Counterclockwise
I’m a firm believer that the things I have done in my life and continue to do have kept me young. I’m not sure if it’s because of these things that I don’t and have never really been concerned about age or getting older but either way that is the case. The question is can we keep ourselves young, delay aging, or even make ourselves younger by engaging in activities that make our minds think we are young and therefore keep our bodies young?
I’ve been reading a lot about the mind-body connection lately, about how much influence our thoughts can have on our physical well-being be it good or bad. It’s something that I’ve always been fascinated by but recently dived back into because of the season of life I find myself in right now. For years now I have focused and truly believed in the power of the mind and how it can influence our lives. I’ve had first-hand experience with how we can create what we want in this life, and I think we have all witnessed over the past few years just how powerful the mind can be over the body.
I’ve been reading this book called “The mindful body” thinking our way to chronic health by Ellen langer. She is a professor of psychology and was the first woman ever to be tenured at Harvard. The book and some of the studies that she has done over the years are literally mind-blowing. One study in particular that she is most well known for is the counterclockwise study that was done in 1979 way ahead of its time.
In this study, they took a group of elderly men in their 80s and retrofitted a living environment for them that was from 20 years prior. So they would be living as if they were 20 years younger. Everything on TV was from 20 years ago, the newspapers they read and the current affairs they discussed all had to be from the past. She explains that these elderly gents looked like they might not make it through the day let alone through the week of the experiment. To put it plainly they were old. They lived as their younger selves for one week and without any medical intervention, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory, and their strength improved and they looked noticeably younger. She goes on to say that almost from the beginning these changes were palpable.
This isn’t to say that we can change our age chronologically but it would seem evident that we associate certain ways of being with certain times in our lives. All of a sudden, I’m at this point in my life so now I have to do this or now I can’t do this anymore. I feel like here in the UK we are very guilty of this kind of mentality. That there is a certain way you have to do things and doing anything outside of that is not appropriate and least of all encouraged.
Without really knowing it until a few years ago bikes have always kept me young and continue to do so. It’s something that I’ve done for such a long time now that I have this knowing that I won’t lose that feeling. Maybe that’s what draws us to riding bikes, that sense of feeling young and not having to change the way we look at life just because we are getting older. Or maybe I’m just lucky and have found some strange portal to feeling young. Either way, I’m sticking with it and if Rune can encourage people out there to do what brings them joy and feel young at heart I’ll be very satisfied.
photos by Simon Weller