The Incredible Shrinking Woman

by Madeleine Kando

I heard on the news the other day that 'walking six miles a day might improve memory in the elderly'. Because the brain has to cope with a lot of different inputs as you walk, the way you place your foot on the ground, the sounds you hear and the things you see, all have to be processed and this keeps brain cells active. It prevents the brain from shrinking.

So, why is meditation so good for you? Isn't the goal of meditation to 'empty' your mind of thought? Wouldn't a meditator's brain eventually shrink to the size of a peanut? Maybe that's why gurus and other idols of the art of meditation are so 'nice', so 'at peace'. They have emptied their mind of all the disturbing thoughts that living in this cruel world generates in any normal sized brain.

If you are honest with yourself, you have to admit that most human functions shrink as you age. I won't go into too many depressing details, but everyone knows that as you age you lose some of your height, vision, hearing, muscle mass etc. The only thing that doesn't seem to shrink with age is your waist size.

Ok, so I can look forward to turning deaf, blind and becoming a midget. But if walking helps brain cells, why not devise a method to exercise your eyes, your ears and your stature to stop their functions from shrinking?

I tried to enroll in a 'eye yoga' class but couldn't find one, so I started my own 'eye exercises'. I take my eyes for a 'walk' every day. I sit in front of the mirror and make big circles with my eyeballs, look left and right, up and down, squeeze them, look cross eyed, the whole shebang. I cannot really tell if my eyes are rejuvenating though. I might just end up looking cross eyed as I get older.

Ears are pretty sedentary things, so you cannot really exercise them, but I have tried to turn music down to a point where I have to strain to hear it. I turn on the television and sit in another room to see if I recognize any of the familiar anchormens' voices.

To stop myself from shrinking I hang upside down on my gravity invertor at least twice a day. When my husband comes home after work, I unobtrusively inch my way close to him to see if I have gained any height. So far, I haven't noticed any difference, but you never know. Better safe than sorry, I always say.

On the other hand, part of me thinks that shrinking as you age might not be such a bad idea. Nature has been kind enough to give us humans time to adjust to growing into adults. Can you imagine how traumatic it would be if you were born an adult?

Shrinking with age might be nature's way to make it easier for us to ultimately completely disappear when we die. Who knows, if we could live to be two hundred years, we would all shrink to the size of a little clump of clay and it wouldn't be so hard to say farewell. leave comment here