Dr. Gladys McGarey is a centarian who is considered a mother of holistic medicine. I was drawn to her by her recent book The well lived life and then watched her ted talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7w44sd1N44 and listened to a podcast with her on the www.thegoodlifecoach.com/253-2/. Besides her practice, she has previously published also following books: Living medicine, The physician within you, The world needs old ladies.

Today she is 104 years old and as far as I could read up on her, she is still offers life consultation.

Doing what you love and keep moving

In my recent articles, I delved into the topic of longevity and examined the lives of centenarians. Yet, what truly captivates me is the example of Gladys McGarey. At the age of 100, she not only delivered a Tedx talk but also maintained a 10-year plan. Using a walker equipped with a watch tracking her 3000 steps a day, she demonstrates that embracing assistance is perfectly acceptable. It’s her vibrant attitude toward life, fueled by what she describes as “Juice,” that truly makes life an incredible journey.

Discovering one’s own path

In the interview, she emphasizes the significance of discovering one’s own path. When she says “find your own,” I interpret it as developing a personalized approach to self-care rooted in love, care, and a thriving mindset.

Can I?

As individuals, we often seek the recipe or grant ourselves permission to engage in certain activities. After hearing her perspective, I decided to permit myself to be more flexible in selecting self-care practices. Typically, I tend to overthink whether something is a genuine need or excessive indulgence. By allowing a bit more freedom to follow what feels good, I address my internal questioning of “Can I?” and challenge the ingrained discipline that tells me I don’t need certain things. This adjustment involves granting myself more permission to enjoy and acknowledge that it’s okay to do so.

Activating our Life force with Love

What does that mean in practice? When we feel the Love and Life running through our bodies, we recognize our conditioning to control and allow ourselves to surrender more for Life and Love to move through us. This is where for me mindfulness of the body plays a role.

As we practice this mindful awareness, we also adopt an accepting attitude towards whatever arises, acknowledging that every aspect belongs to the current experience. This gradual acceptance and allowing facilitate an internal shift, paving the way for the unrestricted movement and flow of life and love through our being.

Dr. McGarey says: “You [have to] feel and know life is there to be lived. You have to live it,” she says. (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/5-ls-for-living-a-long-fulfilling-life-from-a-102-year-old-doctor.html ):

The 5 l’s on living medicine:

Life: ife is like a seed. It has a shell around it. It has all the energy of the universe within it,” says McGarey. According to McGarey, life’s positive transformation requires our activation. Symbolically, in the Hippocratic lifestyle, the process of sprouting signifies an awareness of the seed, water, and life itself. This year, I involved my son and husband in a beginning-of-the-year ritual where we expressed our intentions using sprouting jars. It symbolized a proactive step towards initiating positive change in our lives.

Love: “Love is the activating factor. It cracks the shell,” she says. “It’s the whole aspect of life as we come into it and take our first breath.” For me that is that watering aspect, watering with love, adding water to the seed.

Laughter:  “Laughter without love is cruel. It’s mean [and] cold,” McGarey says. “But laughter with love is joy and happiness.”

Labor: Labor with love is bliss. It’s why a singer sings, why a painter paints, why I became a doctor. It’s what juices you up. It’s what makes you really know: ‘This is who the inner core of me is.’” Pay attention to what drives you, she adds.

Listening: “Listening without love is empty sound,” says McGarey. “But listening with love is understanding.” When you’re able to find people who understand you and what your purpose is, life becomes more fulfilling.

Where is gratitude in this 5ls?  

Gratitude can be a foundation for the 5ls. The practice of gratitude gradually opens up to Acceptance and Love. Gratitude is a very fertile ground to the 5ls.

What do you do when things are challenging?

The other day I was cleaning up the old children’s books, choosing what to keep and what to pass on. One of the books that I kept as a reminder was a book called: “We are going on a bear hunt.” This book has a repeating line: “we can’t go under it, we can’t go over it, we got to go through it.” And so it is that I have this story as a reminder that when we get a challenge, you keep on steady going through it. That reminds us also Tara Brach in her book Radical acceptance. She writes: “The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom. Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance.”

What is included in the word holistic?

We today use the word holistic for many different things. McGarey explains that when they were coming up with the word that would offer complementary side to traditional medicine, they were thinking of including three elements:

• health
• healing
• holy

When I was with on the international conference for Enneagram practitioners in Cape Town, organized by Integrative 9 (https://www.integrative9.com/) one year they call it Holism. As a guest speaker Ginger Lapid Bogda has been guiding us more through “What does it mean to be whole?” so there is this aspect of holy or whole.

How to understand holy? For someone who is religious that would mean belonging to or coming from God, sacred. For someone who doesn’t follow a particular religion the meaning might be:  regarded with or deserving deep respect, awe, reverence, or adoration (source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/holy). Or to someone else, maybe the understanding of the origin of the sound of word might bring the most value in understanding: ME holie < OE halig (akin to Ger heilig) < base of OE hal, sound, happy, whole.

In this article we have explored  Dr. Gladys McGarey as an example of a person, who at the age of 104 is an inspiration for all the 5ls she writes in Living medicine. Life itself is a medicine she says and may this article inspire you to cultivate this 5ls, gratitude and recognize where you get stuck in Fear and with gentle determination move through it to more Love.

Our AISCT connect choir’s choice to sing Alphaville’s “Forever Young” sparked my curiosity. Navigating healthy lifestyle choices and inspired by Hippocrates wellness institute, I questioned what is this about living forever?  Unlike Alexander the Great, I’m not on a world-conquering mission, and the pursuit of immortality feels daunting.

However, I aim to live well, maintain a strong body and sharp mind, and good heart, for activities like playing with grandchildren and doing my daily chores, maybe writing, coaching and enriching relationships with others.  Studying mindfulness, rooted in Buddhism, reveals the power of radical acceptance, even in challenging situations like disability. So with that in mind that being able bodied is what I am now, and being aware that for some people all body and full breath might not be available and still can find an attitude there which gives inner contentment.  

Besides the Forever young song, I am sharing in this article some conclusions from Netflix documentary on centenarians, dr. Atitia’s book Outlive, practices that are part of Hippocrates lifestyle and mindfulness practices.

Netflix’s exploration of centenarian lives became a source of inspiration and reflection. Witnessing the lives of those in Sardinia and Okinawa, I found myself drawn to the simplicity of their joy, the richness of their relationships, and the purpose that infused each day. What stood out was their lack of grasping for health and youth; instead, it was their natural way of getting up in the morning and engaging in life. Their stories prompted me to reassess the markers of a fulfilling life and consider the profound impact of social connections, purposeful living, and physical engagement on overall well-being.

Outlive book

Dr. Peter Attia’s book, “Outlive,” delves into the science and art of extending our healthspan and lifespan. As a renowned physician and longevity expert, Dr. Attia explores the factors that contribute to a longer, healthier life. From nutrition and exercise to cutting-edge medical interventions, “Outlive” provides a roadmap for those seeking to optimize their well-being and outlive the conventional limitations of aging. He, very similar to what we include in Hippocrates lifestyle, puts an emphasis on including different forms of exercise, emotional health, nutritional biochemistry, intake of protein as we age. (Outlive, p.17) he writes “Exercise is by far the most potent longevity drug. No other intervention does nearly as much as to prolong our lifespan and preserve our cognitive and physical function”.

In the Netflix documentary they have established in Sardinia a correlation between the steepness of the village and the lifespan. But surely those people don’t approach this: “ oh I need to get in so many steps a day”, for one lady that walk is simply a way to get to the church.

Quality of sleep

As we find in many wellness evaluation, the quality of sleep is “critical to our innate physiological repair processes, especially in the brain. As any parent knows the accumulation of sleepless nights does sum up to more irritability and reactivity. The quality of sleep can also be largely affected with the food we consume throughout the day, the amount of water intake, stress levels. Looking holistically how to improve sleeping we look into combination of habits, nutrition, tending our emotions, breathwork, supplementation, evening rituals and our reactions when we wake up at night. What we call our secondary emotions. The mood that we are in, affects our thoughts and emotional wellbeing. So there is the whole interconnectivity to be addressed.

Hippocrates wellness framework

When we are using Hippocrates wellness framework for lifestyle mentoring, we follow a holistic model called RESILIENT: responsibility, emotional mastery, sustainability, integrity, living food nutrition, nourishment, exercise immunology, transformation. This is a plant based model. For some people this works really well. Especially those who are unwell and they commit to holistic approach, they are willing to try out a plant based approach much more then someone who considers themselves currently healthy.

Consider eachother’s needs, and meet eachother  with love and respect

In my family the rest of the family is eating everything, I am only one on plant based nutrition.  We are committed to buying local vegetable produce on the market, so that majority is organic, no cow’s milk consumption and minimum dairy in general, we have our own filtration system for water, solar powered house, composting for organic waste, recycling, and a balance and mindfulness of meat consumption and quality in the week. Both with my husband trying to consider eachother’s needs, and meet eachother  with love and respect to what each is following. Trying to keep an open mind and heart to put honouring of self, the other, the relationship and family first.

Lovingkindess and longevity

And at last I am bringing in to this writing the practice of Lovingkindness from mindfulness meditation heart quality practices. In Science direct (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159113001736) I found a published article “Loving-Kindness Meditation practice associated with longer telomeres in women. Telomeres are protein structures found at both ends of each chromosome and play a vital role in preserving the information in our genome. A small portion of Telomere length may serve to determine the lifespan of a cell and an organism”(source: National library of medicine, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/). Previous research suggests a link between behaviors that focus on the well-being of others, such as volunteering and caregiving, and overall health and longevity. Deepak Chopra in his future of wellbeing was including for this reason volunteering in our weekly schedule as part of lifestyle that supports wellbeing.  In the research mentioned above they examined relative telomere length in a group of individuals experienced in Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM). This is a practice which utilizes a focus on unselfish kindness and warmth towards all people. The conclusion of this study was “Although limited by small sample size, these results offer the intriguing possibility that loving kindness meditation practice, especially in women, might alter RTL, a biomarker associated with longevity.

Furthermore we can also mention the Heart rate variability and longevity studies. As a heartmath coach, we use HRV as part of the training of the heart. Heartmath practices such as quick coherence technique, heart lock in, heartbased breathing are supportive to maintain heart coherence, a balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, correlation with vagus nerve tonus, heart rate variability and longevity.

“Crafting My Personal Symphony of Timelessness”

Navigating Alphaville’s melodies, Dr. Peter Attia’s insights, and centenarian tales on Netflix, I am crafting a personal symphony of timelessness. It’s not merely about the quantity of years but the quality of moments, the depth of connections, and the resonance of a heart fully engaged in the dance of life. Through this journey, I strive to harmonize the pursuit of youth with the wisdom gained from introspection, embracing a life that is not just lived but celebrated in every note of existence with having the courage to live with an open, trusting heart. Including the knowledge about healthy lifestyle but not becoming a prisoner of “shoulds” and forgetting the joy of life and simplicity of being in tune with the moment