fact or fiction
Is it a fact or is it merely fiction? Fact or Fiction explores the lesser known truths in the health and wellness world of Longevity.
Eyes Soft, Mind Soft: Relaxing the Gaze to Enter Presence
In a world where our eyes are constantly overloaded with screens, advertisements, and rapid movement, it’s easy to forget that vision is not only a way of seeing but also a way of being. The way we use our eyes shapes our nervous system, our emotional state, and even our patterns of thought. Most of us go through life with a “hard gaze”—focused, narrow, and tense—because we’re trained to seek, consume, and analyze.
By Victoria Marse5 months ago in Longevity
From Numbness to Noticing: Reawakening the Body’s Forgotten Signals
In modern life, many of us walk around half-present, not because we want to but because we’ve unconsciously tuned out our bodies. Hours in front of screens, endless mental chatter, and stress that never fully releases can lead to a quiet numbing of sensation. We still breathe, we still move, but we stop feeling. Subtle messages from the body—tightness in the chest, heaviness in the stomach, restlessness in the hands—fade into background static. Over time, this disconnection can create fatigue, irritability, and even a sense of being a stranger inside our own skin.
By Black Mark5 months ago in Longevity
The Weight We Carry: Noticing Subtle Tensions of Daily Life
We often think of stress as something dramatic — a pounding heart before a presentation, an all-nighter fueled by caffeine, or the surge of panic when deadlines collide. Yet for most of us, the real burden of stress is quieter. It hides in the body like a shadow: the jaw that stays clenched even when no one is arguing, the shoulders that inch upward throughout the day, the belly that never fully relaxes. These subtle tensions accumulate silently, becoming the weight we carry through ordinary life.
By Marina Gomez5 months ago in Longevity
Listening to Silence Within: Nervous System Regulation Through Stillness
In the noise of modern life, silence is often dismissed as emptiness, as absence, as nothing of value. Yet those who practice meditation know that silence is not an absence at all — it is a presence. It is the quiet hum beneath the chaos, a rhythm of the nervous system that can guide us back to balance when overstimulation becomes the norm.
By Victoria Marse5 months ago in Longevity
Grounded Feet, Grounded Mind: Stability Through Somatic Awareness
We live in an age where the mind often races faster than the body can keep up. Deadlines, digital distractions, and the constant pull of productivity can keep us floating above ourselves, untethered from the very ground beneath our feet. In this state, stress accumulates, anxiety spikes, and presence feels like a distant ideal. Yet, a profound shift begins the moment we return attention to something as simple and overlooked as our feet. Somatic awareness — the practice of sensing the body directly — teaches us that grounding through the feet does not only stabilize posture, but also anchors the mind.
By Black Mark5 months ago in Longevity
The Skin Remembers: Touch as a Gateway to Presence
We often speak about mindfulness as if it lives solely in the mind. Practices emphasize focus, concentration, and mental clarity. But the truth is that presence does not begin in the head — it begins in the body. Among the many doorways into awareness, touch is one of the most powerful. The skin, our largest organ, is constantly gathering information about the world, even when our thoughts are elsewhere. To learn to listen to this subtle language is to find our way back to the immediacy of experience.
By Marina Gomez5 months ago in Longevity
The Nervous System as Compass: Feeling Your Way to Emotional Balance
We often think of emotions as something happening only in the mind — fleeting thoughts, moods, or feelings that color our perception of the world. But beneath the surface, our nervous system is the silent guide shaping how we experience those emotions. It’s not just a collection of nerves firing off signals; it’s a compass, pointing us toward balance or disarray, safety or threat, ease or stress. Learning to feel through the nervous system, rather than just think about it, can open a deeper path to emotional regulation and presence.
By Victoria Marse5 months ago in Longevity
Walking the Body Back Home: Embodied Practices for Reconnection
In the rush of modern life, our bodies are often treated as mere carriers of the mind—vehicles for productivity, efficiency, and performance. Yet the body is not a silent servant. It is constantly speaking, whispering signals of tension, fatigue, or longing. When we ignore these messages, we drift further away from ourselves, living in fragments rather than as a whole. The practice of walking the body back home is not about dramatic change or heroic discipline. Instead, it is a tender invitation to return to ourselves through embodied awareness.
By Black Mark5 months ago in Longevity
Posture and Presence: How Sitting Shapes Mental State
Most of us think of posture as a physical matter — something our parents scolded us about at the dinner table, or a detail corrected during yoga class. But posture is more than biomechanics; it’s a lived language of the body. The way we sit, stand, and carry ourselves subtly shapes how we feel, how we think, and even how we relate to others. When we slouch, our breath compresses, our awareness narrows, and our mood tends to dim. When we sit upright yet relaxed, a different kind of presence emerges — spacious, alert, and open.
By Marina Gomez5 months ago in Longevity
