Octogenarian and long term star of Britain’s favourite soap Coronation Street, William Roache believes that the answer to a long and fruitful life is meditation.
In an Interview on ‘This Morning’, Roache admitted that he regularly took a ‘tea break from life’, “I call it a tea break from life and what you need is a place in your home where you can leave all your worries behind for five minutes.”
During these tea breaks, Roache practices mindfulness techniques which he believes keeps him young and active.
Bill, as he is better known as, plays the popular character Ken Barlow in Coronation Street, a role he has played since the first ever episode which was aired on the 9th of December 1960. He is the only original cast member remaining on the show to this day.
Bill states that it is important to control your thoughts during the mindfulness process, “You can’t stop your thoughts, so let them go through. You need to control what you’re thinking about.”
Bill believes that how a person ages has a lot to do with their mindset and how they think. He also places importance on cell renewal which he believes is affected by mindset.
He explained: “Ageing is a belief process, if you think you are going to get slower as you get older, then you will slow down.”
“Your cells, renew themselves all the time, so if you slow down, the cell renewal process slows down.”
Bill also goes to the gym prefering to keep active by doing boxing and basketball where he interacts with other people instead of doing ‘dead exercise’.
Meditation and practicing mindfulness has been shown in many studies to have a lot of positive benefits for both mind and body. You do not have to go to monk-like extremes and meditate for hours on end or practice mindfulness to the levels of a Zen Buddhist, 5 to 10 minutes a day can have a huge positive impact on a person.
Bill was asked to appear in the ITV 1 show 100 Years Younger in 21 Days, which was aired in 2018, to show the contestants how he meditated.
Sitting still in a sturdy straight backed chair, Bill placed his hands down flat on his knees, closed his eyes and began to take long deep breaths. Focusing his attention on the breathing he was able to allow his mind become detached from his thoughts.
Most people believe that each and every thought we have is important and so they tend to ‘willingly’ get wrapped up or involved in them, which can be very harmful. Especially if they are pointless and negative thoughts which can snowball and create a lot of harmful emotions which will have negative effects on the body including cell renewal and regeneration.
With meditation, you soon realise that thoughts come and go and that we are not always the ones who create them. Thoughts come and go as memories, flashbacks, sounds, and images.
Imagine a huge media player attached to giant library of digital files.
Everything which has happened to you, everything you have read, seen, felt, heard, eaten, feared and loved, is all stored in the library as a digital file.
Now imagine that media player is faulty and is constantly playing on random. Throwing images, videos, sounds, and memories into the front of your mind. That is basically how a ‘healthy’ human brain works.
Scary yes?
It can literally drive people nuts and kill them.
Arise Genie.
The human mind has a helping friend.
There is a big magic genie who can help silence the noise.
The human mind is made of two parts, and the most important part is ‘the observer’. That part which can observe what is going on in our body and mind. It can ‘see’ what emotions we are feeling and what thoughts we are attached to.
The observer is separate.
Unfortunately, not many people know about ‘the observer’ part of their mind and regularly get lost in a confusion of their own making. The ‘observer’ should be seen as an important ‘Gatekeeper of the mind’. This Gatekeeper allows us to prevent our happiness and calmness from being destroyed by becoming attached to unnecessary and harmful thoughts, fears and emotions.
The Gatekeeper allows us to prevent negative thinking and emotions from hijacking our mind and destroying our peace and happiness.
With meditation, and by practicing mindfulness, a person engages their ‘observer’ and keeps unnecessary thoughts and fears from snowballing in the mind and robbing.
Moving Meditation & Mindfulness.
If sitting quietly and trying to not become distracted by a busy mind isn’t for you, then maybe you should consider trying a moving meditation like Tai Chi or Yoga. Both are very good for the mind as well as the body.
Both are known as gentle moving meditations.
Focusing your attention on your breathing and on perfecting moves, you quieten the mind and stop the random thoughts from penetrating your consciousness and stealing your peace.
Eastenders star June Brown who is 91 and who was also on the TV show 100 Years Younger In 21 Days, admitted that she regularly practiced yoga to help keep her supple and active. Her home routine included doing the tough position called the Bridge.
By doing yoga, and by focusing her attention on her breathing and on the positions she was placing her body in, June was able to quieten the mind, restore her body to a natural calm state of peace and happiness which has been very beneficial to her long term health and wellbeing.
Both Bill Roache and June Brown are working well past their retirement age and both are showing no signs of stopping just yet.
Both of them practice mindfulness in the way of meditation or yoga.
So, if you are not wanting to give up just yet and ready to make your retirement a Kickass retirement then maybe you should consider taking up meditation or practice mindfulness throughout the day with a mindfulness exercise like yoga or tai chi.