Meditation Reverse Aging?: Frequently Asked Questions
Can Meditation Make You Feel/Look Younger?
Yes, meditation can make you feel and look younger! Meditation puts you in touch with your emotions, life stressors, and the things that hold you back from living your best life. When you meditate, you release blocks and let more chi flow through your body. You release negative emotions and feel better as a result. When you start looking better, people will wonder if you’re reversing aging with meditation.
How Can I Slow Down Aging?
The following things can help you age gracefully and even reverse aging as you feel younger and more powerful. We advise to:
- Deal with your thoughts and the way you think
- Give yourself space to rest, relax, and have downtime
- Pay attention to your body so that it is active each day
- Be aware of how you deal with and process your hard emotions
- Examine your lifestyle and how you live and spend your time
- Maintain positive focus, intention, and purpose
To practice this type of anti-aging meditation and help accomplish this anti-aging process, watch the video presentation on this topic and join in the guided meditation at the end of the video. Thanks for reading. May we all age gracefully with ease.
