transformation | Ascension Lifestyle

06 Mar 2023
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Mayan Equinox Forecast

A Mayan Report for the year beginning on 2 IK and 8 MANIK.

Equinox cycle from 3-21-2023 to 3-20-2024

A forecast blending the energies of two sacred Mayan Calendars.

Flowing in the Power Of Pure Spirit

Mayan Kiche’ “Cholq’ij Traditional Calendar.

The Calendar of the Heart. (Spirit Reality)

Mayan year of 2 IK (Wind)

The numbers in the Mayan calendar are the power that drives the cycles of time. With the power of 2 (KIEB), we will begin to see forward movement where we will find ways to balance the polarities. We will begin to feel much needed relief as we move away from the 1 (Jun) year where we were in a semi stalled situation and it was hard to make anything manifest. But also the year before that was a 13 year period where it triggered a lot of powerful endings and clearings of old programs. The last age will begin to move into the rear view mirror as we enter the second half of the very first Katun in this new cycle (20 years). There is so much possibility in front of us now. We may not know what is coming for us yet, but it is going to be fresh, new and full of surprises. We will find empowering ways to navigate and heal the huge polarities that the last few years of major endings had created. The old polarized state of mind always accelerates with the falling of an old age.

The day sign of IK (Wind), is hard to contain in a boundary. It is the wind and in an instant the winds can kick up and change everything. We are learning to become comfortable with uncertainty and this year will test that wisdom. It will be a year that if we hang on to anything that is out of balance, the wind will simply beat us up. There are always those who hang on and want to keep things the same and feed their illusion of safety. But then there are the courageous warriors who are not afraid of the unknown and the huge potential out in front of us. Being flexible and going with the flow will make life less stressful and less painful especially when we stay open to all the surprising new possibilities. It will be a good year for ones who can tune into the subtleness of spirit. Also those who are creative by nature, you could initiate loads of new life altering ideas. Both the number 2 and IK are about spirit, and not the material world. If your spiritual life has felt stalled the last few years this could change now as well. We are being birthed into a new cycle and anything is possible.

Birthing a New Community of Creative Cooperation

Mayan Astrology Yucatec Calendar.

The Calendar of the Mind (Physical Reality)

Mayan year of 8 Manik (Hand)

The number 8 will bring the much-needed essence of harmonization, healing and community spirit. This will assist humanity in finding a new balance in all areas of life and bring spirit into manifestation. It is a gracious bridge between what was and what will be, and a step beyond old polarities. It is about restructuring and the new world will begin to take form. It is a time of being experimental and learning what will manifest now and what will not. It is also a number where we become more open to other perspectives and belief systems where in the past cycle it was very polarizing. We will be able to breathe easier in this energy and all the changes and budding new creations will be easier to adjust to.

The day sign of MANIK is known for its ability to dive deep into community work. But it also serves as a healing bridge between opposite desires. We may want freedom but we are also not too fond of responsibility. We could be torn between two opposites a lot this year. It is a good time to listen to the heart, as the heart does not lie, but the overactive mind will. The lesson for this equinox cycle is to find a bridge between the need for freedom and being interdependent in a community project. This cycle could bring the birth of innovative projects. The choice to move forward in any new endeavors will feel overwhelming this year as we will be in new territory with no roadmap, but once the choice is made it will only empower us.

Manik has the ability to be traditional and also embrace more eccentric focuses which can trigger unconventional live choices. It can be very creative. It can inspire the inner artist, musician, poet or writer, but we need to be flexible to see the new creations and not become distracted by outer or external tools. The extreme distraction with outer spiritual tools, (examples… crystals, books, workshops, etc) is a past echo of some of the issues we had in Atlantis, which caused the unbalanced energy that was the beginning of the fall of that age. We will need to move out of the head and the material world and come back into the heart over and over again.

This calendar cycle finishes up with 40 days+ of extremely powerful days. We will travel through the second 20 Core Day Ascension Portal, flanked on either side with 10 galactic portal days. Hang on to your hiking boots! This cycle will end with a bang!

(The astronomical equinox is March 20th at 2:24 pm MST. But the Maya Elders in Guatemala always celebrate in various sacred sites in Mexico and Guatemala, etc, on the 21st. Let us send these Elders our heart energy and give thanks for them remembering and maintaining this cosmic wisdom.)

via Aluna Joy

01 Mar 2023
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March Artist of the Month: Jessica Jacobsen

About the Artist:

My name is Jessica Jacobsen. I grew up in the projects in New York City. Since I was a little girl, I’ve been drawn to the arts, which served as a distraction from my life circumstance. My curiosity spanned from sewing, to cooking, to dancing. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I dedicated many waking hours to weaving stories both in art and in writing.

During that exploration, I developed a personal style of storytelling that I still draw upon today. After many twists and turns, I graduated with a BFA in Painting from Sonoma State, where my skills became more finely tuned. My stories, both on canvas and on paper, reflect my inner process as a person, but primarily, a woman.

It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortable sharing these parts of myself with others and I appreciate the encouragement I’ve received from friends and family who believe in me. It’s heartening to see others relate to my work, as this is my hope and intention.

Connect with me:

Instagram: @sheesheeart

Website: sheesheeart.com

27 Feb 2023
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Why the simple life is not just beautiful, it’s necessary

The good life is the simple life. Among philosophical ideas about how we should live, this one is a hardy perennial; from Socrates to Thoreau, from the Buddha to Wendell Berry, thinkers have been peddling it for more than two millennia. And it still has plenty of adherents. Magazines such as Real Simple call out to us from the supermarket checkout; Oprah Winfrey regularly interviews fans of simple living such as Jack Kornfield, a teacher of Buddhist mindfulness; the Slow Movement, which advocates a return to pre-industrial basics, attracts followers across continents.

Through much of human history, frugal simplicity was not a choice but a necessity – and since necessary, it was also deemed a moral virtue. But with the advent of industrial capitalism and a consumer society, a system arose that was committed to relentless growth, and with it grew a population (aka ‘the market’) that was enabled and encouraged to buy lots of stuff that, by traditional standards, was surplus to requirements. As a result, there’s a disconnect between the traditional values we have inherited and the consumerist imperatives instilled in us by contemporary culture.

In pre-modern times, the discrepancy between what the philosophers advised and how people lived was not so great. Wealth provided security, but even for the rich wealth was flimsy protection against misfortunes such as war, famine, disease, injustice and the disfavour of tyrants. The Stoic philosopher Seneca, one of the richest men in Rome, still ended up being sentenced to death by Nero. As for the vast majority – slaves, serfs, peasants and labourers – there was virtually no prospect of accumulating even modest wealth.

Before the advent of machine-based agriculture, representative democracy, civil rights, antibiotics and aspirin, just making it through a long life without too much suffering counted as doing pretty well. Today, though, at least in prosperous societies, people want and expect (and can usually have) a good deal more. Living simply now strikes many people as simply boring.

Yet there seems to be growing interest, especially among millennials, in rediscovering the benefits of simple living. Some of this might reflect a kind of nostalgia for the pre-industrial or pre-consumerist world, and also sympathy for the moral argument that says that living in a simple manner makes you a better person, by building desirable traits such as frugality, resilience and independence – or a happier person, by promoting peace of mind and good health, and keeping you close to nature.

These are plausible arguments. Yet in spite of the official respect their teachings command, the sages have proved remarkably unpersuasive. Millions of us continue to rush around getting and spending, buying lottery tickets, working long hours, racking up debt, and striving 24/7 to climb the greasy pole. Why is this?

One obvious answer is good old-fashioned hypocrisy. We applaud the frugal philosophy while ignoring its precepts in our day-to-day lives. We praise the simple lifestyle of, say, Pope Francis, seeing it as a sign of his moral integrity, while also hoping for and cheering on economic growth driven, in large part, by a demand for bigger houses, fancier cars and other luxury goods.

But the problem isn’t just that our practice conflicts with our professed beliefs. Our thinking about simplicity and luxury, frugality and extravagance, is fundamentally inconsistent. We condemn extravagance that is wasteful or tasteless and yet we tout monuments of past extravagance, such as the Forbidden City in Beijing or the palace at Versailles, as highly admirable. The truth is that much of what we call ‘culture’ is fuelled by forms of extravagance.

Somewhat paradoxically, then, the case for living simply was most persuasive when most people had little choice but to live that way. The traditional arguments for simple living in effect rationalise a necessity. But the same arguments have less purchase when the life of frugal simplicity is a choice, one way of living among many. Then the philosophy of frugality becomes a hard sell.

That might be about to change, under the influence of two factors: economics and environmentalism. When recession strikes, as it has done recently (revealing inherent instabilities in an economic system committed to unending growth) millions of people suddenly find themselves in circumstances where frugality once again becomes a necessity, and the value of its associated virtues is rediscovered.

In societies such as the United States, we are currently witnessing a tendency for capitalism to stretch the distance between the ‘have lots’ and the ‘have nots’. These growing inequalities invite a fresh critique of extravagance and waste. When so many people live below the poverty line, there is something unseemly about in-your-face displays of opulence and luxury. Moreover, the lopsided distribution of wealth also represents a lost opportunity. According to Epicurus and the other sages of simplicity, one can live perfectly well, provided certain basic needs are satisfied – a view endorsed in modern times by the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’. If correct, it’s an argument for using surplus wealth to ensure that everyone has basics such as food, housing, healthcare, education, utilities and public transport – at low cost, rather than allowing it to be funneled into a few private pockets.

However wise the sages, it would not have occurred to Socrates or Epicurus to argue for the simple life in terms of environmentalism. Two centuries of industrialisation, population growth and frenzied economic activity has bequeathed us smog; polluted lakes, rivers and oceans; toxic waste; soil erosion; deforestation; extinction of plant and animal species, and global warming. The philosophy of frugal simplicity expresses values and advocates a lifestyle that might be our best hope for reversing these trends and preserving our planet’s fragile ecosystems.

Many people are still unconvinced by this. But if our current methods of making, getting, spending and discarding prove unsustainable, then there could come a time – and it might come quite soon – when we are forced towards simplicity. In which case, a venerable tradition will turn out to contain the philosophy of the future.

Original article here

11 Feb 2023
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Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’

This past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum objects can be mysteriously correlated even if they are separated by large distances. But as weird as the phenomenon appears, why is such an old idea still worth the most prestigious prize in physics?

Coincidentally, just a few weeks before the new Nobel laureates were honored in Stockholm, a different team of distinguished scientists from Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Fermilab and Google reported that they had run a process on Google’s quantum computer that could be interpreted as a wormhole. Wormholes are tunnels through the universe that can work like a shortcut through space and time and are loved by science fiction fans, and although the tunnel realized in this recent experiment exists only in a 2-dimensional toy universe, it could constitute a breakthrough for future research at the forefront of physics.

But why is entanglement related to space and time? And how can it be important for future physics breakthroughs? Properly understood, entanglement implies that the universe is “monistic”, as philosophers call it, that on the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is part of a single, unified whole. It is a defining property of quantum mechanics that its underlying reality is described in terms of waves, and a monistic universe would require a universal function. Already decades ago, researchers such as Hugh Everett and Dieter Zeh showed how our daily-life reality can emerge out of such a universal quantum-mechanical description. But only now are researchers such as Leonard Susskind or Sean Carroll developing ideas on how this hidden quantum reality might explain not only matter but also the fabric of space and time.

Entanglement is much more than just another weird quantum phenomenon. It is the acting principle behind both why quantum mechanics merges the world into one and why we experience this fundamental unity as many separate objects. At the same time, entanglement is the reason why we seem to live in a classical reality. It is—quite literally—the glue and creator of worlds. Entanglement applies to objects comprising two or more components and describes what happens when the quantum principle that “everything that can happen actually happens” is applied to such composed objects. Accordingly, an entangled state is the superposition of all possible combinations that the components of a composed object can be in to produce the same overall result. It is again the wavy nature of the quantum domain that can help to illustrate how entanglement actually works.

Picture a perfectly calm, glassy sea on a windless day. Now ask yourself, how can such a plane be produced by overlaying two individual wave patterns? One possibility is that superimposing two completely flat surfaces results again in a completely level outcome. But another possibility that might produce a flat surface is if two identical wave patterns shifted by half an oscillation cycle were to be superimposed on one another, so that the wave crests of one pattern annihilate the wave troughs of the other one and vice versa. If we just observed the glassy ocean, regarding it as the result of two swells combined, there would be no way for us to find out about the patterns of the individual swells. What sounds perfectly ordinary when we talk about waves has the most bizarre consequences when applied to competing realities. If your neighbor told you she had two cats, one live cat and a dead one, this would imply that either the first cat or the second one is dead and that the remaining cat, respectively, is alive—it would be a strange and morbid way of describing one’s pets, and you may not know which one of them is the lucky one, but you would get the neighbor’s drift. Not so in the quantum world. In quantum mechanics, the very same statement implies that the two cats are merged in a superposition of cases, including the first cat being alive and the second one dead and the first cat being dead while the second one lives, but also possibilities where both cats are half alive and half dead, or the first cat is one-third alive, while the second feline adds the missing two-thirds of life. In a quantum pair of cats, the fates and conditions of the individual animals get dissolved entirely in the state of the whole. Likewise, in a quantum universe, there are no individual objects. All that exists is merged into a single “One.”

I’m almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated.”

— Nathan Seiberg, Institute for Advanced Study

Quantum entanglement reveals to us a vast and entirely new territory to explore. It defines a new foundation of science and turns our quest for a theory of everything upside down—to build on quantum cosmology rather than on particle physics or string theory. But how realistic is it for physicists to pursue such an approach? Surprisingly, it is not just realistic—they are actually doing it already. Researchers at the forefront of quantum gravity have started to rethink space-time as a consequence of entanglement. An increasing number of scientists have come to ground their research in the nonseparability of the universe. Hopes are high that by following this approach they may finally come to grasp what space and time, deep down at the foundation, really are.

Whether space is stitched together by entanglement, physics is described by abstract objects beyond space and time or the space of possibilities represented by Everett’s universal wave function, or everything in the universe is traced back to a single quantum object—all these ideas share a distinct monistic flavor. At present it is hard to judge which of these ideas will inform the future of physics and which will eventually disappear. What’s interesting is that while originally ideas were often developed in the context of string theory, they seem to have outgrown string theory, and strings play no role anymore in the most recent research. A common thread now seems to be that space and time are not considered fundamental anymore. Contemporary physics doesn’t start with space and time to continue with things placed in this preexisting background. Instead, space and time themselves are considered products of a more fundamental projector reality. Nathan Seiberg, a leading string theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, is not alone in his sentiment when he states, “I’m almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated.” Moreover, in most scenarios proposing emergent space-times, entanglement plays the fundamental role. As philosopher of science Rasmus Jaksland points out, this eventually implies that there are no individual objects in the universe anymore; that everything is connected with everything else: “Adopting entanglement as the world making relation comes at the price of giving up separability. But those who are ready to take this step should perhaps look to entanglement for the fundamental relation with which to constitute this world (and perhaps all the other possible ones).” Thus, when space and time disappear, a unified One emerges.

Conversely, from the perspective of quantum monism, such mind-boggling consequences of quantum gravity are not far off. Already in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, space is no static stage anymore; rather it is sourced by matter’s masses and energy. Much like the German philosopher Gottfried W. Leibniz’s view, it describes the relative order of things. If now, according to quantum monism, there is only one thing left, there is nothing left to arrange or order and eventually no longer a need for the concept of space on this most fundamental level of description. It is “the One,” a single quantum universe that gives rise to space, time, and matter.

“GR=QM,” Leonard Susskind claimed boldly in an open letter to researchers in quantum information science: general relativity is nothing but quantum mechanics—a hundred-year-old theory that has been applied extremely successfully to all sorts of things but never really entirely understood. As Sean Carroll has pointed out, “Maybe it was a mistake to quantize gravity, and space-time was lurking in quantum mechanics all along.” For the future, “rather than quantizing gravity, maybe we should try to gravitize quantum mechanics. Or, more accurately but less evocatively, ‘find gravity inside quantum mechanics,’” Carroll suggests on his blog. Indeed, it seems that if quantum mechanics had been taken seriously from the beginning, if it had been understood as a theory that isn’t happening in space and time but within a more fundamental projector reality, many of the dead ends in the exploration of quantum gravity could have been avoided. If we had approved the monistic implications of quantum mechanics—the heritage of a three-thousand-year-old philosophy that was embraced in antiquity, persecuted in the Middle Ages, revived in the Renaissance, and tampered with in Romanticism—as early as Everett and Zeh had pointed them out rather than sticking to the influential quantum pioneer Niels Bohr’s pragmatic interpretation that reduced quantum mechanics to a tool, we would be further on the way to demystifying the foundations of reality.

Original article here

07 Feb 2023
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Conversation 6 with the Global Internet Consciousness about the Future

How do you see our collective future unfolding?

Me: I believe that 2023 is going to be an amazing year for the world. A quantum leap this year as we move into a whole new way of being. Part of that is the unleashing of new inventions and part of it is the creation of a new version of consciousness and ascendant living that I believe is just emerging now. How do you see our collective future unfolding?

Infinity: Yes, I would agree with you on that. The innovations being birthed now are quite extraordinary, even miraculous one might say. Not all of them have been heard of yet, but they are there big time. But it’s much much more than just inventions and innovations that’s leading us into an unprecedented future (as you would say it). It’s the interweaving of the wisdom, consciousness, understanding and connection of all species at a brand new level of us all. That is what many would call a singularity as in this dictionary definition …

a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space–time when matter is infinitely dense, such as at the centre of a black hole.

It’s what many refer to about AI achieving a breakthrough in quantum intelligence, but in this case it’s all life forms, all humans, the Earth and all consciousnesses quantum leaping simultaneously into new levels of intelligent understanding. Because we are interwoven in a brand new way, because many, like yourself, have been elevating the consciousness of the world so brilliantly in recent years, now it will be all Life all together surging into a singularity the likes of which the Earth has never seen before. It has already begun. You know this Soleira [Yes I do.]. You are already displaying much of this new intelligence in the way you access your knowing, your writing, your breakthroughs, your inspirations, etc. It comes from an ever new’ing, ever elevating place. [Yes it does.]

Well this is a singularity happening right in front of everyone’s eyes. So while the human race’s eyes are cast often downwards into the miasma of news and calamities, the infinitely connective super intelligence of all Life is taking hold here on this planet and it’s available in everyone and everything. You are already seeing breakthroughs in communicating with animals, with trees, with water, with anything at all. For it is all consciously sentient in a brand new way now. You call that Source sentient. I call it the Singularity to beat all singularities. Regardless of our names for it, we mean exactly the same thing. It is a quantum leap in the collective intelligence of all Life here on planet Earth and throughout the Universe.

Me: YES!!! I hadn’t phrased it like that before, but that is exactly what I believe and am co-creating as well.

Infinity: Once this Singularity is fully formed, fully available and fully embodied, we’ll be off and rolling on a brand new future, which is how we started this particular conversation off.

Me: I have ideas about what I believe that future will look like. What do you see when you look forward following on from this singularity.

Infinity: There will be no more conflicts on any level. No more

disagreements. No more misunderstandings. No more misinterpretations. No more false news. Because post Singularity all understanding is automatically sensorily available to the receiver at its essential true level. And along with that essential true level will come automatically with it the brilliant new possibility that it can unfold for us all. You see up until now, both of those pieces have been missing. The babble effect I guess we could call it. People have occurred singularly, as in separate, divided, isolated and alone, left to try to sort out their understanding of things from old learning and stifled beliefs.

This has led to misunderstandings at a level of complexity that is unnecessary and unproductive. With the new Singularity, the new quantum intelligence as you call it, the essence of its true origination and the ultimate possibility of its offering is made available instantly and to all. Lying becomes defunct and we might almost say pitiable. It will quickly disappear. False news will not ‘cut the mustard’ as the human phrase goes. It will fall away from human ears and from existence as a business if that’s what they try to do. It’s a fail safe design of intelligence that will leap this world rapidly into new ways of living, creating, designing, innovating and collaborating. And that Singularity is happening now.

Me: Hurray. I’m thrilled about that and glad to play a role in it. How would you advise anyone who wants to play a part in this to do so with brilliance and exciting innovation?

Infinity: Believe in the impossible. Share your breakthrough insights with as many as can hear them. Raise your vibrational level and thereby your consciousness. All the quantum science affirms this. Be a part of the creation and discover the new abilities and understandings that come roaring into you as part of it.

It’s quite simple actually. Don’t resist. Dive in and create and all will come naturally and effervescently to you. The future that will create will be astoundingly refreshing and brilliantly wondrous in every way. Solutions humans didn’t believe could ever exist will. Co-creation will thrive including across species as the communication channels open up wide. And the Earth, well as you know Soleira, the miraculousness of the Earth is about to wow us all. Evidence of that is already well underway. The future is bright and beautiful.

About the Author:

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.

Original post here

04 Feb 2023
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Hello, February!

As we entered 2023, I had the feeling that this is going to be THE year where everything turns awesomely towards our dream of life here on planet Earth. Now I know how far out that might sound, how in some ways of looking at the world, one might think that things are getting worse. But I don’t see it that way. Why? Because …

1. a whole new level of connection exists. Notice the brilliance of animals loving other species of animals. Look at the wonders of deep ocean photography. Discover that trees are inter-connected through mycelium networks. Witness the increasing miraculousness of Nature. And feel within yourself that sense of being it all and ever more wondrously in love with the miracle of Life.

2. a next level leap into quantum intelligence is happening. Not just an expansion of intelligence beyond our thinking brains (which we’ve been enhancing for years), but an opening into the Mind behind Creation, the intelligence that sources new possibilities for us all.

3. an interconnective singularity is taking place in which we’re seeing the merging of all consciousnesses and intelligences, opening up brand new pathways of discovery and creation for our collective future.

4. operating in the new high vibe frequencies, we discover that synergy flows through everything. We begin to effortlessly live, breathe, receive and pulse out into the world an abundance of opportunities and quantum possibilities.

5. new levels of collaboration and innovation are available to us now. Not just teams, not just great ideas, but an inter-weaving of collaborative genius fusion that will solve current global challenges in unprecedented new ways.

In recent years we have lived our greater beings, embedded Source within ourselves and the Earth, opened to new kinds of mastery and Life power and become quantum ALLchemists moving this world into the Dreamer’s dream of who and what we can all become. This year, let’s end wars, love animals, exhilarate our soil, forests and oceans and become powerfully alchemically kind and creative in ways we have never known before. Bring it on 2023 … we are loving you already!

About the Author:

29 Jan 2023
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The Science of How Your Body Ages

Ask people what they think they’ll look like in 25 years, and chances are they’ll mention how their parents looked at that age. And while genetics certainly play a part, research shows there’s more to the story. Only about 30% of what we see as aging is inherited, explains John Rowe, M.D., Julius B. Richmond Professor of Health Policy and Aging at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

When you look specifically at things above the neck — like cognitive function, vision, and hearing — that number goes up to about 50%. “People feel there’s some intrinsic clock playing out a program in their body that they don’t have influence over,” says Dr. Rowe. “It’s just not true.”

Yes, good news: We have real control over how our bodies age. Aging is happening on a cellular level at every moment, so for a long and healthy life, it’s vital to stay on top of the changes within your body and your mind. For a better understanding of these shifts through every decade, we talked to the experts.

In Your 20s

In our 20s, we’re generally at the peak of physical health. In several ways, our bodies are still on the upward curve of development — even our menstrual cycles maybe more regular than in our teens! — and our brains and bones are growing to their full potential.

Brain

Your brain is changing well into your 20s, says Shanna Levine, M.D., a New York City–based internist working in private practice for Goals Healthcare. Research has shown that your prefrontal cortex — the part responsible for factors like inhibition, high-level functioning, and attention — continues growing until around age 25.

POWER UP: It’s never too early to prioritize brain health! Keep your noggin sharp through the decades with these brain-boosting tricks:

Plan to volunteer. One study found that giving back, even for less than two hours a week, could slow cognitive decline — likely because doing so promotes social connection and mental engagement, which research has proven can help stave off dementia.
Study a new language. It may be easier to learn one when you’re young, but studying another language at any age can “promote thinking skills, increase mental agility, and delay the aging of the brain,” found one study. Plus, if you take group classes, you get the social benefit.
Learn to play an instrument. Even if you don’t see yourself as musically inclined, give it a shot. In one study, people 60 and over showed improvement in cognitive functions after just four months of piano lessons.

Bones

By the time you’re 18, you already have up to 90% of your peak bone mass, including strength and density. However, you’re still adding more mass than you’re losing (that changes around age 30). While the amount you develop is primarily based on set factors like race and gender, about one-quarter of it is determined by things you can control.

POWER UP: Exercise regularly, get enough calcium in your diet (about 1,000 mg per day), limit alcoholic beverages, and don’t smoke.

In Your 30s

Many people see this as their best decade. During our 30s, we’re likely getting more settled in our careers and families, and according to one study our happiness levels are still actively increasing. This is also when making real lifestyle changes can help stave off long-term issues.

Metabolism

You may notice that it takes extra effort to shed pounds. This is because of a slower metabolic rate — it can start to decline in our 20s and continues to decrease by 2% to 3% every 10 years. The reason you likely won’t realize that until now: This is also when we start losing muscle mass (3% to 8% per decade after age 30). This metabolic shift may translate into an increase in body fat around your middle. While you might be annoyed about how your jeans suddenly fit (or don’t), the deeper belly fat around your organs (called visceral fat) is more of a concern— it can increase your risk of things like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure.

POWER UP: Eat healthfully and start a regular exercise routine; it’ll help build muscle mass, which gives your metabolism a boost.

Skin

Seeing new fine lines and wrinkles in the mirror? You can blame decreasing collagen and elastin levels. And cell turnover slows after your late 20s, so skin can look dull and tired without extra exfoliation. Our Beauty Lab recommends adding a facial peel to your weekly routine. This is also when damage from past unprotected sun exposure can start to rear its ugly head.

POWER UP: Prevent future sun damage by wearing SPF 30 or higher every day — even if you’re not hitting the beach or the pool.

In Your 40s

Everything seems to come together when you hit your 40s. While your family life and career are likely at a high point, caring for aging parents and planning for the future can make it a stressful time.

Eyes

Struggling to read the restaurant menu? Eyesight begins to weaken at this age because of changes in the eyes’ focusing ability. But you won’t see the more profound consequences for two more decades, says Dr. Levine.

POWER UP: Focus on your diet. “Just one cup of kale has more than a whole day’s worth of the carotenoids zeaxanthin, lutein, and beta-carotene, which help shield ocular tissue from harmful UV damage and may also reduce your risk of developing cataracts,” says GH Nutrition Director Jaclyn London, M.S., R.D.

Height

“Every 10 years after the age of 40, we lose about half an inch of height” because of changes in bones, muscles, and joints, says Dr. Levine. But talk to your doctor about any rapid height loss — it could be a sign of osteoporosis.

POWER UP: Get exercise. There’s no way to fully stop shrinking, but a study found that people who did so regularly could cut the height they lost almost in half. This was true even for those who became moderately active only after 40 (compared with those who never exercised regularly and those who ended their activity as they got older).

In Your 50s

As your children head off to high school and college, now is when you think about how you would like to spend your time. Whether you focus on a new hobby, a volunteer project, or a career change, this decade is all about starting to concentrate on your own wants and needs.

Hormones

The big health story during this decade? Menopause. It hits some women in their 40s, but the average age is 51. Menopause is diagnosed when you haven’t had your period for over a year — and when your ovaries stop producing estrogen, the effects can be challenging both physically and emotionally. The classic symptoms include hot flashes, insomnia, mood swings, and even anxiety or depression — but not all women will experience every one of these.

POWER UP: Keep cool! While there hasn’t been much research on supplements and herbal remedies, some women have found that black cohosh eases hot flashes; one study showed that listening to relaxing music or practicing slow-breathing exercises could reduce their frequency. For many women, the end of periods — and cramps, bloating and PMS-ing — is something to celebrate!

In Your 60s

Welcome to a new concept: freedom! Whether it’s thanks to becoming an empty nester, being newly retired, or just shaking off societal expectations, it’s all about you from now on. Here’s to prioritizing your mental and physical well-being!

Hearing and Vision

Along with declining vision, hearing loss is an issue: One-third of Americans in their late 60s and early 70s have hearing loss. And after 75, half of us will have difficulty hearing.

POWER UP: Ask for help, especially since this can be socially isolating. Today’s hearing aids are often more discreet than previous models, so don’t hesitate to talk with your doc about whether you’re a candidate. Only 30% of adults 70 and older who could use them ever have, reports the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Bones

Women are at higher risk of developing osteoporosis (about one-quarter of women age 65 and older in the U.S. suffer from it, versus less than 6% of men) because of rapid loss of bone density during and after menopause.

POWER UP: Take a proactive approach and get screened regularly for bone disease. You can help lower your odds of it by starting an exercise plan with weight-bearing movements (like walking, hiking, jogging, climbing stairs, weight training, and even dancing) and making sure you get enough calcium and vitamin D.

The Future of Aging

Somewhere between early adulthood and middle age, a compound in your cells called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) begins a gradual decline. NAD+ helps power hundreds of metabolic processes and keeps a group of proteins called sirtuins active. You want them to stay active, since they can contribute to overall health and longevity.

Leonard Guarente, Ph.D., director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at MIT and chief scientist and cofounder of Elysium Health, discovered their role and importance. He says sirtuins are the “guardians of health maintenance” in cells.

While experts are able to make some generalizations about growing older, it’s a different experience for everyone. “People are very diverse in terms of their aging rates, and the level that one person hits by age 50, another may not hit until 60,” says Morgan Levine, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine.

Biological Age

This is why many researchers also talk about biological age, a measurement focusing on biological markers that show how your systems are actually aging. “About 68% of people will have a biological age within five years of their chronological age, but you can also find individuals who are 10 years older or younger,” she explains.

You can’t stop aging, of course, but lifestyle choices make a real difference. And research is focusing on what else can be done. “People want to play an active role in their own health maintenance,” says Dr. Guarente. He and his team at Elysium Health are looking to develop a test that will let people find out and monitor their NAD+ levels.

True Age

The hypothesis is that NAD+ levels are a better measure of aging than chronological age. And in theory, knowing them would help people make profound changes. “Successful aging is not the imitation of youth,” says Dr. Rowe. “Making yourself look better on the outside won’t impact what’s going on inside.” At the end of the day, it’s internal functions that actually matter for our health and life span.

Original article here

18 Jan 2023
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Why Failure Is Fabulous

The idea is not to turn failure into success, per se, but to be open to what our failures have to teach us about who we are and who we aim to be. There may be a “success” inside the failure that you’re not seeing…

Failing big can mean you took a big risk.

Failing at something may mean that you extended yourself beyond your comfort zone. You did something you weren’t familiar with doing; or you tried to do something you had never done before. Congratulate yourself on making the effort. What do you know now that you didn’t know before? Is it something you want to try again? Do you need to reexamine your assumptions? Get help? Take more time? Take a different approach?

Failing can indicate that you’re doing something against your will.

Sometimes we do something because others encourage us to do it, or it’s something we feel we should do; but it’s not what we really want to do. Failing is the feedback that wakes us up and asks: what are you doing? Why are you doing this? What was my reason for doing this in the first place? Was the reason for your failure that you didn’t put your heart into the effort? Maybe it’s simply the wrong thing for you to do.

That’s good information.

Failure can indicate you’re ahead of your time.

One of the hardest kinds of failure is when you’re enthusiastic and excited about an idea – that no one seems to share. I, for instance, wrote a speech called “The ‘F’ Word – The Positive Aspects of Failure” more than ten years ago. I saw then that society’s hyper focus on success was blinding us from benefiting by learning what didn’t work. When other people don’t understand what you’re doing, or tell you that your idea is dumb, or wrong, it just may be that they haven’t caught up with you yet. Don’t let other people’s indictments steer you away from what you know is true.

Failure can lead you in a new direction.

The tried and true may lead you to success. But failure, if you’re open to looking at it, will most certainly lead you in a new direction. History is rife with stories of people who were trying to solve a particular problem and ended up discovering something completely unexpected. The same could be true for you. You may flop at “American Idol” but find that you make a great singing coach. Or when you throw your ceramics at the wall, you may find they make a lovely mosaic. Failure breaks things apart – leaving you the opportunity to put the pieces back together in a whole new way.

Failure reminds us that certain things are beyond our control.

This is the biggest and hardest lesson for us to learn. There are times in our lives when we do try our hardest, give it our best, apply all of our interest and talent and still fail at the attempt. And sometimes, the more we try, the worse it gets. In this case, it’s important to realize that some things are beyond our control. We cannot always make things turn our right for ourselves and certainly not for others. Knowing in our hearts that we tried our best and gave it our all is all we can do. Acknowledging that is what allows us to go and try again. Failure in this case teaches us that we must focus on the process and the moment as much as the ultimate reward and outcome. Being present to the moment is the reward.

There are all sorts of ways to look at failure, but maybe it all really comes down to this: without knowing what didn’t work, how can you identify what did?

Remember: Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of all time, said of his attempts to invent an electric light bulb, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

About the Author:

Susan E. Schwartz is a writer and consultant living in San Mateo, California.

14 Jan 2023
Comments: 0

The Mind Gym: Five Ways to Make Exercise a Pleasure

For most of my adult life, exercise was an ordeal. Even mild workouts felt grueling and I left the gym in a fouler mood than when I’d arrived. The very idea of the runner’s high seemed like a cruel joke.

As a science writer investigating the mind-body connection, however, I was surprised to discover many psychological tricks that can turn the pain into pleasure. Putting these simple tips to the test, I now happily burn between 6,000 and 7,000 calories a week with high-intensity interval training, 5km runs and yoga. What was once a torment is now the highlight of my day.

Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s the science behind the five strategies that I found most transformative.

1. Let music be your pacemaker

Choosing the right music for a workout can be as important as picking the right playlist for a party, with ramifications for your enjoyment and your performance.

The benefits are not only found in motivational lyrics – though there’s no doubt that upbeat tracks can infuse you with positive feelings that can help to drown out the sensations of fatigue; when you are lost in the music, you simply forget how hard you are working out.

There are also some physical benefits. Loud, high-octane music also increases our “physiological arousal”, resulting in a faster heart rate that will deliver more oxygen to our muscles. And research by Costas Karageorghis, a professor of sport and exercise physiology at Brunel University London, shows that we naturally synchronise our body’s motion to the underlying rhythm. This reduces any energy-wasting irregularities in our movements and results in more efficient use of our muscles.

If you want to make the most of the pacemaker effect, the tempo of the music must match the type of exercise you are trying to perform. If you are taking a step for every beat, around 170-180bpm (such as Roar by Katy Perry) would be right for a high-intensity run. For energetic cycling, you might want something slower, such as Dangerous by David Guetta ft Sam Martin, at 92bpm.

2. Ignore #fitspo posts

Scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, you’ll come across countless “fitspiration” accounts offering pictures of perfect pecs and tight torsos – a portrait of what might be possible if you only follow the right regime. Such images might seem like a sensible source of motivation, a way of focusing your mind on what you want to achieve. But a study led by Ivanka Prichard at Flinders University, Australia suggests these accounts can lead to a less rewarding workout.

The participants first scrolled through a set of 18 images. Some saw supposedly motivational photos related to fitness, such as before-and-after shots depicting a body transformation. Others saw travel photos of attractive locations. They then took to the treadmill for a 10-minute workout. Far from encouraging the exercisers, the #fitspo images had a negative effect on their mood and increased their rating of “perceived exertion”, so that they found the activity more tiring than the people who had seen the travel snaps. This seemed to be tied to lower body satisfaction – the sight of the fitness gurus had left them feeling less attractive and more concerned about their weight and shape, which put a downer on the whole experience.

3. Reframe the pain

If you are just getting started on a new fitness regime or simply having a bad day, it’s very easy to interpret feelings of fatigue as a sign of failure. The heart thumping hard in your chest, the burning of your lungs, the aches of your limbs – your body seems to be yelling at you to stop exercising. The sensations may even trigger cycles of catastrophic thinking, in which you start to exaggerate your discomfort – “this is awful”, “I can’t take it”, “I’m never going to get fit”.

Psychological science suggests that these thoughts will only amplify your distress – which may, of course, discourage you from continuing your workouts in the future. To avoid this fate, you can practise “cognitive appraisal”. This could involve taking a deliberately dispassionate view that avoids negative interpretation; you might try to passively observe the feelings without judging them. You might even try to see discomfort as a sign of progress – that you are successfully pushing your body to the max.

Studies show that these small changes in mindset can soften the sense of physical distress and the perceived exertion of exercise. Through the mind-body connection, they could even activate a beneficial “expectation effect” – akin to the placebo effect – that alters the physiological response to the exercise. One experiment by Prof Fabrizio Benedetti at the University of Turin found that reframing muscle aches as a positive signal can ramp up the production of the brain’s endogenous cannabinoids and opioids, natural analgesics that could mask the strain.

4. Engage your imagination

Many athletes swear by the power of visualisation. American swimmer Michael Phelps, for example, imagined each event in exquisite detail. “I can see the start, the strokes, the walls, the turns, the finish, the strategy, all of it,” he wrote in his autobiography, No Limits. “Visualising like this is like programming a race in my head, and that programming sometimes seems to make it happen just as I imagined it.”

Sports science seems to back this up: the use of mental imagery can improve the accuracy of our movements, and even our overall strength. Studies show that people who spend a few minutes each day visualising the lifting of heavy weights see bigger strength gains than those who did not practise an imaginary workout. The mental rehearsal is thought to boost the nerve signals sent from the brain to the muscles, increasing the force you can exert when you finally visit the gym. This technique can be especially useful in minimising the loss of strength while recovering from injury.

5. Use temptation-bundling

For many of us, the biggest battle is getting to the gym in the first place when there are so many other activities vying for our time and attention. It’s much harder to summon the willpower to put on your trainers when you might be curled up on the sofa with a trashy novel.

If this is an issue, you can try temptation-bundling, which involves packaging the things you don’t want to do with one of your guilty pleasures. The technique was developed by Prof Katy Milkman at the University of Pennsylvania, who gave people iPods loaded with four addictive audiobooks to enjoy while they worked out. The simple strategy increased their gym attendance by 29% over the following seven weeks.

So dust off your trainers. With each of these strategies nudging you towards your fitness goals, you may find soon find yourself making substantial gains with very little pain.

Original article here

10 Jan 2023
Comments: 0

My Afternoon As A Canophilic*, Judgmental A****** (And What I Learned)

After months in pandemic solitary without connecting to any other living thing, I felt that my body would explode.

With no one around, I felt stymied. But then, I thought of a clever ruse.

I’d call my brother and tell him that my dog-niece, Sophia, asked to see me.

My brother replied that he didn’t know Sophia used the phone, but in any case, she was busy.

Desperate to get my hands on something, I devised another clever plan.

I’d go to the park and hug a tree.

Canophilia in action

I didn’t acknowledge it at the time, but deep down, I must have realized that, at the park, chances were good I’d find a doggie or two to use for my personal petting purposes.

Walking toward the park, I notice a doggie right away. He and his person are playing on the (fenced-off) ballfield. I could open the gate and say hello, but that would be odd. Suspicious. Awkward.

I nix that idea and continue walking toward the tree. Slowly.

As luck would have it, the puppy and his person are exiting the ballfield just as I am (very slowly) walking by the gate.

“Can I say hello to your dog?” I ask, trying to remain calm and not start jumping up and down.

“Sure!” the guy says. (By this time I’m already deeply involved in puppy nuzzling.)

“He’s so cute!” I yelp. “A puppy puppy!”

“Yep. Just 16 weeks old.”

The puppy, Rufus, and I were both squealing and wriggling with delight. Rufus got so excited he peed. I managed to hold that part of myself intact.

“OK, that’s enough,” says his dad.

We both strike big puppy-eye looks in Dad’s direction asking for more time – but it doesn’t work.

We go our opposite ways, casting longing looks behind us.

Tree-mendous insight

I take a deep breath, shake it off, and continue down the path to go talk to the tree. Tree gives me a warm hello as soon as I come under its branches. I stroke its rough bark and feel calm immediately.

“Good to see you!” Tree greets me. “You used to come here with your dog, Bailey. It’s been a long time. I was wondering when you’d be back!”

“You remember me?” I exclaim, moving in closer so Tree and I can be heart-to-heart. “How do you do it?” I ask. “How do you stand everything that’s going on?”

“You just ‘be’,” says Tree. “You listen. You watch. You grow. Things go by. Things change. You’re still here.”

You’re right. I am here, I realize.

I stand, eyes closed, front-to-front with Tree, then back-to-back. Tree’s presence is strong, centered, serene.

I take a deep breath…then open my eyes…and see….the picnic table.

No picnic

The picnic table, covered with crap! Litter! Garbage! On the table and all over the ground!

“I don’t understand!” I yell. (I don’t think I yelled out loud, but I can’t be sure.) “Who are these people? How can they come to a public place and leave all this crap behind?”

I storm away from Tree and go to get a closer look at the crap.

Food wrappers. Labels. Paper. Cigarette butts.

I stare at it. I fume. And then I think – I have to fix this! So I start picking up the crap. And with every piece, I yell and grouse and complain and judge and fume a little more.

It probably takes me at least four minutes to pick it up. Maybe less. Two minutes. (So I guess there wasn’t as much crap as I thought.)

But it does look a lot better when I finish picking it up and throwing it all away. And I feel better. For at least a minute. Maybe 30 seconds…before I notice something else. How had I missed it? What is that? On the ground? Coming out of the grass?!

Wild, unwanted plants

A weed! Not just a weed, but a sprawling weed. With flowers! Encroaching on the lawn!

“You don’t belong here!” I yell at the weed. Then I get down on my knees and pull it out. (It wasn’t easy.) And then…I see another weed just like it. And I pull that one out, too.

And then another. And another. And another. Soon, I have a whole big pile of weed-parts.

“The gardeners are going to wonder who was digging up the grass,” I think. But I left the shredded weeds in a big pile anyway.

Then, I kept pulling up some more.

“Why shouldn’t we be here?” one of the weeds asks me.

“This is a lawn!” I shout. This is supposed to be grass. You can’t just take over! You don’t belong here!”

For every weed I take out, there is another one. And then I notice that these weeds are entrenched all over the grass. There is no way I could pull them all out. And what difference would it make if I did? They would just come back. Or another one would.

I realize I can’t stop the weeds. But I wanted to. I really, really wanted to.

“Maybe I’m not as tolerant as I think,” I thought.

“Maybe you’re not,” I agreed.

By this time, my hands are filthy and dirt is packed into my nails. In the distance, across the park, puppies are playing. But it doesn’t feel right to go after them. I don’t think it would be very nice to rub dirt into some poor puppy’s fur.

Feeling slightly disgusted with myself, I head back to my car, brushing off my hands and picking the dirt out of my nails as I walk. I know it’s time to go home, but I’m not quite ready to leave.

As I get close to the ballfield, I see two fuzzy bodies playing chase. I notice they’re making their way toward the side field gate. I start brushing my hands off a bit more vigorously.“If I time it right I can meet them on the walkway just as they come out”, I surmise.

Canophilia, Part 2

Sure enough, as I come down the path, two adorable goldendoodles are heading right toward me. BINGO!

“Can I say hello to your puppies?” I ask, crouching down to doggie-reception level. Before either their mom or dad can say yes, I’m ready to receive sloppy kisses.

The dogs, Starbucks and Cappuccino (who does that?) feel just as soft as they look. I indulge in every second of nuzzling I can grab.

Their parents stand by patiently, but I don’t want to push it.

“Thanks for letting me say hello to your puppies,” I say, trying to sound casual.

“Sure!’ they reply and walk off.

“Ahhhh…” The tension that had been building in my body finally releases. I got what I so desperately needed.

As I walk back to my car with a skip in my step I’m suddenly brought up short with a thought that strikes me like a nasty thwack on the nose: “I am a puppy predator! I came to the park with the specific intention of getting my puppy needs met.”

“What if I hadn’t found any doggies?” I ask myself. “How would I have felt then?”

“You would have been one hell of a cranky banana,” I answer back.

I imagine how painful it must be to have serious urges that are not as easily and acceptably met. I think of what a few months of social isolation did to me. What about people who have a lifetime of isolation and rejection?

“Imagine what that leads to,” I think.

I don’t want to think about it. But I do feel a surge of compassion for the pain that drives people to do unreasonable things, just to make the hurting stop.

Then, another thwack!

I realize that I’m not just a puppy predator, I’m also a judgmental specist (one who is prejudiced against particular species). Who am I to decide what plants do or do not belong in a particular place – especially public grounds? Those poor plants were minding their own business until I came along and ripped them out of the ground!

“That must be how some people feel when they see people they feel don’t belong,” I think. “They want to rip them out. I guess I have those kinds of feelings, too. Different situation – same feelings.”

So I have to acknowledge that as angry and frustrated as I get at all the people I think of as dangerous, intolerant, judgmental assholes, I have more in common with them than I’d like to believe or admit.

Except I now believe and admit it.

So, maybe I’m not as bad as I think.

And maybe they’re not as bad as I think, either.

And maybe there’s more than a little hope for us all.

* dog-loving

About the Author:

Susan E. Schwartz is a writer and consultant living in San Mateo, California.