Super Ager. Elise Marie Collins
be a Super Ager.
You are in the driver’s seat, making small choices daily that compound into your aging future. Super Ager awakens you to discover how you want to do your aging. Elise scientifically explains the rules of the game if you want to be a Super Ager—if you want to thrive into your later decades—if you want to experience the connectivity possible for you as a human being, in your decades ahead.
Elise explains what is working for Super Agers and why, through the lens of Ayurveda, the holistic wisdom tradition that co-arose with yoga as the path to radiant longevity and everyday growth. I’ve devoted my career to sharing Ayurvedic wisdom, and Elise has been a partner on my path as the editor of our Yoga Health Coaching blog. Her generous heart and brilliant mind consistently escort me to new ways of thinking. In Super Ager, she has created a boon for Yoga Health Coaches and wellness pros from all traditions, to guide our society in thriving together.
As you read Super Ager, you will re-inspire yourself in the ancient truths about how we age, and discover what is possible for you. You will stimulate the path you must take to evolve right now and into who you truly want to be.
No joke.
You know there is room for you to grow smarter, more fun, more in the flow, and more connected.
If you want to be continually thriving with each day and each decade, get a few pals together—and start a Super Ager book club. Be smitten by your potential. Evolve together as a core Super Ager strategy.
Cate Stillman
Founder of Yogahealer and Yoga Health Coaching
How you age is based mostly on what you do on a daily basis, and this biological fact remains true all throughout life. No matter how many candles are on your birthday cake, it is always possible to change how you are aging. By conservative estimates, 75 percent of how we age depends on lifestyle, not genetics—and even this genetic component is not set in stone! Changing how you live changes the way your genes express themselves in your body, through an “on/off switch” phenomenon called “epigenetics.” Our genes can act differently, depending on the way we act and behave, the way think and believe, and even the way we view and handle our social and environmental circumstances. Epigenetics is still somewhat of a mystery, but some scientists believe that we will someday be able to influence over 90 percent of what our genes do! This optimism may be premature, but the emerging field of epigenetics promises to give us even greater control over our longevity and health. And since daily behavior already accounts for 75 percent or more of how you age, the opportunities are vast. You can Super Age.
While it’s true that there is no exact formula on how to live to one hundred, your activities, the food you eat, how much you sleep, how you move, who you see, how you view your life, and more have massive impacts on how you age. To Super Age means to slow down your relationship with time, to grow younger, and to grow older more slowly. The good news is that Super Aging is more accessible than ever before. With the right tools and knowledge, you can Super Age with ease. And because each person is unique, the recipe for Super Aging is as individual as each human. Super Ager will teach you to tune in to your inner knowledge of what works for you. You will start with the simplest baby step, and then make small changes—changes that meet you where you are currently at—in order to Super Age. You will be inspired by Super Agers such as Tao Porchon-Lynch, a 99-year old-yoga teacher who once marched with Gandhi, or Whang-od Oggy, a 101-year-old traditional tattoo artist living in the Philippines, or Virginia McLaurin, a 109-year-old who spins basketballs with the Harlem Globetrotters and has danced with the Obamas. You will uncover doable steps to extend your life and create an even better life for yourself right now.
These steps are not chemicals or pills, although your chemistry does go along with your behavior. The steps that you take to optimize your life and to use “slow-down time” will also enhance your life. Super Aging may not always cause you to live longer, because life holds no guarantees, but the steps you take will always cause you to live more fully. You will learn to get together more often with friends, eat more plants, take more classes, play more, dance more, see more sunrises, and feel more satisfaction with your life. The best-kept secret is that there are so many ways to slow down the paths to aging, many of which are lots of fun. This book presents simple, easy-to-follow tips and tricks taken from Ayurveda, the world’s oldest holistic healing modality. Each will give you tips and tricks to Super Age. Finally, this book enables you to build your Super Ager plan, a vision of organic growth through a plan of deliberate action and new habits. You will decide what you will do to Super Age. Use this book as your guide to change old habits and lifestyle choices into habits of Super Agers. Start by changing easier things first. As your confidence grows, you can say, “I got this.” Soon you may find yourself taking on more challenging routines to increase your lifespan and your health span. You may even change behaviors that you never dreamed you would reverse. It’s all up to you. In the end you will write your plan for life as a Super Ager, and you will think of your life as a beautiful garden that you will plant, prune, weed, and care for daily. Get ready: the time is now, so get set to Super Age!
What Is a Super Ager and How Can I Become One?
Do you want to look great, feel fabulous, and stay fit as you age? Why not have the best times of your life as you grow older? What if you could have an eternally youthful and positive attitude as the years roll by? What if your mindset could help you feel more vibrant than people half your age? Are you ready to shift towards this new possibility? That potential is called Super Aging and it is much closer than you think. You have heard the phrase, “Age is just a number.” At this time in history, that motto has never been more true. You have a tremendous opportunity to disrupt and transform how you age. Are you doing it? Even the World Health Organization states: “Health in older age is not random.” Are you living up to your aging potential? In these pages, you will find inspiration, tips, and tools to change the way you live and the way you age. Prepare to Super Age.
What is a Super Ager? The concept has been attributed to Dr. Marsel Mesulam, a cognitive neurologist who used the term to describe older adults who had the memory skills and attention spans typical of individuals several decades younger. Middle-aged Super Agers studied by Northeastern University showed that it is possible to have the brainpower of a twenty-seven-year-old, even when you’re sixty-four. Other studies have demonstrated instances where adults aged eighty and older still have the cognitive ability of someone half their age. In recent years, the term “Super Ager” has been used to describe older adults who demonstrate the brainpower of someone many years younger, but the Super Ager concept is broader, and includes those older adults who have the athletic ability, creativity, inspiration, looks, and spunk of someone two to six decades younger. Approaching 100: Secrets of The Superagers, a 2017 BBC News series, is just one example of a growing interest in the topic of quality longevity. Super Agers are athletes, professors, great-grandparents, yogis, artists, and scientists. They are older adults who express phenomenal agility, strength, compassion, mental acuity, resilience, and endurance. The number of Super Agers is increasing, and many scientists are studying them. Many observe that Super Agers are resilient, enjoy challenges, and are eager to set goals. A friend told me the story of his great-grandmother, who had been a farmer in rural China. In her later years, she resided in Northern California, where she was frequently seen mowing the lawn at age 105. Neighbors judged the family harshly for making this centenarian do family chores. The truth was that her active participation in her family life through mowing in the garden kept this great-grandmother feeling alive and contributing to her family and community. Super Agers just keep on mowing.
At this time in history, aging is changing around the globe. As the average global lifespan keeps increasing, the world’s average person keeps getting older and older—and the shift towards older populations is itself speeding up. This exponential growth in average human lifespan means that as time goes