Barbara Currie - Look 15 Years Younger - The 15-Minute-a-Day Yoga Plan

To my wonderful family: my mother Babs, my husband Gordon, my daughter Lysanne, my son Mark, my daughter-in-law Rachel and my brother Richard and his family. I am most grateful to you all for your kindness and unconditional love and support.

Title Page LOOK 15 YEARS YOUNGER Barbara Currie

Dedication To my wonderful family: my mother Babs, my husband Gordon, my daughter Lysanne, my son Mark, my daughter-in-law Rachel and my brother Richard and his family. I am most grateful to you all for your kindness and unconditional love and support.

Introduction

What Is Yoga?

The Seven Stay-young Secrets of Yoga

Before We Begin

How to Use This Book

PART ONE: 15-MINUTE MIRACLES

Chapter 1: Stage 1

Chapter 2: Stage 2

Chapter 3: Stage 3

Chapter 4: Stage 4

Chapter 5: Stage 5

Chapter 6: Stage 6

PART TWO: GROWING YOUNGER WITH YOGA

Chapter 7: Your 15-Minute Facial

Chapter 8: Arms, Neck and Shoulders

Chapter 9: Flat Stomach Plan

Chapter 10: Bottom, Hips and Thighs

Chapter 11: Your Ageless Body

Chapter 12: Amazing Age-defying Anti-gravity Movements

Meditation

The Power of Visualization

My 30 Tips for Looking and Feeling Young For Ever

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Since the beginning of time, man has searched for that magical something to give him eternal youth.

Today this searching is at an all-time high, with billions being spent on miracle ‘get young’ face creams, neck creams, eye creams, cosmetic surgery, botox injections, collagen implants and facials, all with the ultimate quest of looking and feeling younger and halting the advance of the years.

But why do we want to be and look younger? When we were young, did we appreciate it? Didn’t we curse the spots and pimples, the lack of self-esteem, the school exams, relationship problems, etc? We had unlined skin, but did we appreciate that? Didn’t we cover it with make-up and try to look years older than we were? So what is it that we yearn for about youth? Do we really want to put the clock back and go through all those years again? – I doubt it!

George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘Youth is wasted on the young?’ Isn’t what we are searching for something quite, quite different? Wouldn’t we rather keep our present age but have the radiance, amazing energy, excitement, flexibility and agility of youth? Wouldn’t we like to get rid of the sagging muscles, aches and pains, excess weight, diminished eyesight and hearing and memory loss and replace it with a toned, firm and beautiful body, amazing energy, glowing, unwrinkled skin and improved memory, eyesight and hearing? Wouldn’t we like to be able to stay calm under stress, sleep really well at night and wake with that good-to-be-alive feeling and keep making new goals and planning new ventures regardless of our age?

If you are answering ‘yes’ to any of the above, then yoga is for you. I became a yoga addict at my very first yoga class over 30 years ago. I was stiff, tired, tense and out of sorts when I enrolled to try yoga for the very first time, but the sight of my teacher, then in her late fifties, will stay in my memory for ever. She was perfectly toned and, as she stood to demonstrate posture after posture, she did it with the flexibility, ease – and body shape – of an 18 year old.

She didn’t look tired or tense, but radiated a wonderful zest for life that was contagious and I left my first class walking taller and feeling better than I had felt for ages.

As I continued to learn yoga, from time to time I received some jolts or wake-up calls as ancient legends and parables were recited to us teaching us age-old truths. This is one of my favourites. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time there was a king with the most amazing palaces, beautiful gardens and parks, servants to cater for his every need and riches beyond his wildest dreams. He did not, however, enjoy good health or happiness. He desired these two qualities more than anything else in life, and sent his servants out far and wide to find someone with the secret that they could share with him. Eventually, after many, many years of combing his kingdom, his servants found an old woman in the mountains who made a very special herbal brew. The King sent for her immediately, but she refused to come, saying that the brew had to be made freshly and the herbs grew only around her small house in the mountains. So one day the King, reluctantly, went to see her. She insisted that he stayed in her house alone with her for a least a week, and again, reluctantly, the King agreed. The old woman gave him simple fresh food and took him for long walks in the beautiful mountains that surrounded her home. They watched the sunrise and sunset and marvelled at the bright starry skies. Each night before bed she dosed him with the special herbal mix, saying it would bring him health and happiness.

The King slept better than he had done in years. At the end of the week, he said happily that the herbal brew had worked wonders and he needed to take a large supply back with him to his palace, for which he would reward her handsomely. The old woman replied, ‘There was nothing in the brew that had any special power at all. The secret of happiness and health is and has always been within ourselves.’ All she had done was reveal this to him.

Isn’t this what we are really looking for? When you are happy and healthy inside, your face and body glow with a youthful inner radiance that no amount of expensive face creams or cosmetic surgery can give you. The Yogis of ancient India realized this well over 5,000 years ago.

The word yoga means ‘yoking’ or the joining together of body, mind and spirit with the universal spirit. Realizing that for positive health, happiness and peace of mind, both mind and body must work together in complete harmony; the yogis developed this wonderful system of personal development, the science of yoga.

Yoga is comprised of slow, deep, healthy breathing practices to stimulate oxygen to every cell, physical exercises to tone 100 per cent of the body both inside and out, balancing postures to strengthen the body and help us learn the power of concentration and focus, inverted positions to reverse the adverse ageing effects of gravity, stretching movements to keep the joints and spine in perfect condition, deep relaxation to help us release tension and relax, and meditation for calm, deep, inner peace.

The exercises, coupled with a healthy diet, keep the body in radiant health. The body becomes firm and beautiful, the skin glows with health, posture is corrected, stresses and strains vanish, and agility and tremendous flexibility are restored.

In my opinion, yoga is the best elixir of youth. By practising daily you will soon start to reap its magical benefits.

Inside each and every one of us is a force of energy called prana, literally translated as ‘lifeforce’. This life-force flows freely through the body in youth, but can dwindle with age if the body isn’t cared for correctly, resulting in such things as lack of energy, stiffness in the joints, tension, insomnia, obesity, depression and memory loss, together with poor posture, wrinkled, sagging skin and dull thin hair – i.e., the conditions we refer to as ageing. The modern way of treating this process lies in a special pill, potion, miracle cream or remedy – but these provide only temporary relief as you are treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause of the problem. The cause is obviously within ourselves.