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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 on, questions of aging will increasingly become more and more relevant to society and its members. There’s strength in numbers, and as more people age and get older, now is the time to overthrow old paradigms. In 1990, the number of centenarians worldwide was 95,000. By 2015, that number had quadrupled to 451,000. By 2050, the number of centenarians on earth will grow by 800 percent to over 3.5 million centenarians. Centenarians are just an extreme example of a larger trend: by 2050, the number of people on the planet over the age of sixty-five will double. This massive shift will not only change the way we age; I predict this group of people will change the history of the world. And we need these Super Agers. Overwhelming technological and cultural changes are turning the world upside down. Those who have lived a long and happy life of eighty to a hundred years have learned many lessons critical to our survival. In many cultures, elders are revered for their wisdom and knowledge. As we age globally, older adults can teach humanity the lessons of forgiveness, self-compassion, gratitude, and love. I believe the world will benefit from the growing numbers of older adults in the world.

“Madame Full Charge”

Barbara Graves was “a dedicated and determined human rights and anti-war activist,” who died at the age of 104, in Mill Valley, California. Her friends knew her as “Madame Full Charge.” She read the paper daily and looked for causes that she would champion. Before she turned 100, she told a friend, “I don’t want to be 100, because then I’ll just be remembered for being 100.” I want to acknowledge Barbara Graves for her accomplishments and her legacy. She led humanitarian programs in Tanzania, Haiti, Guatemala, and India. She was a tireless advocate for the environment and the underserved, an unforgettable human being who truly made a difference. By the year 2050, there will be eight times the number of centenarians alive on the planet as are today. When living to 100 becomes less unusual, we will remember Barbara Graves not only for her age, but for all she added to the world. And imagine if there were eight women like her daily fighting worldwide injustices for over 100 years.

Research into how to end aging is not new. Many ancient cultures had formulas, systems, and practices to extend life. Yet in the past few decades, scientific discoveries have revealed promising possibilities for life extension. Experimentation and discoveries have been converging at a rapid and exponential pace. The aging process in humans remains incredibly complex, yet multiple discoveries relating to various aging pathways have made the idea of ending aging seem possible. Companies such as Google’s Calico, SENS research, and The Longevity Fund (a venture capital firm) all are racing to slow the paths of aging. Biologists have extended the life of a worm by ten times. A team of scientists have doubled the life expectancy of prematurely aging mice. But what does this mean for humans? We don’t know yet. Could you live to be two hundred? Maybe. Could aging naturally become a fashionable trend a century from now? No one knows exactly what the future will bring, but you can bet that medical and health breakthroughs will keep on coming at the rapid pace of a high-speed video game.

The World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher

The world’s oldest yoga teacher, Tao Porchon-Lynch, ninety-nine, marched with Gandhi when she was ten years old. Raised by her aunt and uncle in Pondicherry, India, she’s been called a real-life Forrest Gump because of her magical life. When Tao was eight, she saw young boys playing what she thought was a new game. It looked fun, so she joined them. It was actually yoga, and even though her aunt told it was just for boys, she insisted on learning it. As a lifelong passion, yoga was intertwined with her life. She worked as a model and film actress, and she met numerous celebrities and world leaders. In the 1950s, she taught yoga to Hollywood notables. The list of yoga teachers that Tao Porchon-Lynch has studied with sounds like a who’s who of modern yoga: Sri Aurobindo, B. K. S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Swami Prabhavananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In 1967, she abandoned acting to become a full-time yoga teacher. Tao’s words and positive spirit shine forth in her 2014 TED Talk, “You Can Do Anything.” At age ninety-nine, she sits comfortably in lotus position, bending her legs like a pretzel, but more impressive is her indomitable spirit. At age eighty-seven, she took up ballroom dancing, especially tango, and has won over six hundred first-place awards. She inspires the world and reminds us to turn to nature for inspiration: “Use the wonderful laws of nature to recycle your whole body. Nature gives us clues to living in trees that are hundreds of years old. If you realize the trees look dead and now they bloom. The trees are going through their recycling period.” Tao Porchon-Lynch has had many setbacks in life, including three hip replacements. In 2018, she will turn 100 years old, and her inspiration and resilience to bounce back from setbacks and embrace life is truly exhilarating.

The Science of Life

Ayurveda is the original holistic age-stopping medicine. As one of the oldest integral healing system on the planet, Ayurveda means “science of life.” It codifies how to live well and how to age well. Ayurveda has unique philosophical underpinnings that interweave everything from the food you eat, to your natural environment, to the phases of life. Ayurveda is a truly meta-holistic model of the world. In Ayurveda, the sister science to yoga, everything is interrelated. Because Ayurveda embraces all of life and nature with compassion, it can help you simplify the tangled and misinformed habits of industrialized societies. It is no accident that many places in the world where people routinely live to the age of 100 are cultures that never modernized. While we can’t go back in time, Ayurveda can remind modern humans of the value of slowing down and mindfully connecting with nature. Researchers in the emerging field of circadian medicine are confirming the wisdom of Ayurvedic sages, who have long known that by attuning to the daily cycles of a twenty-four-hour day you can actually slow aging.

In Ayurveda, everything in the world can be separated into five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. These elements are a part of you; they are in the food you eat; they are in the computers you type on. These elements are present everywhere, and their qualities can be seen in everything around you. Ayurveda arose from the wisdom of great sages and seers who spent most of their time in meditation and contemplation. These sages or rishis had the intuitive ability to tune in to the universe and humanity, and then reverse-engineer its creation to find out how diseases could be cured and how people could stay in good health and balance. The laws of physics can demonstrate how a musical instrument makes sound waves that humans experience as beautiful music. The laws of physics govern music and explain how it works. Ayurveda deciphers the music of the universe, and western science can explain how the sound waves of the universe operate. Together Ayurveda and science can help you to discover how you can optimize your own aging.

In Ayurveda, each stage of life has an element. All of the elements have qualities that explain the three stages of life. From birth to about sixteen years of age, you are in the earth and water stage of life. From sixteen years of age to about fifteen years, you are in the fire and air stage of life. From fifty to death, you are in the air and ether stage of life. When you know the elements of aging, you can find balance for yourself and use that balance to Super Age.

In the Ayurvedic model, each one of us is a completely unique blueprint. You are like a snowflake that has your own way of living, being, aging, and interacting with the world. While there is a genetic component to aging, our lifestyle accounts for 75 percent of our life expectancy. Ayurveda can teach you how to know yourself and optimize your own personal blueprint and physiology. When you are in balance, your physiology is optimized. To Super Age is to know yourself and to listen to your own inner wisdom. Scientists know how to help people live longer, yet only a small number of people are applying this information to their own lives. If we honor the idea that each age-slowing formula will be different from person to person, I believe people will change more easily. To Super Age is to meet yourself where you are and move in the right direction for you. There are people who drink whisky and live to be 111 years old. Some centenarians eat only whole foods, while others sometimes eat ice cream. And as Ayurveda teaches, we are each completely different. The key to Super Aging is careful personal investigation to find formulas and methods that work for you. What feels good to you? What will help you age and better yet, what will help you live life to the fullest and fulfill your dreams at 58, 67, 75, 84, 99 or 112? In Super Ager you will create a mosaic of daily habits and seasonal habits to optimize your own aging process.

Take Control of How You Age

But isn’t a lot of aging genetic? No, modest estimates measure genetics account for only 25 percent or less. The rest of the aging process—75 percent—is lifestyle. And lifestyle may even account for more; as the complex field of epigenetics grows, there is growing evidence that we influence our genome even more than previous thought.

If you are ready to take control of your life as a Super Ager, this book is for you. If you’re fifty and over, this book will have many, many inspirational ideas and habits. If you are younger, you can put Super Ager habits in place and then coast through to middle age and beyond. There’s a lot of wisdom here: whether you are sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety-five, there’s something for you here on these pages.

We need to learn preventative medicine based on good habits. As you will learn, contrary to popular belief, healthy habits are life-affirming, not rigid or boring. This is important because the medical system in the United States does not emphasize prevention. Americans spend more than any other country in the world per person per year on health care—about $10,348—yet we are ranked fifty-third in the world in life expectancy, at 79.25 years. In Japan, the average life expectancy is 85.52 years—more than six years longer than in the US—yet Japanese annual healthcare expenses, per person, are less than half of comparable American medical spending. More medical dollars does not mean more years of life. In Ikaria, Greece, modern “health care” is almost totally lacking. This isolated island has two doctors and a broken X-ray machine, yet it boasts the lowest middle-aged mortality rate in the world. In the last twenty years, demographers have defined “Blue Zones®” as areas in the world with significantly larger populations of centenarians. Almost all of the Blue Zones® don’t have the economic prosperity of industrialized countries. Instead, members of many of the Blue Zone® communities remain self-reliant well into old age, despite poverty and lack of material success, and live an average of twelve extra years.

Enter the Blue Zone®

What is a Blue Zone®? A Blue Zone® is an area where statistically unusual numbers of verified centenarians live. There are five current Blue Zones®: Okinawa, Japan; The Nicoya Peninsula, Guatemala; Sardinia, Italy; Loma Linda, California; and Ikaria, Greece. Several of these regions are relatively isolated and remote, yet not all are places untouched by modern life. In these regions, people share the following common behaviors:

•Eat a plant-based diet.

•Engage in natural movements, such as walking, gardening, or other consistent physical exercise or movement.

•Have a sense of purpose.

•Belong to a community or faith-based community.

•Take family seriously.

•Practice the ability to relax, let go of worries, or downshift.

•Don’t overeat or eat after sunset.

If you are in good health, you have opportunities right now to optimize the way you live and the way you age. Super Agers are people who step up from our hearts to shine and embrace our aging. What I have learned as a yoga teacher and Yoga Health Coach is that each one of us has a specific and unique way of living and aging. This book is about optimizing that process. When you optimize the way you’re living, you optimize your life. Super Aging requires that you look at and let go of your limiting beliefs, so that you can to shift your habits and lifestyle for the better.

If you are ill or suffering from a chronic health condition, please check with your doctor before following any of the programs outlined in this book. Most of the suggestions in these pages are gentle and have little or no risk. Most suggestions are simple habits, activities, or recipes that are inexpensive and relatively easy to implement.