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[post_content] => During a particularly hard break-up in my 20s, a friend advised me, “The more present you are during this process, the bigger the present you’ll get out of it.” And though I barely understood what that meant, I gave it a try and an odd thing happened. I saw that I was choosing the big, dramatic grieving process I was going through. And that meant it was optional.
In The Art of Presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “Through thought you cannot possibly grasp what presence is.” But he gives some clues to point us in the right direction. He says it’s there, “when you’re not thinking about the last moment, or looking to the next one.” And he uses phrases like “a state of relaxed alertness” and “a spacious stillness,” to describe it.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”
Our presence is tremendously rare and hugely valuable. Especially in this age of epidemic distraction, it’s increasingly difficult and uncommon to choose a voluntary time-out from technology, data, and our own mental analysis. But unlike the artificial value of a coin that accidentally got stamped with a head on both sides, our presence can do for us what nothing else can. And we can make it more abundant by simply choosing it.
Although it may not put food in our belly, most other problems disappear with presence. The need to fix or relive the past disappears. The need to avoid certain unwanted events in the future disappears. Even if we're working on something now that will benefit us in the future, with our presence, we work on it now in order to work on it now. And that’s enough.
The allure of distraction, which so often threatens our presence, dissolves when we practice being present. Do you know the word obviate? I like to write using words that almost everyone understands, but there’s only one word I can think of that means “to make unnecessary,” and that word is obviate. Learning to deepen our presence obviates the urge for distraction and mental departure from our current reality.
With presence, we perceive all kinds of intelligence and detail that we’re otherwise deaf and blind to. We know when to eat and when to stop eating. We know how to move our body in a way that doesn’t cause pain or injury. Our work becomes more interesting. Our relationships become healthier. We listen better and we feel heard.
With two kids, my presence is requested almost incessantly. I hear the word Papa at least 100 times a day. Often, I hear it ten or more times in quick succession. We all yearn for someone’s total presence with us. These are the moments of connection between what is the same in both of us. Presence uncovers what’s real in this moment. And that’s refreshing, exciting, and affirming.
When we’re all so busy that we see time as a commodity, it can seem that giving our presence to someone else is like giving away our treasure. But are we actually giving something away?
Of course not. When we “give” our presence we gain the present. To withhold our presence means both we and the other person miss out.
So, how can you learn to be more present? It takes practice. If you’re new to this, I don’t recommend making a goal like, “I’m going to be more present from now on.” I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to be realistic about what you’re up against – a lifetime of habits and a sea of tantalizing distractions.
Try something a bit less ambitious, such as this: Once a day, as you begin some activity – whether it’s buying groceries, playing Candyland, eating a meal, and listening to a friend’s problems – select this activity as an exercise in presence. In your mind, identify what exactly you’re doing – “I’m vacuuming the floor” – and devote yourself to that. Don’t run away in the middle of the activity. This means don’t pick up your phone, don’t depart in your mind to explore other thoughts and ideas, don’t visit the past, don’t anticipate what’s next, don’t judge. Just dwell in the present. Be saturated by the present. Feel everything. Accept everything. And let each next moment come.
Over time, quicker than you might think, you’ll start regaining your attention. You’ll be able to focus on something for more than five seconds. You’ll begin to yearn for this, which will make your practice much easier. And as you start willingly selecting more and more moments to be completely present, you’ll experience an unending offering of presents.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => A Free Pile of Presents Just for You
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[post_content] => Countless medical studies have shown just how dramatically our beliefs influence our health. People who believe they’re getting a new drug or treatment can experience improvements in mood or profound relief from pain – even when they’re in the placebo group. Our beliefs can alter how toxins affect us. And on the “nocebo” side of the equation (a negative placebo effect) we can even generate signs and symptoms of diseases we don’t have.
In one Japanese study, subjects known to have a strong reaction to poison ivy were told that one of their arms was being rubbed with poison ivy. Yikes! But researchers actually touched them with the leaf of a harmless plant. Every participant broke out in a poison-ivy-like rash.
The subjects were told that their other arm would be rubbed with a harmless plant. Instead, the researchers rubbed real poison ivy on them! But only two out of thirteen people had a reaction to it.
We can make ourselves sick and we can make ourselves well. The key is the incredible power of belief. It’s been thoroughly and indisputably proven, yet few people consciously exploit this magic on a regular basis. I’d like to change that.
As a start, I suggest we practice observing positive belief every time we put something into our bodies.
When you eat, try getting yourself mentally and emotionally enrolled in a positive expectation about how you’ll be affected by it. Admire the food. Tell yourself it’s going to be deeply nourishing. Your body is going to efficiently extract the nutrients and deliver them to all your tissues. It’s totally reasonable to expect that it will support clear thinking, high energy and mental calm, glowing skin, efficient digestion, optimal organ function, strong immunity, etc.
For best results I recommend building your expectations for a minute at the beginning of the meal, remembering this from time to time during the meal, and then happily anticipating the benefits after the meal.
You might even try bringing your attention inward, visualizing the nutrients being absorbed through your intestines and flowing into all of your cells, and telling yourself, “I allow myself to receive the fullest, most complete health benefit from this food” – or whatever words feel natural to you.
What happens when you say to yourself or a dining partner, “I feel really good from this food. My body thrives on good food. I can already tell that this meal is exactly what I needed”?
This should be even easier to do with supplements, herbs, and drugs, since you’re consuming them with a specific healing purpose and outcome in mind. Don’t forget it. Tell yourself as you swallow them (or apply them, if topical) that they’re going to do what they’re intended to do, that they’re perfectly compatible with your body, that the benefits are already starting (whether you can feel it or not).
If you make a practice of priming yourself to expect good things you’re significantly more likely to experience good things, to notice the good things, and to be grateful for them.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Expect Good Things: A Practice for Getting the Most Out of Food, Medicines, and Supplements
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[post_content] => Welcome to part six in my series on longevity. If you missed the first five parts, you can read them on our site. In a nutshell, they were: (1) Live for now and love life (2) Work, stretch, and relax every part of yourself (body and mind) on a regular basis (3) Dance (4) Reduce media consumption (5) Pay attention to your breathing. Let’s continue.
#6: Eat Less
I probably fooled some of you when I entitled the fourth newsletter “Fasting for Longevity” and then writing about media fasting. Less food consumption – including occasional fasting – is also a good idea. There are two main reasons to eat less: (1) to avoid the negative health impacts of overeating (2) to attain the unique benefits of undereating.
First, overeating. Overeating is bad for us. It stretches out the stomach, requiring us to continue to overeat in order to feel full. It hinders good digestion. It can cause heartburn / acid reflux, nausea, hiccups, bloating, and fatigue. It promotes weight gain (there are not many obese centenarians). It may cause our cells to wear out faster. It’s taxing to the digestive organs. It may disrupt the hormones involved in reward and hunger signaling, leading to compulsive eating. It necessarily entails “tuning out” and ignoring the body.
Second, undereating. By undereating, I actually mean various practices that might better be called “measured eating.” Undereating appears to make cells live longer. It promotes enhanced regeneration of our tissues. We feel lighter and more energetic, and are likely to be physically lighter. It supports normalization of reward hormones, mood, and appetite. We get less cancer and tumors may grow more slowly. We’re less likely to experience heartburn / acid reflux, fatigue, bloating, and nausea. Numerous rodent studies have shown that when animals are routinely underfed, they live much longer than normal.
Now let’s look at the specifics of undereating. First there are various forms of fasting. Fasting can mean the total absence of food, reduced food intake, the specific avoidance of certain foods (such as no sugars, no flour, no processed foods, no alcohol, no cooked food, etc.), or the consumption of a specific meal replacement (such as juice, kitchari, rice, or broth). Fasting is often done for a set period of time (1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 10 days, etc.), usually with a simultaneous “fast” from work and regular daily activities, and sometimes for a spiritual purpose. Many of these options have their merits, but it’s beyond the scope of this article to get into the nuances of all of them.
The simplification of one’s food intake – whether as a water fast, broth fast, or whole-clean-food fast – gives the body a break and tends to enhance detoxification and regenerative processes while promoting certain epigenetic benefits (“turning off” certain genes that code for disease or others associated with longevity).1,2 Fasting increases production of human growth hormone (HGH), which has numerous anti-aging effects.3,4
Recent research indicates that intermittent fasting provides many of the benefits that total fasts offer, but in a format that’s less daunting for most people. Intermittent fasting means cycling between restricted and unrestricted food intake. There are numerous ways to do this. The most common format is fasting (water only) for 16 hours of every day – meaning, all of one’s calories are consumed in an 8 hour window (10 AM to 6 PM for instance). I know people who have achieved their optimal weight through this method after struggling with diets for decades. Another form of intermittent fasting entails fasting for 24 hours on 1 or 2 non-consecutive days out of every week. A third common form involves reduced caloric intake (typically 25% of normal, or 500-600 calories) every other day or on 2 non-consecutive days of each week. Besides promoting longevity, these methods reduce incidence of type 2 diabetes.
Even if you aren’t interested in any sort of fasting, you can help yourself quite a bit in four simple ways. (1) Never overeat. Don’t let a feeling of being full be your indicator to stop eating. Instead just eat enough food to not feel hungry. In Okinawa (one of the longest-lived cultures in the world) there’s a tradition of eating to what feels like 80% of one’s stomach capacity. (2) Let your upper digestive tract empty completely between meals. That is, don’t snack. (3) Let yourself feel hungry. Many of us eat so incessantly that we barely know whether we’re hungry or not. We eat because it’s meal time, or because we like the taste, but not always because we actually feel hunger. (4) Stay conscious during the act of eating. Don’t eat mindlessly or while engaged in other things. Enjoy your food and give your attention and reverence to the act of nourishing yourself.
Be well,
Peter
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946160/
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24048020/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC329619/
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1548337/
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[post_content] => During a particularly hard break-up in my 20s, a friend advised me, “The more present you are during this process, the bigger the present you’ll get out of it.” And though I barely understood what that meant, I gave it a try and an odd thing happened. I saw that I was choosing the big, dramatic grieving process I was going through. And that meant it was optional.
In The Art of Presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “Through thought you cannot possibly grasp what presence is.” But he gives some clues to point us in the right direction. He says it’s there, “when you’re not thinking about the last moment, or looking to the next one.” And he uses phrases like “a state of relaxed alertness” and “a spacious stillness,” to describe it.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”
Our presence is tremendously rare and hugely valuable. Especially in this age of epidemic distraction, it’s increasingly difficult and uncommon to choose a voluntary time-out from technology, data, and our own mental analysis. But unlike the artificial value of a coin that accidentally got stamped with a head on both sides, our presence can do for us what nothing else can. And we can make it more abundant by simply choosing it.
Although it may not put food in our belly, most other problems disappear with presence. The need to fix or relive the past disappears. The need to avoid certain unwanted events in the future disappears. Even if we're working on something now that will benefit us in the future, with our presence, we work on it now in order to work on it now. And that’s enough.
The allure of distraction, which so often threatens our presence, dissolves when we practice being present. Do you know the word obviate? I like to write using words that almost everyone understands, but there’s only one word I can think of that means “to make unnecessary,” and that word is obviate. Learning to deepen our presence obviates the urge for distraction and mental departure from our current reality.
With presence, we perceive all kinds of intelligence and detail that we’re otherwise deaf and blind to. We know when to eat and when to stop eating. We know how to move our body in a way that doesn’t cause pain or injury. Our work becomes more interesting. Our relationships become healthier. We listen better and we feel heard.
With two kids, my presence is requested almost incessantly. I hear the word Papa at least 100 times a day. Often, I hear it ten or more times in quick succession. We all yearn for someone’s total presence with us. These are the moments of connection between what is the same in both of us. Presence uncovers what’s real in this moment. And that’s refreshing, exciting, and affirming.
When we’re all so busy that we see time as a commodity, it can seem that giving our presence to someone else is like giving away our treasure. But are we actually giving something away?
Of course not. When we “give” our presence we gain the present. To withhold our presence means both we and the other person miss out.
So, how can you learn to be more present? It takes practice. If you’re new to this, I don’t recommend making a goal like, “I’m going to be more present from now on.” I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to be realistic about what you’re up against – a lifetime of habits and a sea of tantalizing distractions.
Try something a bit less ambitious, such as this: Once a day, as you begin some activity – whether it’s buying groceries, playing Candyland, eating a meal, and listening to a friend’s problems – select this activity as an exercise in presence. In your mind, identify what exactly you’re doing – “I’m vacuuming the floor” – and devote yourself to that. Don’t run away in the middle of the activity. This means don’t pick up your phone, don’t depart in your mind to explore other thoughts and ideas, don’t visit the past, don’t anticipate what’s next, don’t judge. Just dwell in the present. Be saturated by the present. Feel everything. Accept everything. And let each next moment come.
Over time, quicker than you might think, you’ll start regaining your attention. You’ll be able to focus on something for more than five seconds. You’ll begin to yearn for this, which will make your practice much easier. And as you start willingly selecting more and more moments to be completely present, you’ll experience an unending offering of presents.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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