Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being

A
LSO BY
C
HRISTIANE
N
ORTHRUP
, M.D.

Books

Mother-Daughter Wisdom

The Secret Pleasures of Menopause

The Wisdom of Menopause

The Wisdom of Menopause Journal

Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

The Secret Pleasures of Menopause Playbook

Beautiful Girl

Audio/Video Programs

Creating Health

The Empowering Women Gift Collection
with Louise L. Hay, Susan Jeffers, Ph.D.,
and Caroline Myss, Ph.D.

Menopause and Beyond

Mother-Daughter Wisdom

The Power of Joy

The Secret Pleasures of Menopause

Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

Inside-Out Wellness
with Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Miscellaneous

The Power of Joy app

Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom Healing Cards app

Women’s Wisdom Perpetual Flip Calendar

Copyright © 2015 by Christiane Northrup, M.D.

Published and distributed in the United States by:
Hay House, Inc.:
www.hayhouse.com
^®
•
Published and distributed in Australia by:
Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.com.au
•
Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by:
Hay House UK, Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.co.uk
•
Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by:
Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.co.za
•
Distributed in Canada by:
Raincoast Books:
www.raincoast.com
•
Published in India by:
Hay House Publishers India:
www.hayhouse.co.in

Indexer:
Jay Kreider
Cover design:
Karla Baker •
Interior design:
Riann Bender
Interior illustrations:
Scott Leighton, © Christiane Northrup Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Lines from “We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners” from the Penguin publication
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz,
by Daniel Ladinsky. Copyright © 1999 Daniel Ladinsky and used with his permission.

“The Kiss,” from
Make Me Your Own: Poems to the Divine Beloved,
copyright © 2013 by Tosha Silver. Reprinted by permission of Urban Kali Productions.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress

Hardcover ISBN:
978-1-4019-4516-9

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
1st edition, February 2015

Printed in the United States of America

To the ageless goddess that lives in every woman—and to Gaia Sophia, the Earth herself

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: Goddesses Are Ageless

Chapter 2: Goddesses Know the Power of Pleasure

Chapter 3: Goddesses Use the Healing Power Within

Chapter 4: Goddesses Understand the Causes of Health

Chapter 5: Goddesses Grieve, Rage, and Move On

Chapter 6: Goddesses Are Sexy and Sensual

Chapter 7: Goddesses Love Without Losing Themselves

Chapter 8: Goddesses Savor the Pleasure of Food

Chapter 9: Goddesses Move Joyously

Chapter 10: Goddesses Are Gorgeous

Chapter 11: Goddesses Embody the Divine

Chapter 12: The 14-Day Ageless Goddess Program

Resources

Endnotes

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

One of my 20-something pals told me, “Girl, you’re a puzzle.
You’re not young, you’re not old. I don’t know what the hell you
are. You’re Somethin’ Else. Just be somethin’ else. That works!”

— T
OSHA
S
ILVER, AUTHOR OF
O
UTRAGEOUS
O
PENNESS

Recently, I went to a sporting goods store to get my ski boot bindings adjusted, and the salesperson, who was clearly younger than I am, asked me what age I was. Apparently, if you’re over a certain age, they assume you need your bindings to release quickly because your balance has deteriorated and you fall more easily. I am physically active, more so than in my younger years, and I regularly dance Argentine tango, so my balance is just fine. I told the salesperson, who was looking at a formula to determine my binding adjustment, “Just put in 40.” I do that when I’m on exercise equipment, too. I don’t need the stair machine coddling me as if I am a frail little old lady who might hurt herself if the program pushes her a bit. If it doesn’t feel right, I’ll stop and adjust the machine. I don’t let myself feel embarrassed or ashamed about having to use a lower setting. And I don’t let someone else’s idea about what “40,” or “50,” or “60,” or any other number means inform how I see myself.

When someone asks you what age you are, do you even remember? Or is it so unimportant to you that you forget unless a “milestone” birthday is coming up? Age is just a number, and agelessness means not buying into the idea that a number determines everything from your state of health to your attractiveness to your value. You can be younger at 60 than you were at 30 because you’ve changed your attitude and your lifestyle. To be ageless is to defy the rules of what it supposedly means to be this age or that age. It is, quite simply, to never grow “old”—to never feel as if the best days are behind you and it’s all downhill from here.

Let me make one thing very clear: We begin to get
older
the moment we are born. But we don’t use the term “aging” in this culture until we get to about 50, and what most of us associate with “aging” is “deterioration.” The truth is that when it comes to aging, there are people in their 20s or even younger who already show signs of “aging”: deteriorating muscle mass, unstable blood sugar, and loss of balance. Meanwhile, others who are in their 70s are the picture of health. According to Joan Vernikos, Ph.D., a research scientist and former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division, who prepared 77-year-old John Glenn to return to space, aging is nothing more than a slow form of weightlessness: it’s what happens to your body when you don’t get up off your chair, move around, live an active life, and experience the earth’s gravitational pull. Getting older does
not
mean an inevitable decline in physical health or a slide into cultural irrelevance.

Goddesses Never Age
is about agelessness, or ageless living, which is what you experience when you engage life without fear that you’re going to fall—or fall apart. We are long overdue for a paradigm shift in what we believe about growing older. Centenarians are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population (increasing at the rate of 75,000 people per year).
¹
There are currently about 53,000 centenarians in the U.S. and by 2050, there will be 600,000. You read that right:
ten times
as many Americans will be over 100 years old two generations from now. That’s simply one piece of a global story about people living longer. If you want longevity, I’m sure you don’t also want to spend the last years of your life in poor health, thinking about how “old” you are. You can change your future starting today by adopting
a new, ageless attitude that will help you flourish physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Growing older is an opportunity for you to increase your value and competence as the neural connections in your hippocampus and throughout your brain increase, weaving into your brain and body the wisdom of a life well lived, which allows you to stop living out of fear of disappointing others and being imperfect. Ageless living is courageous living. It means being undistracted by the petty dramas of life because you have enough experience to know what’s not worth worrying about and what ought to be your priorities. It means establishing a new relationship to time, where you stop fearing it or trying to outrun it. When people over 100 were asked in a recent survey how they felt about reaching the triple digits, the top three answers were “blessed,” “happy,” and “surprised”—surprised because when you’re living agelessly, you don’t pay attention to your age, whatever it is.
²