Last month we wrote about how a scientific experiment showed that subjects who lived for a few weeks in an environment from 20 years earlier started to feel more energetic, experienced less pain and generally felt more youthful. It is amazing to realise that being unconsciously reminded of an earlier life through external stimulus can actually make your body measurably more youthful.
This month I am going to take this further by suggesting that the same effect could be achieved if you can get your internal sensory environment, your joints and muscles, feeling like they did 20 years ago. There are a number of ways this works: – Aching and stiff joints make you feel old.
It isn’t uncommon for patients of mine who are in pain to describe it by saying “I felt 100 years old when I woke up this morning”. – The way you carry yourself will affect how others treat you. Being bent and slow has a dramatically aging effect in the eyes of others, as illustrated by the sign above. – It is quite normal to unconsciously see ourselves as others do; these judgements can seep in like a poison that acts to accelerate aging.
So stiff, achy joints and a sore back can act as a self reinforcing loop that keeps you feeling old. Thankfully there are solutions, and one of the powerful effects of Osteopathy is to loosen and stretch muscles and joints. This allows the body to move in a more fluid, upright and comfortable way.
Not only do you feel stronger and more confident; others begin to perceive you in this way. It follows that this sense of feeling energetic and younger from the inside, with reinforcing messages from the outside, can unconsciously prompt your body to activate your regenerative systems; prompting actual physiological changes which make you feel more energetic and less prone to pain. There isn’t a study I can point to to say that Osteopathy makes you younger, but it does seem that there are good reasons to suppose that it might.
