Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 29/46

Life Medicine and the Secret of Longevity

‘Longevity’ is usually understood as living for a long time. Yet one can live for a 100 years or more and still lead a life dominated by ‘time poverty’ and/or lacking in ‘quality time’. And being too busy to experience life in all its richness, depth and fullness – and to draw meaning and fulfilment from it – is itself a major cause of illness. In contrast to the association of ‘life’ itself with permanent activity and ‘busy-ness’, Life Medicine recognises that the true ‘length’ of our lives has less to do with the mere quantity of years we live than with the quality and extent of the time we take for ourselves and others whilst living them. Indeed taking time – by which I mean ‘taking our own time’ – is the true secret of health and longevity in every sense – both qualitative and quantitative. A life lived more slowly – given more time – is both a richer and a longer life. The key to this in turn is making time or taking time for ourselves, for others – and for all the things listed below – and many more:

Taking time to feel and be more aware of our bodies all the time – and not just when we are ill.

Taking time to feel and be more aware of our bodies as a whole – and not the just the parts of them we are using or feeling at any given time.

Taking time to be aware of our breathing – and to consciously breathe more slowly.

Taking time to be more aware of our speaking – and to consciously speak more slowly.

Taking time to feel our thoughts and feelings more deeply before we speak them.

Taking time to feel and adjust our posture and to relax our muscles before speaking or moving.

Taking time to allow longer intervals of silence in communication – intervals in which we take all the time we need to silently take in and digest what another person has said before reacting to it.

Taking time to premeditate any activities before we engage in them, to choose and time our actions and interactions in a way that feels right in our bodies – neither needlessly rushing or delaying them – and never just ‘going from one thing to another’ in time.

Taking time to pause and stop time – to create ‘breathing spaces’ between every single interaction, task or activity we engage in – time to rest from them, to recollect, digest and process our experience of them, to feel for deeper layers of meaning in them – and let fresh insights arise from them.

Taking time to feel for and return to a place of deep inner stillness and silence within us before our next actions or words – so that we act and speak from that place of inner stillness and silence.

Taking time to ‘open ourselves’ bodily – to feel and take in the entire space around our bodies.

Taking time to ‘ground ourselves’ bodily – to feel the ground beneath our feet and our entire lower body below the waist.

Taking time to ‘centre’ both ourselves and our breathing in our true spiritual and physical centre of gravity – our lower abdomen – using only our abdominal muscles to breathe and feeling the inner space of the abdomen as the true seat and centre of both our body and self.

Taking time to ‘body’ what we feel before expressing or acting on our feelings – for example to find a tone of voice, facial expression or look in our eyes that truly fits the way we feel inside.

Taking time to make wordless feeling contact with others before speaking with them – to feel and take another person in as ‘some body’ and not just an ‘other mind’ or ‘talking head’.

Taking time to ‘come to our senses’ – using our bodies to experience more vividly and intensely the immediate sensory and sensuous dimension of every encounter or experience, person or place, thought or emotion, situation or state of being.

Taking time to be with and ‘bear with’ ourselves and others in ‘pregnant silence’ – thus allowing new ways of feeling ourselves and relating to others – a new ‘inner bearing’ – to be born from that pregnant silence.

Taking time in all these ways – not just to slow down but also to savour time – to let every single experienced life activity, event or encounter linger on in our bodies and fill them with felt and living meaning.

Taking time in this way to experience true inner ‘ful-fillment’ in life – rather than trying to just ‘lead a full life’.

Taking time to be truly patient with our bodies, our feelings and our lives – and in this way both deepen and stretch out time itself – rather than becoming ‘a patient’ or seeking to ‘extend’ our life.

‘The Secret of Longevity’ – taking more time in one’s life to be more aware of time itself – and to linger in a bodily way with all that occurs within it.



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