How to Remain Focused and Energetic as You Age

As human beings, we have something very valuable in our ability to focus our attention on different aspects of life.  “If you get interested in something, everything in you gets focused on that thing, isn’t it?  Whatever that thing is.  But most people do not know how to find any interest in life unless they’re hormone fired,” Sadhguru says.  “It’s an evolutionary issue.”

Sadhguru explains, “Every other creature is only interested in that, which is either its survival or its reproductive.”  He says that these two needs are chemically fired.  “This is a certain level of existence.  Animal existence is like that.”  

However, for humans, we have experienced an evolution.  “Today scientists say between you and a chimpanzee, the DNA difference is only 1.23%,” Sadhguru says.  “It’s a small difference, but a huge difference.  So if you allow this 1.23% to operate within you, you will see you are not chemically fired towards what you want and what you don’t want.”

He goes on to describe how many spiritual processes around the world center around some denial of food for this very reason.  “Staying away from food is not because we want to deny something.  We don’t want to fall into that category, that we become an animal, that where everything that we want is chemically fired,” Sadhguru explains.  “We want what we want consciously, without the influence of our chemistry.”

When we allow our hormones to control us, we fall into a cycle of compulsion.  We are essentially going around in circles and don’t even know it.  Sadhguru says, “We know if our longings and our focus and our direction of life is chemically fired, either by hunger or hormones, we know that we will not get anywhere.  This we have figured out.  Because of that, we are seeing how we create an interest and a focus and an involvement in something which is not chemically fired desire.”

In order to focus, Sadhguru says that we need energy.  “With age, energy comes down a bit.  If your identity just remains physical, the energy that you had in the body at 16, you will not have it at 30.  You have to invest in your intellect, your intelligence, your consciousness.  Then only you can remain energetic.  If you just invest in your body, you age without knowing what’s happening,” he explains.  “You have to invest in other things which do not need physical support.  Then you will see you can be whatever age and still be vibrantly energetic because your energy is not of the body.”

This is why yoga is so important – it is a union of body, mind, and spirit.  With yoga, you create a certain ease within your system, and so you will be vibrantly alive at any age.  So in order to remain focused and energetic as you age, integrating a practice of yoga into your life will make a world of difference.