Super Ager. Elise Marie Collins

      •Eat dinner early

      •Meditate or practice gentle yoga

      •Go to bed by 10 p.m.

      Vata

      As we grow old, we start to enter the Vata stage of life. Vata means air and ether combined. The Vata stage of life can be an inspiring, creative, and productive stage of life because life is about balance. Habits are grounding and earthy, and become more beneficial to our health as we age. As we age, we need habits more than ever. According to Ayurveda, habits contribute more to the energy of earth and provide stability that attracts healthy aging and creativity, joy.

      According to Ayurveda, when we have a structure of daily and even seasonal habits, one can grow old with ease and grace. In many Super Ager cultures such as the village of Ogimi, healthy habits are an integral part of life and aging. If you don’t belong to a community that supports habits, consider finding a health coach or group that will support you in healthy habit change.

      –PRACTICE PLAN–

      Familiarize yourself with habit change.

      Read

      •Force of Habit by Tasmin Astor, PhD

      •The Power of Habit by Charles Duhig

      •The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

      •Body Thrive, Uplevel Your Body and Your Life with 10 Habits from Yoga and Ayurveda, by Cate Stillman

      •Mindset by Carol Dweck

      •The Neuroscience of Change: A Compassion Based Program for Personal Transformation, by Kelly McGonigal

      •B. J Fogg’s website, resources, classes, and tools on habit change at www.tinyhabits.com

      •For Elise’s courses on habit change, Super Aging, and Yoga Health Coaching, visit www.elisemariecollins.com

      Daily Habits

      Grab your journal and write about your own daily habits. Ask the following questions.

      1.Do I like my habits?

      2.What do I want to change?

      3.What have been my past experiences with changing my habits?

      4.How can I get really good at changing my own daily, weekly, and monthly habits?

      Form a Healthy Habit Support Group

      Cate Stillman has an outline for a book group to follow her book Body Thrive. Consider forming your own healthy habit meetup, book club, or group. You can meet at a local library, community center, or yoga studio. It doesn’t have to cost money to change your habits, and finding a group is the single most powerful tool for habit change for those of us who have grown up in communities where healthy aging is not modeled by those around us.

      Start Small

      What habit do you want to change? Pick one, then take the smallest baby step: pick something that is so easy you can’t possibly fail. Maybe you want to quit eating desserts. Your habit could be take one full inhale and exhale before you eat a dessert. Or your habit could be to begin exercising in the morning. Start with a walk around the block, or ten jumping jacks. Make it so easy you can’t say no.

       Chapter 5

       Move Your Body to Slow Down Time

      “Get up and do things, even if you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you don’t feel like doing this, that or the other. Do the thing that you don’t like to do first, and get rid of it.”