Original subtitles

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My name is Gregg Braden.

I'd like to welcome you to this very special presentation

of "Missing Links," the deep truth of our origin, history,

destiny, and fate.

In the last episode, we only began

to scratch the surface of the extraordinary potential that's

available to us through harmonizing

our heart and our brain, marrying these two organs

together.

In this episode, we're going to apply

what we learned to life itself and to the secret

of an extended lifespan.

We'll also discover how our advanced nervous system

triggers and actually supercharges

our anti-aging mechanism so that we can have long, healthy,

and vital lives.

We've often heard it said that from the moment

we're born we began to die.

Now, I know what the intention is around that.

And I know where people's thinking comes from,

because they're referencing the aging process.

But I want to tell you, there's a consequence

to thinking that way.

And it's a consequence that we probably

would never consciously inflict upon ourselves.

Because our bodies respond to those kinds of thoughts.

The new science is showing us something very, very different.

It's actually more accurate to say that from the moment

we're born, we begin to heal.

Here's where that thinking is going.

There is a huge difference between thinking of life

when we come into this world as a finite amount of experience

that we use up gradually over time.

There's a big difference between that

and thinking of life as a living entity that is always

constantly replenishing, rejuvenating,

and healing itself.

If you think about it, this is a huge, huge difference.

Because when we think about life as a finite quantity,

we have set into motion an expectation, maybe

a subconscious expectation, that every day, every year,

every decade we're using a little bit more,

a little bit more, a little bit more.

And I'm not saying it's right, wrong, good, or bad.

I'm saying it's all about how you choose to live your life.

If you choose to live a healthy and vital and a productive life

well beyond what is typically accepted of the years

that we see today, the 70 to 100 years that

is the average in the Western world today, then

that thinking has to change.

This explains why when we see people that are typically

of advanced age, they look like they are of advanced age.

You ever thought about this?

You ever thought about why is it that someone

when they are 100 or 110 or 114 years old,

which is right now the oldest living person

is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, 114 years old.

When we see someone who is 114 and that

their eyes appear dull.

They don't have that sparkle anymore.

Their physical coordination has begun to wane.

Their skin has lost that elasticity.

And we look at them and they look like 114 years old.

If we allow the mechanisms in our bodies

to do what they're designed to do,

there is, as I mentioned, this huge difference

between thinking that we're using up life

as we're going through life and embracing

the fact that we are constantly replenishing

the cells of our bodies.

We know that the organs of our bodies

heal and replenish the cells different rates.

The stomach lining happens every day.

The heart tissue, for example, happens less frequently.

But we know that this is happening.

What I want to talk to you about today

is the mechanism that allows this replenishing to happen.

What we know about it, what it means to us,

what it has meant in ages past, and what it could mean

in your life in the future.

And to do this, I'm going to begin

this conversation in Tibet.

I've had the opportunity, I was blessed

with about a decade of travel throughout Tibet in the time

when it was very accessible.

It was very easy to go into the Tibetan Plateau,

and into the monasteries and nunneries that

have the wisdom, the records, the texts that

record the wisdom.

And also to be with the people who live the wisdom that's

recorded in those texts.

So there are 12 monasteries in two nunneries

between the capital of Tibet, Lhasa,

and the highest portions of the mountain

ranges where I would routinely go.

And I had the opportunity to lead small groups of people

into these places.

And we would go into monastery after monastery

after monastery and nunnery after nunnery

and be with the people.

Through the translators we could sit with them

in the chanting halls when they were doing the prayers

and when they were doing their chants.

And for me, this is the value, once again,

of being with our indigenous family is something that we

simply cannot get from the hieroglyphs on a temple wall

or from the words in an old crumbling page.

Because it's only through human interaction, heart to heart,

mind to mind, eye to eye, god the god, human to human

that we can have the kinds of conversations

where I can witness in them something

that I may not understand.

Their ability to create a miraculous healing

in their physical body instantaneously.

Or to regulate their body temperature, to raise and lower

that temperature instantaneously when it's 15 degrees Fahrenheit

outside, they can go and sit outside and consciously

raise their body temperature to a point

where that cold doesn't affect them.

I wasn't taught about that in my life or my culture.

And so I can say to these people, how did you do that?

How did you do what it is that you were doing?

And they will answer me through the translator in Tibetan.

And if I don't understand what they've just

said through that translator, I can go back and ask them again

and again and again until I understand what's happening.

And that's something I cannot do from the hieroglyphs of a Mayan

wall or an Egyptian temple wall.

That's why it's important to be with our family,

our global family, and to preserve

the wisdom in our time.

It's disappearing so very quickly

that they've preserved for hundreds,

some cases thousands of years.

So it was in Tibet.

And it was in the 2000s, in this case in 2008,

where I had the opportunity to go to one

of the most remote monasteries.

It took six days out of Lhasa just to get to the monastery.

And once we were there, the only way to get to the monastery

was through the local mode of transportation, a yak.

Which is an amazing way to travel

if you've never traveled by yak up the mountain

trail to the monastery.

And it was in this place where I first

encountered some of the nuns who I sensed were of advanced age,

but I didn't know for sure.

Because on the one hand, they looked like they might be,

but on the other hand, they didn't look like elderly people

that I had encountered in the West.

Their skin was taught.

It wasn't baggy and saggy.

Their eyes were bright and clear.

They had teeth.

They had hair.

Sometimes they shave their hair, especially the women

shave their hair for convenience, for hygiene.

But it's still growing.

And so it was in this particular monastery

where I asked one particular woman, how old are you?

And I asked because the Mother Superior

was able to provide the papers.

Now this is one of those places in this program I cannot show

you her face for security and to honor and respect her privacy

and her safety.

But I'm going to tell you about her.

And then we are going to look at a couple of other examples

where I can show you their faces and you're

going to see the same thing.

But it was in this particular woman, it was the first time.

This is my tip off, my clue that longevity is possible in ways

that we simply don't embrace in the West.

We discount it.

We call it a hoax or we call it a fake.

But it's like those out of place artifacts.

So many examples of advanced age are cropping up

in so many places of the world.

The anomalies are now beginning to tell a story,

and the story is very different from the story

that you and I probably have been

led to believe in the past.

The Tibetan nun that I'm talking about right now,

when we saw her papers, what we saw

is the confirmed date of her birth was 1885, all right.

And the year that I was with her was the year 2005.

We went back again in 2008.

My first contact with her was in 2005.

1885 to 2005, that means I was looking

in the eyes of a woman who was 120 years old.

She did not look like 120 years old.

She lived in a single room.

She walked to the river every morning down

a hillside to bring up the water.

She grew a lot of her own food in the vessels and the vases

that were available to her, basil, tomatoes,

herbs that she would eat every day in a very, very

minimal diet.

She was good, healthy strong, and vital.

And that told me that something is

happening with her that maybe is happening with other people.

Well interestingly, I asked her what was her secret.

And she looked at me through the translator

and she said one word, compassion.

She said that's what we learn in these monasteries.

That is the essence of our Buddhist teachings.

It's all about compassion.

We'll see in a moment why compassion would

have an effect of longevity.

Before we do that, I want to show

you a couple of other cases.

Because I want you to see this isn't an anomaly.

It wasn't long after I met this Tibetan woman

that the national media ran a story about a woman

in the Palestinian territories.

And you're seeing her face on the screen

right now because she made national news.

This was on the Associated Press.

This woman, when you look at her,

ask yourself how old do you think she is.

Because here's her story.

She went shopping one day.

She hadn't been out for a while.

She had to go through a military checkpoint

that she didn't have to go through before,

didn't exist before.

They looked at her papers, they said your papers are expired,

you have to go to the authorities

and get some new papers.

And that's when she made headlines.

Because when they checked back through her records

they found her date of birth was 1888.

And the woman you're looking at in the year 2008,

she is 120 years old.

I'm not saying that she looks like she's in her 20s,

but I think she looks really good for 120 years old.

Her eyes are bright.

Her skin color is good.

Her teeth are good.

She still has her hair.

And I wanted to know what is her secret.

And she said the secret for her was the love

that she had for her family, her children, her grandchildren,

her great grandchildren, her great-great-grandchildren.

She said, they need me every day.

What would they do without me?

She says, I fix their meals.

I help them with their schoolwork.

I help them everything they're doing in their lives.

I work in the garden so that I can prepare the food for them.

She feels needed and she loves her family and she feels loved.

That is a heart based experience, all right.

So that's two.

And these are women.

And I wanted to find an example that was of a male.

And it was only through the research

I was able to find what I'm about to share with you.

And I'm sharing it with you, and I

believe this is factual because it

was documented by the military.

And it was also documented in an article in "Time" magazine

early in the 20th century.

The man that you're looking at right

now has a very interesting history.

His name is Li Ching-Yuen.

The image that you're seeing is a photograph

that was taken of him in 1927 by the Chinese military.

He was at the residence having a meal with an army

general at the time.

He was born in Sichuan China.

He spent the early part of his life as an herbalist.

He was a high altitude herbalist.

And he's also a martial artist.

So he lived in high elevation, thin air,

a minimal diet of very specific kinds of herbs.

And he learned about the energy of the human body

through martial arts.

He enlisted in the Chinese military

at a relatively late age.

He was 72 years old when he enlisted as a cartographer.

And he is documented as enlisting

in the Chinese military in the year 1749.

Now the Chinese keep meticulous records,

and that's why I trust these records, 1749.

He left the military.

And he went back to his home in the mountains

after he served as a cartographer at the age of 97.

And three years later, the military records

sent him a congratulations on his 100th birthday.

That was the year 1777.

They sent him another congratulations

on his 150th birthday, and the records

shows this very clearly in the year 1827.

And this is where it gets really, really interesting.

They sent him another congratulations

for his 200th birthday in the year 1877.

He died May 6, 1933.

His birth date, now there are two different dates.

He said that his birth date was later.

He said he was only born in 1736.

The military records, however, show that he was born in 1677.

So either one of these is showing a man

of tremendously advanced age.

His age at death was either 197 or 256.

And this borders on what are called biblical ages.

When he died he was seven feet tall.

He had accomplished 14 marriages over 11 generations.

And by some estimates, had as many as 180 children

that were attributed to his marriages.

"Time" magazine wrote an article on him, on Li,

and actually did an obituary May 15, 1933.

They acknowledged the validity of his longevity.

And in this article, they asked what was

the secret to his long life.

Before he died he had shared that secret.

This secret, he said, was all about the heart.

The secret was to keep a quiet heart.

Now this is not typical.

I don't think it's the oldest.

Because the time that I've spent in Tibet,

the monks and nuns have told me that there

are yogis that are much older.

I'm not sharing those with you here,

and here's the reason why.

I cannot document it.

I cannot say to you factually as a scientist those yogis are

actually 400 and 500 years old.

And the truth is, that the lives that I'm told they live

don't sound like very exciting lives.

They lived lives of ascetics, very little clothing.

They don't move very much.

They spend a lot of time in meditation.

And their bodies, their bodies are strong and they're healthy,

but they're not as engaged in everyday life.

If I'm going to live 200, 300, 400 years old,

I'd like to be very engaged in everyday life.

From the time I was five years old,

I told my mom that I would be in this world,

I'd be on Earth for 200 years.

I'm on the 200 year plan.

And while mom used to laugh when I would tell her that,

she later in life began to take it very seriously.

And she would say that to me when it came time

to wish me happy birthday, she would say,

I could wish you happy birthday, she said,

but you're on the 200 year plan, so I

have a lot more opportunities to do just this.

The point is, can we live beyond this traditional 70 to 100

years?

Would we want to?

And a lot of times when I ask people

if they want to, what they say to me is they don't want to.

Because to them, old age equates to suffering.

Old age equates to the body breaking down

and the things that they've seen in their lifetimes.

And I want to say to you right now,

it doesn't have to be that way.

The science is showing us this.

And the indigenous traditions are telling us this.

What was the common link between the three

people of advanced age that we just talked about?

The Palestinian woman, the Tibetan nun, and Li,

what was the common theme?

And I gave it away already, because I'm not

good at keeping secrets.

I gave it away.

Each of them had a feeling.

The Palestinian woman felt love for her family

and she felt that she was loved.

The Tibetan nun felt the feeling of compassion.

That's a heart based experience.

Li said the secret was a quiet heart,

feeling the feelings of calmness and serenity in his life.

So the common thread for all of these?

All of them are linked to a heart-based experience.

And you say, well, why would a heart-based experience

create this kind of longevity?

And the answer to that is the secret

to where we're going right now.

It probably comes as no surprise that a heart based experience

would have some effect on our longevity.

But the mechanism is what I want to talk to you about right now.

Because what you have just learned in the last episode,

the ability to harmonize your heart and your brain

in a very precise way, in addition to all of the benefits

that we've already shared, is the underlying trigger

to unlock the potential of longevity and vitality,

healthy longevity in your life.

And it all begins, not surprisingly,

with our DNA and the chromosomes that we have talked

about earlier in this program.

Each time our cells divide, something really, really

interesting begins to happen among

the many interesting things that happen within the chromosomes

themselves.

In the earlier episode, I described

how the tip of every chromosome, the DNA

at the tip of every chromosome has a special component called

a telomere at the end.

I didn't talk a lot about those telomeres

then because I knew I would right now.

A telomere you can think of in just the way

you would think of the shoe laces on your tennis shoes.

If you look at the ends of the shoelaces on your tennis shoes,

they typically have a little plastic cap

over the end that keeps them from fraying

and makes it possible for you to lace them

through the eyes on your shoes.

Well, the ends of your DNA, your telomeres,

are the equivalent of those little plastic caps.

And every time your cell divides, the chromosomes

in the division process, they are

incapable of completing division all the way

to the end of the DNA.

So what that means, is with each cell division,

a little piece of the DNA breaks off.

Its brittle, it breaks away and its lost.

That is what the telomeres do.

They are the buffer so that what breaks off

is the telomere and not the information of the DNA itself.

So when one cell divides in the two,

you lose a little bit of telomeres at the end.

That's OK, you've got a lot left.

Two divide into four, you lose a little bit more.

You've got a lot left, but not as much as you did before.

And you see where this is going.

It goes on and on for a finite period of time

until we reach a point where the telomere is so short

or it is so weak it can no longer protect

the rest of the DNA.

And when your cell reaches that point, we call it senescence.

We call it old age.

And eventually, we call it death.

Because the cell cannot preserve the information,

the DNA cannot preserve the information.

And because of that, it won't allow itself to divide

with bad information.

All right, so that's the mechanism.

Telomere shortening, it's directly

linked to stress in our lives.

And I want to say this to you directly.

I'm going to read directly from the scientific documents,

so you know it's not my opinion.

I want you to hear exactly what it

is they're saying about this.

In the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

the title of this research article,

it tells the whole story.

Listen to the title.

"Accelerated Telomere Shortening in Response to Life Stress."

What they're saying is chronic stress erodes the telomeres.

It impairs the DNA replication, and it accelerates the aging.

So this is peer reviewed science saying in open paper what

we're talking about right now.

It is the stress, the stress of life.

It can come from many places.

It can come from the job, come from work.

It can be emotional stress.

It can be environmental stress.

It can be psychological stress.

It can be a healing crisis.

There are all kinds of stress.

So it's not the stress.

It's about how we interpret and how we deal with that stress.

When we are born, we have a very high complement of telomeres.

What scientists tell us is when we're born,

we have about 8,000 base pairs of telomeres to begin with.

By the time we're in our 30s, we have maybe half of that number.

And by the time we're in our 60s we have maybe about a third

of that number, typically.

But the good news is, all that can change.

And you can direct how it changes in your life.

The lifetime of a telomere and the lifetime of a cell

are generally accepted to be about 40 to 60 cell divisions.

So 40 to 60 cell divisions is generally the lifetime

of an average cell.

And this is what scientists tell us.

It is the limit of that lifetime.

And the limit actually has a name.

It's named after the man that discovered the limit.

It is called the Hayflick limit, Hayflick limit.

That is the number of times, the Hayflick limit

defines how many times our cells can

divide before they reach the point where the telomeres

aren't working any longer.

Interestingly, that Hayflick limit

equates, if you take that number of cell divisions

and how long they live, that equates to about 120 years

of human life.

So we're beginning to see why we do see people living up

to 120 years.

We don't see a lot after that, because they have

reached this Hayflick limit.

The question is, can we increase that Hayflick limit?

Are we bound to that limit?

And the answer is yes, or we wouldn't

be having this conversation.

And a discovery in 2009 tells us why it's possible.

In 2009, the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology

was awarded to three people, to Carol Greider, Elizabeth

Blackburn, and Jack Szostak.

They all worked together to discover

an enzyme in the human body.

Now think about this, this is 2009,

that was just a few years ago.

And they're still discovering things about the human body

that we haven't known in the past.

This new enzyme was mysterious at first.

They found the enzyme, they weren't sure

what the function was.

But the only place they found the enzyme

was hovering near the end of the telomeres.

So they theorized, maybe this enzyme has something

to do with the telomeres.

And if it does, maybe the enzyme has

something to do with long life.

So their discovery of this enzyme

is what the Nobel Prize was awarded for.

The name of the enzyme tells the whole story, it gives it away.

OK, the telomeres are what determine how long the cell can

live and divide.

The enzyme they discovered is called telomerase.

And the purpose of this enzyme, the only purpose

of the telomerase in our bodies is

to heal and repair the telomeres at the end of our DNA.

The thing is, often our telomerase is not

actively engaged in its greatest potential.

It's dormant or if not completely dormant,

it is not as active as it can be.

Well, what scientists found after they discovered

the telomeres, they began looking

into the function of the telomeres

and the telomerase working together.

And once again, not my words.

I want to share with you the exact words

of what it is that they found.

The National Institutes of Health

produced a series of articles in the year 2011.

I'm just going to share with you two direct sentences from that.

Number one, they're saying that the telomeres shortened

with age.

They say "telomere length shortens with age."

That is a fact.

OK, the next sentence is the key.

Because they say "The rate of telomere shortening

can be either increased or decreased

by specific lifestyle factors."

What that means is that you and I have the ability

to make choices in our lives that will either accelerate

the aging process, senescence, old age and death,

or we make lifestyle choices that breathe life

and activate these anti-aging hormones and the telomerase

in our bodies.

And some of these factors you already know.

Of course, diet, exercise, lifestyle,

you know about those things.

But there's another factor now that you already know,

but you may not realize it is impacting

the duration of your cell life.

And that is the technique of heart brain harmony

that we just learned in the last episode.

Because that technique of heart brain harmony,

as you activate that in your life, what it's doing

is it setting up the communication

between your heart and your brain.

And your breathing is telling your body

that you're in a place that's safe.

And that is redefining any stress

that you may feel in your body.

Remember stress is one of the key factors to decreasing

the length of the telomeres.

So it's not just about meditating,

and it's not just about saying a chant,

although those things can help.

But it's about creating this environment in our advanced

and extended neural network that signals to our bodies

that we are in a safe place where

it is OK to put all the energy into the body

into the healing regeneration and rejuvenation

rather than sending that energy in defense

of the world around us through the stress of cortisol

and adrenaline.

I know it's a big, big idea.

The bottom line is, heart brain harmony

is a trigger for longevity.

Now what you're seeing on your screen right now,

I didn't want you to just take my word for it.

I want you to see this.

You're looking at telomeres.

These are photomicrographs of telomeres.

I'm going to show you a before and after.

This is a photograph of telomeres

that are of advanced age.

There aren't many of them left.

They are the little pink areas that you're seeing looking down

at the end of a strand of DNA.

And this is through the aging process.

Now the next image that you see is

going to be precisely the same telomeres.

However, the telomerase has been activated.

And when it's activated, it will heal and reverse

the aging process.

And now you're seeing it right here.

Look at this.

That is the same telomere that now is rejuvenated.

What you're seeing is anti-aging.

You're seeing it real time in the DNA.

And this is human DNA.

What's possible in this slide is possible in your body.

So modern science is now revealing,

it's solving one of the deepest mysteries of the greatest

truths of human existence.

We are literally wired.

I'm going to be personal.

You are wired to thrive in life and to begin

healing of your body.

You begin the moment that you're born.

And you can embrace that at any time in your life.

In our next episode, we're going to take

this idea of personal healing to an even deeper level

with a bigger picture.

And in doing so, we'll discover that the leading edge

science that tells us our personal choices are

the key to global cooperation and peace

are available to us in our lives right now.

Thank you for joining me for this program.

And be sure to tune in for our next all new episode "Missing

Links," the deep truth of our origin,

history, destiny, and fate.

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