I have taken a more psycho-spiritual, as well as solitary, path in my later-life pursuit of health than most people. It is where I am drawn to by who I am and my experience of life thus far. Since I was a child I’ve always felt that I was searching for something outside the norms of daily life, some kind of otherworldly life. This pursuit has taken me through many careers, religions, relationships, inner dynamics and circumstances.

Now, in later life, with more time and less responsibility than in my career days, I’ve come to embrace this path even more. It has religious overtones but is not religion per se. It is decidedly not everyone’s cup of tea at this stage of life.

You don’t need to be on this path to stay healthy; you need to find what works for you.  That being said, spirit and psychology often play a bigger part in this time of life. Just keep in mind that all preventive health journeys have in common, at their core, two simple concepts: moving more and eating less (and more naturally). These are the foundations of later-life health no matter how you choose to spend your time.

Yet I have found that the world of the spirit and the world of physical and emotional health dovetail well. The synergy between them that I feel inside provides me with endless room for contemplation and deepening my practice. And I find that unblocking hidden subconscious dynamics often enhances my physical health and the way I feel about life. Here's my attempt at an explanation, which is guided by my personal experience.

I believe health comes from the same source as everything else in the universe, some kind of universal energy that brought existence into being and keeps it humming. Health is the ultra-complex, ever moving, and wondrous system of well-being that every living thing has in common. It is what keeps us alive and has ensured our survival for millennia. Our health exists within us, in the deepest part of us, the unconscious world of biology, dreams, and beliefs. We are born with it.  And while we can encourage it, harmonize with it, enhance it, and impede it, we cannot control it or claim it. We can only respect it, be grateful for its presence, and try to ever understand, experience, and enhance it more.  Health has supported me all my life, something I have mostly taken for granted.

Health is fundamental and primary and operates within us in ways our scientists are just finding out. How much we don’t know about health far outweighs what we do know. Without health nothing can stay alive. Once the forces of health and life cease inside of us, we disintegrate back into our component molecules and elements. Even advanced medical practices like antibiotics or surgery rely on the vital force of healing to fix us once the source of a problem is eliminated or removed.

Ultimately, health is woven into the very foundation of how the universe works. It has evolved along with the rest of the universe, from inorganic to organic. One could even say that our solar system and galaxy are “healthy” in their extremely well-balanced gravitational rotations. This is their stable survival system, just as ours is the flesh-and-blood symphony inside of us. The system that is “health” is at the very core of existence, not only for every one of us, it is at the core of how everything in the universe works together. Health, in this broader sense, the way things are, work and interact with each other, is the mysterious and ultimately inexplicable “way” that the Taoists say is the source and force behind everything.

As my health practice has deepened over the past few years, I have explored, and shed, many beliefs about how our consciousness and modern world came into being. The first beliefs to go were the literal explanations of religions. I realized, with the help of author and deep-thinker Joseph Campbell, that all religions were simply metaphorical myths whose validity applied to the search for higher ground within ourselves. They come from the deep recesses of our subconscious.  Says Campbell, these metaphors and myths are “revelations of the deepest hopes, desires and fears, potentialities and conflicts, of the human will.”  They are not to be taken literally or as fact.  They spring from the human psyche. This is the same tug I had always felt earlier in my life.  And my physical health exists and comes from that same subconscious place as those yearnings.

Experiencing health that way, how I feel it now, is often just the simple feeling of wonder, the awe of being alive. Health itself, life itself, is the wondrous miracle that makes all our other pursuits and experiences possible. It isn’t all fireworks and exclamation marks. It is life, here and now, in this very moment.

Every breath I take is a miracle. Every breath holds the entire history of the universe in it, from an explosion of simple elements to complex organic molecules, woven together in the force of life. In each breath my body absorbs this life force, an inorganic compound, oxygen, and releases another inorganic compound, carbon dioxide. What my body does with these molecules in between their absorption and release is completely organic, a biochemical miracle that took billions of years to achieve. To the extent I am conscious of my breath, I am experiencing that entire history of evolution in this very moment. This experience, fully felt throughout my body, usually seems to touch something eternal within me that is joyous, connected, and oceanic.

Paying attention to, and acknowledging, my breath and the life force within me that each breath is a part of is my way of showing reverence for the privilege of being alive.  My veneration for the universal life force that keeps me, and everything else on our planet, alive is part of a deep appreciation of this miraculous flesh-and-blood body I have occupied for almost 74 years.