Great man! All guys who think they are too old, have a rethink! Have fun!!

I came across a very inspiring article written by Judit Kawaguchi for a Japanese audience and published in The Japan Times Online. This article has tremendous value to all young and elderly alike. We are therefore indebted to her for publishing Dr Hinohara’s amazing life and contributing to spreading health awareness worldwide. I am sharing this great persons living philosophy for the benefit of all of us and to make our lives more joyful and fun.

Dr Shigeaki Hinohara is 97 years of age and a physician and an educator. His magic touch is legendary. He has healed many patients. He believes rather than surgery and medicines music and animal therapy can help more.

Always willing to try new things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including one “Living Long, Living Good” that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor himself.

As said by many Indian sages and western philosophers and gurus Hinohara too believes that energy comes from feeling good, from within not from eating well and sleeping a lot. Simple food and a peaceful mind is important.

There is no need to ever retire.

Amazing as it may sound but Hinohara plans ahead and his schedule is booked up to 2014. He intends having fun in 2016 and attend the Tokyo Olympics.

Be Active and share

Share what you know. He delivers 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people. He usually speak for 60 to 90

Dr Hinohara giving a speech. Picture courtesy The Tokyo International Forum

minutes, standing, to stay strong. Avoid the lift and go up the stairs. He himself takes two stairs at a time, to get the muscles moving. His advice to us is that in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society and work as volunteer. He still put in 18 hours seven days a week and loves every minute of it.

Avoid materialism

Live a simple life and don’t be greedy.

Forget pain

Pain is mysterious and having fun is the best way to forget it. A child with a toothache gets absorbed in a game, he forgets his pain. You can be the same way.

Find a role model

Observe the way they deal with life and emulate their ways.

Inspiration

Dr. Hinohara says that one of his inspirations is Robert Browning’s poem ” Abt Vogler”, which his father used to read to him.” It encourages us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that we can never finish it while we are alive. All we can see is an arch: the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the distance.”

So three cheers to Dr Hinohara and grateful thanks to Judit whose article has inspired many. I am keen on reading his bestseller book “Living Long, Living Good”.