Lifestyle Keys to Longevity and Wellness

An article on CNN reported that Susannah Mushatt Jones, the world's oldest living person, celebrated her 116th birthday on July 6, 2015. She attributes her longevity to sleep, clean living (she doesn’t drink or smoke), positive energy, and surrounding herself with loving relationships (she has 100 nieces and nephews).

The psychic readings of Edgar Cayce offered similar suggestions for longevity and wellness. From his trance state, Edgar Cayce reiterated that we are multidimensional beings; including physical, mental, and spiritual aspects, and must be viewed holistically. Long before scientific research confirmed that lifespan was based on individual lifestyle choices—including behaviors and environmental factors, the readings indicated that wellness and health were a state of wholeness and balance. The readings also stressed the significance of diet, exercise, and leisure long before the medical community noted their importance.

A healthy lifestyle is the key to staying well and preventing disease. Each of us is responsible for making choices and applying what we know. Since we are physical, mental, and spiritual beings, "preventative measures"need to include all of these aspects. We can use balance in mental, spiritual, and physical activity using moderation, regular hydrotherapy, osteopathic treatment, exercise, proper diet, meditation, and prayer to prevent illness and extend life. We can also seek to reduce stress factors including extreme emotions, frustration, anger, and worry. Imbalance and incoordination can challenge us to grow and develop; thus illness can often be viewed as an opportunity for transformation.

In a reading given for a 37-year-old insurance agent, Cayce said: "There are certain tendencies, certain weaknesses that are present in the body. They are not diseases–these are rather dis-eases, when certain stresses or strains are brought to bear in the mental, in the spiritual, and physical experience of the entity."(Edgar Cayce Reading 2533-6)

This man was encouraged to adapt a more balanced lifestyle, improve his diet, and enjoy regular exercise. The readings stress that for life expectancy, health, and illness, the role of the mind was far more important than heredity and genetics. While Mr. 2533 had inherited a tendency for a glandular imbalance, he could focus his mind on a spiritual ideal and change his own expectations about aging and death: "…because your great, great, great, great grandfather died you will die too—is there, and is part of the expectancy of every cell of your body! It can be eradicated, yes. How? By that constant activity within self of expectancy that this condition does not have to happen to you!"(Edgar Cayce Reading 2533-6)

Also key to health and wellness is having a definite spiritual purpose or ideal and being of service to one’s fellow man. Having a purpose gives us a reason to continue when we encounter obstacles. Edgar Cayce taught this again and again. Here are a few of his readings on this matter:

"This the entity should alter within self, being not only good, but good for something. Lose self rather in the service of others…"(Edgar Cayce Reading 1726-1)

"Make the experiences of the life not only good but good for something, and we will find it will make the rest of the years of the entity’s experience in the earth much more worthwhile… For life…is an opportunity to show the appreciation to the divine within, with the divine in your fellow man, and if you act in that manner much more joy, much more worthwhile will be the earthly experience of this entity."(Edgar Cayce Reading 5294-1)

"... you will live as long as you desire and do good for others."(Edgar Cayce Reading 5223-1)

The Cayce readings also stressed the importance of sleep for restoration and rejuvenation. Lifestyle and behavioral factors can contribute to sleep disorders. Sleep is a period of restoration in which the various systems of the body return to a natural state of harmony and balance. At the mental and spiritual levels, sleep presents an opportunity for communion with the deeper aspects of the soul which may be remembered as dreams. According to Cayce, during "what is ordinarily termed sleep – the mind, the mental forces are caring for all the forces of the body … yet is as aware to the inner self and is as alive to the deeper forces or the soul influences as in its environs of an awake consciousness."(1276-1)

Since all healing comes from within, therapeutic interventions work best when assisting the natural, innate processes of healing. The Cayce source implied too that all knowledge is available within, if we seek patiently, persistently, and consistently. "For, as has been indicated so oft in each body, no medicine, no mechanical appliance does the healing. It only attunes the body to a perfect coordination and the Divine gives the healing."(1173-7)

For more information on health and wellness, visit the online Cayce Health database.

This information should not be regarded as a guide to self-diagnosis or self-treatment. The cooperation of a qualified health care professional is essential if one wishes to apply any and all of the principles and techniques from the Edgar Cayce readings. Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993-20013 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation.