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Secrets of the Centenarians!

Dr. Kornfeld was speaking at a lecture where nine centenarians were in attendance.  Eight of the nine were women.  He asked each centenarian to share their secret to longevity.  Then he asked the audience if they noticed a common thread to the centenarians’ secrets.  No one seemed to notice a common thread.

Dr. Kornfeld noticed one, but only one.  The common theme he noticed was a positive attitude.  No matter what they faced in life; cancer, illness, injuries, etc. they all accepted their challenges and moved on.

Wow, that is powerful!  But, it does not surprise me.  We find the same thing in our fitness and weight loss businesses.

The people who are positive and have a great outlook on life reach their goals, get best results, and are overall healthier.  I’ve been teaching this over the last several years.  I regularly speak to groups, corporations and individuals about their thoughts and mental attitudes.  My primary message is having a healthy mindset; then I talk about exercise and eating healthy.

Iris is a 90 year young woman in our personal training studio who my husband trains two times a week.  Her goal is for strength and balance so she doesn’t fall.  She has such a positive outlook on life.  She dresses in fine clothes to workout.  We compliment her all the time how she looks so nice, and she said when she looks good she feels good.  It’s all in her attitude.

She loves that fact that she exercises with a personal trainer and it makes her feel important. She has also noticed a tremendous amount of benefits many she never expected to experience when all she wanted was a little strength and balance.  Her family is very proud of her also.

Iris hasn’t been the youngest client we’ve worked with.  My husband also trains a 99 year young women.  Molly is full of life and still dances.  Her attitude affects her health and she doesn’t look a day over 80.  Both of our 90 year old clients know the importance of eating health.  They don’t skip breakfast and have a great attitude on life.  They want to make the most of their time left on earth.

Their secret to longevity is healthy eating, exercise and to be happy and positive.

From personal experience, I know how my attitude affects my life, health, business, and relationships.  I’ve seen both sides from clinical depression to working diligently on my positive attitude.  And guess what?

It certainly is more fun and energizing to be positive rather than negative.  It does take effort to maintain a positive attitude on a regular basis, but the effort is so worth the benefits!  Ask the people around me.

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Learn Guided Meditation

Guided meditation is used by many people not only to relax from a busy day but also to tune into their own bodies and minds. Since days have become more stressful, the world has become more crowded and more worldly problems have risen, many people are finding comfort, safety and bliss in a few minutes of guided meditation a day.

With the help of a guiding voice, many people who are new to meditation have found it easy to achieve a much needed quiet moment during the day. Guided meditation can help the user to focus his or her thoughts and block out any distractions in order to experience the pleasure of silence for a moment during the day.

The voice assists the user and keeps his or her on track. Guided meditation helps people to follow the stages of meditation, allowing a person to go as deep into the process as he or she decides they would like to go.

The benefits of properly guided meditation can span from relieving migraine headaches to relaxing cramped muscles to a simple moment of pleasure, satisfaction and quiet. Over-stimulation and stress are both problems that many people deal with on a daily basis.

These daily stressful situations and the exposure to too many over-stimulating activities can seem to be normal and accepted conditions that everyone takes for granted as standard. Although most people are dealing with these situations on a regular basis, it doesn’t mean that these situations do not still put stress and tension on the body and mind.

There are many people who may feel stressed and hopeless about their current home or work situation. Most people think that a vacation or a break from their daily lives is the way to relive this stress.

However, a retreat from basic stresses is only a temporary fix from the anxiety of many people’s lives. In order to have the ability to deal with the tensions that life can put on their body and mind, many people are turning to guided meditation to teach them how to handle their daily lives with ease, patience and a clear mind.

By creating a moment in the day to connect the mind, body and soul in a calm and hushed manner, many people are finding their stressful days don’t seem as stressful anymore.

Guided meditation can help a person to realize the many options he or she has when dealing with the daily tensions of the workplace or home environment. By possessing the foundations of guided meditation, the situations that can usually seem impossible to stay calm through can now seem easy to think through and figure out.

Guided meditation is a great way to help a person just beginning the process to concentrate better and easily achieve the full benefits of a meditative moment. Guided meditation can also help advanced meditation students to hold their concentration and learn new and more developed techniques to make their minds and bodies go deeper into the meditative state.

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Self Defense

The art of self defense is one thing many now arm themselves with as they go about their daily undertakings. Bottom line, in these unpredictable times, danger is always lurking around the corner, waiting for opportune moments to strike.

With the principles of self defense, one stands to have a chance against evil elements of society, like muggers and robbers.

Wing Chun, a Chinese martial art form, stands to be one of the many martial arts which is fast being embraced by many as their means of self defense against the dangers of society. As a form of self defense, Wing Chun boasts to be an impressive form.

Wing Chun, when Romanized is pronounced as Wing Tsun or Ving Tsun, literally means “spring chant”, and “forever spring” alternatively.

Wing Chun is basically a Chinese martial art which is known to specialize in aggressive close-distance/range combat.

The origin of Wing Chun as a Martial Art is basically no different from all other forms of Chinese Martial arts.

Historically, the lessons, practices and traditions of Wing Chun were passed from teacher to student, who in turn eventually becomes a teacher teaching his/her line of students, in an oral manner, making it difficult to exactly pinpoint or give a clear definition regarding Wing Chun’s foundation.

As an oral tradition, there are many accounts regarding Wing Chun’s founding as a martial art. One legend talks about a young woman, named Yim Wing Chun. Yim Wing Chun, whose name meant beautiful springtime, rebuffed a local warlord’s marriage proposal.

The warlord, said he would agree to rescind his proposal, if Yim Wing Chun could defeat him in a fight. In an effort to prepare herself, Yim Wing Chun goes to Ng Mui, a local Buddhist, to teach her some boxing moves. Eventually, a fighting style is developed, enabling Yim Win Chung to defeat the proposing warlord. The warlord, impressed with the fighting technique, is taught the fighting style, and names it after Yim Wing Chung.

On a more historical note, Wing Chun appears to have started in records when third party documentation regarding the Martial Art started to appear during the era of Leung Jan, a Wing Chun master. These third party documentation stands as a much more verifiable documentation regarding the Martial Art.

If one is out entertaining the thought of learning a Martial Art, for its self defense value, Wing Chun would be one good martial art class worth taking lessons.

It was in the news, the new kung fu movie Ip Man has inspired many wanting to take up classes in Wing Chun. Li Xiao Long was the famous disciple of Ip Man the master; and Li Xiao Long was famous for his skills and kung fu. I have never learnt Wing Chun before, but it would be interesting to learn some of its skills. But as my tai chi master advised us, Li passed on early because he was too “yang”, and neglected the “yin” side of the practice for health and longevity.

Therefore, one must be careful not to go to the extreme sides of things, even in learning kung fu. Kung Fu is not just about being aggresive and fighting all the way. In life, everything is about balance. I have always loved the story of Zhang San Feng. I pick up Tai Chi again because I admire master Zhang San Feng, who had achieved deep realizations of Tao – the yin and yang of life. It is his lineage that I seek.

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My masters are my heros. And yes almost all my masters are male. Competitive sports have taught me a lot about life. My masters are the ones who are there to complete most of what I need to know and learn, and there’s no stopping. When I recently picked up tai chi again with a local chinese master, my friends asked me, “WHAT!! you are still learning tai chi? I thought you had learnt it all few years ago!”

I told my friends, “Yep, but this master had made me un-learn and re-learn everything!!!”

I believe there’s always a reason why we stumble upon certain people in our life who would be teaching us something about life and this universe we are in. The masters I’ve met over my life never fail to amaze me with their stories and wisdom:

- my master in USA gave me another kind of perspectives on the kinds of marathons each one of us can run in our life time. Read the story here.

- another one of my master told us about the story of his mother, who had passed away but being a good person that she was when she was alive, she appeared in bliss and in pure land in his dream, and when she appeared in his lucid dream, she told him this, “Son, you must remember this lesson. This is the secret to life – 心专石能穿 (it’s in chinese, meaning – that’s what life is about. You get what you focus on, it’s like making a hole in a stone, like laser beam. Whatever happens to you in life, is what you have asked for, whether you know it or not, the seeds planted by you and you alone). Throughout all the months training under this master, this is the most valuable lesson i’ve taken away from him

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