Everything You Need to Age Well Is Right Here

Seriously, All of it. Right here in this article

I should probably begin by admitting that I don’t actually know everything you need to age well.

Nobody does.

Which is sort of the point.

I’ve spent the last nineteen years trying things, teaching things, changing my mind about things, watching thousands of bodies move, and paying pretty close attention to what happens to Peggy and me as we get older.

I’m 72 now.

I feel better than I did at 55.

That’s not something I expected to be able to say.

Especially considering where this story started.

At 55, Pretty Much Everything Was Falling Apart

My body certainly was.

I had type 2 diabetes.

I was carrying 98 extra pounds.

Both feet were problems. My right knee. My lower back. My shoulder. A possible hip replacement was being discussed.

There were enough potential surgeries floating around that I occasionally say seven, although some were more definite than others.

The point is, I wasn’t doing well.

And at almost exactly the same time, the rest of our life came apart too.

Peggy and I raised alpacas.

If you’ve never spent time around alpacas, you’re missing something.

They’re curious, gentle, slightly ridiculous animals that have a way of making every morning feel like something is happening.

We loved them.

And we’d built a real business around them. Not a hobby. A life.

We’d also built a real estate portfolio and, like a lot of people back then, thought we had created a pretty solid future.

Then 2008 happened.

The alpaca market collapsed.

Most of the real estate disappeared.

The second home disappeared.

Another business kept us from completely going under, but the future we’d spent years building suddenly looked nothing like the future we thought we had.

So there I was.

Mid-fifties.

Body falling apart.

Financial life pretty thoroughly rearranged.

Not exactly the motivational poster version of starting over.

But We Did

There wasn’t one grand decision.

That’s probably important.

I didn’t wake up one morning, pound my fist on the table and announce that I was taking control of my life.

I started changing things.

I changed how I ate.

I started moving.

Then I discovered resistance stretching.

That one was a big deal for me.

I’d spent years beating up my body through sports and then more years living in the consequences.

Resistance stretching gave me a different way to work with it.

We later trained extensively in Ki-Hara Resistance Stretching, and over time Peggy and I took what we’d learned, combined it with everything else we were learning from yoga, movement, hands-on work and thousands of sessions with real people, and kept experimenting.

We’re still experimenting.

I don’t think we’ll ever be done.

But something happened back then that changed the direction of my life.

My body responded.

The weight came off.

My diabetes went into remission.

The surgeries stopped being necessary.

Things I’d assumed were simply broken started working better.

And eventually Peggy and I found ourselves helping other people discover some of the same possibilities.

That’s how RiversZen grew.

Not because we sat down and decided to enter the wellness industry.

Because some things helped us and we wanted to share them.

Nineteen Years Later, Here’s What I Think Matters

This is where I’m supposed to give you the secret.

I don’t have one.

I have a handful of things that are so ordinary they barely qualify as advice.

Move.

Not because you need to burn calories.

Because life requires movement.

You need to get out of chairs. Climb stairs. Reach things. Carry things. Catch yourself when you stumble. Get down on the floor and, preferably, have some way of getting back up.

Strength matters.

Mobility matters.

Balance matters.

Walking matters.

Your body gets better at what you continue asking it to do.

So keep asking.

Eat Food That Helps You Feel Good

I’m carnivore-ish these days.

Meat. Eggs. Animal foods. Very little processed food. Low carb. I generally eat when I’m hungry rather than because the clock says it’s lunchtime.

I believe animal foods are extraordinarily nutritious.

Peggy doesn’t eat like I do.

She’s doing just fine. 😂

That’s taught me something important.

I don’t think everybody needs my diet.

I think everybody benefits from paying attention.

Eat mostly real food.

Notice what happens afterward.

Energy. Hunger. Digestion. Sleep. How you feel tomorrow morning.

Your body is giving you information.

You don’t need to join a food religion to listen to it.

Sleep

I used to think there was probably a correct number.

Now I’m not so sure.

I usually do well somewhere around six and a half to seven hours.

Somebody else may need eight.

The more interesting question for me has become:

Do you wake up restored?

Protect sleep.

Then pay attention.

There’s a theme developing here.

Keep Some Strength

This one becomes increasingly important to me as I get older.

Not bodybuilding strength.

Life strength.

Legs that can get you out of a chair.

Hips that support you.

Hands that can carry things.

Enough core strength to control your body.

Enough reserve that an ordinary day doesn’t use everything you’ve got.

You don’t need to become Hercules.

You just don’t want the grocery bag to become Hercules.

Keep Moving in More Than One Direction

Walking is wonderful.

It isn’t everything.

Your body bends, rotates, reaches, squats, pushes, pulls and balances.

Use those abilities.

That’s one reason our classes sometimes look a little odd to somebody expecting a traditional fitness class.

We’re interested in what helps people live.

Not what makes exercise look impressive.

Get Outside

Walk.

Look at something that isn’t a screen.

Feel the sun.

Watch the river.

Notice a bird.

Peggy and I walk around Astoria and Ilwaco all the time, and I’ve become convinced that some of the benefit has nothing to do with steps.

We’re animals too.

I think we occasionally forget that.

Find People

This may matter as much as anything else in this article.

RiversZen started with movement.

But after all these years, I’m not sure movement is the most important thing happening in the room.

People know each other.

They laugh.

They notice when somebody is missing.

They ask how Peggy is doing.

They celebrate when somebody gets back on the floor or walks farther or simply shows up on a day when showing up wasn’t easy.

Connection matters.

So does being useful to somebody besides yourself.

Have Something You’re Curious About

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life defending what I already know.

I want to find out what I don’t know yet.

I change classes.

I test movements.

I read.

I question things.

Sometimes I decide something I believed five years ago was wrong.

Good.

I’m still paying attention.

Maybe curiosity is part of aging well too.

I hope so.

I’ve got plenty of it.

And Have Some Fun

This one gets left off nearly every longevity list.

Which seems like a fairly serious oversight if the goal is to live longer.

What’s the point of adding years if you’re miserable through all of them?

Play music.

Bang on a stability ball with drumsticks.

Go somewhere.

Laugh.

Eat something wonderful.

Spend time with somebody you love.

Sit by the river and do absolutely nothing productive.

Health should help you live your life.

Your life shouldn’t become a full-time project devoted to health.

I think I lost sight of that for a while.

I’m glad I found it again.

Then Peggy Got Cancer

This changed some of my thinking too.

Peggy had spent seventeen years taking very good care of herself.

She moved.

She ate well.

She taught.

She walked.

She was strong.

And she got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma anyway.

That’s life.

Healthy living isn’t a force field.

Cancer doesn’t check your exercise history before showing up.

Peggy needed chemotherapy, and thank God chemotherapy was there.

She responded remarkably well.

She kept teaching much of the way through treatment. We kept walking. We kept living as normally as we could.

I can’t tell you that seventeen years of movement and good food caused her treatment to go well.

I can tell you I was awfully glad she entered that experience strong.

And it reminded both of us what all of this is actually for.

We’re not building perfect bodies.

We’re building lives with as much capacity as we can.

Sometimes you need that capacity for something you never saw coming.

So That’s Everything

Move.

Keep some strength.

Eat food that seems to work for you.

Sleep.

Get outside.

Find people.

Stay curious.

Have some fun.

Pay attention.

Adjust when something isn’t working.

And don’t turn any of this into another damn protocol.

There will be new studies.

New gurus.

New diets.

New longevity breakthroughs.

New devices that measure something you didn’t know needed measuring.

Some of them will probably be useful.

I’ll keep looking.

But after nineteen years, I keep coming back to remarkably ordinary things.

Peggy and I aren’t perfect examples of aging.

We’re two people in our seventies still figuring it out.

That’s actually what I like about this.

You don’t have to figure everything out before you start.

Do something that makes your life a little better today.

See what happens.

Then tomorrow?

Do it again.

Maybe that’s everything you need to age well after all.