224-CONCISE GUIDE FOR SENIOR FITNESS (Health)

1. Staying Fit, Healthy and Strong for the Rest of Your Life
To optimize fitness for life, there are 6 key areas that should be attended to on a
consistent, life-long basis. We can slack our attention for brief periods without much
consequence, but get back on track quickly and the results are better. On the Senior
Fitness.com website these 6 topics are the 6 Critical Keys to Dynamic Senior Living.
Each of these categories has a significant bulk of knowledge to be understood to get the
best results, but here I try to break it down into some simple strategies that, if applied
simplistically without a lot of study, will produce highly rewarding lifetime benefits. These
6 topics are listed sequentially in the order found on the Senior Fitness website. These
are: ANTI-AGING, EXERCISE, NUTRITION, REST/RECOVERY & RELAXATION,
SUPPLEMENTS, and THINKING & ATTITUDE.
ANTI-AGING- Slowing the processes involved in aging, and delaying their
consequences. This topic argues that there are practical lifestyle choices that lead to
longer, fuller healthier life. There is a developing anti-aging technology based on scientific
investigation of the aging processes in humans. We are building an understanding of how
the body ages, what speeds it up and what slows it down. We now understand the aging
process at the cellular level, and every day this understanding gets better. A growing
body of medical practitioners is specializing in this field of Anti-aging Medicine, and it
makes sense at this time to seek them out as our physicians of choice. You can find these
specialists listed at these sites: http://www.worldhealth.net/pages/directory/ and http://
www.lef.org/Health-Wellness/InnovativeDoctors/. These are search pages where you can
find one near you.
Strategy: Make it a primary interest to understand the causes of aging, what
can be done to slow the process and avoid its greatest hazards; make it a
hobby.
The primary mechanisms of aging are:
OXIDATIVE DAMAGE - damage by ‘free radicals’ at the molecular level. Free radicals
are charged ions or molecules that have the potential to grab or forcibly donate an
electron. They are created in many metabolic interactions in the body, and are produced
by immune cells to create inflammation in order to damage invading organisms. The
body creates numerous antioxidants to control the potential damage these free radicals
can create. Free radicals are defused in multi-step chains of reactions, involving many
different antioxidants. Particularly critical are our mitochondria - the energy plants of
each cell. They are bathed in an environment of free radicals resulting from their own
operation, and depend on locally generated antioxidants to prevent DNA damage. The
most important of these are glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase. We also
get a wide variety of antioxidants from food, particularly fruits and vegetables, but also
from animal sources. When antioxidant levels decline, due either to reduced endogenous
production or insufficient dietary intake levels, free radical damage accelerates and health
generally declines – aging is faster. Taking vitamin C and E are helpful, but not sufficient.
Strategy: Eat a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably
organic; take a broad-spectrum antioxidant supplement; take supplements
that increase endogenous antioxidant production. (More in our discussion of
Supplements.)
GLYCATION - bonding of sugars to proteins (or fats) that stiffens tissues and destroys
their function. Elevated blood sugar is the enemy of aging well. Chronically elevated
insulin is highly pro-inflammatory. Glycation is the primary damaging mechanism in

2. Metabolic Syndrome and Type-2 Diabetes, the cause of which is eating incorrectly.
Strategy: Keep blood sugar levels well below 100 mg/dl – shoot for fasting
values of 84 or less. Eat smaller meals spaced 5-6 hours apart and no
snacks between meals (drink water when you feel hunger); eat nothing after
dinner, go to bed on an empty stomach; get off grain-based and starchy
food "products" which raise blood sugar and insulin; eliminate sugar-based
drinks and sodas; forget desserts and sweets most of the time. Over-eating
assures a short life! (More in our discussion of Nutrition.)
INFLAMMATION - a natural immune system activity used to initiate a repair process for
injury or defense against invading organisms that becomes more prominent, damaging
and indiscriminate as we age. The root cause of increasing inflammation with age is
gradual rise of Nuclear Factor Kappa-Beta (NFKB), a protein that acts as a switch to
turn inflammation on and off in the body. Scientists describe NFkB as a “smoke sensor”
that detects dangerous threats like free radicals and infectious agents. In response to
these threats, NFkB “turns on” the genes that produce inflammation. As we age, NFkB
expression in the body increases, provoking widespread chronic inflammation and
setting the stage for diseases ranging from atherosclerosis and diabetes to cancer and
Alzheimer’s disease.
Strategy: Eat foods that are rich in anti-inflammatory components, thereby
lowering NFKB and inflammation, such as; omega-3 fatty acids from fish,
phytoestrogens, curcumin, garlic, licorice, ginger, rosemary, grapes/red
wine and pomegranate. Keep insulin levels low by eating only low glycemic
foods. (More in the discussions of Nutrition and Supplements.)
SENESCENCE - human cells stop dividing after about 50 divisions due to loss of our
chromosome’s telomere length; this shortening with every cell division appears to set
our maximum lifespan limit at somewhere near 120 years. All of the aging mechanisms
mentioned above drive cells toward senescence and shorten their lifespan, so adhering to
the strategies above will help. The only known practice to promote significant increase in
longevity is caloric restriction. The most important single habit to form is eating modestly!
But, recent studies have demonstrated that Resveratrol, vitamin D and Quercetin all turn
on the same genes associated with longevity that are activated by caloric restriction. Very
Important – telomeres shorten more rapidly in sedentary bodies than in physically active
bodies. Physical activity is critical to longevity.
Strategy: Eating; same rules as under Glycation. Supplement with
resveratrol (>200 mg/day), quercetin (>1000 daily), take vitamin D (1000-
10,000 IU/day) year-round unless you work in the sun regularly. (Have your
blood levels measured – supplement to get into the 60-90 ng/ml range.)
Finally, exercise for life – never quit.
Summary: Slowing the aging process is accomplished by doing things that inhibit the
damage from these aging mechanisms or slow the rate at which the damage is done. In
some cases there is hope that specific types of damage can actually be reversed, and we
could, in fact, grow younger in some respects.
Specific genes and their expression are evident in long-lived individuals, and nutrition,
exercise, sleep and supplementation dramatically control the activation of these genes.
It is in our power to add as much as 30% (current estimates) to our healthy life span, and
delay the onset of the degenerative illnesses associated with aging. Consider how much
money that amounts to if you were able to work only an extra 5 years before retiring. This
is a venture (an adventure to some of us) worth pursuing! Now let’s lay out the strategies
for optimal aging.

3. EXERCISE - The primary driver for reversing age-related functional decline.
The body is a demand-driven, adaptable, living system that requires movement and
muscular activity to maintain its function. Look what happens to someone bedridden in a
hospital; muscle mass, flexibility, strength, bone density and range of motion all drop like
a downed helicopter, in just a matter of days. The unseen effects are equally damaging;
every organ reduces function and slows its activity. Lack of movement is devastating to
the human body.
Aging is very much like a longer version of being bedridden. Slowly, over decades, the
same decreases in capability occur AND the antidote is the same: MOVEMENT. Start
moving and your ability to move will improve. Walk, run, dance, stretch, lift weights, play
games that require physical motion and the losses due to aging will reverse. A sedentary
lifestyle will quickly slow our metabolism, making it easy to get fatter and weaker, while
reducing immune system function yet increasing inflammation with time.
Exercise, be it occupational or recreational is highly anti-aging, and if we have been
sedentary for much of our life, exercise can rapidly reverse many of the losses of aging.
It is one of the fastest ways to “reverse age”. Along with improved ability to move, many
other changes take place. Blood sugar levels will regulate downward and remain more
even, stored fat will be reduced, insulin sensitivity will improve, blood pressure will come
down and your heart will get stronger. Your vascular system will actually start building
collateral arteries around blocked vessels, improving blood flow to your heart and other
organs. The body's repair mechanisms speed up, things heal faster, the immune system
gets stronger; you get sick less often and you recover more quickly from virtually every
malady. But lie on the couch, watch TV, drink beer and eat potato chips with all your spare
time and the disabilities of aging will overtake you like a Mongol army.
On the website we consider three classifications of exercise as fundamentally important,
and encourage engaging in all three for life. These are:
Weight Training - to trigger your anabolic, or muscle-building process; muscle you
need to look good and move well, be stronger than you look and dissolve fat 24
hours a day.
At every age, muscles get stronger and bigger with the right kind of exercise - Every Age!
But walking and soup-can exercises will not build us more muscle. To get your body to
reverse the normal age-related wasting away of your muscle structure and strength you
must start building it again. This means training with weights at levels which cause muscle
growth - everything else is ineffective.
Nearly all the problems related to weight training occur because of insufficient recovery
time or, as it is called in the gym business, overtraining. The primary cause is pushing
too much weight too often, not allowing for complete muscle system regrowth and
neurological and hormonal recovery. A 4-day/week workout schedule will work for
someone under forty; a 3-day/week schedule can be ok for someone under 50, but take
my word for it, past 60 we are far better off with a week or more between workouts.
Now at 71, I have been achieving the best muscle growth I have ever made by picking up
personal record weights, for one rep, over partial/strong range of motion, holding it for 5
seconds before putting it down, and watching with amazement as my strength increases
workout after workout. And the one criterion for timing the workouts is: If I can’t push, pull
or lift more than last time, I didn’t wait long enough for full recovery or the incremental
weight increase is too large. This form of weight training is called Static Contraction
training, and I will probably never go back to my old 3-day split again. This is so effective

4. at building old muscle, and there is so little time spent at the gym to accomplish it, and so
much time out of the month feeling energized compare to the old approach, I see no point
in going back. On the website check out Pete Sisco’s – Static Contraction Training for a
full write-up on the method.
Strategy: Make strength training the heart of your exercise program for the
rest of your life; consider Static Contraction Training as the most effective
method available.
Aerobics - to maintain and recover your heart/lung/vascular fitness.
When you push your aerobic limits, your cardiovascular/pulmonary system improves; it's
called the 'training effect'. Your body adapts to the measured stress by becoming more
efficient at getting oxygen to the cells, and the cells become more efficient in performing
all their various functions. The bottom line is that the perceived effort in climbing a flight
of stairs goes down; you don't have to breathe as hard to get to the top, and you recover
from being out of breath faster. The best part is that you only need to gradually increase
your effort to 20 - 25 minutes per session, and only 2-3 sessions a week to achieve
dramatic, life-changing improvement.
Recently, Laboratory studies have show that even greater benefit is produced by Interval
Training - varying the pace over the duration of the training session by pushing into your
anaerobic limit (increase output until your breathing can't keep up) every five minutes or
so, then throttle down until you catch your breath and your heart rate comes back to it's
baseline aerobic rate. According to Dr. Al Sears, measured increases in lung capacity and
volume result in laboratory studies. This is exactly what you will experience in most well-
run Spinning classes.
On the other hand, endurance running is an enormous stress on virtually all the body's
organs and systems. In many respects, because it raises cortisol levels dramatically,
while suppressing testosterone production, it is a formula for rapid aging. In his new book
PACE® - Rediscover Your Native Fitness, Dr. Sears shows how lung capacity actually
decreases faster in distance runners than in those involved in other forms of exercise. It is
a two-edged sword best used in moderation.
Strategy: Make aerobic training part of your lifetime fitness program,
incorporating interval training, and allowing age-appropriate recovery time
between sessions. Your body will tell you if you are overtraining – you will stop
enjoying it or something will get chronically sore – listen to your body.
Yoga, Pilates, Stretching & Balance - Building poise, posture, flexibility, strength,
endurance, balance and grace, while connecting with the spirit within - speed and
power aren't the whole story.
The importance of posture, fluidity of motion, flexibility and balance are undeniable in
terms of aging gracefully. We believe that the swift and the strong don't have a corner on
happiness, and hope you will take time to find the value in these milder forms of exercise.
Don't kid yourself that they are not strenuous, but they build a strength that is more
evident in the grace of movement, more like a dancer than the sinew and bones look of
the marathoner or the bulging bulk of a power lifter.
The ancient Asian Martial Arts forms bring in the moves of combat in which the elements
of speed and precise movement foster improvements in balance and reaction times. The
milder forms such as Tai-Chi are highly suitable to this cause of senior fitness.
It is extremely important to incorporate some form of stretching into our exercise to
prevent the loss of range of motion as we age. Aging tries to stiffen all your tissues, and
stretching several times per week is the proven antidote.

5. My personal approach is to integrate stretching into my weight training. I stretch the
muscle set that I just worked for 30 seconds after each set, including the warmup set. I
maintain a high level of flexibility and avoid injury with this approach. For non-workout
days I have a daily routine using body-weight poses, doorway stretches
Strategy: Take a Yoga or Pilates course; incorporate the positions and
moves into a gentle daily routine that pulls all muscles to full length and all
joints through full range. Don’t create pain, but hold the stretch long enough
to fully relax the muscles, usually 25-30 seconds.
NUTRITION - the Raw Material for Senior Health and Lifetime Fitness
Food provides the basic materials that build and sustain the body. In our prime we can
seemingly eat anything and digest it, absorb it, assimilate it and utilize it. But as we age,
stomach acid and enzyme production decrease, digestion worsens, absorption and
assimilation of nutrients becomes less effective. Mechanisms for getting nutrients into
our cells, and waste products out, become less effective. The basic starting point for any
anti-aging effort is to eat all the necessary nutrients and enhance the mechanisms for
digestion, absorption and assimilation.
We tend to think of our body as a self-contained object like a chair or, maybe a machine,
the same today as we were yesterday. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are
constantly tearing down and rebuilding every organ, cell and DNA molecule we possess.
Even our bones are constantly replacing themselves. The material for all this renovation
is food. Any deficiency in the needed materials, even short term, and our body will
cleverly sacrifice one part to repair another; like scavenging muscle for protein to repair
sunburned skin. Any prolonged deficiency will soon cause some aspect of our physiology
to malfunction, causing “dis-ease”.
So, our current purpose is to eat so well that we get all the nutrients we need to maximize
our health and life span, and to avoid functional decline and pain as long as possible. At
the same time we need to avoid or minimize intake of any substances that are toxic to our
life processes.
The primary differences between how we eat today and that of only 150 years ago lies
with Industrial farming, industrial animal production and the food manufacturing industry.
In the past we took real produce (fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, seeds and grains), real
animals (birds, mammals, sea creatures) and some of their life-giving outputs such as
eggs, milk and we prepared them at home and ate very well. Today most of what people
eat has been processed, refined, adulterated and vastly altered from its natural state.
Nutrient levels are far below levels of 150 years ago, while toxin content from pesticides,
herbicides and chemical fertilizers are at levels which clearly harm us over a lifetime of
exposure.
We have adopted habits of eating things ‘made’ from foods that are not at all foods. Most
real foods are found around the outer walls of a supermarket, but the bulk of the inner
isles are stocked with “food products” that are full of cheap sugars, nutrient-depleted grain
flours and oils that are so modified as to be unusable by our cell structures. In the name
of shelf-life and expedience we have taken to eating a vast array of pseudo-foods that are
truly slow poisons, rather that sources of life and capable of nurturing our health.
Strategies:
Eat real foods; avoid “food products” that come in bags, boxes or, in many
cases, cans. Minimize consumption of pastries, cakes, cookies, candy or

6. anything with sugar in it.
Eliminate soft drinks, sugared or diet, from your life – learn to drink water.
Eliminate all High Fructose Corn Syrup from your diet.
Eat nothing containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Use
only natural, unrefined oils (extra-virgin olive, coconut, avocado) or butter
for cooking.
Eat free-range/grass-fed poultry and meats; eat wild-caught fish and sea
food. The omega-3/omega-6 fat ratio is unhealthily changed in all animals fed
industrial feeds.

7. REST, RECOVERY and RELAXATION - Time for the body to repair and
strengthen itself.
SLEEP - Most of the reconstructive work your body does happens while you sleep.
Deprive yourself of this vital activity and you will, to some degree, age more rapidly and
decrease your performance in virtually every aspect of your life. Yet, one or the biggest
complaints of our senior population is that we don't sleep well, we don't feel rested when
we do and don't have inadequate energy when we're awake.
We now understand that one night with five hours sleep causes an immediate measurable
increase in blood sugar and baseline insulin levels. String a week of those together and
you begin to slide into metabolic syndrome – mid-body fat increases, blood pressure,
total cholesterol and LDL all rise, HDL falls, immune response falls, stress hormones
increase, insulin baseline climbs. Live like this for a 30 year career and you will almost
certainly earn yourself full-blown, chronic type II Diabetes, and likely heart disease, cancer
and dementia along with it. The fastest way to all these metabolic diseases is chronic
insufficient sleep.
Humans have a primary and fundamental requirement for 7 – 8 hours undisturbed sleep
every night. You can quickly recover from a one or two day loss, or as anyone with a
new baby comes to know, even from several months of modest deprivation, but it takes
a toll on your longevity. It degrades the body’s ability to regulate energy production in
harmony with the normal circadian cycle of light and dark. A pattern of poor quality or
insufficient sleep speeds up all the aging mechanisms and opens us to early onset of the
degenerative diseases associated with aging.
Strategy: Order your life to get enough sleep on a daily basis to feel
energized and avoid fatigue.
If you have trouble sleeping, getting to sleep and staying asleep, there are several things
to consider changing in your behavior patterns.
Strategy: First, start winding down the day earlier than before, turn off the
TV, cut down the amount of light in your rooms, stop reading anything
stimulating or intense before retiring.
Second, use a non-dug sleep aid based on some of these components:
valerian root, passionflower, hops, vervain, chamomile, 5-HTP or l-
tryptophan, magnesium, calcium. Melatonin works for some (makes me
agitated after initial drowsiness). GABA can be useful. Avoid caffeine
beyond late afternoon, do not use alcohol within 3 hours of retiring – when it
wears off, arousal follows.
Sleep apnea and snoring (including your partner’s) lead to worsening medical issues
– see a sleep specialist ASAP. By the time one gets to this stage of sleep deprivation,
full blown metabolic syndrome has typically set in. This condition is one that accelerates
physical degeneration; it self-worsens health rapidly, and must be fixed. The key to
resolution is to lose weight, regain a lean body and to strengthen the muscular support for
the base of the tongue. When we pack on lots of body fat, the tongue gets fat as well. A
heavy tongue overwhelms the muscle structure supporting it during sleep – not the only
cause, but a major contributor to the problem.

8. RECOVERY – A critical thing to understand about aging is that REPAIR TAKES LONGER
than it did when we were young. The number one reason for injury in older athletes is
too much stress without adequate recovery time. We may be able to push/lift the same
poundage as when we were younger, but we better not do it as often. The time between
workouts needs to be lengthened or overtraining will lead to some manner of injury, or a
sense of growing fatigue will lead us to give it up. Whatever physical output you use to
keep in shape and stay strong, reduce the frequency so that muscles, ligaments, tendons
and nerves have time to fully heal before the next hammering. This applies to everything
from pumping iron to dancing.
Strategy: listen to your body for signals of overrunning the healing
processes; aches, pains and fatigue are signs that tell you to allow more
time for repair.
SUPPLEMENTS – to make up for the losses of aging
Look at supplements as tools to make up for the slowing of energy production with aging.
This is the key factor; aging is, at the heart of it, a gradual reduction of the rate at which
our cells can produce energy. Every process slows as a result. To counter that, consider
these categories of supplements:
● Digestive Supplements – Aging reduces our ability to digest, absorb, assimilate
and utilize nutrients from food. The key considerations are lower production of
stomach acid and other digestive enzymes with age, disruption and imbalance of
our gut bacteria population and lack of fiber in todays popularly consumed foods.
Address this by taking Betaine HCl and a digestive enzyme complex with all
meals; digestion will be complete and the stomach will empty faster, heartburn/
reflux will be resolved in most cases.
● Nutritional Supplements – Make up for a low-quality diet and for the fact that
nutrient content of our entire modern food chain is a fraction of foods of 150 years
ago by taking a vitamin-mineral-food extract complex such as Life Extension Mix.
It will be hard to find a product that is more complete in this aspect. Also critical is
supplementing omega-3 fats – look for products with DHA, EPA, and GLA and try
for 3-6 grams a day
● Disease-Specific Supplements – Aimed at specific areas of disease or functional
weakness, in spite of having to carry warning labels that they don’t cure diseases,
there are effective supplements that fix things gone wrong. I’ve been keeping my
knees functional for 40 years with various joint formulas. I’m keeping my arteries
from reclogging with LEF’s Endothelial Defense and Wellness Resources’ Cardio
Helper and Leptinal. I keep energy production peaked up with LEF’s Mitochondrial
Energy Optimizer and CoQ10. Whatever ails you, there is something out there
that can help. You have to scour the market place and compare products and
intelligently evaluate their composition, then use yourself as the lab rat to evaluate
their effectiveness.
● Hormone Maintenance Supplements – Our hormones of youth decline with
age; we slowly lose our lust and hustle, desire and ambition. But products abound
that can slow this process. Hormone levels and balance can be greatly restored
to eliminate many of the physical and emotional impacts of this aspect of aging.

9. These may work well into our 80s, and when they stop, there is bio-identical
hormone replacement. I personally have spent more energy on understanding
this process in men, and treating my own changes as they occur, but women
have a good range of products available as well. For men, the key ingredients
are Chrysin, Muira puama, Maca, Nettle, Ginger, Tribulus , Horny goat weed and
DHEA. DHEA is better assimilated using a transdermal crème; a product I use is
TestroMax for Men from Life-flo.
● Sports/bodybuilding Supplements – Most of these work on enhancement
of nitric oxide production, super-loading of creatine and other ATP-boosting
elements or increased testosterone production. Post-workout supplements try
to put back what was drained out during a workout to promote rapid repair and
muscle regeneration and restore energy levels. I specifically like Force Factor and
Hypershock (by Myogenix) to get me ramped up for a workout and Aftershock or
Myotein to start the recovery afterward. There are dozens of similar products on
the market; a terrific source for information on this whole subject of bodybuilding is
www.bodybuilding.com.
Strategy: Make use of supplements to extend our body’s functional life and
fitness. Count on nutrients for real health; they build and heal us from the
cellular level up. Drugs mostly trick the body and there are normally serious
side effects to their long-term use.
My favorite publication for learning the latest science related to aging, health and
supplements is Life Extension Magazine. This is high quality publication with credible
reporting and well documented articles. The life Extension Foundation funds numerous
studies around the world in the science of this field, reviews virtually every study of merit
around the world and reports on all aspects of accumulated knowledge. Then if the
science warrants it, they create a supplement product to put that knowledge to work. We
can offer our readers a free 1-year membership to Life Extension Foundation, including
the monthly magazine. This is an awesome opportunity to stay current on practical
strategies for optimizing your personal health and aging process. Just click the link: https:/
/mycart.lef.org/Cart.aspx?item=MEMBFREE12M&source=ED. If you get a dialog box
asking for a mail.lef.org user name and password, just copy & paste the link in the URL
bar in Internet Explorer and it should take you to the proper shopping cart page to sign up.
Firefox browsers put up the unwanted dialog box, which you can’t get past. Once on the
cart page, select/check the free membership box and then Checkout. Fill in the form and
you’re a member.
THINKING and ATTITUDE - One person’s junk is another’s treasure; it’s all
a matter of thinking and attitude. Mental fitness leads to physical health.
Are you a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person? Is this life mostly
pleasurable and worth living or painful and largely a drag. Reality is personal; everything
is experienced through a sort of internal filter system that our genetics and experiences
form over time. Everything we experience is really an interpretation of sensory inputs; the
signals bombard us through our eyes, skin, ears, nose and mouth, and millions of sensory
neurons in our gut, lungs, muscles and joints. We make sense out of it as we can, and
call it reality. When we remember something from the past or imagine something in the
future, we use the same mental pathways to re-experience or pre-experience events or

10. situations, and we assign emotional meanings to those experiences as they are in our
mind.
The critical thing to understand is that THOUGHT or THINKING is made up of the same
stuff as our sensory inputs. In other words, thinking is a process of internally creating or
re-creating the same words, sounds, images and feelings that we use to sense the world
around us. But the interpretation of those experiences is something we can change at will,
if we know how.
We don't get a user's manual for the brain, we just assume that we are using it correctly
as we grow up. As we mature, we become aware that some people seem to be running
their brains better than others. We develop strategies or behaviors for responding to the
world around us. And we get locked into behaviors that sometimes are not serving us well
at all.
Do you have ways of dealing with the world that you would change if you could? Would
you like to be excited about activities you now avoid, or motivated to change patterns of
behavior that no longer serve your greater good?
My purpose is to present tools available to change our thinking, our feelings and our
attitudes for the better. I was 38 years old when I bought a copy of “Unlimited Power” by
Anthony Robbins, and when I finished the book I was a vastly more optimistic person than
when I opened it. I was also vastly more equipped to deal with the world and its people
around me. I had never understood that I could change my thinking, feelings and attitudes
about anything in a heartbeat. I thought I was stuck with my feelings and emotions that
seemed to beat me up on a regular basis, that I was stuck with a sadly disappointing
ME. The book introduced me to a basket of tools for personal change – change that
really happened when I decided it should. No longer a matter of wishing to be different, I
became able to alter any aspect of my being pretty much on command.
Neuro-linguistic Programming or NLP
NLP began as a study of successful strategies for psychotherapy, and focused on three
very effective therapists who could bring about rapid change and healing in patients, but
seemingly had no idea of how they accomplished that outcome. In studying the methods
of these therapists, Richard Bandler and John Grinder began to see common language
patterns used by them to get inside their patient’s cognitive processes and make change
for the better. That led to exploring the nature of cognitive or thought processes to answer
the question - what is the nature of thought, both conscious and unconscious?
They rapidly came to understand that thought is a construct of our sensory inputs and
that language is a primary component of our experience. The words we use internally to
represent a situation or circumstance elicit our behavior in that event. In fact, words are
abstract symbols we use to represent very large patterns of images, sounds, sensations
- both touch and internal, smells and tastes and the gut feelings that make up much
of what we experience as emotions. An example of that would be to imagine that you
are swimming in the warm Australian waters over a beautiful reef, and you hear the
word "Shark!” By now you have already undergone a cascade of images, sounds and
emotions just from reading this line - you may be nearly unaware of it or you may have
felt a huge shudder of dread, depending on your experience. The point is that it was
completely internal - you were not there in reality - yet a single word elicited a vast pattern
of internal experience and perhaps strong emotion.
As they shared this understanding of language and thought with others of similar interests,
methods of therapy began unfolding rapidly. NLP began expanding in many directions,
but all related to the concrete understanding of how the brain catalogs and interprets

11. our sensory experience. Many Psychiatrist and Psychologists became practitioners of
these developing therapeutic strategies and certification programs developed to train
practitioners. The NLP community produced a vast catalog of rapid phobia cures, mental/
visual patterns to effect rapid emotional change, word/language patterns to 'reframe' an
experience to make it less powerful, strategies to create rapport with others very quickly
and ever so much more. There are even techniques for change based on 'timelines' - the
methods we humans use to distinguish events of the past from those of the present or
imagined events in the future.
Neuro-linguistic Programming or NLP is a powerful collection of tools to rapidly and
permanently change the way our brain works, if we want such a change. If you have
ever wished that with a wave of your hand you could change your experience to
better serve you, you should embark on the NLP journey - it will change your life in
any way you choose. Start with these web links: www.purenlp.com www.nlp.com
www.nlpcoaching.com www.nlpco.com www.nlptoolbox.com
Hypnosis for Change - Ancient and mysterious; a powerful modern tool for change.
Hypnosis is another way of making nearly instant changes in behaviors, thinking and the
way activities and circumstances make you feel. A trusted, skilled hypnotherapist can
assist you in rapid change of behaviors you wish to alter. There is no need to fear this
approach, when it works incredibly fast and changes are lasting.
An interesting aspect of this change stuff is that one targeted change in a behavior pattern
often leads to a cascade of new attitudes and extension of interests and activities. So
change what you wish, but be listening to your loved ones to see if they still love the new
you. You may need some fine adjustments along the way.
There are also many resources for learning Self-hypnosis, with which the same change
strategies can be self-induced. You just have to remember that you are relying on an
amateur. We found Hypnosis Network to be a great source of information and training for
self hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Find them at www.hypnosisnetwork.com/?kbid=1624.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) - Rapid emotional and physical
healing by melding acupressure meridian stimulation with linguistic
suggestion
Another breakthrough technology - the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT - combines
the use of the acupressure meridian points with verbal elements of NLP to effect
remarkable emotional transformations and healing as well as rapid modification of thinking
and behavior patterns. This technique is the simples of all, and it is effective even with
zero skill. You just memorize the sequence and location of the meridians, make up a
statement of the positive outcome you want and tap the meridians in sequence while
repeating the statement. Yes, a practitioner can do this for us and probably get to the root
of our issues more skillfully than we can as armatures, but once we own and understand
this tool, we can quickly apply it to any thing we wish to change in ourselves. The home
page for Gary Craig, the developer of EFT, is: www.emofree.com. You might go there for
some of the history and the original training DVDs. Gary has retired – we wore him out I
suppose – but has handed the reins to the folks at www.eftuniverse.com where the EFT
community will continue to provide wisdom on the practice and certification programs for
practitioners.
Strategy: Use one or all of these techniques to change whatever you wish
to change in yourself, to take your life in whatever direction you wish it to
go. We can seldom change others to fit our needs; we can always change
ourselves to better handle reality.

12. The Bottom Line
Get used to the idea that life in this body is finite – we all get to die. In the mean time we
are on this earth to be a part of each other’s journey through whatever time we can share.
Living is a GOOD enterprise, a gift we should make the most of. Pay attention to what
builds up this body and makes it healthy, fit and strong, and walk away from that which
tears it down.
Order you life so that you are doing what is interesting to you, but find interests which are
constructive. Work to make life better for those around you, act with integrity and honesty,
nurture the relationships you form, especially those with people you love. Surround
yourself with people you like and respect, and distance yourself from liars and con-artists
and the jerks that can’t get along with most others. Learn to manage stress by having
a sense of being in control of your circumstances – if you live as if you had complete
control, whether true or not, you will have far less stress, and likely live longer and better
as a result.
The strategies presented above are all strategies for taking charge and responsibility of
our being and our outcomes. They all, if implemented, lead to a richer sense of having
lived well up to now, with more of life’s riches to come. When we finally come to that
unavoidable winding down to physical failure and death, I believe there will be a sense
of gratitude and thanks that pervades our last days for a life well lived. That’s been my
experience.
Good Living - Frank