It is less and less common now to have undernutrition. Although overeating is damaging, some people think that the more simply they eat, the better their health will be. But simple is only good for a certain length of time. If we eat too simply and don’t take any oil, flour, fish and desserts for long enough, hardness is created. Our nutrition becomes inbalanced.

The proper amount of food can only be identified when we are seated. We don’t have normal sensation when our stomachs are elongated. We only have it when our stomachs are bent. Everyone has a point where they feel full but not stuffed. If you’ve had enough food, you feel satisfied, If you go beyond that point, you can eat endlessly. However, in order to find this point, we have to slow down and take time for a meal, sitting quietly and being with our food. This does not mean no dinner conversation but rather not eating in front of the television or while reading. When we are with our food and get to that point, we stop eating and do not overeat. It takes time to find this point because often times our digestive system has expanded from our past behavior.

Healthy digestion and cholesterol levels; freedom from weight problems and heart disease and numerous other ailments begin with proper nutrition. Proper nutrition begins with sitting down to receive nourishment, without doing other things, at lunch and dinner and for many people, breakfast. This gets us in touch with what we need. With this simple and practical tool, in the spirit of Strengthening Health Macrobiotics, we can realign ourselves with nature, helping ourselves and our world to age naturally.

It is natural for our bodies to stop growing after twenty years. It is only recently that people continue to gain weight as they grow older. After the first twenty years of life, we continue to grow our personality, not our body. We decide what type of person we would like to become. We ask what image we have of ourselves. How can we develop the understanding and ability to embrace life? This growing of our personality and consciousness depends on our gratitude or appreciation. When we have this gratitude and appreciation, that always creates a kind of openness. However, if we follow modern society and we start to blame and accuse, it cuts us off and makes us more isolated and narrow and then we automatically start to shrink. We start our lives open and full of curiosity and then through different experiences and responsibilities we gain many concepts. Those concepts make us start to close off unless we break through and become open again. As a result, we can’t age in a healthy way and we start to age unnaturally. True aging is a result of being open, as a child is open, but with greater maturity.

Strengthening Health Macrobiotics approaches daily life; eating, and the prevention or attempt to cure cancer and many other diseases with a goal of good circulation. The Body Rub is one of the main ways to achieve increased openness and improved circulation. Sitting down to eat, tasting and noticing our food, chewing it well, helps create gratitude. With these and other seemingly simple practices, we may age naturally after all.

The process of healthy aging means transformation from the physical world towards the spiritual world. When young, we are more interested in physical and sensory things. We liked to be very active and we are interested in stimulating our senses, often times with loud music.

As we start to grow and mature, we become more interested first in emotional and then later in social issues. Then as we move towards old age, we start to become more interested in life issues and the value of our own life. We start to look back at our life and ask whether we did the things we wanted to do or are happy with our lives. Then finally, we start to think about moving on to the next world and this is generally the natural process of aging. It is a process of growth and maturation, not getting old, hard and drying out.

Healthy aging means we go into each area of our life and we can enjoy it fully and completely. As we are able to comfortably move on to the next level, it does not mean we are abandoning the level before. It just means our central focus is somewhere else. But we are free to move however we like, up or down continually. This is the most natural part of aging.

Proper, or balanced, nutrition and proper circulation are essential for healthy aging. The practice of Strengthening Health Macrobiotics moves us towards healthy aging. Cancer of all kinds, cholesterol and heart issues as well as many other kinds of sickness all are helped by Strengthening Health Macrobiotics. But its seven steps can also be used simply to age naturally.