Aging brings with it a host of changes: physiological, mental and social. If we advocate the popular belief that our minds are separate from our bodies, this process of change can be objectively assessed as a story of decline originating in either sphere. Seen this way, the health of our body limits what we can accomplish in later life by dictating what we are physically able to do; similarly, declining mental health, as a symptom of aging, can bar us from making a meaningful contribution.

Many people believe that our participation in life is a function of our health (both physical and mental). I disagree: I believe the state of our health is a function of our participation in life.

And I propose we think of aging as simply a biological process.

The mind and body are not separate aspects of the same ‘being’. For that matter, where does the mind reside? Not in our brains. The mind is ‘in’ every cell of our body. Our essential nature, our ‘Self’, is a unified consciousness that is our bodies and that consciousness extends and connects to the world we, as individuals, experience.

As a consequence of our attachment to the idea of mind/body separation, we end up seeing the mental changes we experience over time as age ‘happening to us’. When people withdraw from life and reside more and more in their internal conversations, disconnected from the world and from participation with others, they are buying into ‘being’ separate from their body. They drift into a kind of malaise, a resignation born of denial about their essential nature. They abandon themselves to live within their minds, disconnecting from their bodies and the reality of their present existence as a physical being. Perhaps if these people chose instead to challenge their body by maintaining different practices, they might find themselves not only healthier and more ‘present’, but also more able to participate and be more ‘alive’.