Let it age: beautiful, strong & relaxed
This woman takes the aging left
© Getty Images / ThinkstockI have the best yoga teacher in the world. Their wisest advice is, "Stop when you can not." I find this sentence almost beguiling. In the middle of the heroic position - the "warrior" - standing, shaky, moaning, desperate. And then the redemption, this yielding. A K. o. - one to zero for my body. He was just stronger than my damned will. Great.
Why do I like that? Because I fight a fight that's just hard to win: I want to be fresh and sinewy, agile and firm. Young and jumping. But I do not want to give away my inner bastard, that is, the strange animal that grunts with unbelievable depths even at the slightest effort: "Get loose! Being lazy is beautiful, where is the next hammock?"
What I hate is people like Tracy Anderson, so mean, relentless US fitness gurus who torture poor stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna for weeks of torture so they can level our guilty conscience with chiseled calves or unreal abdominal muscles.
I'm a good 40 now, and I like myself. It's not that long ago that I started to feel comfortable in my body. At 20, but also 30, I felt rather uncomfortable in my skin: inhibited, unsexy, not grown-up. Maybe I'm a late bloomer, but I think it just takes time to appreciate your own flesh and blood. And then come these years with the four before and with them the thought: "Shit, now it's downhill again." Which means: I would have to take countermeasures. But not at any price. Not for the price that I sell my peace of mind. Life is exhausting enough.
I know if I had to vomit from exhaustion after exercising or if I thought about liposuction a second, then I would feel really weak and insanely old. Impossible and stupid. I do not have the time, not the money, and I do not even feel like trimming myself to perfection and immaculate. I secretly grin at women who rehearse the perfect shoulder stand for a year. This is too hard for me. Somehow life-threatening. And yet I carry the image of my elegant leaning into the curve (though coming into years) youth in me. It's even a real beacon. Shake me, chase me up. And always keeps me trying out daredevils.
You could already watch me for two hours by an eloquent beauty saleswoman, the achievements of Brazilian high-tech dermatologists preached to me then buy for several hundred euros all-round microparticles in a super cream. I laughed at every cream pot over 30 euros for decades. It did not matter anyway: Suddenly I did not care about the lowered nasolabial folds, because in their region thanks to the new super cream now a lively yeast mushroom jumped about. Then I prefer to reach again to the drugstore lotion, in organic quality, for 4.95 euros.
I often run out of gymnastics tutorials full of zest for action, finally failing due to the complexity of the processes. I went to meditation classes to steel my body from the inside out, took vitamin supplement cures, subscribed to healthy herbs, pulled icy laps in the pool for a tiny epoch at seven in the morning. And with everything again and again very much diminished. As I said, an eternal fight. Until I was afraid: leave it or make half-time. I was happy when a friend countered my complaints about my wrinkles: "Forget about this beauty, you look good when you're fine."
Do and let - a great mixture
And take the casual advice of the gorgeous model Iman (over 50) to all those who flirt with Botox and hyaluronic acid: "Just put five kilos, then there will be no wrinkles." I do not swallow expensive vitamins anymore (probably humbug anyway), I prefer to boil a cup of fresh ginger and lemon. But without a plan, simply according to your mood. I only consider my weekly yoga date, even if it often costs me to overcome. But when I'm there and come into my own river, I sometimes feel as high as if I had taken drugs.
It is this wondrous mixture of doing and letting. From over-growing and flopping, if need be. That makes me young. I gallop through the park with my sons, because the three of us feel happy and happy. I let myself be persuaded to a table tennis match, even if I'm just off set. I meet a friend and sweat and puff with her in an inspiring conversation. I stay in motion.I was fascinated by the idea of the American doctor David Agus: to dance through life as if prancing, with swing.
Do not squat on your laptop for five hours, sprinting around the block in between, trotting through the apartment or office phone, ignoring every elevator. I have long known the simple delicacy of climbing stairs. And I've developed my own gymnastics cycle - I always start with the exercise that makes me feel right now, and then I ask my legs, my stomach, my arms: What are you up to now? A crazy workout. Not always. But again and again.
