Could a youthful environment actually make you more youthful?

by Lian Brook-Tyler

Could a youthful environment actually make you more youthful?

It sounds far-fetched and yet, research shows that this is exactly what can happen, and in significant, objective, and measurable ways.

Safety goggles on, let’s begin with the science.

In what’s long been one of the studies that’s most fascinated me, psychologist Ellen Langer ran some research in what became known as The Counterclockwise Study.

Back in 1979, eight men aged between their late seventies and early eighties attended a retreat designed to replicate the year 1959… i.e. twenty years earlier.

Everything around them was designed to reinforce this time shift: Newspapers, music, TV programmes, and cultural references. They were also told to speak about 1959 as if it were the present moment, immersing themselves as if it were their reality now, rather than as a memory.

A comparison group also attended a retreat, but they were asked to simply reminisce about 1959 instead of inhabiting it as their current reality.

After just five days, the results were striking, the men in the immersive group showed measurable improvements across multiple markers:

Grip strength increased.

Joint flexibility improved.

Posture became more upright.

Hearing test scores improved.

Memory performance improved.

Independent judges who assessed photographs rated them as looking visibly younger.

The study was small and short, and it doesn’t prove that environment alone reverses ageing, but what it does suggest is something that, for me, is way more intriguing… that the mind, body, environment, and identity are deeply entangled, and when one shifts, the others may follow.

So if this can work for youth, what else might it work for?

This, dear gentle reader, is a question I’ve been living into for years, and thus far, the answer is: a cornucopia overflowing with endless possibilities.

I’ll give just one example for now, this John William Waterhouse painting has been hanging on my bedroom wall for 17 years now.

When it was first hung, I was a new mother juggling a corporate career: nappies, sleepless nights, and spreadsheets were the iconography of my life.

And yet, this painting - one of the very first things I would see every morning upon waking - showed me a very different life, one in which a woman could breathe in a rose in full bloom, and receive its invocation to beauty, nature, dreaming, wisdom from the ancient past, and things I didn’t have language for back then, but I could feel were important, and maybe even the *most* important.

The painting is called The Soul of the Rose.

This painting slowly inspired me to make other changes in my environment, which, little by little shaped my mind to prioritise beauty, nature, dreaming, wisdom from the ancient past, and other things that I began to discover not only the language for, but their deep resonance with my own soul.

And now, these two words - Rose and Soul - define my own life and the work I do with others: the Rose is the most powerful teacher of the Feminine, and the Soul is the North Star that can guide our whole life.

I will share all of my secrets about priming the mind (well, *almost* all, there’s some things that can only be shared in more intimate settings) to create the changes you long for in your life, in my upcoming All The Everything podcast episode.

Join me on Friday 27th February at 2.30pm, live on YouTube. We will journey deep through science, spirituality and story, into how you can shape your mind to serve your own unique and precious soul.

All my love,

Lian ♥️

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